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A batch of the best highlights from what Quinn's read, .
How Measurability/Mathematical Bias Limits the Scope of Scientific Inquiry and Human Discovery
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So there's this old paper from the, I think, 1960s by Eugene Vigner, the Nobel Prize physicist. It's called something like, on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. The fun paper, and he's like, there's no good reason why mathematics should work as well as it does. And there's no good reason why there should be a tool that allows humans to predict things as well as math does. There's no good reason. It's kind of nuts. And we should all just be grateful. And he says some other things, but he's basically just kind of being all about how great mathematics is and how there's no good reason why it should be. And it's pretty cool that it does work so well. I think that there's a counter to that, which is that not everything is that easily described that mathematics. And there's lots of things for which mathematics is not that effective at describing. And it's actually just the things that were well described or easily described by mathematics are the things that were discovered using mathematical tools. They're the things that lend themselves that were amenable to mathematical inquiry. And a lot of the things that we're interested in terms of social science and cognitive science and the related philosophical inquiry are things that are much less tangible in terms Of this kind of specification. And you can see it like in a physics equation, right, a physical theory, whether it's about mass or electricity or something else, right, you have a theory about how things work. And then you can write out equations. And all the terms in the equations have units. And they are all directly related to the things that are measurable. The theories are directly about relationships between things that are measured. And in social theories and cognitive theories, so often our theories are about relating constructs. And then we have proxy measurements, but the theory isn't about the relationship between the proxy measures. The theory is about the constructs and the relationships between the constructs that are social in nature, that are cognitive in nature, but aren't the things that are being measured. And so there's this gap. And I don't know the extent to which that gap can be overcome.
Paul Smaldino & C. Thi Nguyen on Problems With Value Metrics & Governance at Scale
COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life
Providing Mental Scaffolding and Tools Drastically Increases Human Cognitive Performance
Summary:
Scaffolding people's experiences with tools like mind mapping can raise their performance above their innate capacities.
Studies have shown up to a 40% increase in cognitive capacity when individuals are taught and encouraged to use tools for problem-solving and understanding. This highlights the significant role of tools in enhancing human cognitive performance, akin to how a computer is described as a 'bicycle for the mind' by Steve Jobs.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So but Kotzky was this Russian educational theorist, right? And he and his whole notion was, if you scaffold people's experiences, so just training wheels, right, basically, you can raise the level of their capacity and their performance above And beyond their innate capacities. So mutual friend of Danglish Marktemberg, who's in Jordan Hall's, and I was Zack Stein, as a Harvard psychologist, very thoughtful guy. And he was working with an organization, his whole dissertation was on standardized testing and how whacked it is, right? And how the inequities it bakes into the system and that kind of thing. And they did studies where they would have somebody, you know, fundamentally on an intelligence or cognitive capacity assessment, right, makes sense of your life, makes sense of The world, makes sense of this word problem, whatever it would be. And then, you know, and then someone would score, you know, a 60% or a three out of five on a Leica scale, right? But then they would teach them how to mind map, right, a tool scaffolding, right? And they'd say, okay, so now everything you just said there, now hit the like draw connections, draw bubbles, draw dotted lines, like, sort and establish the relationship here about What you were thinking, and then retested them. And they would score a five out of five. So there's sort of up to this 40% swing in someone's intelligence or cognitive capacity, just based on did you give them a tool, right? It's like Steve Jobs saying, you know, that a computer is like a bicycle for the mind, right? And you're like, oh, okay. So how many bicycles for our minds, right? Can we share and create such that we can all pedal faster?
#11 - Jamie Wheal — Tackling the Meaning Crisis
Win-Win with Liv Boeree
Cynics are those who actively oppose change. NOBL recognizes that “cynics’ negativity can be annoying,” but engaging with them and trying to convince them can often be a huge time suck when it comes to leading change. Here’s the magic: “cynics are just disappointed idealists.” Perhaps they have gotten their hopes up about change only to be let down. Unlike a fence-sitter, a cynic is at least actively engaged with the change effort so spend your time delivering “something that matters” to your cynics, because actions will speak much louder than words. And if you are successful, your greatest cynics, once won over, will often become your greatest advocates.
Becoming a Changemaker
Alex Budak
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