CS295J/Class Members' Pages/Gideon/Week 1: Difference between revisions
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Mental deliberation can be slow, and in this case, the brain's RPM for tetris pieces is much higher. Using our environment for cognitive tasks is something we do all the time. If you believe Google makes us smarter (as opposed to dumber), you would agree. The additional notion that cognition is actually taking place in the active external reality might be difficult to believe at first. For example, | Mental deliberation can be slow, and in this case, the brain's RPM for tetris pieces is much higher. Using our environment for cognitive tasks is something we do all the time. If you believe Google makes us smarter (as opposed to dumber), you would agree. The additional notion that cognition is actually taking place in the active external reality might be difficult to believe at first. For example, consider the problem of following directions to get to a new restaurant. | ||
*1) We can write directions down on paper. | *1) We can write directions down on paper. | ||
Revision as of 14:50, 30 January 2009
Literature Keys
- Clark-1998-TEM
- Owner, Evaluator
- Summary
- Scholl-2000-PCA
- Discussant
- Adamczyk-2004-NNW
- Discussant
- HermerVazquez-1999-SFC
- Poster, Evaluated
Summaries
Clark-1998-TEM
The Extended Mind
We should not limit our notion of cognition to something taking place only within the skull. Instead, we can think about actively incorporating the external environment (or being incorporated into it), forming a single-system loop of cognition. To help understand this in terms of how we might utilize a computer's resources, consider the following:
- A beginner tetris player will often "unnecessarily" rotate pieces and move them about before deciding (or being forced to decide) on a final orientation.
- An intermediate tetris player will make fewer "wasteful" moves because he/she will have had the training and/or metal power to perform these simple calculations in his/her head.
- It's not unreasonable to assume an advanced player will take this one step further, achieving a perfect state of efficiency in play, only moving when absolutely necessary.
However, this is not the case! In fact, an advanced player's actions, in many ways, resemble those of a complete beginner. Namely, the expert WILL make moves which, though seemingly unnecessary), are taking advantage of the computers ability to do the same thing he/she would be doing, but better.
Concretely...
| Action | time [ms] |
| Plan a button press | 200 |
| Computerized piece rotation | 100 |
| Mental rotation | 1000 |
Mental deliberation can be slow, and in this case, the brain's RPM for tetris pieces is much higher. Using our environment for cognitive tasks is something we do all the time. If you believe Google makes us smarter (as opposed to dumber), you would agree. The additional notion that cognition is actually taking place in the active external reality might be difficult to believe at first. For example, consider the problem of following directions to get to a new restaurant.
- 1) We can write directions down on paper.
- 2) We can map them on our iPhones.
- 3) We can insert them into our neural implants which integrate with memory and spatial navigation systems.
Are the three cases so different? Are we more willing to say the ink on paper is less cognitive than the implant? This paper argues that indeed these cases are fundamentally equivalent in terms of distribution of cognition.