Oddly Influenced

An elaboration on episode 49's description of the brain as a prediction engine, focusing on a theory of what emotions are, how they're learned, and how emotional experiences are constructed. Emotions like anger and fear turn out to be not that different from concepts like money or bicycle, except that the brain attends more to internal sensations than to external perceptions. If the predictive brain theory is true, the brain is stranger than we imagine; perhaps stranger than we can imagine. Main sourcesLisa Feldman Barrett, "The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization," Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017.Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017.Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality, 2024.Other sources"... Chemero’s approach in his book Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (episode 43)...""... Clark suggests something like this in his 1997 book, Being There, covered in the unnumbered episode just before episode 41...""... Remember how, last episode, I distinctly remember driving seated on the left side of the car while in Ireland..."George A Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information,” 1956. ("... replicating an experiment from 1949...")CreditsPicture of the University of Illinois Auditorium is from Vince Smith and is licensed CC BY 2.0. It was cropped.

Delve into the fascinating world of memory construction, uncovering how our memories are more about assembling experiences than just recalling them. Discover personal driving stories from around the globe that illustrate this concept. The discussion further extends to emotions and suggests that they might also be pieced together from past encounters, inviting listeners to rethink their understanding of both memories and feelings.

Ever wondered why we call a Springer Spaniel a 'dog' instead of a 'mammal'? The discussion dives into the cognitive science behind our preferred level of abstraction when categorizing the world around us. Explore the quirks of human categorization and how culture shapes our labels. From playful metaphors to the surprising 'first law of Frisbee,' discover how hierarchical thinking influences our understanding and communication, all while keeping things just abstract enough to make sense.

It's fairly pointless to analyze metaphors in isolation. They're used in a cumulative way as part of real or imagined conversations. That meshes with a newish way of understanding the brain: as largely a prediction engine. If that's true, what would it mean for metaphorical names in code?Sources* Lisa Feldman Barrett, "The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization," Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017. (I also read her How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017) but found the lack of detail frustrating.)* Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, 1997. CreditsImage of a glider under tow from zenithair.net.

When we name a class name `Invoice`, are we communicating or thinking metaphorically? I used to think we were; now I think we aren't. This episode explains one reason: ordinary conversation frequently uses multiple metaphors when talking about some concept. Sometimes we even mix inconsistent or contradictory metaphors within the same sentence. That's not the way we use metaphorical names in programming.SourcesLakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 1980. (I worked from the first edition; there is a second edition I haven't read.)Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, 1997. Lisa Feldman Barrett, "The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization," Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017.CreditsPicture of cats-eye marbles from Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.

Explore the fascinating legacy of Winston W. Royce and his misunderstood waterfall model. Discover how metaphors can mislead in software development and learn six tips for better visual communication. Delve into the cultural biases tied to upward and downward trends, shaping our perceptions of success. Hear about the reality of iterative design and the inevitability of setbacks in the development journey. Finally, find out how chunking information can improve understanding and retention in learning through effective visual aids.

Conceptual metaphor is a theory in cognitive science that claims understanding and problem-solving often (but not always) happen via systems of metaphor. I present the case for it, and also expand on the theory in the light of previous episodes on ecological and embodied cognition. This episode is theory. The next episode will cover practice.This is the beginning of a series roughly organized around ways of discovering where your thinking has gone astray, with an undercurrent of how techniques of literary criticism might be applied to software documents (including code). Books I drew uponAndrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought (2/e), 1993 (four essays in particular: see the transcript).Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 1980. (I worked from the first edition; there is a second edition I haven't read.)Two of the Metaphor and Thought essays have PDFified photocopies available:Reddy's "The Conduit Metaphor – A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language About Language"Lakoff's "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor"Other things I referred toHelper T cellsRichard P. Gabriel's website"Dead" metaphorsThe history of "balls to the wall"CreditsThe image of an old throttle assembly is due to WordOrigins.org.

In this podcast, the host explores a software design style inspired by ecological and embodied cognition. They discuss using Erlang-style 'processes' as core building blocks and the importance of avoiding Big Ball of Mud. The episode delves into the balance between intellectual control and biological plausibility in design decisions. Additionally, the host references Extreme Programmers' practices and test-driven design concepts for inspiration.

David Chapman, an AI researcher, discusses his work on the Pengi program. They explore ecological software design, indexical expressions, and the implementation of a game controller. They also discuss the behavior of bee wolves and the maintenance of the AI program Pangy.

Scientists studying ecological and embodied cognition try to use algorithms as little as they can. Instead, they favor dynamical systems, typically represented as a set of equations that share variables in a way that is somewhat looplike: component A changes, which changes component B, which changes component A, and so on. Peculiarities of behavior can be explained as such systems reaching stable states. This episode describes two sets of equations that predict surprising properties of what seems to be intelligent behavior.Source:Anthony Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, 2011Either mentioned or came this close to being mentionedJames Clerk Maxwell, "On Governors", 1868 (PDF)Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, 1997Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Embodied Cognition", 2020Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The Computational Theory of Mind", 2021Wikipedia, "Dynamical Systems Theory"Nick Bostrom, "Letter from Utopia", 2008/20CreditsThe image is from Maxwell's "On Governors", showing the sort of equations "EEs" work with instead of code.