Oddly Influenced

Memories appear to be constructed by plugging together stored templates. Do concepts operate the same way?SourcesSuzi Travis, "False Memories are Exactly What You Need", 2024.Lisa Feldman Barrett, "The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization," Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017.CreditsImage of street warning from Dublin, Ireland, via Flickr user tunnelblick. Licensed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

We see a creature near us, and we describe it as a dog. Why that and not "mammal" or "animal"? And if that dog's a Springer Spaniel, and we know it's a Springer Spaniel, why do we nevertheless call it a "dog"? In an apparent digression, I discuss the idea in cognitive science of a "basic level of categorization" (or abstraction). While we construct hierarchies and taxonomies, we tend to operate at one specific level: one that's not too abstract and not too concrete. SourcesGeorge Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, 1987.Gregory L. Murphy, The Big Book of Concepts, 2002.Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2024. CreditsThe image of the dog and cat is via https://fondosymas.blogspot.com. It is licensed as Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 España.

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.

Suppose you believed that the ecological/embodied cognitive scientists of last episode had a better grasp on cognition than does our habitual position that the brain is a computer, passively perceiving the environment, then directing the body to perform steps in calculated plans. If so, technical practices like test-driven design, refactoring in response to "code smells," and the early-this-century fad for physical 3x5 cards might make more sense. I explain how. I also sketch how people might use such ideas when designing their workplace and workflow. Books I drew uponAndy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, 1997Alva Noë, Action in Perception, 2005Also mentionedGary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, 1998I mentioned a session of the Simple Design and Test conference.The sociology book I contributed to: The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming, 2009, edited by Andrew Pickering and Keith Guzik. My chapter, "A Manglish Way of Working: Agile Software Development", is inexplicably available without a paywall.The MIT AI Lab Jargon FileI believe the original publication about CRC cards is Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham, "A laboratory for teaching object oriented thinking", 1989. I also believe the first book-type description was in Rebecca Wirfs-Brock et. al., Designing Object-Oriented Software, 1990. The idea of "flow" was first popularized in Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's 1990 Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. The idea of the hedgehog and the fox was popularized by Isaiah Berlin in his 1953 book The Hedgehog and the Fox (a wikipedia link).The original developer of the Pomodoro technique describes it here. There was a book about it, but Goodreads has been sufficiently enshittified that I can't find it. Perhaps you might be interested in Reduce PTSD and Depression Symptoms in 21 Days Using the Pomodoro Method instead? Because Goodreads prefers that.The Boy Who Cried World (wikipedia)CreditsI was helped by Steve Doubleday, Ron Jeffries, and Ted M. Young. I took the picture of Dawn in the tango close embrace.