future notes

things that I may or may not write about someday

first published: march 15, 2025
last updated: march 20, 2025

ai + cogsci

(i tried separating these out as two categories, but there is too much overlap!)

what is ai?
-- every little thing we do is search
ai techniques: when does the search happen? compile-time vs. run-time
search vs. x-polation? (curve fitting?)
plant cognition, and looking at group means versus individuals in plants and people
-- binet's children and observations about interpreting intelligence tests
-- that column in that wildlife journal
a cool serendipitous case study of conceptual change in science
how thought experiments can generate new "empirical" data
arc and raven's and core geometry and the bongard problems
-- why are all of these so difficult, and so fundamental?
three types of creativity (margaret boden)
aphantasia
my phd student and his n-step detective story

my "spatial anchoring" conjecture (reading on paper vs. electronic)
social interaction value (studying for my phd quals)
white board lectures (pacing, handwriting, mirror neurons, and joint attention + doc-cams)
optional phone relinquishment policies
LLMs for learning to code; why the analogy of learning assembly vs. not is a bad analogy
solving problems by local randomized search; that math comics blog post; what jerry roth told me
education IS the silver bullet, from the west wing

the journals of william ross ashby - cybernetics and information/control theory
-- old school! complete scans of all his handwritten journals
-- also his letters to other luminaries of the time (turing! wiener! craik! mcculloch!)
-- all part of a beautifully curated digital archive of his work
nurturing science, website by biologist uri alon
-- a great collection of thoughts and resources on building a more nurturing culture in science and research labs, and why this is good for us as people but also good (essential!) for advancing the science
the circle of stuff you know and the circumference of stuff you don't
when to write a paper
doing before reading; feynman; hamming
the mathematics genealogy project; and why scientists ask other scientists who they did their phd with

smartphones vs. flip phones
old vs new video games (upload/download bandwidth idea)
gps and spatial cognition
visual complexity in infant visual experience and the reality threshold (and contingency)
online versus print journals, and citation counts
intermittent rewards and addictiveness
why i am not using LLMs for anything

links to bookshop.org - support local bookstores!

cogsci
- thinking in pictures: my life with autism, temple grandin
- metaphors we live by
- the parrot's lament: and other true tales of animal intrigue, intelligence, and ingenuity, eugene linden
  -- just an amazing (and thoroughly entertaining) set of animal stories. my favorites were the ones about how orangutans are the zoo's cleverest escape artists.
history of science and technology
- the mismeasure of man, stephen jay gould
- visions of a flying machine, peter jakab + gossamer odyssey, morton grosser
  -- these two books should be read in sequence!
tech and society
- the siren's call: how attention became the world's most endangered resource, chris hayes
- addiction by design, natasha dow schüll
  -- a hugely significant book in the canon of literature on technology and addiction. while the focus is mostly on slot machines, the lessons carry over wholesale to thinking about addiction and the modern internet.
writing + design + etc
- tufte
- make it clear, patrick winston
  -- patrick was a former ai professor of mine, close mentor, and friend. sadly he passed away a few years ago. i still tell lots of stories about him, and he greatly influenced a lot of my research and teaching.
fiction
- vernor vinge
- ted chiang
- c. j. cherryh

my favorite geeky tshirts
-- with the disclaimer that (of course) one doesn't have to wear geeky tshirts to look like a computer scientist! a great piece on this by programmer and artist amy wibowo
the oregon trail micro-generation
my project on orangutan enrichment, and interesting stories from along the way
my graphic design projects