Thursday, August 29, 2013

Is Organized Memory the Explanation Behind Logic?

Here I want to propose a new way of thinking about logic.  I want to argue that any type of logic can be equivalently viewed as a manner of organizing your memory.  By "organizing your memory," I mean putting the things which you remember into groups that are similar in some way, and then taking new information and observations and adding these to the appropriate group.  For example, think of what it takes to read a sentence.  The image of the sentence enters your eye, and then your brain divides the sentence into separate words.  To put the word together, you would learn the individual letters, and the word could be identified by identifying the letters, which could be done by matching the shapes of the letters with the letter shapes you have memorized.  Basically, it's all a big chain: the image you see is organized into objects which are identified as letters which make up words with associated meanings to give the meaning of the sentence.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Starcraft improves your mind & memory improvement

Another one of those coincidental things happened.  Although I stopped playing Starcraft 2, I kept on watching it, and, having caught up on all the matches in the Korean leagues I follow, I searched for some other Starcraft 2 stuff and just so happened to find this article, titled: playing Starcraft can increase your cognitive abilities.
"Importantly, the results of the study suggest that cognitive flexibility can be improved through training, which Glass admits is a controversial theory.  He says that more research will be needed to replicate the results."
I saw that and said, "What?  Isn't that like some bold point I made recently about what I've always believed?"  And... controversial??  I just can't see it as controversial.  I just can't.  Name any area, any subject, any skill, and you can find people who have made significant improvements in that area or subject or skill.  I see no reason why it should be impossible to improve in cognitive flexibility, or in memory, mental agility, logical thinking, creativity, and so on, for that matter.  Now, I'd love to hear any argument for fixed mental ability, because as much as I try to argue the opposite viewpoint against myself, I see neither benefits nor significant evidence for it in this case.  At least in memory, I've seen my own mind make significant improvements.  While there are many things that make me think my memory has improved greatly, I found one old memory game which shows the improvement to be more than just something I'm imagining.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The limits of science

What if I told you that everything you learned in science might not be true?  Well, it might not be, and that is true.  By now you surely know how much I hate setting limits, but here a limit exists.  The laws of science cannot be proven true.

The problem lies in how logic works.  Here are two notable things.  One: statements that have never been proven false are not therefore true, otherwise it would be a true statement that I'm the smartest person in the world (just kidding).  Two: the fact that one explanation works and all other known explanations do not does not make the one that works true.  That would be similar to saying that problems that cannot be answered today will never be answered.  The fact that no one can provide an alternate explanation does not mean that the only supported explanation is true, just as the fact that no one can solve a problem does not mean that the problem cannot be solved.  Now, how does this apply to science in general?

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

The Talent Code

    I actually read a book about talent.  It's kind of a surprising thing; although it's stuff that I would read, I rarely ever actually do read it.  Usually it's something I only do when I think about something that I'm sure I've heard of before and want to find something talking about it so I can post it here, something like that.  Anyway, this post will be about The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  If you couldn't have guessed, I don't intend to talk about the quality of the writing or how worthwhile of a read it is, or anything like that.  Who would be interested in knowing that?