All Episodes
Displaying 1 - 20 of 55 in total
E52: Emotions as concepts
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 exper...
E51: Constructed memories (a nugget)
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...
E50: the preferred level of abstraction (a nugget)
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 Spanie...
E49: Metaphors and the predictive brain
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 u...
E48: Multiple metaphors
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:...
E47: Oops! The Winston W. Royce Story
In 1970, Winston W. Royce published a paper “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems.” Later authors cited it as the justification for what had come to be c...
E46: How do metaphors work?
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...
E45: The offloaded brain, part 5: I propose a software design style
In this episode, I ask the question: what would a software design style inspired by ecological and embodied cognition be like? I sketch some tentative ideas. I plan to...
E44: The offloaded brain, part 4: an interview with David Chapman
In the '80s, David Chapman and Phil Agre were doing work within AI that was very compatible with the ecological and embodied cognition approach I've been describing. T...
E43: The offloaded brain, part 3: dynamical systems
Scientists studying ecological and embodied cognition try to use algorithms as little as they can. Instead, they favor dynamical systems, typically represented as a se...
E42: The offloaded brain, part 2: applications
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 i...
E41: The offloaded brain, part 1: behavior
Embodied or Ecological Cognition is an offshoot of cognitive science that rejects or minimizes one of its axioms: that the computer is a good analogy for the brain. Th...
EXCERPT: Concepts without categories
This excerpt from episode 40 contains material independent of that episode's topic (collaborative circles) that might be of interest to people who don't care about col...
EXCERPT: Christopher Alexander’s forces
Software design patterns were derived from the work of architect Christopher Alexander, specifically his book A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. This ...
E40: Roles in collaborative circles, part 2: creative roles
The last in the series on collaborative circles. The creative roles in a collaborative circle, discussed with reference to both Christopher Alexander's forces and idea...
E39: Roles in collaborative circles, part 1
Farrell describes a number of distinct roles important to the development of a collaborative circle. This episode is devoted to the roles important in the early stages...
E38: The trajectory of a collaborative circle
Collaborative circles don't have a smooth trajectory toward creative breakthrough. I describe the more common trajectory. I also do a little speculation on how a circl...
E37: Resilience engineering with Lorin Hochstein
An interview with Lorin Hochstein, resilience engineer and author. Our discussion was about how to handle a complex system that falls down hard and – especially – how ...
E36: BONUS: One circle-style history of Context-Driven Testing
I was a core member of what Farrell would call a collaborative circle: the four people who codified Context-Driven Testing. That makes me think I can supplement Farrel...
BONUS: a circle-centric reading of software development through the 1990s, plus screech owls
Michael P. Farrell's Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work (2001) describes how groups of people follow a trajectory from vague dislike of the s...
