Intro to Thinking

The limits of Human Intuition A man bought a horse for $60 and sold it for $70. Then he bought the same horse back for $80 and again sold it, for $90. How much money did he make in the horse business?

Super simple, right? Most common answer: $10 –You actually make $20 How do you do it? Comparing total amount paid out with total amount taken in ( =20) Most American college students answer incorrectly Most German banking executives get it wrong

Let’s try again A man bought a horse for $60 and sold it for $70. Then he bought firewood for $80 and then sold it, for $90. How much money did he make?

Let’s try some more logic puzzles All members of the cabinet are thieves. No composer is a member of the cabinet. What conclusion can you draw? Is there one? Yes! There is a valid conclusion –Some thieves are not composers or there are thieves who are not composers

How about another… Some archaeologists, biologists, and chess players are in a room. None of the archaeologists are biologists. All of the biologists are chess players. What follows? What conclusions can you draw? Pinker found that most people will say that none of the archaeologists are chess players – not valid What is valid is to say that some chess players are not archaeologists.

Information processing model Organize items into mental groupings –Called concepts Form concepts from prototypes –Representative of the most typical member of a category Complex concepts = schemas

How do you give someone directions? What mental processes do you go through?

The Cognitive Niche – Steven Pinker (Harvard) Three key ideas to note 1.Computation 2.Evolution 3.Specialization

Idea #1: Computation The function of the brain is information- processing (computation) Brain = hunk of matter = Romeo and Juliet? –Interference – the pursuit of goals

Explain why Bill got on the bus. Do you need DNA to answer this? Do you need a brain scanner to answer this? So how would you figure out why he got on the bus?

Mind-body problem How can little “nothings” called beliefs cause behavior – a physical event Pinker calls this the COMPUTATIONAL THEORY OF MIND –Lifeblood of the mind is information (before in class we learned it as what?) –Knowledge, goals, and beliefs are implemented as information, as patterns in bits of matter

So – how do beliefs and desires cause behavior according to computational system?

Idea #2: Evolution How do we understand complex devices? –Complex devices What did Darwin say the job of the mind was?

Idea #3: Specialization The brain is not a singular, homogeneous mass of “wonder tissue” The heart doesn’t look like a kidney and a kidney doesn’t look like a heart Specialization goes all the way down to the minute neurotransmitter

The mind is complex – how do we know? –Because robots are dumb The mind is a system of organs of computation that allowed our ancestors to understand and outsmart objects, animals, plants, and each other Conclusion: