Intro to Thinking

2. Intro to Thinking

3. 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?

5. 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 (160-140=20) • Most American college students answer incorrectly • Most German banking executives get it wrong

6. 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?

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

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

11. The Cognitive Niche – Steven Pinker (Harvard) • Three key ideas to note • Computation • Evolution • Specialization

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

13. 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?

14. 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

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

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

17. 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

18. Conclusion: • 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