Topics about how people think and learn (especially children), and various tricks and techniques for teaching — not just school learning, but *life* learning.
Well, turnabout is fair play. Computers have been driving us crazy for decades already. 😉 And does this mean that we’re ready to create the HAL-9000? 😉 (Really interesting ideas about brain research using neural nets, though I have my doubts that it will be very useful for most things until we understand the brain …
Continue reading ‘“Boffins develop method of driving computers insane”’ »
Electric shocks help people learn. Well, duh! If I were a neuron getting shocked all the time, I’d certainly be looking for the fastest way to turn it off too! 😉 Seriously, it’s an interesting read for science geeks. And one of several bits of science suggesting that a real “thinking cap” might not be …
Continue reading ‘“Mild brain shocks may improve learning and cognition”’ »
Scott Adams points out a possible link between creativity and boredom. I can see where he’s coming from, in that when you’re bored you’re more likely to think of something creative than when you’re too busy to think, but I’m pretty sure people can be creative even without boredom, at least in the area that …
It seems that the human brain may have some built-in hardware for detecting cheating.
You might have seen this guy, he was a guest on a lot of shows after he won the US Memory Championship earlier this year. Memory training is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. I really think that schools should have one mandatory class every year devoted to it. Of course, it’ll …
Remember how your parents/grandparents/schoolteachers used to use the phrase “put on your thinking cap”? Someone has actually come up with one. And it apparently works, too.
I kind of wish that someone had thought of this when I was in school. My younger self would have considered it torture, but it would have helped me get more fit, and I think my general lack of fitness contributed to my depression.
Although this is an interesting article to me, it would probably bore just about everyone else to tears. The only thing that might mildly interest some people is the coining of a new (to me) word in the last sentence: […] With the pressure off, Siemens is incented to deal with the PR problem and …
As I mentioned a few days ago, in my younger years I had problems understanding what was going on in other people’s heads — apparently a problem common to people like me. It seems that it’s a good thing that I’ve always read a lot of fiction, that trait is probably responsible for the majority …
Continue reading ‘“How Reading Fiction Can Improve Your Social Skills”’ »
(In part 1, I talked about discovering a few weeks ago that there’s a name for the differences between myself and others, High-Functioning Autism, referred to as HFA from here on. This part focuses on my reactions to that discovery.) I’m still trying to make sense of my life in light of this new information. …