Why cognitive science?

[sapience]

I've reconnected with an old friend, and I just thought I'd share the bit I wrote about the appeal of cognitive science, in case it would be of interest to you.I'm studying cognitive science, which is the study of mind and intelligence from an interdisciplinary perspective.  It's a pretty broad topic, since it can cover any aspect of higher brain

Comments

[milkysa]

This is very cool.

I know a few people from college who (at least at the time) were very into cognitive science from the computer science aspect. I like seeing how your interests in the field come from a different angle.

[sapience]

Thanks!

It's funny, I really enjoy programming, but computer science is something I've only ever gotten into in pursuit of some other goal. The great thing about an interdisciplinary pursuit, however, is getting to meet people who are all coming at the same topic from different perspectives, which helps give a much more complete and powerful (albeit also more complex and confusing) picture of the subject.

Random LJ sojourner

[pasquin]

I've had similar musings. Pellegrino states that evolution was once limited to the code in our dna, that the evolution really accelerated once a method was developed to store code outside the organism (culture, language, et al). I've also gotten a lot of insight into evolution from David Wilson. Once you start looking at human behavior from an evolutionary perspective, a lot of what is considered irrational behavior makes more sense.

What I find frustrating is that with all the advances in science, and our understanding of our basic evolutionary programming, we are still stuck with brain 1.0 beta. Until we can upgrade the hardware, we're limited to whatever helped our ancestors on the Serengeti.

Re: Random LJ sojourner

[sapience]

I'm not sure who Pellegrino is, but I'm encouraged to know that I'm not the first to describe culture, technology, etc. as external evolutionary code.

I'm assuming that by David Wilson, you mean David Sloan Wilson. I haven't read any of his books, but I've read some of his essays, and it's good to read an evolutionary biologist taking group dynamics into account.

Humans have evolved well beyond brain 1.0 beta (as a quick look around the animal kingdom will illustrate), but I see your point. Hardware upgrades are so far outside of the practical realm right now, though, that I prefer to leave ruminations on the subject to philosophers and science fiction writers.

If you're interested in ways of hacking the human operating system, though, Keith E. Stanovich's The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin.

Re: Random LJ sojourner

[pasquin]

Charles Pelligrino is a somewhat eccentric, certainly egoistical scientist who has done anything from dive on the Titanic (and tie his thermodynamic theory of downdrafts with the sinking and the eruption of Vesuvius!), unearth Atlantis (as Minoans), and engineer an anti-matter drive (on paper). His biggest claim to fame might be as the inspiration for Crighton's novel, Jurassic park. Cloning dinosaurs from ambered prehistoric mosquitoes was his idea.

Never a dull read.