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Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

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Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#61

Post by zitterbewegung »

tuxxy wrote: post #49
zitterbewegung wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is an astute observation and the only way you can gauge accuracy is to confirm ground truth some other way. Try probing the system so that it conforms to your model and revise it when new evidence is apparent.

>confirm ground truth I'm not a philosopher, but I do enjoy reading and learning about post modernism. Isn't a large point of this book that you actually can't confirm a "ground truth"?

Yea, but when I use it in practice I have to verify if my assertions are true. So I guess I'm doing "reconstruction" I'm not sure.

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#62

Post by zuzuleinen »

While not a book, I have created a very simple program which fetches a random cognitive bias from Wikipedia.

I've set it up on a daily cron and now I receive every day a cognitive bias on my e-mail and read it on breakfast.

So far some biases really stuck with me and I notice myself referring to them every time I'm thinking about something.

With the results I have only for a couple of weeks I'm definitely planning to use it all my life.

Here is the code: https://github.com/zuzuleinen/bibi

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#63

Post by Luc »

dang wrote: post #57
Luc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I figured you had an axe to grind.

Please don't be rude in comments here, even when someone else had an axe to grind.

Yeah, and moreover, I should have stuck to providing links to some good books, like so many others have kindly done. Next time!

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#65

Post by EdwardCoffin »

Descartes' Regulae (Rules for the Direction of the Mind). There are online copies, but all the ones I have found are incomplete. The best one is in John Cottingham's The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 1

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_the_Direction_of_the...

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#67

Post by skyfeet »

See Arthur Koestler's book "The Ghost in the Machine" published in 1967. Koestler coined the word "holon". A holon is a whole functional and structural unit while at the same time a part of a larger whole, which is itself a part of an even larger whole. Koestler sees life as a hierarchy of holons. For example, a mitochondrion is a structural and functional unit with its own code of instructions while being a part of a cell, which is another holon, which is part of an organism, another holon, which is part of a social group, yet another holon.

It occurred to me that consciousness may also be a hierarchy of holons. A whole can only be known from a "holistic" perspective. Any attempt to reduce it to parts to understand the whole destroys the character of the whole. This may help explain why reductionist science has had little success in explaining consciousness.

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