This is a short review of the book “Philosophy of Technology” by V. Dusek and its main themes and ideas. I’ve selected some interesting ideas to talk about, and included some excerpts from the book in the end.
Category: Research
Can Economists ruin Innovation with an Index? Thoughts on measuring innovation, growth, culture, and creativity.
The 2022 Global Innovation Index report released by WIPO has been published for 2022. Here are some of thoughts on the report, including a few comments and reflections on innovation, economic growth, measurement, and cultural resources.
The Cognitive Reflection Test : A shortcut to measuring Intelligence
Can three innocent questions serve as a proxy for an intelligence test and predict cognitive ability? Even if not, it might be fun to play around with them, and reflect on what reflective thinking ability can teach us about our decision making and mental habits.
I got a notification with a link to an article, and I was naturally inclined to check it out: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/psychopathic-stare
How couldn’t I?
Breaking and important news… The headline itself is amazing :
Psychopaths don’t move their heads when talking
A new study found that people who scored high in certain psychopathic traits are more likely to limit head movements.
The GII report and ‘Index’ reports in general
Let me start by saying that one should be very careful when dealing with broad inter-country indicators and not just because they could (they will) contain mistakes (some have had very juicy scandals that involve cooking data and massaging numbers).. I think that many of these ‘reduce-everything-into-a-number’ measures, especially when they try to measure wide social processes carry inherent ‘conflation risks’ leading to waste of mass-scale resources.
How does learning (the acquisition of knowledge and skills) happen? What are the models for the learning stages? There are many theories, but theorists seem to agree that four is a good number… and a circle is a good shape.
The models presented here consider conscious effort, competence level, abstract vs experiential learning, and contemplation/reflection on progress.
