3 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2022
    1. . In a 2004 study byAngelo Maravita and Atsushi Iriki, they discovered that when monkeys andhumans consistently use a tool to extend their reach, such as using a rake toreach an object, certain neural networks in the brain change their “map” of thebody to include the new tool. This fascinating finding reinforces the idea thatexternal tools can and often do become a natural extension of our minds
  2. Mar 2022
    1. “Noteson paper, or on a computer screen [...] do not make contemporaryphysics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make itpossible” is one of the key takeaways in a contemporary handbookof neuroscientists (Levy 2011, 290) Concluding the discussions inthis book, Levy writes: “In any case, no matter how internalprocesses are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinelyconcerned with what enables human beings to perform the

      spectacular intellectual feats exhibited in science and other areas of systematic enquiry, as well as in the arts, they need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.” (Ibid.)

      Does Neil Levy go into anything on orality with respect to this topic? Check: Levy, Neil. 2011. “Neuroethics and the Extended Mind.” In Judy Illes and B. J. Sahakian (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, 285–94, Oxford University Press

      Link this to P.M. Forni's question about how I think about mathematics and my answer relating to scaffolding or the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

      Link this to the 9/8 zettel quote from Luhmann about writing being thinking.

      Compare the ideas of visual thinking (visualizations) and a visualization of one's thinking being instantiated in writing along with the Feynman quote about the writing being the thinking. What ways are they similar or different? Is there a gradation in which one subsumes the other?

      What does Annie Murphy Paul have to say on this topic in The Extended Mind?

  3. Nov 2021
    1. Basically you take an idea, convert that idea into a character then whenever you want to think about that idea you imagine yourself as that character and then explain that idea to yourself through that character. For example: We first take an idea (lets use automation) Then we turn it into a character (lets see automation as a mass of cogwheels and pistons moving around randomly) Then you imagine yourself as that character and see the world through that characters eyes (in this case we would be disgusted by humanity because of how slow and inefficient it is) Now when we are asked a question about automation or when we want to think about automation we can imagine ourselves becoming that character and we can speak through them to answer that question

      Related to the idea of putting oneself into another ideas' shoes discussed a bit in Annie Murphy Paul's book The Extended Mind.