Brains That Work Smarter, Not Harder
from the how-it-all-works dept
More data isn't always a good thing. As has been pointed out plenty of times, efforts for things like data retention often have the opposite of the intended effect (catching criminals) because it hides the good data with all the bad data. Is it any surprise that our brains feel the same way? Clive Thompson is talking about some research that took people by surprise, noting that smarter people tend to be better at ignoring useless data, rather than storing more data. Traditionally, it's been assumed that the brain is sort of like a big hard drive -- and people who can remember more tend to be smarter. However, this research suggests that it's not the ability to remember more, but to remember the right things. In some ways this isn't that surprising. After all, intelligence often seems to come from the ability to do better pattern matching than others -- and having the right data, rather than too much data can often help make those patterns clearer. It would be interesting to see what sort of impact this would have on artificial intelligence research. Many AI projects seem to have worked on the basis of cramming the system with more and more and more data in the hopes that some sort of intelligence would eventually emerge. Perhaps the focus should be more on teaching it how to ignore data.
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More Data
Misunderstanding this will lead the human brain to make mistakes in judgment and will, as you state, cause tech-folks to give data storage and mining an undeservedly high priority.
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Our brains...
Speed readers actually look at the lines or even paragraphs directly rather than going word for word. Many people are taught to read word for word. There is lost data though by many speed readers as compared to those who would read slower in comprehension tests.
There are pros and cons to everything...
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Re: Our brains...
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Ignoring an important part of perception
As we grow older, this ability deteriorates. Difficulty understanding your companion at a noisy restaurant is as much a matter of not being able to ignore/suppress everyone else in the retaurant as it is a result of possible hearing loss (in fact, impaired perception may impair cognitive function).
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Re: Ignoring an important part of perception
This is LLI in a nutcase, I tried to explain it as simple as possible. I just find it quite interesting and pertinent to the subject in question. Hope it helps.
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Re: Ignoring an important part of perception
LLI in a nutcase, I suppose would be that in the low IQ people :P
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Re: Brains that work smarter
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
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Re: Brains that work smarter
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nope...
Be more careful when you make generalizations.
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more vs. less data
There has been a fair bit of behavioral finance research into how poorly the average person deals with probabilities and in deciding the relative importance of different data.
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No Subject Given
I dont really know, just wondering because I found this article fairly facinating.
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good book suggestion
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Reminds we of a joke
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No Subject Given
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Focus is the Secret of Genius
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The 'ol pattern matching & useless data exclusion trick
and I must say rejecting useless data makes sense. I am by nature a very good pattern matcher too. Thought it was a skill refined by years of reading debug screens (hexdumps). Maybe I was good at it because it was a natural ability.
When people tell me the tricks they use to remember, say a pin number, I don't see how they do it. An example: I recall such things as the sequence of digits, not a set of button locations on the keypad. Interesting article by the way.
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