
The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity [pdf] - brianclements
http://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(15)00767-9.pdf
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randcraw
I've always been fascinated by curiosity. Like invention, it seems to
integrate all the merits that make homo sapiens sapient. (Of special import to
me after all my zoology classes seemed to dwell on that difference to excess).

I think too few past investigations of cognition, especially AI-motivated and
abstract / computational models of cognition, have approached the topic from
assessment of human higher cognitive functions like creativity, invention, and
genius. It seems there'd be a lot of value toward understanding the mechanisms
of cognition by recognizing patterns of extraordinary performance and then
decomposing them to consistuents (as neurologists do clinically), rather than
starting with the constituents and trying to compose them into higher models
of cognition (as biologists or AI folks do, systematically or synthetically,
respectively).

IMHO, AI approaches to cognitive synthesis have been largely a no-go. Perhaps
more dissection of high-level cognition could help?

I do know some folks have pursued research agendas somewhat like this --
cognitive scientists like Doug Hofstadter, or cognitive psychologists like
John Anderson (ACT-R) and AI engineers like John Laird (Soar) or cognitive
modellers like Thad Polk.

But has anyone seen continuing progress toward more than building bottom-up
synthetic models that demonstrate an occasional human-like cognitive pattern,
or bottom-up observational psych/neuro research papers on phenomenology, using
this focus? I'm not enough attuned to recent work to know.

~~~
brianclements
Everyone is biased to some extent by their own fields of study, and as the
saying goes, to a person with a hammer, every problem is a nail. Since AI
fields have long been incubated by people in the software fields, it becomes a
language/data/algorithm problem. And not that those things aren't important,
they definitely are a piece of the puzzle. But ask them more philosophical,
pedagogical, or creativity based questions, and they are easily stumped. You
need to know what your trying to emulate! Or at least have a philosophical
view on what consciousness or creativity is first.

I've long imagined what a software spec would look like for one trying to
build an AI. I imagine it would be equal parts technical and philosophical.

I personally think more AI firms and researchers need to permanently employ
professional artists, teachers, and creative types. But perhaps I too may be
biased ;)

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asgard1024
I assume everybody here is familiar with the feeling when you suddenly
understand something; it's as if pieces of a puzzle suddenly click together
and create the whole picture. So, my question, what is this feeling? How does
the brain recognize that it should have this feeling? (Because we can feel it
in so many abstract things...) Maybe curiosity then can be just explained as a
craving for this feeling; but actual cognitive basis behind this feeling, at
least to me, seems lot more interesting.

~~~
Umn44
"So, my question, what is this feeling? How does the brain recognize that it
should have this feeling?"

If we take the idea seriously that the universe is unified and all knowledge
is unified, then it would be safe to treat the universe as a single entity.
AKA everything is related to everything else in a whole host of mundane and
non mundane ways that human beings are not aware of given the limits on the
human brain/body and the time and energy required to process that information.
AKA all the truth is there (the universes structure and its relationships).
Rather our mind is busy highlighting things that are interesting, it's just
the brain buildings models and finding interesting links unconsciously and
when its done we get an update. AKA most thinking is done all the time
unconsciously without our awareness of it. See the science:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ)

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untilHellbanned
I'm gonna only add a troll comment and downvote me if you will, but PDFs break
the web. That most academic publishers use PDF drives me crazy!! Why did we
allow this to happen?

~~~
eveningcoffee
I favor PDFs because they are in form of self contained concentrated
knowledge.

I can save them, print them, read them on e-book and they play nice and they
do not have unnecessary elements like menus or side panels or what ever.

The same can not be said about a web page. If nice printing option is not
provided then it is normally near impossible to print correctly, if I save
them, it is not sure that they would display correctly years later, if I do
not save them, I could not be sure I could actually access the information
years later.

~~~
zafka
Hmmm, This sounds like a standard whose time has come. Web pages that easily
transform to a nice printable form, or perhaps multiple transforms.
Occasionally I will be on a web page that has a "print format" option, but
most of them suck. Now, How to monetize??? First thought is to be one of the
new open science publishing platforms funded by donations and appropriate
advertising.

~~~
brianclements
I think the only way for everyone to get what they really want is to separate
the "view" from the data. You can pack a lot of metadata, links, binary data
(pictures) into a standardized and compressed format, then you can allow all
the various mediums (web, desktop view, in-app text only, in-app pictures
only, etc.) to create their own support/plugins for accessing that data
package. Ship one package, view everywhere. And the plugins can be made for
that medium safely from scratch. They can even simplify/allow/disallow certain
categories of info as needed (allow text, disable links, don't view pictures)
so that the data morphs to the needs of the medium/plugin.

addendum: I would add that mediums are usually just incidental and necessary
means to get to content. Why force everyone to adopt a medium (adobe binaries)
to get to the real focus? The content? Instead, just package the content, and
people are great and finding their own paths to it via plugins if the
interface and code is open and standardized.

~~~
brianclements
I went on a google quest about this topic. Mapping my way through postscript,
file encoding, pdf, xml, json. I eventually found my way onto a format that
was right under my nose all along that kind of does all this. epub! Can
extract to plain text, web, pdf, view natively, it's comprised of layers that
you can use or not use, etc. Submitted it as it's own topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10563472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10563472)

