The Axon Terminal - 2012-02-02

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2:33 AM

crap I need to start contributing to this site again

@Josh looks like you found a bug:

2

Q: Can't create a new tag wiki SE 2.0 meta sites

Looks like creating tag wikis on SE 2.0 metas isn't working. To reproduce, go to the "moderation" tag page on Programmers meta. There is no tag wiki, so click the "help us create it" link. Instead of going to the edit page with textboxes for the excerpt and the body, another page is shown with ...

bug tag-wiki per-site-meta

3:24 AM

I notice we've just hit the 100 question mark.

I did a little bit of googling for where others are asking questions and answers:

4

Q: Where else are people asking scientific questions about psychology and cognitive science?

At present, I think the stack exchange model provides the best infrastructure for building a high-quality question and answer site. In general, I think that if people on the Internet who are looking for a place to ask quality scientific questions on psychology and cognitive science, become aware ...

discussion site-promotion

9 hours later…

12:41 PM

@BenBrocka ooooh, a bug!

And I was about to give Tim Stone +100 on MSO!

@JeromyAnglim Yey for reaching 100 questions! Good finds on those other forums, also

1:03 PM

Great answer @JeromyAnglim!

5

A: By learning to read and write upside down, what did I do to myself?

Negative Transfer A common scientific term to describe what you are talking about is called negative transfer. I.e., where learning one skill actually results in lower performance on another skill. This is contrasted with positive transfer, when learning one skill facilitates performance on anot...

I read that question and was worried it wasn't going to generate very good answers, I was very pleasantly surprised that you provided a term for exactly what he described!

2 hours later…

3:03 PM

LOL at:

2

Q: Is leg jiggling a focus aid?

This is slightly left-field, but I am interested in the CS implications of this. Many people are, like me, leg jigglers. That is, we often sit jiggling or bouncing a leg - usually to the irritation of those who don't around us, but that is a separate issue. The evidence that I have seen is that ...

I have had people get perturbed at me for "leg jiggling" as well. Plus calling it that just sounds humorous :-)

I also have some suggested edit's I'd love for someone to take a anger at on that question as well as in this answer (CC @BenBrocka :-)

@Josh I was actually leg jiggling as I was reading that question! :)

now you'll have a hell of a time trying to stop, lol

I'm also curious as to why someone downvoted my question about Synesthesia... if only because I'd improve it if I could. I suspect it was just someone who didn't like the question at all/thought it was too basic/too general/etc. Not overly concerned about it at all, just curious/desire to improve the question

@Josh Why can't I 'suggest edit' that question? Wanted to fix the types and use a list for the a, b, c summary.

@StevenJeuris because I already did that :-)

@Josh Oh, SE amazes me again, smart.

3:09 PM

user image

now if we could get someone to approve my edits... glares at Ben

(I'm totally joking of course. Really he should just bounty 425 reps to me so I can approve edits :-)

... and now if only SE would be smart enough to detect list items and suggest making lists out of them! :)

@StevenJeuris To MSO! ;-)

@Josh No time, want to fix something before end of work.

Good luck @Steven!

Okay, in an effort to stop my now-constant-leg-jiggling and also try and earn some health points at the same time I now head for the exercise bike!

@Josh Which one do you have?

I work on exercise bike software. ;p

3:13 PM

@StevenJeuris amazon.com/gp/product/…

Since you write software for these bikes maybe you can tell me WTF it means when it tells me to "reverse direction", LOL

Because if it actually means "pedal backwards" this seems... rather silly :-)

@Josh That's boring! :) Check this out: youtube.com/watch?v=bIeSEDL-CXE

@StevenJeuris I will check that when I return! If I'm going to make it to my meeting in time I better head AFK now, so we can discuss later @Steven :-)

TTYL!

@Josh Haha, that indeed is a poor way of putting it! ;)

3:32 PM

@Josh ping me if you need any more, I still don't get the little notification that helps me find suggested edits

2 hours later…

5:16 PM

Remeber to try and reach out to industry experts on Twitter/ect: twitter.com/#!/BenBrocka/status/165118432231165952

2 hours later…

7:19 PM

Whew, today's a busy one!

@BenBrocka Thanks! I think those two were the only ones I have pending at the moment

@Ben looks like this edit is pending.

So are these: 61 60 59 57

7:59 PM

Thanks for the approvals @Ben!

@StevenJeuris man I wish I had that!

@Josh That's another way to gain rep. ;p

Sadly the boring bike was what was within my budget, lol

Not to mention it was what was within my budget in the middle of the recession!

@Josh Understandable, it is quite expensive. Probably because it's quite a niche market.

I normally watch things like Charlie Rose while biking. That's whan I watched the Charlie Rose Brain Series, actually

I had a Trek magnetic resistance bike before, but it eventually gave out

@Josh We once figured we could play real movies instead of those 'real life videos' :) If you wouldn't peddle fast enough you'd get an annoying slow movie, haha. :)

Did I just say peddle? That can't be right.

8:03 PM

thanks

.. to pedal?

LOL

That would make for an interesting bike ride

@Josh ... very helpful. :) I pedal on my bike?

I do find that when watching anything political I bike faster, especially if the politicians get my blood boiling hahaha

@StevenJeuris yes, you pedal your bike while riding around to peddle your wares

@Josh Great memory aid ... or so we'll see in about 1 month when I ask the same question again.

yes, you peddle your bike while riding around to pedal your wares .... Shit

8:07 PM

LOL, damn you English language!

Haha, a better idea would be to visualize what peddling a bike would look like. :O :)

5 hours ago, by Steven Jeuris

I work on exercise bike software. ;p

Just ask your sales team @Steven! ;-)

Haha! This will stick!

user image

He can no longer pedal his bike as he is peddling too much.

ahahahahahaha

@StevenJeuris this has now been saved to my "random funny chat images" folder :-D

Whew, this one needs some major edits. I'll take a stab at it as long as nobody else is.

0

Q: Is there any term/bias corresponding to the praise for the unknown?

The Humanbeing is inclined to praise and even afraid of the unknown. This inclination has led to the mythology and many gods up to now and we are still carrying this habit on our daily life. "Oh, look at these crop circles, aliens must have created them!" "Oh, he can bend the spoon! He must ha...

cognitive-psychology psychology

> "Oh, he can bend the spoon! He must have psychic power!"

>_> is this even a real question?

@Josh Let me check.

Ow, I have read a bit on that subject, "The God Delusion". Richard Dawkins added plenty of references as well as to why we would be inclined to believe such stuff. Although it all sounded a bit vague to me.

8:17 PM

Okay, I will continue to edit!

@Josh Don't forget to add those wikipedia references. ;p

Yup! Thanks :-D

And removing those pesky 'thanks' stuff. Newcomers to SE are way too friendly. :)

hahahah

@StevenJeuris you mean linking "God of the Gaps" right? Or more of them?

@Josh [9][10]

8:20 PM

Oh I just deleted those since it was quoted. Do you think I should keep them and just link em?

At least I would link them, and if they are any good, adding them in full text at the bottom might even improve the question.

Is there any consensus on how to add references yet? ... checking. :)

Oh crap, now I lost them... actually if @Ben would be so kind as to approve my edits then we can see the diffs and you can clean those up for me @Steven. +2's all around!

Still only 3 up votes. Wouldn't call that a consensus.

Yeah I know. NEED MOAR META USErS!

While you're at it, I suggest a 'belief' tag?

... or is it 'believe'.

Either way, I'm definitely interested in that question.

8:34 PM

More edits for Mr @Ben :-)

It's a pity I don't have the book near me at the moment, otherwise I could have attempted to turn my comment into an answer.

Also, yey for Nice Question badge on Question #1 :-D

I'm sure there must have been a couple of references in that book.

Cog Sci Newsflash: @JeromyAnglim has overtaken @BenBrocka for the #1 user position!

I'm going to start bugging Jeromy to approve my edits now :-)

@BenBrocka ... Ben's post I reply to now is probably the reason. :)

@Josh That user did sufficient research in my opinion btw. Interesting link to Occam's razor, God of the gaps ... Your edits will do magic! :)

8:41 PM

@StevenJeuris Thanks. I agree, after reading the question more it is a valid question. The parts about "Oh, he can bend the spoon! He must have psychic power!" put me off at first, plus until i edited I was kinda unclear on the question

I interpret it two folded, "Why do we believe?" and "Why do we want to believe?"

Small difference actually.

Good point!

Fascinating question when you think about it, because as he points out, it is pretty ingrained in our nature

Well, why it is ingrained, I find the evolutionary argument I read about pretty convincing.

Hi all, just woke up for the morning; @Josh I'm happy to approve edits; bring them on :-)

Well then good morning @Jeromy! :-)

8:47 PM

But somehow that doesn't feel like it explains his questions, why we tend to prefer a explanation over just abiding by not being able to explain it.

Looks like you just approved my final remaining pending edit @Jeromy, which pushed me to 500 rep (yey!). Now @StevenJeuris you can tweak this question more if you wanted to. (I couldn't see the Diff anymore after posting a suggested edit)

@Josh For starters, I find the question title itself still terrible. :O

Although, I don't know a good alternative immediately. :)

Ug, that's normally where I start! IDK what's wrong with me today, distracted I guess :-p

> What drives Humans to praise or fear the unknown?

maybe?

@Josh Better!

Although, it's not the unknown you praise, but an unsubstantiated explanation of it.

@StevenJeuris Very true

That could be improved at a number of points in his question

> Why are Humans reluctant to understand the unknown?

still not happy with that

8:57 PM

Why are people inclined to believe unsubstantiated explanations when faced with the unknown?

A bit too long though.

@Josh Why are people inclined to resort to belief when faced with the unknown?

You like?

@StevenJeuris I like it

@StevenJeuris yes even better

K, editing ...

Those are interesting articles they linked to in wikipedia. I've added them again, but only as a link, not at the bottom of the references.

newdualism.org/papers/R.Larmer/Gaps.htm

amazon.com/dp/0805074791/?tag=stackoverfl08-20

@StevenJeuris this sounds fascinating!

I want that book. :) It might actually answer the question. A bit dated though (2003).

It's amazing how fast we learn things in this field

That's one of the reasons I love it, it's so new compared to other sciences

9:16 PM

@JeromyAnglim: Another update! :)

Or do you already have a list of suggested edits?

I don't think anyone does... I suspect a bug but I'm not sure

SE Staff appointing mods will solve the problem :-D

@Josh My last post was a week ago, so that's probably why :P

@BenBrocka haha that could be why. You just felt badly and wanted to let the rest of us catch up, eh? ;-)

211 with that edit! Whew! :)

I'm catching up alright!

Surprised I'm still getting rep actually

9:28 PM

I upvote just about everything I see from both of you two, so, that helps I'm sure :-)

(because you guys do a great job of asking/answering :-)

@BenBrocka Any ideas on the 'believe' question? I'm quite interested in it, and if you know anything relating to it can do some research on that. :)

I've heard some stuff but don't feel like digging for research on it...that's a big part of why I havent' anwered lately :) finding resources for UX is hard enough

We need more users! :-)

I know two other people I am going to refer to the site

Also nice edits @Steven, improved upon my edits well

I think I have to click on the "review" button to see suggested edits.

Jeromy has the power!

I have the review link but not enough rep to do anything there, lol. Well actually now I can VTC

9:40 PM

@JeromyAnglim no, it's in mod tools, which is in a higher priv bracket

0

Q: What is the most complex artificial neural network created to date?

A few years ago I wrote a research paper on neural networks, at the time IBM's Blue Brain was the clear winner. Some rumor went around that they were close to emulating a brain the complexity of a cat; this has been debunked. At the time their research was groundbreaking and previously even emu...

neural-network artificial-neural-network artificial-intelligence

@BenBrocka HAL9000 of course!!!

Although Siri would argue that point ;-)

user image

this is what it looks like to me, at least when there are no edits

5 mins ago, by Josh

Jeromy has the power!

:-D

Hm, then it's just the notification we don't get? I thought I checked that tab before and it doesn't show anything

I agree; it is strange that there are no notifications that I'm aware of.

9:51 PM

@Josh Siri ain't complex, I would even argue, it isn't AI? As far as I understand it it's simply a smart platform for speech recognition, that's all.

Yet another over simplistic answer provided to you by yours truly!

1

A: Why are people inclined to resort to belief when faced with the unknown?

In the book "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief", Wolpert (2007) discusses the evolutionary origins of belief. Although I haven't read it yet, abc news reviewed the book. Wolpert argues that our wide range of beliefs, some of which are clearly false,...

@StevenJeuris I was halfway joking.... but in seriousness, I'd say complex yes, netral network no

The speech recognition is done on the phone (I am pretty sure)

Siri is a NLP

which I'd argue is failry complex :-)

but much of what Siri does is offloaded to Wolfram Alpha

@Josh NLP are of course AI complete, it's one of the fundamentally difficult aspects of AI. I would certainly not discount Siri as "not an AI"

It processes language quite well, though it does offload many searches to wolfram alpha

@BenBrocka Wouldn't that question quickly get outdated? This seems suitable for wiki on the long run. Even the question has to be updated as more modern neural networks are developed.

@BenBrocka doesn't what characterizes something as an AI really depend on if the system can learn?

I am not sure if Siri learns based on it's experiences, or if it functions from a central database of knowledge fed to it by developers

I think only Apple knows for sure

@Josh But does it do NLP? As far as I know some apps are aware of specific words which can trigger a requested action. I see it more as a link between words and actions, nothing more. Well .. that and it keeps 'context', so the links between words and actions change depending on your previous 'action'.

9:56 PM

@StevenJeuris this is a very good point...

@StevenJeuris Breakthroughs in neural networks are fairly rare...and even if it had to turn community wiki it's an often relevant and important question

@StevenJeuris I've seen my business partner talk to it. He asks it things in so many ways and tries to trick it, I am fairly convinced it does NLP.

@Josh But that's the thing. If you say 'umbrella' and <town-name> in one sentence, it's going to give you the weather. That's how I figured it would work.

It doesn't matter how you phrase it.

@StevenJeuris I think if it gets confused it just resorts to poor matching

@StevenJeuris and in my experience it seems it ultimately dumps to "shopping for term" or "google for term"

... oh well, that's how I would attempt to implement it at least. :)

A connected graph of words which when combined trigger certain actions.

And applications can plug in their own graphs.

10:00 PM

Learning is a branch of AI, rarely is any AI solution supposed to solve all possible problems of AI, if it did we would have solved the "central problem" of creating an AI as "smart" as a human

@Josh The thing is exactly that afaik, Siri doesn't learn in any sense. I guess it's all based on predefined data.

@StevenJeuris i.e. a neural network :) that's an extremely simplified way of how words activate neurons

@BenBrocka A neural network can change itself right?

@BenBrocka very interesting. THis is one of the things I'm hoping to learn a lot more about from our site. Even though I am a professional developer I've never really dabbled in AI. Aside from a robotics class in high school, and I don't think that counts :-)

@StevenJeuris Siri's responses change but it's unclear why, that is, do humans correct it or is it learning. We can only guess unless I can convicne my brother to get insider info :-D

For me for something to be AI, the resulting artifact should be created by the program, and not just follow a predefined path.

10:04 PM

@StevenJeuris I agree. But my opinions in this area carry very little weight :-D

Also, yey for one of the first real on-topic chats! \o/

@Josh In what sense do they change? If you start a request, and ask the exact same thing over again as in a previous 'session', I would be amazed it answers differently.

@StevenJeuris well I know for one thing the "joke" questions have changed

i.e. now the first response to "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" is "Oh no, not this again", since everyone asks Siri that

now does Siri know everyone has asked that and developed that response? I suspect a dev saw a vast increase in people asking that and coded "Not this again" as the first response

@StevenJeuris Organic ones certainly, an artificial one can technically be hard wired, it depends on how willing you are to define it as a neural network when it doesn't perfectly emulate the functionality of an organic one

Siri (software)

Siri () is an intelligent software assistant and knowledge navigator functioning as a personal assistant application for iOS. The application uses a natural language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of web services. Apple claims that the software adapts to the user's individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as finding recommendations for nearby restaurants, or getting directions. Siri was originally introduced as an iOS application available in the App Store...

> Apple claims that the software adapts to the user's individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as finding recommendations for nearby restaurants, or getting directions

That's a form of learning...

Is my answer here too fragmented?

0

A: What can we learn from the neural networks of C.elegans to understand human brains?

Caenorhabditis elegans is probably not an ancestor to Humans. As found in Sponge proteins are more similar to those of Homo sapiens than to Caenorhabditis elegans, certain sponges were found to have more similar protein structures to humans than C. elegans suggesting the sponges are the ancestor....

Again their question was probably overly general

10:10 PM

reads the answer

updated thoughts on the landscape of Q&A sites: meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/113/52

Doesn't seem fragmented to me @Ben, it's a clear and concise answer. Addresses all his points logically

> There are also a lot of people asking questions on psychology sites who are working through psychological problems. While these sometimes might be on topic on this site, a lot of the time, they would be too specific, and not scientific enough (in my opinion) for this site

@JeromyAnglim that's a great point

They're all good points @Jeromy

@Josh cheers

@BenBrocka nice answer on the c.elegans question

So the question is, how can we gently introduce some of those users to our site...

> Ideally it would be good to inform people on other forums who might be interested in being involved in a more feature rich site. However, I'm not quite sure about how that can be done both effectively and in a respectful way (i.e., without spamming).

Over seeding is bad... but maybe if we find good, answerable questions on forums and ask them here, then post back to the forums that we cross posted..?

Not sure, I am leery based on my coming off too strong for the LinuxQuestions crowd :-p

@Josh I asked Stephen Anderson about one of our questions here

@stephenanderson Any thoughts on Motivation vs Goal Oriented behavior? http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/144/motivation-vs-goal-oriented-behavior

Tweeted by BenBrocka on February 2, 2012 at 5:04 PM

@Josh I remember that question. Sadly we can't expect everyone to leave forum based Q&A quite yet...

10:21 PM

@Josh perhaps that's a separate meta question.

Now, in retrospect, I wasn't formulating my MSO answer to appease the users of LinuxQuestions, I was doing it to appease MSO users to earn rep. So saying things like we do it better! is clearly not what to say to users of another forum ;-)

Hm...but it's true. Forums were not made for the Q&A format

It does come off very strong and borderline rude. It's a great example of why I am "The Unhandled Exception" on MSO, that's what I mean when I say I'm more snarky on MSO XD

@BenBrocka oh I believe it 100% and stand by it. I just mean the tone could offend a long time forum user

Everyone that's tried to use the Apple support forum knows that no matter how fabulous the company offering the fourm is, forum style threads don't fucking work for support or Q&A

agrees

10:23 PM

Though of course explainations of the benefits would be better than just stating that our site is superior

@JeromyAnglim yeah, I think so. It's related to this one but not really a duplicate, I think

user image

Weeeeeeeeeee

eeek! a worm!!! Have a star XD

@BenBrocka Convince by example would be the way to go.

@BenBrocka good point; and ultimately it's the people that appreciate the benefits of stack exchange that we'd like to get involved.

@StevenJeuris good point; growth will happen organically as the site builds up more high quality questions and answers; I'd just like to give it a bit more a kick start, particularly considering that cognitive sciences is a little further removed from the programming core of stack exchange.

10:28 PM

Benefits before features :) sharing examples questions and or asking people to answer is probably a great start

@JeromyAnglim Seriously? "Weeeeeeeeeee" is a good point? :/ :)

LOL @StevenJeuris, you twit ;-)

What can I say, everything I say is brilliant

:-) must type more quickly

Even the monosyllabic exclamations of joy

10:30 PM

lol

@JeromyAnglim I agree, I think it's our job as enthusiasts / early adopters of this site to help the community grow

agree

Anyway, I met get to some question and answering now. ciao

Hey, SE finally went full HTML5

0

A: Why is Stack Exchange still using the HTML4 doctype with HTML5 features?

I don't know when we changed this, but View Source and you'll plainly see we now have <!DOCTYPE html> On all SE 2.0 sites.

ttyl @Jeromy!

@JeromyAnglim byebye

10:36 PM

One of these days Jeff is going to permaban me, lmao

10:57 PM

@BenBrocka I still don't understand wtf is up with the close votes on that question. So wrong

"Our docutype is wrong!" / "This is the same issue as our jQuery version being not the latest bleeding edge" WTF? Uhhh no, no it is not!

</rant>

Yeah, I assume they mean "We don't change things. EVAR"

Good old MSO =p

11:45 PM

1

A: Is leg jiggling a focus aid?

I've also observed this behaviour in friends, and was curious to see what research has been done on the topic. Here's what I found (summary at the end). Sechrest and Flores (1971) study of leg-jiggling Sechrest and Flores (1971) performed an observational study of the prevalence of leg-jigglin...

> They tentatively conclude that leg jiggling is a symptom of tension and classify it as a nervous mannerism

@JeromyAnglim that's what my business partner thinks it is when I start this semi-involuntary motion

he always asks me why I am nervous / upset

> Researchers have noticed that leg jiggling is used by students when studying in order to deal with the otherwise, long period of no movement

that makes a lot of sense

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Feb '122

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