Increase the Information Entropy in Your Life

Increasing the options, the uncertainty, keeping things novel will preserve your brain's elasticity, make life go by more slowly, and increase the number of options for the future.

tl;dr Version

  • Intelligence makes the external world more syntropic by becoming more extropic.
  • Information Entropy increases your potential future histories.
  • Information Entropy keeps your brain elastic.
  • Information Entropy makes time pass more slowly. Perceptually extending your lifespan.
  • Some people have so little Information Entropy they can be described with an algorithm.
  • Don't be an algorithm.

Folksonomies: cognition intelligence novelty elasticity

Memes

09 SEP 2016

 A Lack of Uncertainty Impacts Learning in Adults

Healthy aging can lead to impairments in learning that affect many laboratory and real-life tasks. These tasks often involve the acquisition of dynamic contingencies, which requires adjusting the rate of learning to environmental statistics. For example, learning rate should increase when expectations are uncertain (uncertainty), outcomes are surprising (surprise) or contingencies are more likely to change (hazard rate). In this study, we combine computational modelling with an age-comparativ...
  1  notes
 
16 AUG 2014

 Orwell Notes Hitler's Rigidity of Mind

It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anyth...
  1  notes

He notes that Hitler's ideas did not change at all over 15 years and that is a mark of madness.

02 FEB 2014

 Alternative Reason for Age-Related Cognitive Decline

As adults age, their performance on many psychometric tests changes systematically, a finding that is widely taken to reveal that cognitive information-processing capacities decline across adulthood. Contrary to this, we suggest that older adults'; changing performance reflects memory search demands, which escalate as experience grows. A series of simulations show how the performance patterns observed across adulthood emerge naturally in learning models as they acquire knowledge. The simulati...
  1  notes

The idea that as we grow older, our brains have more information to sort through, which makes it take longer to find the data we need.

27 DEC 2013

 Non-Hacking Activities for Aspiring Hackers

Again, to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help. They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of hacking. Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of hackers (including all the most accomplished ones I know of) are very able w...
  2  notes

Things hackers do in their spare time to keep their minds flexible and sharp.

24 DEC 2013

 Environmental Variation Improves Creativity

It also suggests, at least to me, that creativity can be enhanced deliberately through environmental variation. Two techniques seem promising: varying what you learn and varying where you learn it. I try each week to read a scientific paper in a field new to me—and to read it in a different place. New associations often leap out of the air at me this way. More intriguing, others seem to form covertly and lie in wait for the opportune moment when they can click into place. I do not try to fo...
Folksonomies: cognition creativity
Folksonomies: cognition creativity
  1  notes

Jason Zweig describes how new experiences prompt new associations.

24 DEC 2013

 A Second is Subjective

How many seconds are there in a lifetime? 10^9 sec A second is an arbitrary time unit, but one that is based on our experience. Our visual system is bombarded by snapshots at a rate of around three per second, caused by rapid eye movements called saccades. Athletes often win or lose a race by a fraction of a second. If you earned a dollar for every second in your life, you would be a billionaire. However, a second can feel like a minute in front of an audience, and a quiet weekend can disap...
  1  notes

Terrence Sejnowski on how a moment of time is a subjective experience that grows longer the more novelty is packed into it.

22 NOV 2013

 Stress is Healthy

Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure. But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge? Now that is exactly what participants were told in a study conducted at Harvard University. Before they went through the social stress test, they were taught to ret...
  2  notes

At least it can be, if we don't think of it as being detrimental. If we don't stress about stress, but rather think of it as healthy reaction and seek social connections as a coping mechanism for it, then stress is good for us.

Additional Note: Could this be why parents have longer lifespans? The oxytocin response tempers the detrimental effects of stress, leaving only the beneficial?

02 JUL 2013

 Cognitive Neoteny in Modern Humans

The boy-genius can be seen as a specific instance of psychological neoteny which is apparently adaptive in modernizing cultures, and it occurred early in science because science is one of the most ‘modern’ and advanced social systems [2]. ‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity. It represents a relatively fast and simple way of evolving adaptations – for instance modern humans in Western Europe ...
 2  2  notes

Perpetual education and change has pushed humans into a perpetual state of youthful cognition. Our brains remain childlike in order to continue to learn and adapt to our ever-changing modern environment.

28 JUN 2013

 Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism

In stark contrast to early suspicions that bilingual children were at risk of retardation or at best, “mentally confused” (Bialystok, 2005), recent research links bilingualism to cognitive reserve and suggests it may offer protection against dementia in old age. Cognitive reserve describes a kind of resilience which appears to mediate the relationship between brain pathology and the clinical expression of that pathology; it is thought that this resilience derives from more efficient use of br...
  1  notes

It protects against the onset of dementia in old age and produces numerous sensory and executive cognitive benefits in life.

23 APR 2013

 Intelligence Arises out of a Need to Maximize Entropy

The researchers developed a software engine, called Entropica, and gave it models of a number of situations in which it could demonstrate behaviors that greatly resemble intelligence. They patterned many of these exercises after classic animal intelligence tests. [...] "It actually self-determines what its own objective is," said Wissner-Gross. "This [artificial intelligence] does not require the explicit specification of a goal, unlike essentially any other [artificial intelligence]." ...
 1  1  notes

The more entropy, the more possibilities. Intelligence therefore seeks to maximize "future histories" in order to keep the number of possibilities maximized.

13 APR 2013

 Walking is Good for the Brain

Have you ever wondered why one of the most difficult things to teach a robot to do is to walk on two legs? It turns out there's a reason. Apparently, the simple act of walking turns out not to be so simple after all. Professor Florentin Worgotter of the University of Gottingen in Germany explains why teaching a robot to walk on bumpy terrains like cobblestones is so challenging: "Releasing the spring-like movement at the right moment in time—calculated in milliseconds—and to get the dampe...
Folksonomies: evolution brain health hiking
Folksonomies: evolution brain health hiking
  1  notes

Walking rapidly on uneven surfaces exercise all areas of the brain and may explain why humans experienced such rapid brain growth once we became bipedal.

13 APR 2013

 Novelty is Good for the Brain

There is unanimous agreement among neuroscientists and psychologists that the human brain operates best when it is regularly subjected to new challenges. We have recently discovered that the brain benefits from a broad variety of problem-solving activities such as crossword puzzles and Sudoku. There also appear to be benefits when we mix these activities up: doing crosswords puzzles for a while and then switching over to Sudoku, and later, back again. The same goes for changing daily routines...
  1  notes

The more the brain experiences novel situations, the more it grows new connections, soon it becomes good at growing new connections.

13 JAN 2012

 Constant and Free Life

Constant, or free, life is the third form of life; it belongs to the most highly organized animals. In it, life is not suspended in any circumstance, it unrolls along a constant course, apparently indifferent to the variations in the cosmic environment, or to the changes in the material conditions that surround the animal. Organs, apparatus, and tissues function in an apparently uniform manner, without their activity undergoing those considerable variations exhibited by animals with an oscill...
Folksonomies: biology freedom life
Folksonomies: biology freedom life
 2  2  notes

Mammals and other animals that maintain a constant environment within themselves are free of the changes to the world outside them.

21 APR 2011

 Spend 20 Percent of Your Time Learning New Things

He says things like, "Do good stuff." He says, "If you don't do good stuff, in good areas, it doesn't matter what you do." And Hamming said, "I always spend a day a week learning new stuff. That means I spend 20 percent more of my time than my colleagues learning new stuff. Now 20 percent at compound interest means that after four and a half years I will know twice as much as them. And because of compound interest, this 20 percent extra, one day a week, after five years I will know three time...
  3  notes

From Joe Armstrong, the "compound interest" on this learning will result in big gains in the future.



References

09 SEP 2016

 Age differences in learning emerge from an insufficient r...

Periodicals>Journal Article:  Nassar, Bruckner, Gold, Li, Heekeren, Eppinger (10 June 2016), Age differences in learning emerge from an insufficient representation of uncertainty in older adults, Nature Communications, Retrieved on 2016-09-09
  • Source Material [www.nature.com]
  • Folksonomies: cognition aging
    Folksonomies: cognition aging
     1  
    16 AUG 2014

     Review of Mein Kampf

    Periodicals>Magazine Article:  Orwell, George (1940), Review of Mein Kampf, Retrieved on 2014-08-16
  • Source Material [docs.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: politics criticism
    Folksonomies: politics criticism
     2  
    02 FEB 2014

     The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lif...

    Periodicals>Journal Article:  Ramscar, Hendrix, Shaoul, Milin, Baayen ( 24 October 2013), The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lifelong Learning, Topics in Cognitive Science, 6 (2014) 5–42, Retrieved on 2014-02-02
  • Source Material [onlinelibrary.wiley.com]
  • Folksonomies: cognition
    Folksonomies: cognition
     1  
    27 DEC 2013

     How To Become A Hacker

    Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article:  Raymond, Eric Steven (2001), How To Become A Hacker, Retrieved on 2013-12-27
  • Source Material [www.catb.org]
  •  1  
    19 DEC 2013

     This Will Make You Smarter

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Brockman , John (2012-02-14), This Will Make You Smarter, HarperCollins, Retrieved on 2013-12-19
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     52  
    22 NOV 2013

     How to make stress your friend

    Proceedings of Meetings and Symposia>Conference Session:  McGonigal, Kelly (Sept 2013), How to make stress your friend, Ted Talks, Retrieved on 2013-11-22
  • Source Material [www.ted.com]
  • Folksonomies: stress ted talks wellbeing
    Folksonomies: stress ted talks wellbeing
     1  
    02 JUL 2013

     The rise of the boy-genius: psychological-neoteny, scienc...

    Periodicals>Journal Article:  Charlton, BG (2006), The rise of the boy-genius: psychological-neoteny, science and modern life, Medical Hypotheses, 2006; 67: 679–81., Retrieved on 2013-07-02
  • Source Material [www.hedweb.com]
  •  1  
    28 JUN 2013

     Computer programmers and the �bilingual advantage�

    Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses>Doctoral Dissertation:  Wright, Hannah (September 2012), Computer programmers and the “bilingual advantage”, http://thecodingbrain.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/evidence-suggesting-that-young-computer-programmers-have-bilingual-brains/, Institute of Education, University of London, Retrieved on 2013-06-28
  • Source Material [thecodingbrain.files.wordpress.com]
  •  3  
    23 APR 2013

     Physicist Proposes New Way To Think About Intelligence

    Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article:  Gorski, Chris (Apr 19 2013), Physicist Proposes New Way To Think About Intelligence, Inside Science, Retrieved on 2013-04-23
  • Source Material [www.insidescience.org]
  •  1  
    13 APR 2013

     The Watchman's Rattle

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Costa , Rebecca (2010-10-12), The Watchman's Rattle, Vanguard, Retrieved on 2013-04-13
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: education
    Folksonomies: education
     8  
    13 JAN 2012

     Lectures on the phenomena of life common to animals and p...

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Bernard , Claude (1974-06-01), Lectures on the phenomena of life common to animals and plants, Charles C Thomas Pub Ltd, Retrieved on 2012-01-13
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: nature
    Folksonomies: nature
     1  
    21 APR 2011

     Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Seibel , Peter (2009-09-16), Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming, Apress, Retrieved on 2011-04-21
  • Source Material [codersatwork.com]
  •  24