Hey all! The other day, I came across an interesting thought experiment, so thought that I'd share it here.

Imagine this: you're sitting in a uni lecture, and suddenly receive a text message from your grandmother letting you know that she had a serious fall about an hour ago.

The reaction of most people in this scenario would be one of sadness / worry. Of course, we would all agree that your grandmother falling over is not a good thing.

However, let's think about how the "goodness" of the world has changed after you receiving the text message. Before receiving the message, your grandmother had already fallen. After receiving the message, your grandmother had still fallen, but we now have the benefit of you knowing about the fall, meaning that you may be able to provide help, etc. In actual fact, you receiving the message has improved the "goodness" of the world.

Now, sure, your perceived goodness of the world has decreased upon reading the text message - one minute, you were enjoying your uni lecture, and the next, you learn that your grandmother is injured.

However, that's just your perception of world "goodness". The actual "goodness" metric has increased. The fall happened an hour ago, and the fact that you received a text about it is a good thing.

So here's the question: should a truly rational agent actually be happy upon hearing that their grandmother has had a fall?

I first heard about this paradox the other day, when my mate brought it up on a podcast that we host named Recreational Overthinking. If you're keen on philosophy and/or rationality, then feel free to check us out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also follow us on Instagram at @ recreationaloverthinking.

Keen to hear people's thoughts on the thought experiment in the comments!

What strategies can I adopt to use my brain to its fullest potential and enhance my cognitive abilities?

Has anyone listed to this podcast? It's stil running but I just listened to the first 7 episodes after someone sent it to me. It discusses telepathy and related phenomena, particularly related to autism and savant syndrome.

It's very compelling but I can't get past my skepticism. Can anyone more intelligent and well versed in this subject than I am offer any sort of rebuttal?

Sorry if posts like these are considered pollution in this sub, but would be very grateful for a little guidance.

Graduated magna cum laude from a top five film school—I’m sure I could get some nice recs from professors, but other than that I’m not sure I have much to offer. I’d be lying if I said my resume was particularly impressive, especially this last year (graduated in 23)

I took and thoroughly enjoyed a neuroscience course as well as a couple of psych ones while I was at school. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain, and I’m sure much has already been made here about future prospects for cogsci professionals as AI becomes increasingly relevant (unless I’m missing the mark here. Please don’t hesitate to tear me apart)

I’m a pretty smart dude, and confident I’d be able to put in the work were I to be admitted somewhere

In all honesty, though, this is a prospect that I came upon relatively recently—I’m a little unclear as to what exactly an admissions team would be looking for, and suspect the answer is not me

I’m not necessarily asking for a “how to get into grad school” walkthrough, but if I have a snowball’s chance it couldn’t hurt to think about hedging my bets/looking elsewhere.

Thanks in advance

Hey yall, I am currently a freshmen uni student studying software engineering right now and I was thinking of changing my major to Cognitive Science since it interests me more and I like how it blends psychology neuroscience and computer science together. I have always been fascinated by the mind and it's processes and I just found out that my school (UT Dallas) offers a degree in that so I feel pretty fortunate about it, though I'm still thinking if I want to switch or not, but I was wondering what are some of the careers I can get into after i graduate especially if I do concentrations in AI and human computer interaction? My school as 4 concentration areas but I need to choose 2. Any info is appreciated!!

Does anyone know what specific areas of intelligence the LSAT Logic Games were testing? I'm curious about how the removal of the section will impact it's ability to measure IQ accurately.

Hi guys,

I'm interested in the cognitive neuroscience field, especially related to computational simulation of perception.

I'm about to enter a master, but I'm unaware if it's more prone to the philosophical aspect, rather than a technical BCI oriented one. Here's the program breakdown:

• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
• INTRODUCTION TO PYTHON
• NEUROPSYCHOLOGY
• PHENOMENOLOGY
• PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
• DEEP LEARNING
• LINGUISTICS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
• ETHNOLOGY AND ETHNOPSYCHIATRY6
• PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
• HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
• SOCIAL SEMIOTICS
• THINKING AND SOCIAL COGNITION
• PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTING
• PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION
• INTRODUCTION TO PYTHON
• MEDIA THEORY
• MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Would such subjects allow me a to pivot in a technical position or is too much "humanities"?

Hey everyone,

I’m currently studying Psychology in Germany and considering switching to Cognitive Science for my Master’s. However, I’m not sure if it’s the right choice because I’m not really interested in pursuing a career in research. The working conditions in research aren’t very appealing to me—especially the idea of having to move every 3–5 years for temporary contracts. I’d like to build a stable future and eventually start a family without constantly having to relocate.

Are there any people here who have experience with a Cognitive Science Master’s and ended up outside of research? What kind of career options are there? I’d be particularly interested to know if it’s possible to work in areas like consulting, technology, or even science communication.

Thanks a lot for any advice or experiences you can share!

Looking for 300 people to participate in my eating behaviour study. You get the chance to win one of three £20 Amazon vouchers ! https://bbk.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2fYxTHmgjQN1hZk

Hello folks, I'm doing research on few-shot learning, conceptual transfer, and analogical reasoning in NLP models, particularly large language models. There’s been significant work on how models achieve few-shot or zero-shot capabilities, adapt to new contexts, and even demonstrate some form of analogical reasoning. However, I’m interested in exploring these phenomena from a different perspective:

How cognitively plausible are these techniques?

That is, how closely do the mechanisms underlying few-shot learning and analogical reasoning in NLP models mirror (or diverge from) human cognitive processes? I haven’t found much literature on this.

If anyone here is familiar with:

• Research that touches on the cognitive or neuroscientific perspective of few-shot or analogical learning in LLMs
• Work that evaluates how similar LLM methods are to human reasoning or creative thought processes
• Any pointers on experimental setups, papers, or even theoretical discussions that address human-computer analogies in transfer learning

I’d love to hear from you! I’m hoping to evaluate the current state of literature on the nuanced interplay between computational approaches and human-like cognitive traits in NLP.

Hi everyone, My name is Amber and I am in my final year of study of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at UCL. I am currently recruiting participants for my thesis investigating patterns of online dating app use and its impact on self-image and self-perception. I am hoping to recruit around 400 participants to complete my survey, it takes 10 minutes and is completely anonymous. If anyone would be interested in participating, please follow the link below!

Understanding Patterns of Online Dating App Use (ucl.ac.uk)

This study has been approved by the UCL Ethics Committee: Ethical approval no. 26999/001

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me!

Thank you, your help is greatly appreciated! :)

Hi. Forgive my ignorant question but I watched dr. K’s video on this topic and I got interested. So here goes: The default mode network activates when we are not focused on a particular task… and does what exactly? I mean I know that the brain is not well understood but to our knowledge (as humans) what is its function? Or rather if you used electrodes to ‘turn it off’ what would be missing from that person? The video mentioned that overactivity of the DMN is connected to things like anxiety and depression. Is this true/proven? Are there mental disorders that are related to the DMN’s over/under-activity?

Hello everyone,

I am currently looking for possible topics for my master's thesis and I recently had a very interesting idea:

From what I know about exercise science, coordination as a whole cannot be trained and transfer effects are very small or non-existent (only when the tasks are very similar can a transfer effect be observed). From what I know about cognitive psychology, it is controversial whether attention can be trained or impaired by multitasking (MT). Currently, there are two conflicting theories: the trained-attention hypothesis (MT improves attention because parallel processing of information gets better) and the scattered-attention hypothesis (MT worsens attentional control because attention is too scattered). The way attention is measured can vary, and this seems to me to be the crux of the matter. If switching between tasks/redirecting attention is required, you will see improvements/positive effects with more and more training. If focusing on a single task/object is required, reallocation of attention is seen as a negative effect.

In addition, studies have shown that playing action video games improves spatial and temporal attention, as well as top-down attention, vigilance, and visual working memory. Some studies also suggest that they can improve verbal working memory in older people.

Now to my main idea. Since coordination and attention training follow the same pattern (what is trained gets better, transfer effects are rare) and have the same underlying mechanism (systematic activation of neurons), identifying transfer effects in attention tasks may indicate that these cognitions are similar/related. So I want to find out which cognitions can be improved by different types of video games (e.g. action, strategy) and how big these transfer effects are, if there are any. Furthermore, it might be possible that training attention/MT and coordination together could yield even greater results through synergetc effects.

Okay, this is as far as I have thought about it for now. I know there are still some links missing and I need to improve my argumentation. I also don't know if this is even a plausible research topic, since this is not exactly my scientific domain. So I would like to hear your opinion and thoughts on this. Thanks in advance!!

One recently accepted EMNLP paper titled "Towards a Semantically-aware Surprisal Theory"  (Meister et al., 2024)(https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.17676),  in which the authors introduce the concept of similarity-adjusted surprisal. Although surprisal is a well-established concept, this paper presents a weighting algorithm, z(w<t,wt,w′), which adjusts surprisal based on the (semantic) similarity between wt and other words w′ in the vocabulary. This approach allows the model to account for both the probability of a word and its similarity to other contextually appropriate words.

I would like to bring to your attention that the algorithm for similarity-based weighting was first proposed in my preprint series from last year (my work titled "Optimizing Predictive Metrics for Human Reading Behavior" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.03.556078v2; arXiv:2403.15822;  arXiv:2403.18542). In these preprints, I also detailed the integration of semantic similarity with surprisal to generate more effective metrics, including the methodology and theoretical foundation. Additionally, I’d like to provide my other related research using such metrics. My earlier work on contextual semantic similarity for predicting English reading patterns was published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02240-8). Recent work on predicting human reading across other languages will appear in Linguistics, Cognition. Moreover, more preprints expand on using these metrics in modeling human neural activity during language comprehension and visual processing:

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.09921
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2404.14052

Despite clear overlap, the accepted paper (Meister et al., 2024) has not cited my work, and its primary contributions and methods (including research objective) closely mirror my algorithms and ideas released earlier than this accepted paper.

Additionally, I observed that multiple papers on surprisal at major conferences (EMNLP) originate from the same research group. In contrast, my paper submission to EMNLP 2024 (based on arXiv:2403.15822 and available at OpenReview) received unusually low ratings, despite the originality of my approach involved with upgrading surprisal algorithms. These patterns raise concerns about potential biases in the panel of cognitive modeling research in EMNLP that may hinder the fair evaluation and acknowledgment of novel contributions.

In light of these overlaps and broader implications, I respectfully request a formal review of the aforementioned paper’s originality and citation practices, and I ask that the paper be withdrawn pending this review. EMNLP holds a strong reputation in NLP and computational linguistics, plagiarism or breaches of academic ethics are not tolerated.

Thinking about transferring back to California cause my college doesn’t have cognitive science, I know ucsd has good cognitive science what other Cali schools have good cognitive science?

I just wanted to know what is up with my mom and I.

My mom has a really good memory for remembering faces, doesn't even have to get close to someone or talk to them, she just remembers them if she comes across them and can tell you where she saw them first.

I have a strangely good memory for conversations. I can recall all conversations and I can even tell them word for word. I usually creep people out just from the fact I can remember conversations from over 10+ years ago. I could even repeat conversations told to me word for word, as if I lived that experience and was telling the story. I don't even know I have those memories, they just pop up when l'm having a conversation with that person. Suddenly it's like I have a whole archive of conversations with said person at my disposal.

Is this something that's inherited?

Hey, I'm a 2nd year CogSci student and have been given a task to translate a specific Cognitive word/expression into my language which doesn't have a clear translation yet. Do you know any rather difficult Cognitive expressions to translate from English?

Im a university student, and im interested in studying cognitive. Im not yet sure what stream specifically and need help because i dont know what would be a good fit for me.

I enjoy computer science and the logic of problem solving so i am looking into doing a minor in cs as well. However, i also like the deep thinking aspect of cognitive science. I can sit and ponder on a thought for a long time and I like to always try and problem solve and enjoy that process. I love solving puzzles and love to challenge my brain. I like philosophy and psychology, and linguistics maybe the a little less. Im interested in ai and the way we think and how our brain works.

Im also not sure what kind of career paths are related to what specific stream you study in cognitive science. Will it matter since you focus on different aspects of cognitive science?

Any advice or general knowledge would be appreciated as i dont really know much about cogs and what it has to offer

I am a first year currently attending UofT and im interested in studying cognitive science, but I am not sure what focus yet. Im interested in a bit of AI. I just want to find a true passion for something whether its cogsci or not. I want to dream big, but i dont know how to start or where to start. So im just seeking insight, any tips, inspiration anything

1. Any recommendations of books, articles, videos, etc that i maybe might spark an interest as someone who does not have much understanding of cogs.

2. What kind of jobs are there related to this field. And if you are working right now, how did it start? What focus of cogsci is related to your job?

3. Tips for a uni student to thrive in this field? Such as doing my own research, connections with profs in research, etc

4. Is an undergrad degree enough? Or is it more beneficial to go to grad school and continue studies and research

5. What inspired you to pursue cogsci?

Has Chomsky written or made public statements on his view of Embodied Cognition? i.e. if it is a useful way to study the mind and if it has anything to contribute to language acquisition.

Hi there,

I have some questions in regards to IQ measures and if you're cognitive scientist or professional with demonstrated experience in clinical testing setting, I would love to have your opinion!

I am looking to have my IQ tested. Previously, I have been tested with results of 150, and 119, supervised by professionals.

I notice the huge disrepancy, which I would hypothesize coming from unfit health during testing or having different kind of intelligence measured. The instruments were undisclosed unfortunately.

I am looking forward to have myself tested, and found that WAIS-IV, Raven APM, and other internationally-recognized gold standard measures have not been made available in my country.

Instead, the most common use is Amthauer's IST 2000R Indonesian version. It claims to measure verbal, mathematical, and spatial intelligence. If my hypothesis is correct, then the norms was produced around 2004.

I would love to have some thoughts on the following: (1) Should I be concerned with validity and the scope of IST 2000R? It appears not to be an internationnally recognized instrument, and may appear to not to measure Cognitive Processing like WAIS does. (2) Should I be concerned with how old the norms is? As I believe the most recent production is 2004 editions, and would have possibly incurred flynn effect? (3) Is there any way to have myself tested cross border remotely using Raven APM? From what I understand, RAPM could be administered through Pearson's Q-global. I have not found any psychologist nor psychometrics center here which has access to it.

Much of thanks!

Cheers, Eugene

How? Is it theoritically possible?

I’ve been trying out USnap for a few weeks now, and I’m wondering if anyone else is struggling with the output speed. Sometimes it feels like it takes forever to generate text or images, even when using different models. Is this just me, or are others noticing this too? Do you guys have any tips for speeding things up, or is this just how the platform works right now?

Would love to hear how others are handling this!

I've heard that "cognitive training" games have limited cross-disciplinary benefit, and that training in one domain generally doesn't transfer to others (i.e, someone who's good at critical thinking in the context of history won't necessarily be good at critical thinking in the context of mathematics). However, I've also heard that arts education can result in cross-disciplinary "soft skills" benefits, and that improv theater training was shown to boost creativity and self-efficacy (though I'm not sure of that study's sample size or operational definitions). What's the consensus on using games and other training methods to build broadly-applicable "soft skills"?