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"The Allure of Cognitive Science and Its Impact on Design and AI Interaction"

Jan 25, 2024 - 10:10amSummary: The speaker reflects on the idea of returning to school and studying cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field that blends various subjects like philosophy, neuroscience, and computer science, which they discovered through a coworker. They had initially studied science at the community college level, pursuing general education before dropping out and working in software, where they learned skills not directly relevant to web app development. Although not currently planning to go back to school, they find the concept of cognitive science fascinating due to its relevance to understanding the human brain and AI, with potential implications for the future. If circumstances allowed, such as affordable tuition and the ability to learn without financial pressure, the speaker would be excited to pursue cognitive science for its practical and forward-looking applications in technology and understanding human cognition. The speaker is explaining how certain things influence their approach to designing systems and living their life, especially in relation to interacting with artificial intelligence. These influences are significant enough to capture their attention, hence the phrase "that's why that calls my name." They imply a deep connection or interest in the impact of these factors on their work and personal life. This perspective helps to inform their design decisions and overall interaction with AI technology.

Transcript: Day three of our little prompting game and decided to try out voice note as a medium for it instead of writing because I wanted to be outside. So today's question is, what would I study if I went back to school? I think it's a nice question. I don't really have any plans to go back to school at the moment, but it's nice to put on the imagination cap for a bit and think about what might be. So I originally went to school to study science, and I got not very far into it, just general ed stuff sorted. I was about to start getting into the fun stuff when I dropped out, but up until then, I couldn't say that the experience was amazing. It was a community college, there were some teachers that cared, there were some teachers that didn't. So it was fine. I think I knew more than enough to not really pay attention to any of the classes at this point. Besides networking, networking was fucking hard because nothing made sense with networking. It was also a four-hour evening class, which probably didn't help. But anyway, I left, and I did a bunch of software stuff, and I realized things that I was learning there weren't really applicable to building web apps for people. Anyway, I think it would be cool to have had a bit more algorithms, data structures, distributed stuff under my hat, but it is what it is. So I went on this not-school adventure, and it wasn't until I met one of my coworkers at the first startup, who said she had graduated UC Berkeley with a cognitive science degree. And I'm like, what now? And explained what it was, and it was basically an interdisciplinary pseudo-degree that sat between philosophy, linear algebra, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, computer science, and maybe one other thing. And I'm like, holy shit, that exists? And instantly I'm like, well shit, maybe I do want to go back to school. I think if I wanted to go back, and I can go to a place where I wasn't paying 20k a month or a semester or whatever in tuition, I didn't have to work two jobs to find that place, nor was I in some school that... Like, if I can go back to a school in New York or Berkeley or something with all the expense things covered, and I didn't... My future ability to provide food for myself wasn't tied to how well I did learning the content, but rather I could be there simply learning for learning's sake. I still think cognitive science would be something I'd be stoked to go back for. I think it just touches... It's right at the intersection of so many interesting things that I know... I think we know so little about how the brain works, how AI works, and it really seems like interesting shit for the next 50 years will be somehow connected to this field of study. Understanding ourselves and understanding the way that we understand things. So, it just seems like a very future-oriented thing to learn. For other people that might be how things work now. And for other people it's how things worked in the past, but I think cognitive science is just getting started because we know so little. And it's less abstract to me than theoretical physics or quantum mechanics. I think with a sufficient understanding, cognitive science... Those things can help me think about how I design systems and design my own life and interface with AI. So, that's why that calls my name.

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