Journal Entries
Pinker
Posted Dec 16, 2007
I'm gonna take a go at Pinker one of these days, so want to note that I found the tool-color experiment interesting. Gnomon explains Pinker's theory as to why 98% of folks get the "right answer:"
Subject: Well...what was it?
Posted Jan 24, 2002 by Gnomon [Eine gut gebratene Gans ist eine gute Gabe Gottes]
Post: 16
Stephen Pinker, the cognitive psychologist, says that we all classify things and then attach a rating to the classification to say how well the thing fits. For example, potatoes, cabbage, spinach, peas and carrots are all vegetables. But carrots are "better" vegetables than potatoes. They fit in with more of the things that vegetables do than potatoes. Meat, chips and two veg. You would not expect one of the two veg to be potatoes. In fact, carrots are the perfect vegetable: most people when asked to think of a vegetable will think of a carrot.
Leaving Pinker and going on to my own speculations, in the same way, Red is the perfect colour and Hammer is the perfect tool. So most people think Red or Hammer or both.
I found the "Test for ... Wierdness" in The Community Out Tray (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/C914) under The h2g2 Community.
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Latest reply: Dec 16, 2007
conversion
Posted Dec 9, 2007
I know. The point of "The Hitchhiker's Guide" is that there is no point, an existential conundrum of spacetime in which no humanly-generated "is" persists without constant re-creation and - thus - perpetual reminder of everpresent fragility. We endure (persist, subsist, celebrate) on the edge of vulnerability, always.
My first set of quotes from "The Hitchhiker's Guide" are at
"Don't Panic" (http://www.reflexivity.us/blog/archives/2007/12/dont-panic.html),
and the second batch at
"Babel fish (Douglas Adams on interpretation)" (http://www.reflexivity.us/blog/archives/2007/12/babelfish-dougl.html).
Hence this leg of the journey begins...
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Latest reply: Dec 9, 2007
adarkally
Researcher U10619601
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