Book review: Mind in motion

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Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 9:06:14 AM6/21/19
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Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought
By Barbara Tversky, Basic Books, 2019

I'm telling everyone I know about this book.  I highly recommend it.

The author is a research scientist.  The book is anything but dry.  It might change your life.

Quotes

A creature didn't think in order to move; it just moved, and by moving it discovered the world and then formed the contents of its thoughts⁠—Larissa MacFarquhar.

Art proves that life is not enough⁠—Paraphrasing Fernando Pessoa.

This book means to show how we think about space and how we use space to think...The premise is audacious: spacial thinking, rooted in perception of space and action in it, is the foundation of all thought. The foundation, not the entire edifice.

Laws of cognition

These are solidly grounded in research.  Understand them, or suffer.

First Law of Cognition: There are no benefits without costs.

The root of all cognitive biases. We evolved to solve problems quickly, but not necessarily accurately.

Sixth Law of Cognition: Spatial thinking is the foundation of abstract thought.

Oh, how I wish I had understood this in school...

Implications for Leo

Creativity does not mean daydreaming!  For me, it means finding juicy problems to solve.

Tversky discusses empathetic design:

"[Designers] study a community of users intensively to see what people actually do and what kind of new product or service might improve their lives...We compared two strategies, mind wandering and empathetic, for the standard divergent thinking task, finding new uses for familiar objects...The hands-down winner was the empathetic strategy...Only the empathetic strategy approach gave a productive way to search for new uses."

This is highly relevant to me at present.

Edward

Kent Tenney

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Jun 21, 2019, 10:13:47 AM6/21/19
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Great recommendation, just ordered it.
The sample pages hooked me, I think her emphasis applies to
questions I have about why I think and act as I do.

Thanks,
Kent

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Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 10:18:52 AM6/21/19
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On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 9:13 AM Kent Tenney <kte...@gmail.com> wrote:
Great recommendation, just ordered it.
The sample pages hooked me, I think her emphasis applies to
questions I have about why I think and act as I do.

Glad to hear it.  Let us know your thoughts after dipping into it.

Edward

jkn

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Jun 21, 2019, 10:20:35 AM6/21/19
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Her surname caused me to look things up ... she was married to Amos Tversky, who worked extensively with Daniel Kahneman (Author of eg. 'Thinking, Fast and Slow') on cognitive biases and prospect theory.

The book looks right up my street, thanks!

    J^n

Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 10:25:49 AM6/21/19
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On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 9:20 AM jkn <jkn...@nicorp.f9.co.uk> wrote:

> Her surname caused me to look things up ... she was married to Amos Tversky, who worked extensively with Daniel Kahneman (Author of eg. 'Thinking, Fast and Slow') on cognitive biases and prospect theory.

I knew I knew that name from somewhere. I read "The Undoing Project" recently and failed to make the connection.

> The book looks right up my street, thanks!

You're welcome.

Edward

Chris George

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Jun 21, 2019, 10:42:36 AM6/21/19
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For those who want the Cliff Notes version. :-)


Chris

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jkn

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Jun 21, 2019, 11:28:57 AM6/21/19
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On Friday, June 21, 2019 at 3:25:49 PM UTC+1, Edward K. Ream wrote:
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 9:20 AM jkn <jkn...@nicorp.f9.co.uk> wrote:

> Her surname caused me to look things up ... she was married to Amos Tversky, who worked extensively with Daniel Kahneman (Author of eg. 'Thinking, Fast and Slow') on cognitive biases and prospect theory.

I knew I knew that name from somewhere. I read "The Undoing Project" recently and failed to make the connection.


I didn't know of that book ... thanks!

Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 11:58:25 AM6/21/19
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On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 9:42 AM Chris George <techn...@gmail.com> wrote:
For those who want the Cliff Notes version. :-)


Thanks for this.  Hehe.  At 1 hour 23 minutes it's a bit long for the Cliff's Notes crowd.

Edward

Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 11:58:59 AM6/21/19
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On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 10:28 AM jkn <jkn...@nicorp.f9.co.uk> wrote:

I knew I knew that name from somewhere. I read "The Undoing Project" recently and failed to make the connection.


I didn't know of that book ... thanks!

You're welcome.

Edward

Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 12:03:39 PM6/21/19
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On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 8:06 AM Edward K. Ream <edre...@gmail.com> wrote:
Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought
By Barbara Tversky, Basic Books, 2019

I'm tempted to quote an entire section from the last chapter.  But no.  You'll have to get the book ;-)  Suffice it to say that this book describes what I have done for the last 20 years, and suggests two overarching goals for Leo.

- Improve cooperation with other editors & programs.
- Leo must allow better diagrams! Like Joe Orr's demo.

Aha: Leo's commands are Leo's gestures.  So are vim and org mode commands. So there is a "gestures race".  Bring it on!

Edward

axyhexo

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Jun 21, 2019, 12:03:52 PM6/21/19
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> For those who want the Cliff Notes version. :-)
Fer sher, thank you!
A quick glance at the book on Amazon reminds me of Lev Vygotsky, an early-20th-c. Russian, thought of now as a developmental psychologist, but he also realized that: animals act but don't think (at least my cats don't), people speak which is action, and so theorized that thought is internalized speech-action.
Also, his name Lev ... is Russian for Leo.
Joe

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Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 12:06:37 PM6/21/19
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On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 11:03 AM axyhexo <axy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For those who want the Cliff Notes version. :-)
Fer sher, thank you!
A quick glance at the book on Amazon reminds me of Lev Vygotsky, an early-20th-c. Russian, thought of now as a developmental psychologist, but he also realized that: animals act but don't think (at least my cats don't), people speak which is action, and so theorized that thought is internalized speech-action.
Also, his name Lev ... is Russian for Leo.

Thanks for these comments. I hope you will support your local bookstore rather than buying from The Company That Must Not Be Named :-)

Edward

jkn

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Jun 21, 2019, 12:23:14 PM6/21/19
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On Friday, June 21, 2019 at 5:03:52 PM UTC+1, Joe wrote:
> For those who want the Cliff Notes version. :-)
Fer sher, thank you!
A quick glance at the book on Amazon reminds me of Lev Vygotsky, an early-20th-c. Russian, thought of now as a developmental psychologist, but he also realized that: animals act but don't think (at least my cats don't), people speak which is action, and so theorized that thought is internalized speech-action.
Also, his name Lev ... is Russian for Leo.
Joe


Yes ... getting around to reading the Vygotsky on my reading pile is ... taking a while...

Nice one re. the Leo connection!

    J^n

 
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 7:42 AM Chris George <techn...@gmail.com> wrote:
For those who want the Cliff Notes version. :-)


Chris

On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 7:25 AM Edward K. Ream <edre...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 9:20 AM jkn <jkn...@nicorp.f9.co.uk> wrote:

> Her surname caused me to look things up ... she was married to Amos Tversky, who worked extensively with Daniel Kahneman (Author of eg. 'Thinking, Fast and Slow') on cognitive biases and prospect theory.

I knew I knew that name from somewhere. I read "The Undoing Project" recently and failed to make the connection.

> The book looks right up my street, thanks!

You're welcome.

Edward

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Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas

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Jun 21, 2019, 8:31:24 PM6/21/19
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Thanks for the recommendation. I will put the book on the radar. This work kind of reminds me about Richard Sennet and The Artisan, where his main thesis is that thinking is doing and vice versa.

On a related note, that is why is so important for me having a live coding environment: is thinking by doing/coding. You deploy your thinking in an interactive space (the IDE) where ideas take shape. Live coding is particularly alien in the coding world (where most people fight with files), but hopefully, after 40 years, is coming again.

Two readings about the importance of intertwining action, thinking and coding and environments to support such entanglement:

Cheers,

Offray

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Edward K. Ream

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Jun 21, 2019, 9:45:21 PM6/21/19
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On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 7:31 PM Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas wrote:

Thanks for the recommendation. I will put the book on the radar. This work kind of reminds me about Richard Sennet and The Artisan, where his main thesis is that thinking is doing and vice versa.

Interesting.  Thinking of "thoughts in action" is a good way to get in action and out of ones head.

On a related note, that is why is so important for me having a live coding environment: is thinking by doing/coding.

Yeah. I wish python would support this.  Otoh, automatic syntax checking and pyflakes checking catches almost all of my blunders, which is a huge speedup.

Two readings about the importance of intertwining action, thinking and coding and environments to support such entanglement:


Thanks for these links.  I've bookmarked them.

Edward

Matt Wilkie

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Jul 7, 2019, 9:58:29 PM7/7/19
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Thank you for this thread!

My to-read book pile is about to undergo some rearranging. Noah Yuval Hurari is going to move mid-seat (distinct from back seat).

-matt

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