My new post for the University of Sheffield’s iCog blog is now online! It discusses some of my recent work on Conceptual Short-Term Memory, and what it can tell us about perception, cognition, and consciousness. For an in-depth exploration of the topic, you can find a more detailed treatment in my recent article at the
What makes someone a jerk? Is it merely being rude, or selfish, or is there something more subtle that underlies the behavior of the jerk? And just as important, how do you know if you’re a jerk yourself? (NB: ‘jerk’ is far more common in American English than British English; I’m not quite sure whether
We’re all familiar with ‘ballparking’ – making rough estimates or vague guesses. Today I want to talk about a particular kind of ballparking, namely how we solve a type of mental puzzle called “Fermi questions”. They were employed by physicist Enrico Fermi during the Manhattan project as fun puzzles to keep up morale (at least