Strangeattractor comments on Open thread, Oct. 27 - Nov. 2, 2014 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: MrMind 27 October 2014 08:58AM

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Comment author: Artaxerxes 27 October 2014 03:36:08PM *  17 points [-]

Is the recommended courses page on MIRI's website up to date with regards to what textbooks they recommend for each topic? Should I be taking the recommendations fairly seriously, or more with a grain of salt? I know the original author is no longer working at MIRI, so I'm feeling a bit unsure.

I remember lukeprog used to recommend Bermudez's Cognitive Science over many others. But then So8res reviewed it and didn't like it much, and now the current recommendation is for The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, which I haven't really seen anyone say much about.

There are a few other things like this, for example So8res apparently read Heuristics and Biases as part of his review of books on the course list, but it doesn't seem to appear on the course list anymore, and under the heuristics and biases section Thinking and Deciding is recommended (once reviewed by Vaniver).

Comment author: Strangeattractor 29 October 2014 12:04:03PM 2 points [-]

I have some suggestions for books related to the topics you mentioned. There's a pretty good section on cognitive ergonomics in Wickens' Introduction to Human Factors Engineering that is a clear introduction to the topic, and mentions some examples of design issues that can arise from human beings' cognitive limitations and biases.

Also, Chris Eliasmith's book Neural Engineering: Computation, Representation, and Dynamics in Neurobiological Systems shows some of the technical approaches people have taken to modelling what happens in the brain.

I'm not sure if either of those is what you're looking for, but I found them interesting.