Cognitive surplus/ cognitive deficit/ cognitive decline

TL;DR I used to run a cognitive surplus (I’ll define that later. But you get the idea) As I get older the surplus decreases, and I frequently run deficits. I still like my present mind and I would not trade what passes for wisdom for a faster CPU. But this is what’s likely to happen, youngsters, as your cognitive surplus turns to a deficit. Better get ready.

Cognitive surplus

Imagine, having a conversation. If the conversation is superficial, it can be done automatically. If not, then it requires thinking mixed with speaking and understanding mixed with listening. Let’s concentrate on the thinking and speaking part because that’s what people care about and mostly do.

Thinking and speaking impose a cognitive load. The load for speaking is usually less than the load for thinking. People can think faster than they can translate their thoughts into words. So the rate at which a participant carries out their part of the conversation is limited by the rate at which they can speak. The if the cognitive resources that someone needs to keep their speech buffers filled are greater than the cognitive resources that are available, the difference between supply and demand is cognitive surplus.

Cognitive surplus varies throughout a conversation. It also varies across conversations based on the topic and currently available cognitive capacity. Stress lowers capacity, and ceteris paribus drops the surplus. (By the way, I always get ceteris paribus and mutatis mutandis confused. Now I won’t. But that’s another story) A complex topic requires more capacity, and ceteris paribus lowers surplus. A conversational counterpart with a different background or a different epistemological frame of reference topic requires more capacity, and ceteris paribus lowers surplus.

(OK, gonna quit with the ceteris paribus for the rest)

When younger I operated with a considerable surplus (thanks Mom and Dad for the good genes.) I could use some of my surplus to carry out another activity. In my prime could carry out a challenging conversation while doing my physics homework. Then I couldn’t do that. But I could not, but I could carry on a conversation while doing something like carrying out an unfamiliar repair. Then I couldn’t do that. Now I can talk while driving but only if the conversation is not too demanding and if there’s not much traffic.

The days of high surpluses are gone!

Today, If I’m following a recipe and someone asks me a question I can’t answer it. I put up my hand and wait until I’ve reached an undemanding part of the recipe, or I use the little surplus I have (after accounting for the small cognitive load of cooking and my degraded capacity) to formulate a response and speak it.

Cognitive deficit and changes in demand

Cognitive deficit Is the opposite of cognitive surplus. It is the gap between the amount of cognitive capacity needed for a task and the amount that is available.

Automation lowers cognitive demand. Social protocols (“How are you?” “Good?” “How about you?” “Fine” “And the family….”) are almost entirely automated, and thus largely undemanding My wife’s father had advanced Alzheimer’s when he died. Social protocols were the last thing to go. I remember him looking at his newborn daughter and laughing, “Look at her! She’s got less hair than me!” He looked like a functioning human being. But if he turned away and turned back, he’d say the same thing again, in the same way.

If I think about something in advance, the cognitive work that I’ve done goes into work-in-process inventory. The cognitive demand required to turn ideas that are in inventory into ideas that are finished enough to be expressible is lower than the cognitive demand required to produce an idea from raw data and rules for reasoning.

Listening to someone dramatically raises cognitive demand. That explains why people try to avoid listening. Most time when someone is speaking, people are working on building their response and not deeply considering what’s being said. When someone goes into cognitive deficit when speaking their peace, they need time to recover—and prepare their rejoinder. No time to listen, because listening does not give you recovery time. Worse, it’s more demanding to understand someone else’s ideas and fit them into your own intellectual framework. It’s far easier to take ideas that you have in inventory and doing the minimum work required to adapt them to the conversational context.

Writing this post

I created the first draft of this post using my mobile phone and Google’s “voice typing” capability. My speech was punctuated by pauses. Where my ideas were already well formed because I’d done some thinking and put those ideas into work-in-process inventory, I was able to speak whole sentences or more. When I was filling in gaps, the pauses were longer. There were long periods of silence when I had to build cognitive surplus and inventory and then fluidly translate those ideas into words.

There are trade-offs between using voice typing and finger typing. Voice typing is harder. It puts me in cognitive deficit more easily. To keep up my speech rate I have to focus and minimize distractions—both mental and physicals.

Finger typing is slower. I can’t type as fast as I can think, so I generate a substantial cognitive surplus. I might use that surplus to think more deeply, and sometimes I believe I do that. I might also use some of it to focus on my fingers and keep my typing rate up. But most of the time I some of that surplus on distractions. I look at what I have already written and imagine ways to improve a sentence or paragraph. That might improve the quality of my product at a cost to its quantity and to my satisfaction.

I want those ideas out of my head and onto the page.

So voice typing it is.

​

Industrial scale lying in the marketplace of ideas

For the past several days I've been trying to write an essay provisionally entitled “Industrial scale lying in the marketplace of ideas.” So far I’ve produced lots of words, a bunch of ideas, and quite a bit of frustration. I’ve failed to produce something that I want to publish on the blog.

One of the essays that I’m proudest of is [Violence markets and government monopolies](https://70yearsoldwtf.blogspot.com/2015/11/violence-markets-and-government.html) And I think this could end up being as good. I'm determined to see it through, but the way I've been working on it is not converging and has been manifestly unsuccessful.

So here's the new plan. Lay out the main argument. Identify the research I need to do and write things along the way. Finally, get to the promised land. Let’s see what happens.

## The main argument

The idea of a “marketplace of ideas” is useful, but underdeveloped. There are many kinds of ideas, and they each have their own marketplaces. The internet has changed the means and economics of idea creation and it has completely disrupted the old means and economics of distribution.

The change in economics has led to changes in the markets for ideas, and those changes have led to new market failure modes and new ways to manipulate those markets. The changes may call for new forms of regulation in certain markets. I don’t know what those regulations might be or how to carry them out effectively. I hope I’ll figure it out by the end.

I'm going to start by reviewing some of the literature on the rise and evolution of other markets--for example, the markets for products and services and financial markets. Then, with a good historical grounding of these well-studied markets, I'll turn to the history of the markets for ideas and changes in their generation and distribution of ideas. I'll probably drop some meme theory along the way. Finally, we'll get to modern marketplaces for ideas.

I will argue that the marketplaces for some important ideas--the ones related to politics, government, and economics--are coupled to markets for violence. If someone can generate ideas that convince people that the idea generator should be in power, then they can maintain power with fewer violence delivery resources.

Some people create ideas in order to discover the truth. Others generate ideas without regard for truth--other than as a convenience. Lies are as easy to assert as truths but more difficult to defend without extra work because a single false statement will stand out as inconsistent with a large number of true statements. Lies work best when they are produced on an industrial scale, each lie supported by other lies.

Lies also work better when people are told (and believe) that there is no such thing as truth or that truth cannot be found. These are lies.

Lies work better when they are packaged in ways that make them appear more truthful. Once again this takes extra work.

That's the project.

Now, onward!

The early results are in, and the answer is "no."

Yesterday I challenged myself to write a post an hour. I sat down and started on my first post. I made a strategic error. I chose to write something that required lots of thought and lots of research. And I didn't choose a particular self to leave the effort. Instead, I ended up with a free-form discussion that went on for pages.

This morning, I continued on that post. And before too long I found myself writing a prologue to the post. So I was further away from completing it then I had been.

Full stop.

(By the way, when you dictate to the word full followed by the word stop, Google's speech-to-text replaces those words with a period. And when you say the word period, you get one of those too. So the previous paragraph was originally rendered. '..')

So I'm starting again. The long blog post may come out in episodes, or I may reward myself for finishing a blog post in an hour by working on it for a little bit, or something else may happen. But I'm clear and resolute in my objective.

A post an hour.

It shouldn't be hard if I discipline myself. (Hah!) In the past 24 hours I found so many things that I want to write about. And think about. And share with other people.

Speaking posts engages different parts of my brain than writing them. It's harder in some ways, easier in others. And drafting while walking up and down the driveway gives my post a nice time bound. Plus it's good for my heart.

And now it's time to polish this up and post it.

A post an hour. Can I do it?

Here's what I want to do. I want to write. A lot. I'd like to knock out an essay each hour for the rest of the day. Can I do it?

I think it's possible. I certainly want to try. And I've got my wonderful new high productivity workflow worked out. I just have to do what I've decided to do the way I've decided to do it. Or better.

To start with, I need to pull together my internal family, my crew. There are too many parts of me that want to write. Some want to write different things. Some have competing views on how to write the same thing. The results, predictably, have been paralysis.

So, step one is to pull a crew together. Give a little rah-rah speech. Find out who wants to write. Line them up. Tell them they'll each have a turn. And then pick the first one and go!

I've been team writing an essay with Steve Ginzburg. Our approaches are highly compatible, but not identical. We sometimes go back and forth arguing over small wrangles. We’d do better if we agreed who owned each document and let that person be the final authority on it. The other one can give feedback. That feedback can be taken, or rejected, or discussed. But not debated endlessly. As we have sometimes done. Sadly.

On the home front, doing my own writing, I get in arguments with myself perhaps because I don't have a clearly delineated sense of which self that owns a particular piece of writing. If I did, I might be able to resolve these things more quickly and reach my goal.

So here is the first of today's essays. I dictated it my phone on a brisk walk up and down my driveway at around 12:28. And I've highlighted the changes that I've made from the first draft. They're really pretty minimal. It's now 1:28 and I'm wrapping it up. Without interruptions, I could have finished in half an hour.

Next up, finish the other blog post that I've been working on all morning. Refining, re-refining, re-re-refining. And then getting it out. Before 2:28

Precision and accuracy

Precision and accuracy in measurement are different, and often confused.

From here

Let's assume that we are trying to measure a property that has a value that is stable and that can be measured.

To measure a property we need both an instrument and a procedure. Using the same procedure with a different instrument or the same instrument with a different procedure will usually give a different result.

We'll call the combination of instrument and procedure a technique.

A technique for measuring a property yields accurate results if repeating the technique gives a series of measurements that, on average, converge on the "true value" of the property. This assumes that there is a knowable "true value."

A technique for measuring a property yields precise results if it repeating the technique gives a series of measurements that are close to one another and if the technique can differentiate properties that are close to one another, and not identical.

So a measuring technique can be accurate, precise, both accurate and precise, or neither.

Stories we live (and die) by

We are creatures who live in story. At least I am. We are invested in our stories. At least I am.  If we've got a good story, we want to preserve it, enhance it, and embellish it. At least I do. The last thing we want to do, when I have a good story, is to get rid of it. That’s true, at least, for me. (Or at least, that's my story.)

My best stories are about my struggles to overcome difficult conditions. And many of my favorites are about writing. When I'm not writing, I'm still working hard. I'm struggling to write. And man, is that tough.

But here's the problem, I've just realized. Maybe the struggle to write is such a good story that preserving it is more important than actually writing.  Or maybe I haven't just realized that. Maybe "I just realized" is just another story.

Fact: It's been 45 days since the last time I wrote. Ironically, I wrote about my high productivity workflow. Which I then proceeded to not use. Because?  Beats me.  But I'm sure I could come up with a great story to explain it. Or a story about struggling to explain it. While not writing, of course, because then the story would disappear.

That's the paradox. If I used my super-duper workflow (as I'm doing right now) then my ongoing struggle to write would be over. I would just sit at my computer, talking (as I'm doing right now), and having words appear--fairly effortlessly.  What's the fun in that? What is heroic about talking?  Nothing.  Indeed, the better I'm getting at this (as I'm doing right now), the worse the story gets.

If I simply continue to do what I'm doing right now, the story of the epic struggle between me and some unknown, invisible, powerful force that keeps me from writing is gone. Even the story of trying to name it is gone. Call it ADD. Call it distraction.  Call it the divided self. Spend time deciding what to call it. Find things to write about, and then don’t write about them, because--that's the way the story goes. And the story goes on.

And this morning, right now, I'm ruining a perfectly good story. I'm sitting here in front of my Chromebook and the words are coming out and they need very little editing.  (And now I'm editing them, and the editing is easy, too. Shit!) The story of my struggle to write is much more interesting than the story of how I'm writing this. Once I'm in flow, things just--well, they flow. No drama.

I've got a ton of stuff to write about, and an effective way to write it down and I could go on writing. But to do that, I have to give up my story of struggling against a force greater than myself. (It has to be a force greater than me, or I'd win an instant. And what's the fun in that?)  Instead, right now, I'm a laborer. My job is writing. I sit in front of my computer, and I do my job. Is that a story? Not an interesting one.

Can't I accept the fact that I've “ broken through” and finally written something as the story of a victory?  Sadly, no.  When I'm telling myself the story of my struggle, it’s the story of my battle against a worthy adversary--even if it's in my own mind, imaginary. It's worth. But right now, while I'm sitting down actually writing, I realize that the struggle was not between a noble hero, and an evil force. It was just stupidity. An embodied idiot was struggling to overcome a stupid idea of his own creation.

Not as good a story.

But wait, I'm a storyteller. If  I have to make it a story to write the next piece, I can do that.

I can totally do that.

So here's the new story: Through a combination of brilliant thinking, moral courage, self-discipline, and force of will, I managed to overcome--Oh, fuck it. It's really stupid.

I'll just post it, and get on with it.