Cognitive Drag {Content}

Principle

Hierarchizing cognitive drag depending on their consequences and based on the context (user and usage).

Could not managing such drag properly limit the abilit of oneself to do research efficiently? Even to think efficiently reaching a certain level, creating a barrier against one own progresses?

Drags

• forgetting earlier found solution or non-working solution
  • as if parsing the same branch of a working tree again
• imprecise vocabulary
  • increasing uncertainty by using general terms, risking faulty communication, because of a limited vocabulary
• the cost of architectural choices
  • if one postulate that Cognition#ThinkingIsTechnical then the underlying choices of tools will impact how fast and scalable the following thinking process will be
  • consequently one of the difficulty is not just how to acquire quality information but also how to store it in an easy to access and re-use way
    • this is probably why formalizing an idea is hard but knowing "where" to store it for further uses (without yet knowing which one those will be as the idea is not yet formulated) is even harder
      • an imperfect solution is to formulate the idea out of the structure yet then only insert it once it has been properly developed
        • the downside of this solution is that one has to have the discipline of this doing this complex integration step

To develop

• quality of thinking
  • being able to use your brain as efficiently as possible

See also

• Education
• SC01 with links on cognitive science in general
• Sophisms that gather the manipulation of discourses
• the tuna ability to gain momentum from its own generated vortices
• As of the 18h of September 2009, Google presents 108 results on "cognitive drag"
  • including a definition generalizing from the notion of persistence of vision
• my notes on The Mathematician's Mind
  • The science of thought by Friedrich Max Müller, 1887
  • How to Solve It by George Pólya, 1945
  • How to Solve It By Computer by R. G. Dromey, 1982

Inspiration

Reading Hadamard's The Mathematician Mind and comparing the optimization of thinking and my practice of swimming (In swimming, and all other sports where time is the measure, one has to produce effort but also to counter the drag it generates).