Cognitive Science

Essay 4 Where Do Abstractions Come From? Introduction: The Tesseract Problem We cannot visualize a four-dimensional object. But we can see its shadow – a three-dimensional projection that preserves some of the original structure while losing the dimension that makes it what it is. We can study the shadow, rotate it, measure it. We can learn real things from it. But the projection is irreversible. No amount of studying the shadow will let us reconstruct the object that cast it. ...

Intelligence Is Compression, Not Experience Why Intelligence Advances in Discontinuities Introduction: Experience Is Not the Same as Understanding In the previous essay, we argued that intelligence is best understood as learning rate under novelty. When familiar strategies fail, the intelligent system is the one that adapts fastest. Intelligence scales not by thinking harder in isolation, but by parallel exploration – many agents, many trials, many hypotheses tested at once. That framing explains a great deal. It explains why evolution looks intelligent without thinking, why markets outperform individuals, and why modern AI systems feel powerful even when they do not learn in real time. It suggests a future in which intelligence emerges from swarms of smaller systems exploring in parallel, not from a single superintellect. ...