Course:COGS303/2008-2009-1
Welcome to Cognitive Systems 303, 2008-2009 winter term 1! This wiki has been created as a medium for further discussion and questions related to the Cogs 303 lectures. Your TAs will be checking this site frequently and are happy to answer questions here related to the material, course organization, and the cognitive systems program. In addition, this wiki will be used to submit target articles, which are due every Thursday.
Please feel free to answer and respond to each other's questions and comments as well. If you are not familiar with this wiki software, you might be interested reading the MediaWiki tips on editing and formatting. We will review all the posts and make additional suggestions and comments as requested. Have a great term!
Target Articles
September 11, 2008: Misuse of Language
CBS Interview with Video Game Censorship Advocate Jack Thompson
This guy is a total bonkers! I especially like his explanation of how the brain work:
"Of course, as you actually grow neural pathways called dendrites that enable you to perform more easily the physical acts of violence. Plus, from a psychological perspective, to act out of virtual violence in a virtual setting is far more damaging than just viewing it. You enter into the violence, you become the protagonist."
--ColinSteinmann 12:04, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
http://jasonjeffrey.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/why-space-exploration-is-worth-the-cost/
--BarryRoss 07:22, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
http://pharmacyautomationsystems.com/why-automate.htm --- Ivan Zhao September 10th, morning
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/climate-change-not-caused-by-humans-academic/2007/04/04/1175366308635.html --- George Vulic 17:00, September 10th, 2008
http://www.carolinapoliticsonline.com/2008/08/27/are-libraries-becoming-obsolete/ --ChrisRogers 02:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
http://singaporeboysg.blogspot.com/2008/09/global-warming-is-it-real-al-gore-says.html --RachelTeo 03:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
This looks to me like a blogger either totally misunderstanding or deliberately misinterpreting an interview transcript. Either that, or the interview-ee was just being nit-picky in terms of terminology. In any event the story goes: Interviewer asks an investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission what value he gives to "free speech". Given that it's an item out of the American Constitution, rather than something literally (word-for-word) secured by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the investigator replies that he gives it no value. The blogger, presenting the transcript on her blog concludes that it's a chilling admission from a human rights investigator that he doesn't value freedom of speech. http://www.bloggernews.net/113422 --SheaClare 05:18, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
We Become What We Condone by Sen. Jesse Helms--CameronHassall 05:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC) link title
September 18, 2008: Quality of Evidence; Misuse of Statistics
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53103ChrisRogers 21:34, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/president_bushs_troop_announce.html George W. Bush’s Troop Announcement, Sept. 9, 2008 “Today, I am pleased to announce the next step forward in our policy of "return on success." General Petraeus has just completed a review of the situation in Iraq - and he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended that we move forward with additional force reductions. Over the next several months, we will bring home about 3,400 combat support forces - including aviation personnel, explosive ordnance teams, combat and construction engineers, military police, and logistical support forces. By November, we will bring home a Marine battalion that is now serving in Anbar province. And in February of 2009, another Army combat brigade will come home. This amounts to about 8,000 additional American troops returning home without replacement. And if the progress in Iraq continues to hold, General Petraeus and our military leaders believe additional reductions will be possible in the first half of 2009.” --> This may seem like a lot, until you realize that there will still be 138,000 troops left in Iraq. This is more than four times the US force in Afghanistan. This is more than the number of US forces in the Iraq before a troop increase was ordered in January of 2007. Further, the reduction will not be complete before February of next year – after Bush has left office. --SheaClare 02:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
http://www.scientology.org/news-media/stats/pg004.html http://www.scientology.org/news-media/stats/pg005.html Ivan Zhao 9:06pm, Sept 17th
Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do by Paul Cameron --CameronHassall 04:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
There is a 15% disagreement in 238U Decay Constant--ColinSteinmann 08:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Mother Wrongfully Convicted Of Murdering Her Babies Thanks to Statistics--ColinSteinmann 15:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
September 25, 2008: Correlation and Causation; Explanation
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2007-04-05-daylight-savings-usat_N.htm/ --GeorgeVulic 15:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/is_red_bull_a_gateway_drug_some_john_hopkins_experts_say_caffeine_drinks_need_warning_labels? --RachelTeo 23:09, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/16/lkl.01.htmlChrisRogers 05:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
http://www-search.cardiff.ac.uk:8080/search.sim?qt=%22price+of+beer%22+violence&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Go&sr=0&nh=10&cs=iso-8859-1&sc=cardiff&sm=0&ha=0&mt=1 (At the bottom of the page, it's a PDF called "Beer Violence") Shea Clare Sept 25, 1:16AM
Homosexuality More Dangerous Than Smoking --ColinSteinmann
October 9, 2008: Analogy
http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/bigswitch/BarryRoss 06:24, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/cell-analogy.htmlGeorgeVulic 07:10, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
http://msfrizzle.blogspot.com/2006/05/electron-cloud-analogy.htmlChrisRogers 18:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Ramachandran, V.S., Phantoms in the Brain, pp. 134-137. --CameronHassall 01:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/quantum-mechanics-and-tomb-raider/ --RachelTeo 02:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Flatland: A romance of many dimensions The most fun you can have thinking about Math! --ColinSteinmann 10:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
October 23, 2008: Keeping an Open Mind
Continental Drift http://www.crystalinks.com/continental_drift.html --BarryRoss 07:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC) Interesting Idea: God does not exist. --KyleMelnick 22:13, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Duchesne --RachelTeo 23:38, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Interesting Idea: Free Energy--ChrisRogers 06:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
The Krebs Cycle --CameronHassall 08:47, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Instructions
You must submit the link to your target article by 9:00am on Thursday, ensuring that your submission is both signed and datestamped, e.g.:
- http://www.cogsys.ubc.ca/cogs303/ --MinjungKim 07:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
You can automatically sign and datestamp your article by typing two dashes followed by four hyphens, like so: --~~~~. If you submit multiple articles, only your most recent article with the most recent datestamp will be accepted; your previous submissions will be free to be taken by other students in the class.
If you have any questions, please e-mail the TA right away.
Critique Articles (***Register your critique articles here!***)
Ellis, H.D. et al. (1997) Reduced autonomic responses to faces in Capgras Delusion.--KyleMelnick 17:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Reviews, 9, 1–17. Washington, DC: Office of Naval Research.--GeorgeVulic 16:08, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Brooks et al. (1986) A robust layered control system for a mobile robot. --RachelTeo 01:01, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Good article: VS Ramachandran, EM Hubbard. Psychophysical investigations into the neural basis
of synaesthesi. - Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2001
Bad article: J New, L Cosmides, J Tooby. Category-specific attention for animals reflects
ancestral priorities, not expertise. - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007
--ColinSteinmann 04:23, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Wolford et al., The Left Hemisphere’s Role in Hypothesis Formation. --CameronHassall and Rozin, et al., "Head versus heart"... --CameronHassall
GOOD: Hirstein et al., Capgras syndrome: a novel probe for understanding the neural representation of the identity and familiarity of persons--ChrisRogers 07:16, 27 November 2008 (UTC) BAD: Domin et al., Students' categorizations of organic compounds --ChrisRogers 07:16, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Articles Related to Bad Research
1. Research relating global warming to increase in suicide rates: http://wiki.ubc.ca/images/3/3e/COGS303-globalwarming.pdf
Preti, Lentini, Maugeri. (2007). Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide: Data from Italy, 1974–2003. Journal of Affective Disorders.
For a humorous discussion/criticism, see this blog entry. The entry does get somewhat technical towards the middle, although the beginning and the end are fairly easy to read.
2. Research on aspirin and preventing heart attacks: http://wiki.ubc.ca/images/8/89/COGS303-aspirin.pdf
Rosnow & Rosenthal. (1989). Statistical Procedures and the Justification of Knowledge in Psychological Science. American Psychologist.
This is a rather technical paper criticizing some common methodological errors. There is a rather good segment on the distinction between statistical significance versus meaningfulness of the results, however.
In a previous study, regular intake of aspirin was found to reduce the incidence of heart attacks (pp.1278-1280). The researchers found the results were statistically significant (i.e., highly reliable), p < .001, primarily due to the extremely large sample size of over 10,000 participants per condition. Rosnow and Rosenthal note that the actual size of the correlation was, in comparison, very small: r = 0.034, meaning that only 1% of the variation in the incidence of heart attacks could be explained in terms of aspirin administration. This is not a very effective treatment for preventing heart attacks.
The article itself is extremely technical, so you are not expected to understand it. It is available for your perusal, however, if you are interested in taking a look for yourself.