Cognitive Engineering

Can you be forever young or wise beyond your years? Is age a justifiable way of categorising people? Image: William Mulready RA via Wikipedia Things mentioned in this podcast: - Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’ https://www.thoughtco.com/shakespeares-seven-ages-of-man-2831433 - Peak age in different sports https://www.thestatszone.com/archive/olympic-sports-how-does-peak-age-vary-13812 - Cognitive changes with age https://www.canyonranch.com/blog/health/how-your-brain-changes-with-age/ - When people get married https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2016 - When people have children https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthcharacteristicsinenglandandwales/2017 - Do we become more conservative as we age? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics - Average age of first-time buyers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47070020 - WaPo on how happiness changes with age https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/24/under-50-you-still-havent-hit-rock-bottom-happiness-wise/ For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

Peter, Nick and Fraser mansplain the adoption of new vocabulary for any wordies out there - totes adorbs. Image: artyangel via pixabay.com Things mentioned in this podcast: - Plotkin paper on information theory and language evolution https://langev.com/pdf/plotkin00languageEvolution.pdf - Bentz et al on entropy across different languages http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~lpearl/colareadinggroup/readings/BentzEtAl2017_CrossLingEntropy.pdf - Linguistic determinism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/#LinDetLinRel For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

Should we spend time worrying about the risk of freak accidents? Image: Theo Campbell and Kaz Crossley by Theo Campbell Things mentioned in this podcast: - Theo Campbell’s accident https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49483153 - National Statistics death data https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths - Micromorts infographic https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/crunching-numbers-on-mortality.html - What people actually worry about https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/why-we-worry/201305/what-do-we-worry-about For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

Can the call for divine intervention be a cause of harm? God only knows. Image: wlox.com Things mentioned in this podcast: - Willingness to pay for prayers https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/09/10/1908268116 - Hate crime advice https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/hate-crime/what-are-hate-incidents-and-hate-crime/ - Harrassment advice https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/what-are-the-different-types-of-discrimination/harassment/ For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

Cowboys, 49ers and Patriots - can we determine anything about a culture based on the sports it plays? Image: KeithJJ via pixabay Things mentioned in this podcast: - Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions https://data.world/adamhelsinger/geerthofstedeculturaldimension - Hofstede’s methodology https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=orpc - All-time Olympic medal table https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-olympic-medals.html For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

Do fiery rhetoric and extreme policies help win elections? Image: Bundesarchiv via Wikipedia Things mentioned in this podcast: - Kaldor-Hicks criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaldor%E2%80%93Hicks_efficiency - ‘That which is seen, and that which is unseen’ (Bastiat) http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html - Public spending in the UK since 1900 https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/past_spending - List of UK pressure groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pressure_groups_in_the_United_Kingdom For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience." Was George Bernard Shaw right about the lessons of the past? Image: Public domain via Wikicommons Special Guest: Dr Kristian Gustafson https://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/kristian-gustafson For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

The internet provides a level of information resilience that mankind has never before possessed. But what happens if it breaks? Image: Tekniska museet via flickr Things mentioned in this podcast: - Getting deplatformed from Apple https://boingboing.net/2019/08/13/getting-deplatformed-from-appl.html - Cloudflare outage explanation https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-outage/ - List of significant internet outages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_outage - Verizon and BGP Optimizer outage https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-verizon-and-a-bgp-optimizer-knocked-large-parts-of-the-internet-offline-today/ For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

Do not listen to this podcast. When is it permissible to ignore the voice of authority? Image: Danny Lawson via PA Images Things mentioned in this podcast: - Whaley Bridge residents who refuse to move https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-49210937 For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

They're persistent, irritating and difficult to ignore. Yes, Frazer, Nick and Peter discuss midges. Image: CSIRO via Wikipedia Things mentioned in this podcast: - Midge facts https://www.lifesystems.co.uk/news/45-facts-about-the-highland-midge and https://www.highlandtitles.com/blog/midges/ - Parasite strategies https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2013.1108 - How successful is terrorism? https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5fa3/f5d6d2ff50c200e759eba39509d179b0e33c.pdf For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

Would it be wrong to take a set of instructional schematics to the barber? We discuss when vague requirements work, and importantly when they don't. Image: J Pitts via Wikipedia Things mentioned in this podcast: - Goodhart’s Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss

While Aleph Insights is on a summer break from recording podcasts, here's an episode from our archive. Why do some films age better than others? Image: www.starwars.com/news/the-5-most-…s-visual-effects

While Aleph Insights is on a summer break from recording podcasts, here's an episode from our archive. What does tastiness tell us about fruit choice? Could we engineer the perfect fruit? Or are we just comparing apples and oranges? Image: Malte Sörensen via Flickr

While Aleph Insights is on a summer break from recording podcasts, here's an episode from our archive. Are personality tests any use? What can they tell us if anything? Or is it like a star-sign? Take the test! www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test Image: Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. Courtesy of Katharine Myers via Wikipedia.

Is it meaningful to assign personalities to the decades? Image: Ezekiel via Wikipedia Things mentioned in this podcast: - The thirty-year nostalgia cycle https://thepatterning.com/2017/02/13/the-nostalgia-pendulum-a-rolling-30-year-cycle-of-pop-culture-trends/ - When did the sixties really begin? https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/02/06/when-did-sixties-really-begin-heres-why-it-matters - Did the nineties ever end? http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150205-the-1990s-never-ended - Life satisfaction over time https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction For more Cognitive Engineering episodes find us on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, or add this RSS feed to your preferred player: feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:219479129/sounds.rss