Jim Carnicelli's AI Blog

[ Audio Version ] When I was in the store eyeing up On Intelligence , I also noticed an interesting looking book titled Visual Intelligence , by Donald D. Hoffman , that I was pretty sure I'd have to get back to. I finally bought it a few days ago. Owning to the circumstances of a bit of recent travel, I found I have had a bunch of time to read it. I'm a slow reader, but my inner geek found this book so gripping that I finished this roughly 200 page book off in two days. (I suppose if it had more words and fewer of the pretty pictures, it might have taken a few more days and been less gripping.) Given that I found Visual Intelligence a very cool book, I thought it worth writing a review. I'll begin by saying it's incredibly well written and that most of it should be easily reachable by the casual reader. It lends many cool insights into the curious nature of human vision and, by implication, all the other senses. My read of On Intelligence and its implications

[ Audio Version ] Poor researchers like me can't generally afford to put together sophisticated research projects. One of the interesting things about researching intelligence, though, is that we have at least one human research subject that's available for experiments 24 hours a day. If you'd like to learn more about the nature of learning in the human brain, there's a simple but interesting experiment you can run. Like most people, I'm right handed. For about a year, now, I've been trying to teach myself to brush my teeth with my left hand. I've gotten pretty good at it, but I'm still in awe at how bad my fine control skills with my left hand are compared to my right. Now, I'm sure people who understand handedness better than I will say my left hand will probably never be as dexterous as my right hand. And, sure enough, I don't work out my left hand as often as my right, so it'll probably never be as strong, which affects dexterity. S