A good theory of consciousness is one that predicts behavior that is unexplained by other current theories of consciousness. Einstein's General Theory was given credence because it predicted the bending of light.

We wake up each day with the same attention budget as everyone else. This is the one thing all humans equally share.

Spending that attention budget by doing this is what gives meaning to our lives.

It's is only through doing that we learn. It is only through learning that we find meaning.

Yet many of us waste attention budget exclusively on consumption. Seeking the random dopamine hits that tickle our curiosity. Yet we seek only the convenient things to do.

Activities that are convenient, that takes little effort don't consume a lot of attention. But enough of these small distractions will. But unfortunately, there's little learning taking place.

This is an insightful article about what's wrong with Google as compared to Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.

Which actually reminds me of the difference between organic and engineered designs:

Organic or biological designs are reusable designs from the ground up. They accommodate the needs of the environment because of the generality of the architecture. They don't pretend to solve just a narrow problem.

Architectures like biology that lead to general intelligence (i.e. like you) are from the ground up built from reusable components that encourage combinatorial mixing opportunities. One can never correctly guess the needs of the environment (i.e. market).

The opposite of generalization is pre-mature optimization. A company that has is genesis as a one-product company has a bias toward optimizing the entire stack. As a consequence, it compromises reusability and thus shuts of future opportunities of evolution.

In physics, energy is that which is causally invariant or symmetric with respect to time. Said differently, energy is never created or destroyed, it is conserved in the universe.

Now there is a question about information. Is information causally invariant? Does information remain the same with respect to time? To understand this, let's first understand what energy is, then attempt to understand what information is.

The strange thing about energy is that it is this universal currency that seems to be interchangeable between the different forces in nature (i.e. electromagnetic, strong, weak and gravity). It is that thing that makes change possible.

Now let's assume that the universe is computational in nature. That is, anything we see in nature is a consequence of computation. That is, there is computation underneath the physics that is driving the universe to change.

What does it mean then that information is conserved in this computational universe? Also, how is energy conservation related to information conservation?

Constructivism is perhaps the most important idea that will shape the future of humanity. The ills of society are a consequence of the willful ignorance of constructivism.

There are two important definitions of constructivism, one comes from mathematics and the other from psychology. The mathematical definition leads rejects the law of excluded middle. It's relevant in understanding causation.

The psychological definition: "Humans actively construct their own knowledge, and that reality is determined by our experiences as a learner."

The models of causality that our brains invent to navigate the world is a consequence of our progressive development in the world we live in. Robert Kegan calls his theory constructive developmental theory to emphasize two important aspects of cognitive growth.

Cognitive growth is constructive as explained above. It is also developmental in the sense that our mental models of the world make abrupt changes as we grow in maturity. The symmetries in our models break and lead to new symmetries.

Survivorship Bias 101

History is written by the victors. But if we exclusively focus on these successes, we allow survivorship bias to distort our understanding of the world.

But what is "survivorship bias" and how does it work?

Here's Survivorship Bias 101!

👇👇👇

1/ First, a few definitions.

Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on survivors (successes) and ignoring casualties (failures).

When we do so, we miss the true "base rates" of survival (the actual probability of success) and arrive at flawed conclusions.

2/ When we completely ignore failures, we lose our ability to correctly identify the differences between successes and failures.

Put simply, exclusively focusing on successes may actually inhibit our ability to identify (and replicate) the actions that led to such success.

3/ Cicero wrote on the topic over 2,000 years ago.

An atheist named Diagoras is shown portraits of people who prayed and were saved from death at sea as proof of God's existence.

Diagoras replies, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked?"

4/ Cicero cuts right to the point - we cannot conclude that prayer led to being saved from the sea if we ignore those who prayed and then drowned.

Survivorship bias can lead to a deeply-flawed understanding of cause-and-effect relationships.

Let's look at some examples.

1. On Fri. 8 Jan. Military Intel Contact said to keep phones on, charged and ready for Tier 4B notification as the RV release was being expedited and our start was at any time.

Lot of chat about instructional coaching. To get it right, don't underestimate the time it takes!

- There has to be a shared vision for effective T&L from the coaches. Keep revisiting this and keep unpicking all the elements so they are able to break them down and explain them.

We used the Evidence Review by @ProfCoe to create some effective teaching habits, using a lot of TLAC techniques and work from @every_lesson. Knowledge and expertise and ability to break this down is vital.

Lots of time then required with coaches to look at lessons and look at highest leverage point. In one training session our coaching team picked out over 30 tweaks in a 5 minute video. Where do you start? Why there? Consistency key. Leads to great debate.

Time needs to be built in. Time for visits, time for coaching sessions, time to practice. SLT need to all understand the process and buy-in and all live it. Putting staff development first is truly exciting and hugely powerful if actioned in the way it is desired.

Teachers/coaches need to have the process modelled for them. Staff need to understand the why behind IC, not just what it is. Worth talking through research on teacher's habitual practice from @mikehobbiss and @DrSamSims.