Cognition

Thinking in Bets Summary of Key Points

In ‘Thinking in Bets,’ former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke merges her poker expertise with cognitive psychology to outline a framework for making better decisions under conditions of uncertainty. She posits that life is more like poker than chess, as decisions must often be made with incomplete information. Duke offers practical strategies for acknowledging and coping with the inherent uncertainty of decision-making, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between good decisions and good outcomes.

A Thousand Brains Summary of Key Points

In ‘A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence’, Jeff Hawkins, the co-inventor of the Palm Pilot and founder of Numenta, presents a new theory of how the brain understands the world. Hawkins argues that the brain uses a multitude of reference frames (thousands of ‘mini-columns’ in the neocortex) to model objects of perception. He suggests that intelligence is a product of these models working together and that this framework could lead to the development of truly intelligent machines.