{"id":28862,"date":"2026-09-22T17:30:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T00:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=28862"},"modified":"2026-09-25T16:46:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T23:46:41","slug":"cognitive-abilities-and-limitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2026\/09\/22\/cognitive-abilities-and-limitations\/","title":{"rendered":"Cognitive Abilities and Limitations"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>How AI is being used to solve math problems that humans have been unable to;<\/li>\n<li>How anti-vaxxers are at core angry, fearful, and despairing;<\/li>\n<li>NYT&#8217;s Brett Stephens complains that none of the National Book Award finalists are by or about people like him.<\/li>\n<li>Beck&#8217;s new album Ride Lonesome.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"center\">&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/div>\n<p>On the general theme of humanity&#8217;s cognitive ability. I&#8217;ve mentioned before that, as with morality, there&#8217;s a wide range of positions. At the high end, we know of prodigies like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Srinivasa_Ramanujan\">Srinivasa Ramanujan<\/a>, who had preternatural mathematical skills; we know of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Savant_syndrome\">Savants<\/a> who can tell you what day of the week a particular date falls (and oddly these are associated with autistic people); and so on.<\/p>\n<p>The AI revolution is revealing that there are things that can be known that even smart humans figure can&#8217;t out.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/dam\/asset\/4edea88b-e1e7-47d4-a024-64701af074d7\/GettyImages-2262108239-cropped.jpeg?m=1790012229.627&amp;w=900\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Scientific American, Lyndie Chiou, today<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/mathematicians-use-ai-to-find-mysterious-symmetries-solving-decades-old-problem\/\">Mathematicians use AI to find mysterious symmetries, solving decades-old problem<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Subtitled: In parallel, a race by amateurs and mathematicians has found all 25,000 cases of one \u201cinverse Galois problem\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The details aren&#8217;t the point. But a sample:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For any polynomial, known algorithms tease out its Galois group. But the reverse direction is opaque: Given a particular Galois group of symmetries, can you always find an associated polynomial? The quandary became known as the inverse Galois problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When I was at UCLA I indulged in math courses on interesting topics like group theory. Then changed majors, to computer science (at CSUN) to get a job. Math still fascinates me, but it&#8217;s sort of like poetry, or music: beautiful in its own way, if not practical in the real world. (I could immediately retract this in other contexts: weird math has turned out to support physical observations again and again.)<\/p>\n<p>And so on. The point remains. There are realms of reality that most humans, maybe all humans, cannot perceive.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p>And, at the low end.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/YPQXPI6UX3W7ST6AVDAGQFSEYM_size-normalized.jpg&amp;w=1440&amp;impolicy=high_res\" width=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Washington Post, opinion by Robert Gebelhoff, today<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2026\/09\/22\/dcs-anti-vaccine-conference-taught-me-painful-lesson\/\">I attended an anti-vaccine conference. The joke ended quickly.<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;I am firmly pro-vaccine. Ridiculing those who are not helps no one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have a confession: When I arrived at the Grand Hyatt hotel in D.C. on Thursday to cover an <a class=\"js-itid-click\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2026\/09\/17\/rfk-jr-give-keynote-speech-conference-anti-vaccine-group-he-founded\/\" rel=\"\">anti-vaccine conference<\/a>, my intention was to make fun of it. That was wrong.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wpds-c-PJLV article-body type-text\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\" data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"MHZT5IDEAVGCBE2JSUW73QFAZU\" data-el=\"text\" data-scroll-pos=\"1\" data-scroll-measured=\"true\">To be clear, I have an unshakable faith in vaccines. I have written about immunizations for years, so little of the anti-vaccine rhetoric at the convention surprised me much. Most of it \u2014 including the keynote address from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. \u2014 was the same deceptive talking points I have heard countless times.<\/p>\n<p>Over the course of the day, however, I realized that treating those views with disrespect, wrong though they might be, would help no one. It would only feed into the resentment that created the anti-vaccine movement as it is today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Many examples. Anecdotal evidence. The writer concludes,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Moreover, purveyors of false information often layer multiple claims on top of each other. Diving into any one of them can turn out to be a complicated rabbit hole. Kennedy, for instance, referenced a 2017 study that found babies in Guinea-Bissau who received the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine were more likely to die than those who didn\u2019t get the shot. Except that paper was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goats-and-soda\/2025\/07\/01\/g-s1-74752\/rfk-jr-vaccines-safety-gavi\" rel=\"\">based on data from the 1980s<\/a>, regarding vaccines that are no longer used and with questionable methodology. Plus, multiple other studies \u2014 including from the same authors \u2014 came to different conclusions.<\/p>\n<p>This sort of detail makes readers\u2019 eyes glaze over, so reporters rarely spend time parsing it. That gives anti-vaccine activists room to claim that the traditional media \u2014 indeed the entire political establishment \u2014 is against them.<\/p>\n<p>That is what crushed me on Thursday \u2014 that sense of victimhood that nearly everyone in the conference shared. It is anger and fear and despair, emotions that are so easily preyed upon by opportunistic politicians. \u201cSomething happened to our kids,\u201d Kennedy said, and the audience applauded.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not a sentiment one should ridicule lightly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s never about rational analysis.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/09\/23\/multimedia\/22stephens-hvqz\/22stephens-hvqz-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp\" width=\"250\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, opinion by Brett Stephens, today<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/22\/opinion\/national-book-awards-dei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DVE.VknD.3965Pa94Plxw&amp;smid=url-share\">The Literary World\u2019s D.E.I. Checklist<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last week, the longlists for the National Book Awards were announced. Among the 20 authors in the fiction and nonfiction categories, nearly all are straight white males. Most are also on the political right, some even on the far right. Remarkably, mainstream media outlets haven\u2019t reported this, perhaps because they don\u2019t think it\u2019s noteworthy. It\u2019s as if we were living in 1956 rather than 2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He&#8217;s complaining about the narrow range of topics in the finalists, both fiction and nonfiction, for this year&#8217;s National Book Awards.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hannah Lillith Assadi\u2019s novel, \u201c<a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/people\/hannah-lillith-assadi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Paradiso 17<\/a>,\u201d is \u201cinspired by the life of her late Palestinian father.\u201d <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/people\/kimberly-blaeser\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kimberly Blaeser<\/a>, a poet, is the \u201cfounding director of Indigenous Nations Poets.\u201d Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian American writer whose novel \u201cD\u00e8y\u201d <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/longlist-for-the-2026-national-book-award-for-fiction\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reflects on<\/a> \u201cthe many forms of mourning experienced through immigration, gentrification and diasporic identity.\u201d Juli\u00e1n Delgado Lopera\u2019s novel \u201c<a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/books\/pretend-youre-dead-and-i-carry-you\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pretend You\u2019re Dead and I Carry You<\/a>,\u201d set in 1990s Bogot\u00e1, \u201cexplores Colombia\u2019s queer underground community.\u201d Louise Erdrich, the highly acclaimed author of \u201cPython\u2019s Kiss,\u201d is identified in <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/books\/pythons-kiss\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">her N.B.F. biography<\/a> as \u201ca member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.\u201d Marlon James\u2019s novel \u201c<a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/books\/the-disappearers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Disappearers<\/a>\u201d is a \u201cqueer epic\u201d set in Kingston, Jamaica. <a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/books\/beginning-middle-end\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Valeria Luiselli<\/a> is a writer born in Mexico whose \u201cBeginning Middle End\u201d spans \u201ccontinents, languages and four generations.\u201d Kenan Orhan is a Turkish American writer; his first novel, \u201c<a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/people\/kenan-orhan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Renovation<\/a>,\u201d is a story about a family migrating from Istanbul to Italy. Morgan Thomas\u2019s book \u201c<a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/books\/mad-eden\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mad Eden<\/a>\u201d is about \u201ca trans health care worker\u201d who has been diagnosed with autism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A commentator on Facebook points out that a couple of these books aren&#8217;t even out yet (judges get advance copies), so Stephens could not have read them yet. Stephens is concerned only about their apparent subject matters.<\/p>\n<p>I have a different but parallel reaction. That all the books judges for awards like this select as finalists are about marginal groups&#8230; in contemporary American culture&#8230; in one era of history&#8230; and they consistently ignore books about big issues about science and philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Music<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a new Beck album out! I heard about it in the New York Times, on Sunday. And that it&#8217;s a sequel, or third in a trilogy, of earlier Beck albums <em>Sea Change<\/em> and <em>Morning Phase<\/em>. The latter has my favorite Beck song, maybe my favorite song of all time: Turn Away.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a full YouTube video, though it has ads. (Update 23 Sep: no, this isn&#8217;t the CD itself, it&#8217;s some kind of selection, and leads to songs by other people. Today 25 Sep: it starts with the third track on the CD, and after a few songs switches to a song by Harry Styles.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"In The Night\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l1U_6wMLlmY?list=PLBz1HMqU9hRM\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Now listening for the third time. Nothing has quite jumped out to me yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How AI is being used to solve math problems that humans have been unable to; How anti-vaxxers are at core angry, fearful, and despairing; NYT&#8217;s Brett Stephens complains that none of the National Book Award finalists are by or about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2026\/09\/22\/cognitive-abilities-and-limitations\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,17,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-music","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28862"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28896,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28862\/revisions\/28896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}