MITECS

From: Thomas Buckner (tcbevolver@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Aug 22 2005 - 16:18:18 MDT


Rather than get in it with the "What's IA"
thread, I already done went to the SL4 glossary
wiki to find out for myself. Whilst reading the
other acronyms, I came across MITECS, which I
don't recall being sufficiently mentioned in
prior threads, so I post the wiki entry (all that
follows is writ by Eliezer) for others who may
not already know of it:
http://sl4.org/wiki/MITECS
MITECS
"SL4Wiki | RecentChanges | Preferences
[MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences],
edited by Wilson and Keil

I desperately wanted this book five years before
it even existed. It's a good thing that this book
was published in 1999, because if I had found
this book in 1999 and learned that it had been
available since 1994, I would have run amok with
a flamethrower. Somewhere in this book is a short
summary of almost every subject in cognitive
science that I've ever been interested in. Some
hint of the vast depth of the field of cognitive
science can be gained by reading an entire book
whose concepts are summarized in a two-page
article in MITECS, then realizing that MITECS has
471 articles. Not that MITECS is a shallow book:
If 90% of the usefulness comes from 10% of the
information, then this book tries to give you 40%
of the usefulness with 1% of the information, and
often succeeds. And MITECS is enormously powerful
in combination with Google. MITECS tells you that
there's something you need to know about, and
Google hunts down online research papers.

The price Amazon currently quotes is $165, but I
bought mine for $90 at our local Microcenter. Is
it worth it? Definitely. If you want to become a
cognitive scientist, there is no other book on
Earth that will move you closer to this goal, not
even Gödel, Escher, Bach. If you have to choose
either a college curriculum in cognitive science
or reading MITECS cover to cover, pick MITECS."

Guess I better look for one too...

Tom Buckner

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