Using Cognitive Neuroscience to become a Millionaire?
By Paul
Winner of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?, Ogi Ogas explains how he used techniques of congintive neuroscience to win the quiz the show;
"I used priming on my $16,000 question: "This past spring, which country first published inflammatory cartoons of the prophet Mohammed?" I did not know the answer. But I did know I had a long conversation with my friend Gena about the cartoons. So I chatted with Meredith about Gena. I tried to remember where we discussed the cartoons and the way Gena flutters his hands. As I pictured how he rolls his eyes to express disdain, Gena's remark popped into my mind: "What else would you expect from Denmark?" …Another cognitive process essential for winning on Millionaire is intuition, or more precisely, knowing how to make decisions based on intuition. What if you have a feeling about an answer? What should you do with your hunch? Folk wisdom holds that on standardized tests you should go with your first impulse. Research tends to support this idea: a first impulse is more often correct than a second, revised decision. But what if $250,000 is at stake? "More often correct" does not seem certain enough to serve as a basis for a decision. How can you evaluate the true likelihood of a hunch being accurate?...
But I didn't hesitate when I got my $500,000 question: "Who was the only Beatle to never appear on a Jerry Lewis telethon?" I had no clue whatsoever. I quickly Switched-the-Question. But my substitute question was almost as obscure: "When Bayer marketed heroin to consumers in the late nineteenth century, it was promoted as a remedy for what ailment?"I used my last lifeline, the 50/50, reducing the choices to "Stuffy head" and "Persistent cough." I tried using priming and intuition, struggling to recall Victorian-era American opium-addicts, but I got nowhere.
I desperately wanted a shot at the million, so I considered another cognitive capacity explored in my department: theory of mind, the ability to imagine other people's perspectives. I contemplated the show's writers themselves, imagining them sitting at their keyboards composing three fake but credible answers. "Stuffy head" struck me as resembling the kind of manufactured distraction I might come up with."
Via Mind Hacks
Related;
Teach your brain to stretch time
Brain on Fire
Podcasts
The Private Life of a Brain Surgeon
Katrina Firlik's business is brains. Carving into the 'flesh of the soul' is her day job. The first woman admitted into one of the most prestigious neurosurgery programs, she's just penned an insider's account of her world. Part mechanic - part scientist, her intimate encounters of diseased and damaged brains offer a unique, and grisly, lens onto our most mysterious and wondrous organ.
Reclaiming imagination: art, psychosis and the creative mind
Comments