iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 06/10/2026

Indeed. Here's Selfridge in the discussion of McCarthy's common sense paper at the 1958 Mechanisation of Thought Processes Symposium (Vol 1, p. 87), where, among others, Grace Hopper was present.

snippet of text (Selfridge in reply to Bar-Hillel):
"(...) Deductive logic is inferred as much as anything else. Most women have never inferred it, but they get on perfectly well, marrying happy husbands, raising happy children, without ever using deductive logic at all."

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 05/10/2026

Erinnert mich an die sehr hervorragenden Traumzeichnungen der letzte Woche leider verstorbenen Ingrid Wiener (wie dieser, in der Konrad Bayer sie in eine Schmelzkäsesemmel verwandelt)

Bild mit nummertierter Annotation:

1) Träume ich bin in Estland oder Lettland? Am Theater. Es ist in der "Dakamer" Konrad Bayer. Dakamer heisst so etwas ähnliches wie

2) "Boulevard" in est- oder lettländisch in meinem Traum. Konrad Bayer hat mich an das Theater geholt.

3) Er lebt hier noch (in Österreich ist er schon lange tot) und ich soll zusammen mit ihm und einer rotgekleideten Dame mit 50er Jahre -> II

Walster 05.04.04

II

1) Kränzchenlockenfrisur spielen. Er tritt als Zauberer auf und verwandelt mich in ein grosse Schmelzkäsesemmel.

2) Es ist ein grosser Erfolg - höre das Publikum tosend klatschen.

3) Erwache bei Vogelgekreische

05.04.04

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 23/08/2026

The 2nd author of that article, Cornell Schreiber, and me were collaborators for many years. Among others, we worked on the paper folding domain I ended up writing my book about. bsky.app/profile/benn...

First page of Schreiber, C. (2015). Topologie | Konstruktion einer Kreuzfaltung: Selbstbeobachtungen zum lebendigen Denken. In Raab, T. & Eder, T., editors, Selbstbeobachtung: Oswald Wieners Denkpsychologie, pages 191–216. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Topologie | Konstruktion einer Kreuzfaltung:
Selbstbeobachtungen zum lebendigen Denken

Cornell Schreiber

In diesem Aufsatz berichte ich von meinen Selbstbeobachtungen zur wie folgt lautenden Aufgabe:

Falte ein A4-Blatt in deiner Vorstellung, so oft es dir gelingt, nacheinander abwechselnd horizontal und vertikal. Beachte dabei die Form, die das Blatt nach jeder Faltung annimmt. Nimm dazu kein »echtes« Blatt zur Hilfe. Die in der Aufgabenstellung besagte Kreuzfaltung dürfte den meisten aus eigener Erfahrung wohlbekannt sein, zum Beispiel als Falttechnik, einen A4-Briefbogen auf die Größe einer Postkarte zu komprimieren. Schnell hat man ein Papierblatt binnen weniger Handgriffe und nahezu automatisch über Kreuz gefaltet. Der genauen Form des Blatts, etwa den Kantenformen an seinen Seiten, muss man sich dabei nicht
widmen.

Hingegen stellt die Aufgabe, eine mehrfache Kreuzfaltung vorzustellen, eine Herausforderung für unseren kognitiven Apparat dar – und ist insofern von denkpsychologischer Relevanz. In der Vorstellung können die Konsequenzen einer Faltung nicht mühelos am echten Blatt »abgelesen« werden. Stattdessen muss man die immer komplexer werdenden Formen des Blatts im Arbeitsgedächtnis konstruieren: angefangen bei einfachen Intuitionen von Blatt und Faltung müssen die Strukturen des mehrfach-gefalteten Blatts aus den Strukturen des jeweiligen Ausgangszustands nach und nach neu »zusammengesetzt« werden. Einsicht in die Regelmäßigkei-
ten der Kreuzfaltung, z. B. welche Kantenformen typischer- (...)

Title and abstract of Angerer, B., & Schreiber, C. (2019). Representational dynamics in the domain of iterated mental paper folding. Cognitive Systems Research, 54, 217–231.

Representational dynamics in the domain of iterated mental paper folding

Benjamin Angerer a,⇑, Cornell Schreiber b
a
Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Germany
b
Department of Philosophy, Research Platform Cognitive Science, University of Vienna, Austria

Received 14 December 2017; received in revised form 25 October 2018; accepted 11 November 2018
Available online 17 December 2018

Abstract

Successful problem solving relies on the availability of suitable mental representations of the task domain. Especially for more complex problems, there might be a wide variety of possible problem representations, and it might even be beneﬁcial to change them during problem solving. In a ﬁrst part, we argue that investigating the dynamics of understanding in terms of dynamically changing problem representations is an underexplored aspect of problem solving research, and that most classic tasks even preclude the opportunity of such dynamics to occur. Continuing this theoretical discussion, as an illustrative example of a task designed for the exploration of such representational dynamics, the second part of the paper discusses a novel, complex spatial transformation and problem solving task. In this task, one is asked to repeatedly mentally cross-fold a sheet of paper, and to predict the resulting sheet geometry without the use of external aids. Through its deliberate openness and diﬃculty, this task requires ﬁnding new and more eﬃcient representations – ranging from kinaesthetic and visuospatial imagery to symbolic notions. We present an overview of the task domain and discuss various ways of representing the domain as well as potential dynamics between them.
Ó 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Problem solving; Representational change; Spatial imagery; Paper folding

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 12/07/2026

Well, you'd think as an academic publisher of some renown, @routledgebooks.bsky.social would manage to re-release an unchanged book as open access without introducing new errors... alas :/ bsky.app/profile/benn...

comparison of a figure from the OA and the original release. In the OA version, a text label is missing

comparison of a figure from the OA and the original release. In the OA version some boxes have the wrong opacity, making everything look messy

comparison of some maths notation from the OA and the original release. In the OA version, the symbols are all over the place, making things illegible

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 12/07/2026

It was all LaTeX when they got it :(( Figures messed up too, with missing box labels, f'ed up opacity, ...

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 12/07/2026

Aw, man... now that's embarrassing! First time scrolling over the newly released PDF myself and noticed the publisher has introduced loads of errors that weren't there in the original release!!? All they had to do was to add a CC disclaimer! Will post an update once they fixed it

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/07/2026

In particular, beyond the specific work reported in the book, my main hope is that it shows the value of qualitative and exploratory methods – approaches that could help shine a light on less-well understood areas of cognition, but that many cognitive scientists remain unfamiliar with. 12/13

Theory and methodology

The theoretical focus and empirical methods in this book might seem to make a curious combination, depending on the reader’s background. Hence, a few words about the motivation and ambition of the project reported in this book. One of the seeds for this project lies in the fact that the prevalent theory of problem solving in cognitive science has hardly changed within the last couple of decades even though its incompleteness is widely acknowledged (e.g. Funke, 2014). Thus, theory development is the book’s main focus. Incidentally, this coincides with an increasing number of calls for theory development to play a more prominent role in psychology again, recognising that the various “crises” of psychology will not be solved by revising our empirical practices alone (e.g. Fried, 2020; Guest & Martin, 2020; van Rooij & Baggio, 2021). The empirical study reported in this book is therefore subsidiary to this theoretical interest, and it was designed to allow the exploration of phenomena that are not covered by the current state of the theory. Without a theory that would allow generating testable predictions, open exploration is a necessary preliminary step in extending the theory. This ﬁrst speculative phase lays the ground-
work from which new hypotheses can ultimately be derived and, subsequently, tested. Therefore, the speciﬁc aim of this study was to provide a rich set of observations that invites theoretical speculation and development, rather than testing hypotheses. The thick description of those observations and subsequent

... discussion of my theoretical proposals based on them should thus be seen as the results of this study (cf. Ohlsson, 2012, p.113), and I hope they will spur on the reader to engage in further theory development themselves. Finally, in providing such a discussion I also aim to make a methodological point by demonstrating the value of exploratory research in general and detailed single-case studies in particular (cf. Devezer, Nardin, Baumgaertner, & Buzbas, 2019; Nickels, Fischer-Baum, & Best, 2022). Where there seems to be the tacit assumption in contemporary cognitive science that empirical work ought to be experimental and quantitative, and theoretical work ought to be either formal, computational, or philosophical, I want to show how theory development based on open-ended, exploratory empirical studies can contribute to the cognitive science endeavour, and provide a much-needed complement to the aforementioned methods. After all, if we keep excluding areas of cognition from investigation because we do not (yet) know how to approach them quantitatively, or how to formalise them, we should not be surprised if our theories remain incomplete.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/07/2026

For instance, the very idiosyncratic "crocodile metaphor" was invented by one pair as a mnemonic device for understanding and remembering the configuration of edges up to the fifth fold. 7/13

One edge that has been folded in on itself three times (one component of higher folds). Underneath the caption "doubly-folded crocodile".

Figure 87: Final state of the standardised mnemonic form of the crocodile metaphor: Proceeding from lower to upper jaw describing each crease in PF_3.

A protocol excerpt, reading:

S2: §[v-gesture, with the other hand a folding gesture from front to back originating from the v] "... is it like a normal, folded crocodile?"

S1: "exactly, it is a normal, folded crocodile, and then we’ve got ... around it (…) a doubly-folded, no, 2 nested doubly-folded crocodiles"

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/07/2026

Tracing the participants' idiosyncratic trajectories, I could observe how imagistic and gestural representations were slowly supplanted by more verbal and abstract forms. Crucially, spontaneously produced metaphors precipitated many of these representational changes. 5/13

A figure depicting a pair of participants engaging in joint gesturing. They are depicting some aspects of the nested side of the 4th cross-fold by using their fingers to represent open and closed edges, depending on their relative direction

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/07/2026

To explore this issue, I conducted a case study looking at how pairs of participants develop their understanding of a complex task domain (iterated mental paper folding) over the course of three days. It's a nice task domain: While it's based on a familiar physical activity, ... 3/13

Figure 1.1: Cross-folding a sheet of paper five times by alternating between two perpendicular folding directions.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/07/2026

3 years after publishing my book 'Representational Change and the Use of Metaphors in Problem Solving', this week it has finally become open access www.taylorfrancis.com/reader/downl... I had a thread about it on Tw*r, but I've long since deleted that account, so let me say a few words here: 1/13

Book cover: Representational Change and the Use of Metaphors in Problem Solving - The Winding Roots of Understanding (2023). Routledge.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 29/06/2026

"A certain Mr M. in Göttingen boasts of having invented a poetic hand-mill by means of which odes of all kinds could be produced entirely mechanically. Several collections are said to already contain its products, (...)" (2/3)

"Allerhand.

Ein gewisser Her M. in Göttingen rühmt sich eine poetische Handmühle erfunden zu haben, durch welche man Oden von aller Gattung ganz mechanisch verfertigen könnte. Es sollen in verschiedenen poetischen Sammlungen schon Producten von derselben stehn, die kaum der Kenner von denen aus freyer Faust gemachten unterscheiden würde. Die Einrichtung der Maschine hat viele Aehnlichkeit mit einer großen Englischen Seidenzwirnmühle; die Kraft die sie in Bewegung, setzt, ist der Wind."

Hessen-Darmstädtische privilegirte Landzeitung. (1777). (61). https://doi.org/10.11588/DIGLIT.31922.15

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 23/06/2026

In Bayern sind da leider schon länger Hopfen und Malz verloren, was das angeht. Hast du diese hochnotpeinliche "KI-Strategie" der TUM gesehen, vor anderthalb Jahren? Das Grußwort des Präsidenten hat schon auf den restlichen Ton eingestimmt...

Screenshot eines Dokuments mit dem Titel "Förderung von KI-Kenntnissen und verantwortungsvoller Nutzung von KI an der TUM" (TU München)

Der erste Absatz lautet:

Die großen Fortschritte in der Künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) und der Verarbeitung natürlicher Sprache sind in der Gesellschaft angekommen. (Folgender Satz im Screenshot hervorgehoben) Der Umfang, das Ausmaß und die Auswirkungen dieser Technologien sind höchstwahrscheinlich tiefgreifender als jede andere Veränderung in der Geschichte. Wir erwarten, dass die KI dazu beitragen wird, die Wissenschaft produktiver zu machen, medizinische Diagnostik zu verbessern, Prozesse zu beschleunigen und zu flexibilisieren, und wir können uns bisher nur ansatzweise vorstellen, wie KI die Ausbildung von Studierenden, Mitarbeitenden und Fachkräften verändern wird.

(Rest des generischen Gewäschs gekürzt)

Für die Technische Universität München:

Thomas F. Hofmann
Präsident

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 06/06/2026

Wobei damit ein noch ärgerer Kelch an uns vorbeigegangen ist...

(Auszug aus dem englischen Wikipedia-Artikel zu SCSI): "... Until at least February 1982, ANSI developed the specification as "SASI" and "Shugart Associates System Interface".[10] However, the committee documenting the standard would not allow it to be named after a company. Almost a full day was devoted to agreeing to name the standard "Small Computer System Interface", which Boucher intended to be pronounced "sexy", but ENDL's[11] Dal Allan pronounced the new acronym as "scuzzy" and that stuck.[12]"

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 23/05/2026

Scheint auch sonst nur das beste für die Menschen zu wollen

Auszug des Wikipedia-Artikels über Albig: "... und ist seit 2023 Cheflobbyist für den Tabakkonzern Philip Morris in Deutschland."

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 21/04/2026

Oh, absolutely. Preaching to the choir here!

Excerpt from the introduction of https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003313021

"(…) Theory and methodology

The theoretical focus and empirical methods in this book might seem to make a curious combination, depending on the reader’s background. Hence, a few words about the motivation and ambition of the project reported in this book. One of the seeds for this project lies in the fact that the prevalent theory of problem solving in cognitive science has hardly changed within the last couple of decades even though its incompleteness is widely acknowledged (e.g. Funke, 2014). Thus, theory development is the book’s main focus. Incidentally, this coincides with an increasing number of calls for theory development to play a more prominent role in psychology again, recognising that the various “crises” of psychology will not be solved by revising our empirical practices alone (e.g. Fried, 2020; Guest & Martin, 2020; van Rooij & Baggio, 2021). The empirical study reported in this book is therefore subsidiary to this theoretical interest, and it was designed to allow the exploration of phenomena that are not covered by the current state of the theory. Without a theory that would allow generating testable predictions, open exploration is a necessary preliminary step in extending the theory. This ﬁrst speculative phase lays the groundwork from which new hypotheses can ultimately be derived and, subsequently, tested. Therefore, the speciﬁc aim of this study was to provide a rich set of observations that invites theoretical speculation and development, rather than testing hypotheses. The thick description of those observations and subsequent discussion of my theoretical proposals based on them should thus be seen as the results of this study (cf. Ohlsson, 2012, p.113), and I hope they will spur on the reader to engage in further theory development themselves (…)"

"(…) Finally, in providing such a discussion I also aim to make a methodological point by demonstrating the value of exploratory research in general and detailed single-case studies in particular (cf. Devezer, Nardin, Baumgaertner, & Buzbas, 2019; Nickels, Fischer-Baum, & Best, 2022). Where there seems to be the tacit assumption in contemporary cognitive science that empirical work ought to be experimental and quantitative, and theoretical work ought to be either formal, computational, or philosophical, I want to show how theory development based on open-ended, exploratory empirical studies can contribute to the cognitive science endeavour, and provide a much-needed complement to the aforementioned methods. After all, if we keep excluding areas of cognition from investigation because we do not (yet) know how to approach them quantitatively, or how to formalise them, we should not be surprised if our theories remain incomplete."

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 16/02/2026

I only cited you in mine. In good company though, at least.

Screenshot from the bibliography of my dissertation (https://doi.org/qrrd). The entry "Herring, R. (2017). Emergency Questions. Cardiff, UK: Go Faster Stripe Ltd." is highlighted in between Hayes & Simon, Hersh and Hilbert.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 08/01/2026

Ach, so genau nimmt es ja eh niemand mit DFG-Leitlinien! Hier z.B. ein Auszug aus einer scheints schon fast vergessenen...

Auszug aus den DFG-Leitlinien zur Sicherung guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis:

3.2 Prinzipien

Leitlinie 1: Verpflichtung auf die allgemeinen Prinzipien

Hochschulen und außerhochschulische Forschungseinrichtungen legen unter Beteiligung ihrer wissenschaftlichen Mitglieder die Regeln für gute wissenschaftliche Praxis fest, geben sie ihren Angehörigen bekannt und verpflichten sie – unter Berücksichtigung der Besonderheiten des einschlägigen Fachgebiets – zu deren Einhaltung. Jede*r Wissenschaftler*in trägt die Verantwortung dafür, dass das eigene Verhalten den Standards guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis entspricht.

Erläuterungen:
Zu den Prinzipien gehört es insbesondere, lege artis zu arbeiten, strikte Ehrlichkeit im Hinblick auf die eigenen und die Beiträge Dritter zu wahren, alle
Ergebnisse konsequent selbst anzuzweifeln sowie einen kritischen Diskurs in der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft zuzulassen und zu fördern. Die Prinzipien guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis sind in den nachfolgenden Leitlinien ausgeführt.

Leitlinie 2: Berufsethos
Wissenschaftler*innen tragen Verantwortung dafür, die grundlegenden Werte und Normen wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens in ihrem Handeln zu verwirklichen und für sie einzustehen.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/12/2025

Similarly, O. Wiener discussed this in '68 as an issue for scientific progress: "... had Copernicus had a computer at his disposal with which to multiply and shift the by then conspicuous Ptolemaic circles, we would probably have a modern Ptolemaic worldview and be tackling spaceflight nonetheless."

quote from Oswald Wiener (1968). die verbesserung von mitteleuropa, roman. 9. Fortsetzung. manuskripte 23/34, pp. 55–65.

"das prinzip der denkökonomie hat den fortschritt der wissenschaften verursacht. hätte aber koppernigk einen computer zur verfügung gehabt, der die unübersehbar gewordenen ptolemäischen kreise ohne weiteres vermehren oder gegeneinander verschieben hätte können, wir besässen wahrscheinlich ein modernes ptolemäisches weltbild und würden nichts desto weniger die raumfahrt in angriff nehmen."

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/12/2025

I worry that that's a general pattern. While _in_principle_ technologies may be used in supportive, creative, progressive ways, their affordances and current systems' incentives almost inevitably lead to them being employed in ways that impede change. Weizenbaum discussed this in '85: t1p.de/ooy5n

Q: Do you think that the computer is creating a technical elite, reinforcing old power structures, or remaking American society?

A: I think the computer has from the beginning been a fundamentally conservative force. It has made possible the saving of institutions pretty much as they were, which otherwise might have had to be changed. For example, banking. Superficially, it looks as if banking has been revolutionized by the computer. But only very superficially. Consider that, say 20, 25 years ago, the banks were faced with the fact that the population was growing at a very rapid rate, many more checks would be written than before, and so on. Their response was to bring in the computer. By the way, I helped design the first computer banking system in the United States, for the Bank of America 25 years ago.

Now if it had not been for the computer, if the computer had not been invented, what would the banks have had to do? They might have had to decentralize, or they might have had to regionalize in some way. In other words, it might have been necessary to introduce a social invention, as opposed to the technical invention.

What the coming of the computer did, "just in time," was to make it unnecessary to create social inventions, to change the system in any way. So in that sense, the computer has acted as fundamentally a conservative force, a force which kept power or even solidified power where is already existed.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 10/12/2025

Das ist übrigens die andere Seite davon. Wäre eigtl ein guter Hintergrund für Neuberufenenporträts

Eine Wand mit in ihr endenden Überresten eines Treppengeländers (das obere Ende der Bielefelder Treppe ins Nichts)

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 29/10/2025

Die richtigen Prioritäten müsste man schon haben...

Auszug aus dem BayEUG Art. 1 Satz 3: "Oberste Bildungsziele sind Ehrfurcht vor Gott (...)"

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 15/10/2025

Passend dazu ein Kommentar aus dem Frühling 2013, für den ich doch glatt nochmal das persönliche Twitter-Archiv bemühen musste

Tweet vom 29. Mai 2013: "Let's look at this bottle, for instance." …immer das gleiche. Ich fordere eine Kruscht-Schublade in jedem Hörsaal!

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 08/09/2025

I'd say they're both important and required. Coming from a country with one of the least amounts of regulation in Europe (tobaccocontrolscale.org/results-2021/), I can tell you that peer pressure alone sadly isn't enough. Visiting neighbouring countries always feels like a relief, smoke-wise

result table of the most recent (2021) tobacco control scale, assigning European countries points according to their implementation of different forms of tobacco regulation. on the top of the table are Ireland and UK with a score of 82 out of 100, Germany ranking 34th out of 37 with a score of 43.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 01/09/2025

Über solche "Lösungen" hat Weizenbaum 1985 schon gesprochen (web.archive.org/web/20211002...)

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 15/08/2025

Only got the old pre-cognitive green of the CPC464 still going, but even that got way more expensive in the wake of it

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 24/06/2025

A friend of ours found in Iran found these three as newborns in a box on the street corner and took them in. A mere ~9 months later, here they are, blissfully unaware of what's going on...

2 of the kittens, grown up and napping on the floor, in a beam of sunlight

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 07/05/2025

I always liked the way Oswald Wiener made this point in 1968: "... if Copernicus would have had a computer at his disposal with which to multiply and shift the by then conspicuous Ptolemaic circles, we would probably have a modern Ptolemaic worldview and would nonetheless be tackling spaceflight."

quote from Wiener, O. (1968). die verbesserung von mitteleuropa, roman. 9. Fortsetzung. manuskripte 23/34, pp. 55–65.

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 11/03/2025

Oh, I know this story! The year is nineteen-aught-six. The president is the divine Miss Sarah Bernhard and all over America people were doing a dance called "the funky Grandpa"!

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 08/03/2025

oder wie die Tagesschau es nennt, "Sparpolitik"

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Benjamin Angerer @benniangerer.eurosky.social · 23/10/2024

Und noch eigentlicher haben wir natürlich alle nur auf das TT gestarrt

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