I find the ability of AIT to predict these cognitive phenomena quite impressive... Yes it is! But you seem puzzled...

I wonder how it works. Are we supposing that our brains are Turing machines? This just means that we are able to perform computations.

No, more that that! It presupposes that we monitor our own computations. You mean, to decide that one is shorter than the other?

Yes. It is one thing to perform computations, and another thing to measure and compare their length. So that we know that something is simple?

Precisely. It presupposes some kind of self-monitoring. I’m not fully convinced. And yet it does explain a lot of things. The story about abnormal lottery outcomes, the effect of distance on interest, the role of simplicity in aesthetics. And, I guess, many other cognitive phenomena (we are just halfway through this chapter).

Sure. I don’t deny that. But it could be that our brain does all this through very different means. I just read that people are very good at detecting visual patterns based on their simplicity.

Yes, I know. Like in the reconstruction of hidden patterns. No. The point was to measure reaction time when people have to pick an object that doesn’t fit.

And? It was about geometrical shapes. Reaction times was predicted by the simplicity of the shapes.

You mean that people were quicker at designating anomalies when the shapes were simpler? That’s it.

It just shows that our brain prefers simplicity. Not that it can measure it explicitly. Maybe the two are inseparable.

What do you mean? Don’t know. Just a hunch.