Understanding computers and cognition
by Terry Winograd, Fernando Flores · first published 1986
67% recommend33% neutral
Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought, and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology takes place. Understanding Computers and Cognition is written for a wide audience, not just those professionals involved in com
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…the world's most advanced machine learning algorithms. My own thinking on this has been very much influenced by an early AI researcher-turned-philosopher and HCI practitioner, Terry Winograd. His book Understanding Computers and Cognition has some solid arguments for seeing cognition as a trait evolved as a form of "structural coupling" between a living organism and its environment. Highly recommended for anyone looking for an alternate…
on “The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.” ↗Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores. Highly recommended if you're interested in how people interact with computers (and how computers interact with people, and how both…
on “Ask HN: What good books have you read in 2016?” ↗I posted a comment about the Heidegger philosophy side of things a few days ago. Winograd’s book Understanding Computers and Cognition is my reference - explains the connection really well. He gives the example of hammering to argue that common sense human intelligence is based on situatedness (related to heidegger’s “being-in-the-world”)…
on “Ask HN: Will there ever be a resurgence of interest in symbolic AI?” ↗…widely used and abused in neuroscience—to the point where a frog has “fly detector” neurons. Humberto Maturana pushed back against this pervasive idea. Chapter 4 of Terry Winograd’s and Francesco Valera’s Understanding Computers and Cognition has a good overview of common presumptions. Given that CNS is a 700 million year hack, there will be lots of odd tricks used to generate effective behaviors.
on “Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons” ↗…CS classic by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores that is often highlighted on HN. It is a key text in understanding both what goes on in our brains and what is and may go on in machine brains. 1986. Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (with Fernando Flores) Ablex Publ Corp
on “The non-Riemannian nature of perceptual color space (2022)” ↗…Nature 2. Evan Thompson: Mind in Life 3. Luis Favela: The Ecological Brain: Unifying the Sciences of Brain, Body, and Environment 4: Alva Noë: Out of Our Heads 5: Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores: Understanding Computers and Cognition 6: Douglas Hofstadter: I Am a Strange Loop Pretty sure that Demis Hassabis, Rich Sutton, and Karl J. Friston. Like Maturana and Valera, all three of them have strong backgrounds in neuroscience.
on “Memory makes computation universal, remember?” ↗One day we will look back on this talk as a high water mark of the AI religion craze. This whole AGI discourse that OpenAI/Altman are evangelizing is like a giant skyscraper they are trying to build on a foundation of quicksand. 1. The foundational issue is not even that AGI "does not yet exist, with even AI's top researchers far from clear about when it might". It's way worse than that. There is
on “Sam Altman’s leap of faith” ↗The boiling - cooking - is the bias here. Winograds Understanding Computers and Cognition is the most excellent resource in 2026, written over three decades ago by now.
on “The Prompt API” ↗…impossible Well, there's your first problem. Serious AI researchers have been publicly calling bullshit on superhuman AI since at least 1987, when my old professor Terry Winograd wrote the following in Understanding Computers and Cognition (1): "one cannot build machines that either exhibit or model intelligence behavior" The idea that "no serious researchers are skeptical about AGI" is a total fantasy perpetuated by people who haven…
on “Experts who say we shouldn't worry about superintelligent AI are wrong?” ↗Understanding Computers and Cognition by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1986. ISBN 0-89391-050-3). Terry Winograd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Winograd) wrote the early natural language program…
on “Systems Explained by Humberto Maturana” ↗…best way to read this article is as if it’s someone’s reaction to Borland releasing TurboPascal. Sure, let’s be ambitious! Or since it mentions AI, this is his follow-up to Terry Winograd publishing Understanding Computers and Cognition. Mid-80s vibe, priceless.
on “We should be more ambitious with the software we build” ↗