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Leitura de 12 min

Hypocognition and the Importance of Concepts

Summary

The episode explores the idea of hypocognition—the inability to recognize or process experiences due to a lack of conceptual frameworks. Host Jonathan Cottrell begins by asking whether we can fully experience feelings we don’t have names for, illustrating how concepts allow us to attach meaning and memory to our experiences. He uses examples like learning about podcasts by relating them to radio talk shows, and the rarity of multi-team sports versus common one-on-one competitions, to show how concepts shape our understanding.

Cottrell discusses a 2019 study by Katie Wu and David Dunning that demonstrated how lacking a concept for something (like an unfamiliar fruit) makes people less likely to recognize it even when repeatedly exposed to it. This phenomenon extends to professional contexts: novice developers may encounter the same bugs as experienced ones but fail to recognize them because they lack the conceptual vocabulary. The more experiences we accumulate, the more conceptual “surface area” we build for connecting future stimuli.

Concepts are not just about individual experience but also about cultural and contextual diversity. Teams benefit from diverse perspectives because each person brings unique conceptual frameworks that help decode complex problems differently. Ultimately, having a rich vocabulary of concepts transforms how we perceive, remember, and act on information—whether in learning new languages, interpreting symbols, or collaborating effectively in the workplace.

Recommendations

Organizations

  • GiveWell — A charity evaluator that researches which organizations can do the most good with donated money, focusing on saving lives and helping people in extreme poverty. First-time donors get matching up to $1,000.

Research

  • Study by Katie Wu and David Dunning (2019) — Research on hypocognition showing that people without a concept for something (like an exotic fruit) are less likely to recognize it even with repeated exposure, impacting memory and experience.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to concepts and feelings without names — Jonathan introduces the core question: can we experience feelings we don’t have names for? He explains that concepts allow us to attach meaningful information and memories to our experiences, using childhood as an example where limited vocabulary restricts our ability to label complex feelings.
  • 00:01:31 — Building concepts through analogy and cultural sharing — The host illustrates how we build new concepts by relating them to existing ones, like understanding podcasts through the lens of radio talk shows. He discusses how concepts are shared culturally, using examples of one-on-one matches versus the rare concept of multi-team sports, noting that e-sports are helping popularize the latter.
  • 00:03:57 — Sponsor message from GiveWell — A break for a sponsorship message from GiveWell, an organization that researches charitable effectiveness. They compare charities that save a child’s life for 3,000, emphasizing the importance of informed giving. First-time donors are offered a matching grant up to $1,000.
  • 00:05:53 — Hypocognition study on recognition and experience — Returning to the main topic, Cottrell references a 2019 study by Katie Wu and David Dunning on hypocognition—the lack of linguistic or conceptual representations. The study showed that Americans who knew the name of an exotic fruit reported seeing it more often than those who didn’t, demonstrating how concepts shape recognition and memory.
  • 00:08:23 — Implications for developers and team dynamics — The host applies the hypocognition concept to software development. Novice and experienced developers perceive the same code or bugs differently due to their conceptual frameworks. This affects bug detection, team organization, and mentorship, as seniors may struggle to understand why juniors miss issues they themselves easily spot.
  • 00:10:29 — Concepts, diversity, and concluding thoughts — Cottrell emphasizes that concepts are shaped by context and experience, making diversity on teams critically valuable. Different backgrounds provide varied conceptual lenses for interpreting stimuli. He concludes by thanking the sponsor and producer, reinforcing the idea that expanding our conceptual vocabulary enriches our perception and collaboration.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2019-12-04T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:11:31

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Can you experience a feeling that you don’t have a name for? Certainly the answer to this is probably

[00:00:14] yes, because when we’re very young, when our vocabulary is limited, we have plenty of complex

[00:00:23] feelings without knowing exactly what the name is for that feeling. But once we have a concept,

[00:00:31] a framework for the feelings that we’re experiencing, we can start to attach more

[00:00:38] meaningful information and memories to those feelings. So what exactly is happening here,

[00:00:45] and how does it relate to our work, our day-in and day-out experiences with our teams,

[00:00:53] that’s what we’re talking about in today’s episode of Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan

[00:00:57] Cottrell, and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective,

[00:01:02] and purpose in their careers. So this idea, the idea that we can hang our experiences on concepts

[00:01:13] is critically important to understanding how we create memories, how we create knowledge,

[00:01:23] how we build up our conception of an idea. For example, imagine that you did not have a concept

[00:01:31] for podcasts. Perhaps you were brand new to podcasts, and this actually has happened,

[00:01:38] and most likely in your lifetime. At some point, podcasts were introduced to you.

[00:01:43] Now, you can build this concept with reference to other concepts. For example,

[00:01:49] if you were like me, you already had the concept,

[00:01:53] of radio talk shows, and you could compare podcasts to the radio talk shows.

[00:02:00] And like podcasts, many of our concepts are shared broadly at a cultural level.

[00:02:07] Most people that you would talk to understand the concept of a one-on-one match.

[00:02:13] The idea that one person or one team is attempting to somehow beat another team.

[00:02:22] And similarly,

[00:02:23] we can imagine the concept of multiple individuals competing against each other,

[00:02:30] like in a race. But very few people would have the encoded concept of a multi-team sport,

[00:02:39] more than two teams. Now, let’s set aside relay style sports and think more in terms of

[00:02:48] interaction with other players. There aren’t many of these kinds of sports.

[00:02:53] But, more recently, we can imagine in the e-sports arena, this concept is taking shape more commonly.

[00:03:03] You can have multiple teams playing against each other in direct interaction with each other,

[00:03:09] in a capture the flag style game. Many multiplayer shooters work this way.

[00:03:15] So why do these concepts matter? What do we do with them as humans? And how do they affect our day-to-day lives?

[00:03:23] Well, as we go throughout our days, we’re exposed to various stimuli,

[00:03:30] whether that’s in our jobs, or our interactions with other people, even in our own imaginations.

[00:03:38] We have experiences that our brain is constantly decoding. And these concepts,

[00:03:47] they change the way that our brains decode and ultimately respond to that

[00:03:53] stimuli. We’re going to take a break and talk about our sponsor, and then we’re going to come

[00:03:57] back and talk about how these concepts matter to the way that our brain decodes our daily stimuli.

[00:04:04] Today’s episode is sponsored by GiveWell. Giving is hard. When you donate your money,

[00:04:12] how do you know what a charity can actually accomplish with it?

[00:04:15] For example, imagine that you want to help children. You found two legitimately trustworthy

[00:04:22] organizations. You found two legitimately trustworthy organizations. You found two

[00:04:23] legitimately trustworthy organizations. But they run entirely different programs.

[00:04:27] One can save a child’s life for every $300,000 donated, while the other can save a child’s life

[00:04:34] for every $3,000 donated. If you could tell the difference up front, you’d donate to the one that

[00:04:41] was a hundred times better at saving children’s lives with your donated resources. Now, this is

[00:04:48] exactly what GiveWell does. It’s hard for you to know what to do with your donated resources.

[00:04:53] Charities will actually accomplish with your donation, but GiveWell spends 20,000 hours each

[00:04:58] year researching which charities can do the most with your money. They recommend a short list of

[00:05:04] the best charities they’ve found and share them with donors like you. And you can have a big

[00:05:10] impact. GiveWell’s recommended charities work to prevent children from dying of cheaply

[00:05:15] preventable diseases and help people in dire poverty. You can learn how much good your donation

[00:05:22] could do by visiting GiveWell.com.

[00:05:23] Visit GiveWell.org. Their recommendations are free for anyone to use and GiveWell doesn’t take

[00:05:30] any cut of your donation. First-time donors will have their donation matched up to $1,000

[00:05:36] if they donate through GiveWell.org. Thanks again to GiveWell for sponsoring today’s episode

[00:05:43] of Developer Tea. So we asked the question at the beginning of this episode of

[00:05:53] GiveWell, if you couldn’t put a name to your experience, then can you really have that

[00:05:58] experience in its entirety? And it’s a difficult question to answer, but we can look at the way

[00:06:05] that culture has propagated, and it specifically has propagated through language and the representation

[00:06:13] of language. And so by creating concepts specifically around our language, we’ve been able to

[00:06:23] transfer a lot of information from one generation to the next. This information transfer is

[00:06:30] arguably responsible for most of our modern day experience as humans. But beyond this,

[00:06:39] our individual experiences are heavily dependent on the concepts that we already have in our

[00:06:46] minds. In a study that was published in October of this year, researchers, researchers, researchers,

[00:06:53] Katie Wu and David Dunning identified hypocognition, this idea of something that is just out of reach

[00:07:03] of our cognitive abilities, and linguistic representations that people don’t have

[00:07:11] available to them, that this has a profound impact on our experience. Specifically,

[00:07:16] some of the study, for example, showed that people tend to not recognize when they are

[00:07:23] experiencing an instance of a concept. What does that mean exactly? Well, for example,

[00:07:29] the two researchers presented exotic fruits to Americans, and the ones who said that they knew

[00:07:37] what the fruit was reported having seen that fruit multiple times more than the people who

[00:07:45] didn’t know what the fruit was. In other words, if you didn’t know what an apple was beforehand,

[00:07:53] even if you were exposed to the same number of apples as another person who did know what apples

[00:07:59] were beforehand, they would report having seen more than you did. Your ability to recognize the

[00:08:07] thing as something that you’ve encountered before and that you already have a concept for changes

[00:08:14] your experience. It changes the things that you’re able to remember and then act on in the future. And here’s why this is critical.

[00:08:23] In the same study, the two researchers point out that this has implications in the workplace,

[00:08:30] specifically with relation to developers who have more experience and developers who have less. Now,

[00:08:38] they didn’t call out developers specifically, but we can extrapolate because we’re talking

[00:08:43] about human cognition here. Novice developers who experience the same bugs or see the same code or

[00:08:52] watch the same tests running, they have different concepts available to them than a more experienced

[00:09:00] programmer. Now, this has implications for the way that we organize our teams, but it also has

[00:09:07] implications for those of you who are senior developers trying to understand why a novice

[00:09:14] developer can’t seem to catch bugs before they go out into production. The reality is that

[00:09:22] our experiences, the times that we’ve experienced those bugs in the past, those are our concept

[00:09:30] builders. We create, for lack of a better term, surface area for future experiences to be related

[00:09:41] to. Remember, we talked about having podcasts being related to radio talk shows. And the more

[00:09:50] experience we have, the larger the number of experiences we have, the more we can create. And so,

[00:09:52] the more we can create, the more we can create. And so, the more we can create, the more we can create. And so,

[00:09:52] the larger our vocabulary gets, the more linguistic concepts we’ve built up, the more likely we are

[00:09:59] able to take advantage of the stimuli that we’re receiving. You can imagine explicit examples of

[00:10:07] this. For example, trying to read a different language, or even worse, trying to interpret

[00:10:14] symbols from a different alphabet. When we don’t have those concepts available, we quite simply

[00:10:21] process information entirely differently than someone who does have those concepts available.

[00:10:29] As a final note, let’s keep in mind that concepts are not just a function of experience and time,

[00:10:36] but also a function of context. And this is why diversity on a team, and we mean this in the

[00:10:43] deepest sense of the word diversity, is critically important. Because everyone’s concepts that they

[00:10:51] have built, that they can use as their way of seeing stimuli, all of those concepts are valuable

[00:10:59] and important. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again

[00:11:05] to GiveWell for sponsoring today’s episode. Remember, first-time donors can have their

[00:11:10] donations matched up to $1,000. Head over to givewell.org slash developer tea. Today’s episode

[00:11:16] wouldn’t be possible without spec.fm and our wonderful producer, Sarah Jackson. My name is

[00:11:21] Jonathan Cottrell, and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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