Behavior In The World

One of the clever things about *The Sims* is that the behavior of the characters is actually contained in the objects in their environment.  They walk by a refrigerator and it calls out to them to open it and make a sandwich.

So I'm heading to the kitchen to pick up our new video recorder and the cats are meowing by the cat dishes;  I feed them and realize we're running out of catfood;  I make a note to myself on the computer;  then I need to go to the bathroom;  then I notice the kitty litter needs changing. 

What the hell?  I was trying to pick up our new video recorder.  And now I'm changing the kitty litter and don't even remember how I got there.

Shit, my life is *The Sims*.

Comments

[Ian]

Haha. I actually make it a point to exploit this "notifying environment" trick (that is, making the world remind me of things). I put my dog's glucosamine medication on top of his dogfood container, so whenever I feed him (he reminds me) I remember to give him glucosamine. When I'm done writing code for a while, I'll add this (uncommented) into the source code, which guarantees I'll see it before the next time I see a succesful compile.
!!! implement xxx_yyy here !!! // forces me to not forget it

And with todo lists or a dayplanner, the only thing you have to remember is that you have a todo list. I sometimes wonder if it's bad to rely on the world this way, is it making me cognitively lazy?

[Adam Russell]

This sort of human behaviour seems like a development of the phenomenon Phillipe Grasse described in his studies of termites as 'Stigmergy':

"The coordination of tasks and the regulation of constructions does not depend directly on the workers, but on the constructions themselves. The worker does not direct his work, but is guided by it . It is to this special form of stimulation that we give the name STIGMERGY ( stigma , goad; ergon , work, product of labour = stimulating product of labour)." Grasse

http://www.stigmergicsystems.com/stig_v1/stigrefs/article2.html

[GBGames]

Ian: Nah, that's just called getting it out of your mind. The human brain can only handle one thing at a time effectively. If you force yourself to remember multiple things, all of them will seem urgent and you won't focus too well.

On the other hand, if you put reminders to yourself in obvious places, you ease your mind. Your mind knows that you will be reminded of things in the appropriate place. It doesn't have to remember that you need to take care of the dog. You don't have to worry about where you were when you were coding. And your todo list is great because, like you said, you only have to remember you have the list. Everything is in it.

My favorite slogan regarding reminders: "If it is on your mind, it isn't getting done."

If you're not familiar with David Allen's "Getting Things Done", you should look into it. He's done a lot of research on it and clarifies why todo lists and reminders work so well and are essential to getting things done.

[Christian Mogensen]

This is what's know as putting knowledge in the world as opposed to relying on the user's memory. User interfaces do this when they offer a dropdown menu or a checkbox instead of a command line to enter into.

You no longer have to remember the command, instead you can pick it from the list.