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SUMMARY:Reconciling intuitive and Newtonian physics - Adam Sanborn (Univer
 sity of Warwick)
DTSTART:20110926T150000Z
DTEND:20110926T160000Z
UID:TALK33247@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr. Cristina Savin
DESCRIPTION:People have strong intuitions about the masses of objects and 
 the\ncausal forces that they exert upon one another when they collide.\nTh
 ese intuitions appear to deviate from Newtonian physics\, leading\nresearc
 hers to conclude that people use a set of heuristics to make\njudgments ab
 out collisions. However\, people’s judgments about mass are\nindeed cons
 istent with Newtonian physics\,\nprovided uncertainty about the velocities
  of the objects is take into\naccount. The resulting rational model of int
 uitive dynamics easily\nextends to accommodate other aspects of people’s
  inferences about\nphysical causation\, such as judgments of whether one o
 bject caused\nanother to move. I argue that intuition and physics need not
  be\ndivorced\, and that a simple psychological process – stochastically
 \napproximating Bayesian inference by recalling previous collisions –\nc
 an bring them together. This is one of several routes in which\nprocess mo
 dels can be derived as approximations to rational models.
LOCATION:Cambridge University Engineering Department\, CBL Rm #438 (http:/
 /learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Directions)
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