Coffee Chat with Anthony Wagner

Psychology professor Anthony Wagner chatted with us over coffee last Friday. Professor Wagner is the PI of the Stanford Memory Laboratory and teaches several courses on memory, including Psych 45: Learning and Memory. 

Wagner discussed how deciding and changing one's focus in grad school relates to the idea of "exploration vs exploitation," and how he decided research in memory satisfied his curiosity early in his career. He also discussed the technology he uses in his research, which includes imaging techniques such as fMRI and computational approaches such as machine learning. He discussed how neuroscience can be applied in legal systems, such as being an expert witness in court cases. 

When asked for tips on improving memory, professor Wagner emphasized the importance of recall and practice. Often, the pressures of school can led to us cramming for exams, which leads to good short term performance. However, spaced repetition is key for long-term retention. Wagner hoped that psychologists and educators could work together to improve students' learning and incorporating techniques like spaced repetition into schools. 

Written by Lucy Li.

Humans of SymSys: Andrew McCabe

"Start going through midlife (aka mid college) crises as early as possible. And really embrace them. The work you put into digging your way out of them will hopefully help you see new meaning in avenues and ways of thinking that you hadn't before [...] [and] try to catch yourself viewing the world as black and white..."

Andrew is studying at the Learning Design and Technology program at the Graduate School of Education. He majored in Symbolic Systems with a HCI concentration.

Introduce yourself: I'm a student in the Learning Design and Technology (LDT) program at the Graduate School of Education; I love what I do everyday. Never before have I been so happy to read what I'm being assigned in my classes, and never before have I connected on such a fundamental level to my classmates (like, mind-reading level) and material. Learning science and frameworks are definitely my jam. I was a SymSys undergrad with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction. I spent my entire life prior to college as a student athlete balancing school with gymnastics and was on the varsity team here at Stanford for my Freshman and Sophomore year. While I'm happy to have had gymnastics be such an influential part of my life, I'm also happy to have left it behind to be able to focus on all the things it was distracting from. It was like this big distortion effect. I wanted so badly to pay attention to so many other things that felt so obviously more important but didn't have the time or energy or mental space to do it. Like, why was I at Stanford? What was I here to study? What was I going to contribute to after leaving? What do I do about my increasing suspicion that I can't solve the world's problems with tech even though everyone on my email lists is telling me I can? And of course: how was I going to pay off all my loans???? Spoiler: despite having quit gymnastics to answer these questions, I still don't know the answers. But I think that makes sense. These questions take a long time to answer and the longer I think about them, the more people I meet (like my great LDT classmates), the more I realize none of them are black and white.
 

What drew you to the SymSys major? Why did you pick SymSys as opposed to other (especially, related) majors? What was your concentration and why did you choose it?

I picked SymSys because my parents and I were always convinced I was interested in psychology growing up. Always thinking about "how people's brains work" (though it wasn't until senior that I took a class called relational sociology with Dan McFarland and realized that my psych interest was really an interest in sociology). I also found out about HCI as a field of study right before applying to college and I convinced myself that it was this amazing way to combine psychology and tech and make buku money doing it. Passion and money. It was a miracle. And then when it came down to it, SymSys just had less intense classes than the CS major and I was trying to avoid the harder engineering classes like the plague.

What’s your favorite SymSys-related class that you’ve taken so far?

My favorite SymSys class was probably Ling 1 (Jk). I'm not sure I really had a favorite SymSys course. To be quite honest, none of them really jammed with me. I guess I just wasn't very into thinking... symbolically? The SymSys courses I took were kind of just mandatory hurdles I had to get over in order to take my HCI classes. My favorite HCI class was CS247. It was a real confidence booster that made me finally feel like I didn't have to be good at thinking computationally or symbolically(?) to have a skill set seen as valid at Stanford. Nowadays I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on the ethics of the mindsets and practices that I think HCI + design thinking can foster but, like I said before, it doesn't seem like a black or white question anymore either.

Are you involved in research? If so, tell us about a project you are working on:

Following CS247 I worked in Michael Bernstein's lab with one of his PhD candidates Niloufar Salehi. She was a great mentor. Super compassionate, super supportive, and so so good at thinking critically and creatively about her work. Anyone that's interested in being more critical about the practice HCI should totally reach out to her. I think she has the critical consciousness and awareness (+ compassion) about her work that I wish we were all taught to have in our classes. Even though I don't think I was that much of a help to warrant being a co-author, I helped her write a paper detailing a crowd-work system called Huddler, which optimized familiarity of project teams.

What is one piece of advice you'd like to offer to younger students?

Start going through midlife (aka mid college) crises as early as possible. And really embrace them. The work you put into digging your way out of them will hopefully help you see new meaning in avenues and ways of thinking that you hadn't before. Also, I think this is the third time I'm bringing this up but, try to catch yourself viewing the world as black and white, Good and Bad. I'm a person that's often really easily influenced by my friends/the people around me and their viewpoints. Especially when they're really passionate and there's deep emotion behind what they're saying. As I've started to realize, this tendency has led me to adopt beliefs and stances that I haven't thought very critically about. Case in point, I'll feel really strongly about something and then when inquisitive people start saying, "Oh, that's interesting. Tell me more about why you feel that way," I struggle to give an answer that's based on much reasoning at all. And then a lot of what I saw as reality feels much less convincing than it did before. As enlightening as they are, I'm trying to avoid those moments in life from now on.

What underlying questions and issues do you hope to tackle/learn more about through SymSys?

None really. In undergrad I was most preoccupied with the question of why Connie Chan kept sending me emails telling me to work for X or Y AI/Machine learning start up and trying find glimpses of a world where working for one of those companies wasn't the only version of success.

As a diverse major with a lot of flexibility, many students struggle to find continuity across their coursework. (How) do you address this?

I'd say trust in your concentration. SymSys as a major didn't mean much to me as a whole. I didn't see the application of most of the general requirements to my life or future life. But I did appreciate the focus of my concentration. And in my Senior year I finally realized that HCI wasn't the only concentration that I could have taken that probably would have felt grounding. Given my current interests, I think I could have felt just as at home and productive (if not more so) in the Learning concentration. And for some, I'm really convinced of the application of Philosophical Foundations. I'm realizing now that just being able to exercise your mind in critical and curious ways is really an essential skill not just in any pursuit but also in being a fulfilled person. And I think if you go about it right then the philosophy track and others can be really good ways of building that skill.

What’s the coolest (loosely) SymSys-related topic that you’re excited about right now?

Learning! Find me on Stanford Who and ask me for my favorite readings and topics. I'd love to talk about learning science, educational philosophy, and frameworks and would be grateful to be pushed by any questions or insights you have.

Andrew is one of many profiles featuring selected alumni, undergraduates and graduates who are involved in the Symbolic Systems community.

Coffee chats: Peter Bailis

Peter Bailis, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, spoke with us on Thursday about his research in post-database data intensive systems, his advice on how to navigate the wide variety in the field of computer science, and the importance of incorporating feedback into the decision-making process as much as possible. 

Professor Bailis’s current research investigates questions of what the future of "big data" will look like. More specifically, Dr. Bailis' work focuses on data systems beyond databases, how companies and individuals can make better use of the vast amounts of data collected from their products, and the intersection between the rise of machine learning and the future of systems. He also teaches at the undergraduate level about database design and use in applications, and at the graduate level about database management systems and data-intensive systems through the lens of original research. 

Before becoming a member of the Stanford DAWN Project, the Future Data Systems Group, and the Stanford InfoLab, he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. While there, he also worked on problems surrounding data management and data-intensive computing, and spoke to us about how each problem gives rise to 10 more equally compelling problems, explaining to us that he prefers a depth-first approach to choosing what problems to solve next.   

When asked about how to stay engaged in the work he does and decide when to dive into something new, Peter stressed the importance of remaining curious and designing avenues for feedback throughout one's life. He emphasized incorporating feedback facilitates better assessments over the course of your life about what's working and what's not in terms of professional, academic, or even personal trajectories.  

To learn more about Peter Bailis, visit his website at www.bailis.org.

Written by Pratyusha Javangula

Humans of SymSys: Sam Reamer

"[My classes] have helped me in that they have caused me to think more deeply about the world that I live in..."

Sam is a senior majoring in SymSys with an individually-designed concentration in the Artificial Intelligence and Logic.

Why did you decide to major in SymSys over related majors such as CS, linguistics, etc.?

I took CS 106a winter quarter freshman year and really liked it, so I knew I wanted to do more programming. I was debating doing CS and found that the department had a lot of requirements I didn’t want to fulfill. I really liked cognitive science from a class I had taken at UCLA when I was in high school. I also don’t consider myself a techie or a fuzzy, I really like both, and SymSys seemed like a perfect way to blend the two. I also liked how Symsys allowed for a lot of flexibility. I was also thinking of doing CS + X, but the unit count made it such that I would have had to take pretty much all my classes toward my major, rather than leaving room for the classes I wanted to take for fun.

How do you think your SymSys background has benefited you (in your current job, in the way you approach problems, etc.)? 

I don’t really view things in terms of how they’d benefit me. I don’t know if philosophy of mind will ever benefit me in the workplace, or if human behavioral biology will ever come into play in what I do professionally, but I think that they have helped me in that they have caused me to think more deeply about the world that I live in, and they have been enjoyable experiences.

What is the ‘must take’ class in the SymSys curriculum? ('must take' can mean favorite, most rewarding, etc.)

I think the most interesting class that I’ve taken at Stanford was Human Behavioral Biology. You learn a lot of cool anecdotes, and the professor is amazing — even though the class is pretty long. It’ll make you a more interesting dinner guest.

If you could have lunch with one faculty member associated with SymSys, who would it be and why? 

I feel like Ken Taylor would be an interesting dinner guest, even though I’ve only heard one lecture by him. The reason I’m not listing Robert Sapolsky is because you shouldn’t meet celebrities. I don’t know if who he is in person could live up to his performance in lecture.

When someone asks you “what is Symbolic Systems?” how do you usually reply? 

I think it depends on your concentration. I feel like my version of SymSys is cognitive science, but with more of a focus on computer science. In general, I think that SymSys is what you make of it.

Which subfield of SymSys (e.g. CS, linguistics, psychology, philosophy) were you least familiar with before declaring? Did anything surprise you?

I kind of had an idea of what all of them were before declaring, because I had taken a lot of classes before declaring. Coming into Stanford, I didn’t really have an idea of what CS was like, so I was most surprised by how interesting and fun programming can be. I definitely think CS has the most fun coursework.

If you could go back in time and be a Stanford student again, what would you have done differently and why?

I would have realized that classes can be a lot more fulfilling than they were in high school. I think that in high school, I supplemented a lot of classes with extracurriculars, but I think that you can have a fulfilled quarter by focusing on classes. In high school I wanted to be a part of everything, but in college, I think that you can benefit by taking the time to engage with the material.

Outside of SymSys-related topics, what else are you interested in?

I’m really interested in world mythology and reality television (especially Survivor).

Sam is one of many profiles featuring selected alumni, undergraduates and graduates who are involved in the Symbolic Systems community.

Humans of SymSys: Caroline Ho

"What ethical issues arise when developing intelligent/autonomous systems, and how should we address them? How can we build technologies which promote human autonomy, justice, and fairness? It is my hope that SymSys will help me build both the ethical/social foundation and technical background necessary to answer them..."

Caroline is a junior majoring in SymSys with an individually-designed concentration in the Ethics of Technology.

Introduce yourself: I'm a junior majoring in SymSys with a concentration in Ethics of Technology. On campus, I serve as the exec lead of Girls Teaching Girls to Code, a co-chair of HackOverflow (WiCS exec board), a peer counselor at the Bridge, and a VR programmer at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab. In my free time, I write a satire blog on tech/CS, go out to social dance events, take long walks around campus, participate in hackathons, and yell about AI ethics. Also, I made a meme about SymSys once.

What drew you to the SymSys major? Why did you pick SymSys as opposed to other (especially, related) majors?

I really love the breadth and flexibility of the SymSys major – as someone with interests in both tech and the humanities/social sciences, I was super excited about the fact that I could learn about areas of which I had no prior knowledge (i.e., psychology, neuroscience, linguistics) while going deeper into my personal areas of interest (i.e., computer science/AI, philosophy). Also, while this wasn't really a reason I chose the major, SymSys is basically the "meta-major": you get to think about the nature of thinking! How cool is that?

What is your concentration and why did you choose it?

When I first came to Stanford, I was deeply interested in political science and ethics, and while my passions may have shifted in a more technical direction, that hasn't changed. As a result, I've developed an individually designed concentration in Ethics of Technology, which will allow me to augment my CS coursework with classes providing a more critical lens on my technical interests. Since I'm currently planning to go into the tech industry, I figure it's my responsibility to ensure the products I build and algorithms I design are beneficial for society.

What’s your favorite SymSys-related class that you’ve taken so far?

I can't say enough good things about CS 103 – it's an incredibly well-taught course which made me fall in love with math again. Plus, you get to learn the mind-blowing philosophical/social/technological implications of the theoretical content you learn along the way. Want to know why you can never build a completely secure voting machine or whether we can prove all truths to be true? To find the answers to these questions (and more!), take CS 103.

Are you involved in research? If so, tell us about a project you are working on:

This year, I started working for the Virtual Human Interaction Lab through the Virtual Reality Intensive Training Seminar (VRITS), which has been a very "SymSys" experience since the lab combines elements of CS and psychology in its research. Currently, I'm programming the environment for a study on how various VR experiences impact people's emotions.

What is one piece of advice you'd like to offer to younger students?

Explore as much as you can, and don't be afraid to dive into subjects you know nothing about! While this definitely relates to SymSys, you should take it more broadly as well – there's so many amazing fields of study at Stanford that probably weren't offered at your high school, so why limit yourself to the ones you're familiar with?

What underlying questions and issues do you hope to tackle/learn more about through SymSys?

As an aspiring AI ethicist and engineer, I'm interested in a couple questions in particular: 1) What ethical issues arise when developing intelligent/autonomous systems, and how should we address them? 2) How can we build technologies which promote human autonomy, justice, and fairness? It is my hope that SymSys will help me build both the ethical/social foundation and technical background necessary to answer them.

Caroline is one of many profiles featuring selected alumni, undergraduates and graduates who are involved in the Symbolic Systems community.