In this episode we discuss training: what it can realistically achieve, why it often fails and how people actually become good at things.

The conversation begins with Aleph’s past experience delivering analytical training, and Nick’s frustration that training often strips away the excitement of discovery. The group explores whether people really learn best through formal instruction, or whether genuine understanding comes from practice, mistakes, motivation and real-world need.

Links:

Michael Polanyi's 'Tacit knowledge' - We know more than we can tell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge

Episode summary

In this episode, the team explores what prizes are actually for. Starting with a discussion of FIFA’s much-mocked “Peace Prize” and the longer pedigree of the Nobel Peace Prize, they examine how prizes gain prestige, whether they genuinely incentivise good behaviour and how they can shape status, motivation and public recognition.

The conversation moves from global peace prizes to personal experiences of winning school and university awards, before turning to the deeper question: what makes a prize valuable? Is it age, scarcity, continuity, the calibre of previous winners or the significance of what it rewards?

The episode ends with the proposal of a new award: the Aleph Peace Prize, aimed not at symbolic virtue but at people or institutions that have plausibly reduced the risk of actual conflict.

In this episode

• Why FIFA’s “Peace Prize” is seen as absurd and performative
• What the Nobel Peace Prize was originally meant to reward
• Controversial Nobel winners, including Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama
• How Nobel Peace Prize winners tend to fall into categories such as:
• peace process participants
• human rights advocates
• institution builders
• humanitarian organisations
• Whether prizes are mainly about:
• incentives
• recognition
• credentialisation
• reward
• Why prestige depends on factors like age, continuity, scarcity and past winners
• The idea that too many prizes can dilute the value of all prizes
• Personal reflections on school and university prizes, and how recognition can affect confidence and effort
• A proposed alternative peace prize focused on real-world conflict reduction

In this episode, Fraser McGruer, Nick Hare, Chris Wragg and Peter Coghill explore one of modern life’s most persistent irritations: being asked to create yet another username and password.

The conversation starts with a familiar frustration—setting up endless accounts for everyday tasks, from charging an electric car to buying a coffee—and quickly broadens into a deeper discussion about identity, convenience, data and the trade-offs built into digital life.

Why do so many companies want us to log in all the time? Is it really about making life easier, or is it about harvesting data? The team examines the competing incentives at work: users want speed and low friction, while businesses want persistent identity, customer lock-in and as much information as possible.

Along the way, they distinguish between situations where accounts are genuinely useful and those where they feel completely unnecessary. They also explore how the digital world has transformed ordinary interactions that once depended on human recognition and informal trust into bureaucratic login rituals.

Nick introduces a “new account nuisance matrix” to sort the helpful from the pointless, while Peter outlines the technical case for more robust digital identity systems—without handing all power to Google, Apple or the state. The discussion ends with a look at possible solutions, including the idea of self-sovereign identity, where users retain control over their own credentials and data.

In this episode:

• Why account creation feels so relentless now
• The trade-off between convenience and data harvesting
• Why companies want persistent digital identity
• The technical reasons accounts can be useful
• Why some logins feel justified and others feel absurd
• The differences between digital and analogue identity
• The nuisance of fragmented sign-ins and password fatigue
• Why centralised digital identity systems may be risky
• The case for self-sovereign identity

Key ideas and concepts:

• Greed vs speed: businesses want your data, users want less friction
• Persistent identity: proving you’re the same person across visits or devices
• State: the saved information attached to you, such as baskets, preferences and purchase history
• Attribution and accountability: knowing who posted, purchased or interacted
• Account fatigue: the frustration caused by low-value services demanding high-effort sign-up
• Walled gardens: big tech identity systems that simplify things while increasing dependency
• Self-sovereign identity: a model where users control their own credentials and access

Examples discussed:

• Electric vehicle charging apps
• Coffee shop loyalty schemes
• Amazon and frictionless checkout
• Independent bookshops and analogue ordering
• Guest checkout versus full account creation
• House buying and repeated identity verification
• Smart home devices that require accounts
• Local newspaper paywalls
• Recipe websites and corporate brochure downloads
• Google, Apple and Facebook sign-in systems

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction: username and password fatigue

00:27 Nick’s frustration with electric car charging apps and endless account creation

02:40 Peter introduces the “greed versus speed” tension behind digital accounts

03:28 Data harvesting, free products and the business model behind sign-ups

04:17 Why convenience often pushes people towards platforms like Amazon

05:03 Chris questions whether personal data is really as valuable as companies claim

07:14 Nick explains the legitimate technical reasons accounts exist: identity, state and accountability

10:39 Why digital life makes account creation feel more frequent and intrusive

11:32 Chris compares digital sign-ups with older, more human forms of transaction

12:56 The independent bookshop as an analogue alternative

14:15 Identity and authentication in the physical world

15:32 Online purchasing as self-service bureaucracy

16:18 Peter points out that non-digital bureaucracy can be just as bad, especially when buying a house

17:14 The appeal of a reusable digital identity

18:03 Why fragmented identity systems are inefficient and frustrating

19:46 Nick presents the “new account nuisance matrix”

20:19 Good accounts versus pointless accounts

23:25 The worst part of the Internet: sign-up demands for low-value services

24:42 Electric car charging as a prime example of unnecessary account friction

25:21 Peter begins discussing solutions and warns against false promises from big tech

26:18 The dangers of relying on Google, Apple or governments to own digital identity

28:02 Why centralised identity systems create security risks

28:48 Self-sovereign identity as a possible solution

29:26 Outro

Contact

If there’s a topic you’d like the team to cover, email: [email protected]

In this episode, Fraser McGruer, Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Chris Wragg explore one of the most enduring pieces of technical advice: have you tried turning it off and on again?

What begins with a glitchy video call and a reluctant router reboot quickly develops into a wide-ranging discussion about systems, states and the surprisingly deep logic behind rebooting—not just in computers, but in societies, economies and even our own lives.

The team unpack what actually happens when you power cycle a device, from memory leaks and zombie processes to cosmic rays flipping bits in memory. From there, they build a broader framework: what counts as a “state”, what a “good state” might be, and when a system can—or cannot—be reset.

Peter introduces a theory of rebootability, with criteria including whether a system has an external reference point, whether it depends on consensus, and whether it can be restarted from outside itself. These ideas are applied to everything from national constitutions and financial systems to climate change and rainforest collapse.

Along the way, the conversation touches on revolutions, failed societal resets, post-war reconstruction, and the limits of trying to “go back” to a supposedly better past. The episode closes with personal reflections on resets—from Covid lockdowns to life-changing career shifts and the everyday reboot of sleep.

In this episode:

• Why turning something off and on again actually works
• What a “state” is (and why it matters)
• The concept of a “known good state”
• Peter’s theory of rebootability
• Systems that can’t be reset (climate, ecosystems, global economy)
• The role of consensus in rebooting social systems
• Why revolutions and resets often fail
• The appeal of starting over—from software to psychology
• Personal and societal examples of “reboots”

Key ideas and concepts:

• State: The internal condition of a system that determines how it responds to inputs
• Known good state: A reliable baseline you can return to
• Rebootability: Whether a system can be reset to a functioning state
• Bootstrap problem: A system often needs something external to restart it
• Path dependency / hysteresis: How the past shapes what’s possible now
• Consensus vs reality: Some systems only work if people agree they work
• Tipping points: States from which recovery is difficult or impossible

Examples discussed:

• Routers, computers and memory leaks
• Chess, board games and “soft locks”
• The climate and rainforest collapse
• Written constitutions as “system blueprints”
• Currency resets (e.g. post-war Germany)
• The French Revolution and failed systemic resets
• Post-war Germany and Japan vs Iraq and Afghanistan
• Religious and mythological “reboots” (e.g. the Flood narrative)
• Sleep as a daily biological reboot

In this episode, we explore a deceptively simple question: what makes a death culturally significant?

The conversation begins with an unsatisfying Reddit-style list of famous deaths by decade and quickly turns into a more analytical discussion. The team teases apart different kinds of significance: the death of an already important person, the death of someone whose future mattered as much as their past, and deaths that became historically or culturally transformative even when the individual was not especially well known.

Along the way, they discuss deaths that mark the end of an era, deaths that act as catalysts for social or political change, and deaths that become mythologised through mourning, media and time. They also consider whether cultural significance can be measured at all, and toy with building a rough model comparing the significance of a person’s life with the significance of their death.

Examples range from Princess Diana, JFK and Julius Caesar to George Floyd, Mohamed Bouazizi, Emmett Till and Jesus, with stops along the way for Harambe, Queen Victoria, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Alan Turing.

The episode closes on a more personal note, as each speaker reflects on a death that feels significant to them personally, from Ray Charles to John Cazale and Alan Turing, before things take an irreverent turn in classic Cognitive Engineering fashion.

In this episode:

• What counts as a culturally significant death
• The difference between a significant life and a significant death
• Deaths that changed history versus deaths that symbolised lost potential
• Whether cultural significance can be measured
• Why time, myth and collective mourning matter
• Personal reflections on deaths that still resonate

People and examples mentioned:

Queen Victoria, Vladimir Lenin, John Lennon, Princess Diana, Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, Queen Elizabeth II, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Michael Jackson, George Floyd, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Harambe, Mohamed Bouazizi, Kitty Genovese, Emmett Till, Neda Agha-Soltan, Rachel Corrie, Thích Quảng Đức, the Princes in the Tower, William of Norwich, Crispus Attucks, Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr, Jeffrey Epstein, Ray Charles, John Cazale, John Candy and Alan Turing.

Where did all the eccentric inventors go? The men (and women) in sheds, the gadgets with flashing lights, the sense that the future was arriving one bizarre prototype at a time. In this episode of the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, the panel ask whether invention has become boring — or whether our idea of invention is simply out of date.

Starting with Tomorrow’s World, the Innovations catalogue and the golden age of gadgetry, the conversation moves into patents, capital intensity, incremental progress and the shift from lone inventors to teams, firms and platforms. Along the way, the hosts explore whether innovation has moved from atoms to bits, whether low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and why we might be surrounded by astonishing technology while feeling less excited than ever.

The episode closes with personal “inventions”, disappointing gadgets, and a reminder that creativity may be more democratised now than at any point in history — even if it no longer looks like a bearded professor wheeling something dangerous into a TV studio.

Topics covered

• Tomorrow’s World, gadgets and the romance of invention
• The myth of the lone inventor
• Atoms vs bits: physical invention and software
• What patent data actually shows about innovation
• Capital intensity and “low-hanging fruit”
• Incremental vs breakthrough innovation
• Why batteries and concrete are more exciting than they sound
• Democratisation of invention: GitHub, maker spaces and 3D printing
• Falling costs and the invisibility of progress
• Why technology might feel boring despite being extraordinary

Key ideas & moments

• The heyday of individual inventors may have been the 19th century, not the 1980s
• Most inventions today are still physical — just less visible
• Incremental progress can be transformative without being dramatic
• Cheap, abundant technology dulls our sense of wonder
• Why invention may be everywhere, but invention stories are disappearing
• Fraser’s dual-glasses “optical breakthrough” (and its controversial reception)

Contributors

• Fraser McGruer
• Nick Hare
• Peter Coghill

About the podcast

The Cognitive Engineering Podcast explores decision-making, technology, creativity and complex systems through thoughtful, wide-ranging conversations. New episodes are released every week or two.

Links

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

- The Innovations Catalogue http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2957409.stm

- Decline of the Independent Inventor https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w11654/w11654.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

- The ‘bungling inventor’ trope https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BunglingInventor

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

- Mirror life https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/17/science/mirror-cell-life-dangers

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

- Trump ranked as worst president https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/presidents-ranking-trump-biden-list?

- George W Bush the worst president ever https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/george-w-bush-the-worst-president-in-history-192899/

- The Secretary Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Click bait and switch: has the internet swapped out knowledge for monetisation? Search engine optimisation, advertising run amok, users as customers: has the internet become a little bit crap and, if so, how do we fix it? In this podcast, we discuss the problem with the internet's funding model, whether it could learn a thing or two from the BBC, and continue a seemingly futile quest for a decent cheese-ranking website. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - Is Google Getting Worse? https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf - Hacker News forum says ‘yes’ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39013497 - How Google is killing independent websites https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/ - Dead Internet Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory - The Eternal September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Tech it or leave it: what is the best technology? The bed, writing, antibiotics? In this podcast we ask: how do we define technology, and can we objectively measure the best of it? We take a look at potential metrics - from the number of people who benefit to quantifying the overall happiness created - and wonder whether the best is yet to come.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

1. Estimates of historical world population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population
2. Timeline of inventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions
3. The philosophy of intellectual property https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

The missing link: why are we fascinated by lost media? From Celebrity Number Six to the original Backrooms photo, Love's Labours Won to absent Doctor Who episodes: what is it about lost media that intrigues and inspires us? In this podcast, we discuss the neurological itch that solving such mysteries can scratch, and how any media - in the age of the internet - is at risk of vanishing. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: Reddit: Celebrity Six https://www.reddit.com/r/CelebrityNumberSix/comments/1dr71l4/celebrity_six_mega_post/ - Information about the finding of Celebrity Number Six https://www.reddit.com/r/CelebrityNumberSix/comments/1fc1rci/information_about_the_finding_of_celebrity_number/ - The location of the Backrooms photo https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G5rA1PseLZozA6oUYjdVN6Rn8GNdEVY7bTXV4SmVp7E/edit# - The Lost Media Wiki https://lostmediawiki.com/Home - Kidd and Hayden (2015), The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4635443/ For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]