Cognitive Engineering

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

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

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.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

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

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

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]

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

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]

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

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]

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

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:

• Estimates of historical world population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population
• Timeline of inventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions
• 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]

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

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]

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

Is bigger really better? Does a company's product suffer the larger its owner gets? And if so, why? In this podcast, we discuss all things 'enshittification' - the perceived process of service and platform decay - and ask what is responsible: from growing beyond core competencies to ignorance of novel solutions.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

In this podcast, we're discussing old age and when, exactly, it befalls us. Do we simply wake up one day absent of youth? Or can we estimate its proximity by certain metrics, such as daily medication or number of grandchildren? We take a look at how old age has been historically codified, and reason why it might not be just a number. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - The Sorites Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox - Mortality in England and Wales: past and projected trends in average lifespan https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/mortalityinenglandandwales/pastandprojectedtrendsinaveragelifespan - Perception of when old age starts has increased over time https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/22/when-old-age-starts-perception-study - Cognitive Engineering: Seven Ages: First Puking and Mewling https://soundcloud.com/aleph-insights/seven-ages-first-puking-and-mewling For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp