· Link Some Neurons ·

Hi, I am Enes Mankırcı. I am a data analyst with self-taught expertise in AI, machine learning, and deep learning, combined with a philosophy degree from Bogazici University.

I’m interested in a pretty eclectic array of subjects, from quantitative finance to science of learning, from sociocultural anthropology to AI.

I embrace lifelong learning as a guiding principle and have a passion for exploring and applying strategies to increase efficiency in learning.

I’ll be using this blog as both a notebook to capture my thoughts and opinions, and as a journal to document and reflect on my readings.

Email me

Featured Posts

The Trenches (And Those Who Fight in Them)

Education integrates with everything: economics, culture, cognition, policy. That complexity obscures the actual problems. You see symptoms. Disengaged students. Poor outcomes. Persistent inefficiency. But what’s really broken? Harder to see.

Read →

Learning and The Role of Emotions

This is the first of the blog posts where I am going to summarize, explain and share my thoughts of some of the influential scientific papers that are related to learning, a subject that I am very passionate about.

In this blog post, the main subject will be the role of emotions in learning.

Read →

Make Use of Flow

In this blog post, I explain flow. My aim is to give enough information to remove the abstractness regarding flow and eventually present a fallacy I derived that could be implemented in our way of thinking to improve the quality of our lives.

Read →

Recent Posts

  • The Trenches (And Those Who Fight in Them)

    Education integrates with everything: economics, culture, cognition, policy. That complexity obscures the actual problems. You see symptoms. Disengaged students. Poor outcomes. Persistent inefficiency. But what’s really broken? Harder to see. This is part of a series examining education from different angles. This essay focuses on education and job market incentives. Not an ideology piece. Just tracing what happens when interconnected systems optimize for the wrong metrics and end up reinforcing each other. The Trenches (And Those Who Fight in Them) Incentives. They make the world go around. If you want someone to act a certain way, create an environment where they’re […]

    Read ->: The Trenches (And Those Who Fight in Them)

  • Hebbian Learning, Error-Driven Learning and Leabra Framework

    This is the fourth of the blog posts where I am going to summarize, explain and share my thoughts on some of the influential scientific papers and books that are related to learning, a subject that I am very passionate about. My aim in these blog posts is to present the thought process, the idea and the technicalities of these papers in a comprehensive and simple way. In this blog post, the main subject will be Chapter 4 (Learning) of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience by O’Reilly, Munakata, Frank, and Hazy. I will specifically talk about Hebbian Learning, error-driven learning, and the Leabra […]

    Read ->: Hebbian Learning, Error-Driven Learning and Leabra Framework

  • Synaptic Plasticity, Cell Assemblies, Phase Sequences by Hebb

    This is the third of the blog posts where I am going to summarize, explain and share my thoughts on some of the influential scientific papers that are related to learning, a subject that I am very passionate about. My aim in these blog posts is to present the thought process, the idea and the technicalities of these papers in a comprehensive and simple way. In this blog post, the main subject will be the foundational work of The Organization of Behavior by Donald Hebb. Donald O. Hebb (1949) – The Organization of Behavior (1949) Unlike the works I have examined […]

    Read ->: Synaptic Plasticity, Cell Assemblies, Phase Sequences by Hebb

  • Neural Networks and Cognitive Processes

    This is the second of the blog posts where I am going to summarize, explain and share my thoughts on some of the influential scientific papers that are related to learning, a subject that I am very passionate about. My aim in these blog posts is to present the thought process, the idea and the technicalities of these papers in a comprehensive and simple way. In this blog post, the main subject will be neural networks and cognitive processes. The papers I have chosen to include are: Rumelhart, Hinton, Williams (1986), Richards, Lillicrap, Beaudoin, et al. (2019) and Lake, Ullman, Tenenbaum, […]

    Read ->: Neural Networks and Cognitive Processes

  • Learning and The Role of Emotions

    This is the first of the blog posts where I am going to summarize, explain and share my thoughts on some of the influential scientific papers that are related to learning, a subject that I am very passionate about. I am very passionate about. My aim in these blog posts is to present the thought process, the idea and the technicalities of these papers in a comprehensive and simple way. In this blog post, the main subject will be the role of emotions in learning. The papers I have chosen to include are: Damasio (1996), Immordino-Yang & Damasio (2017) and Pekrun, […]

    Read ->: Learning and The Role of Emotions

  • Recognizing Education: A Broad Critical Look At Our System

    I think the educational system is seriously faulty. It is rather obvious but often ignored because humans are still able to become professionals, academics, and artists despite going through this system. However, I believe this is possible not thanks to, but despite the current educational system, and it is only due to our ability to overcome challenges. This state of the educational system also often makes me wonder if it is intentionally designed to prepare people to adapt to the faults we face in almost every aspect of life. When I realized something was wrong with this system, I was around […]

    Read ->: Recognizing Education: A Broad Critical Look At Our System

  • Make Use of Flow

    In this blog post, I aim to explain flow. As flow is not yet a thoroughly discovered subject, my approach will be similar to carving a stone sculpture. I will approach flow from different perspectives to narrow down our understanding of it with the expectation of reaching a clearer and more concrete idea about flow. I will explain quotes from some ancient thinkers that, in my opinion, concern the state of mind we call flow today. I will provide information regarding flow research. My aim is to give enough information to remove the abstractness regarding flow and eventually present a cognitive […]

    Read ->: Make Use of Flow
All Posts ->