I have a psychology background, so I am deeply interested in neuroscience and AI research. I've even read Metzinger several times in the past, rankingI have a psychology background, so I am deeply interested in neuroscience and AI research. I've even read Metzinger several times in the past, ranking him up there with Dennet and also a number of bleeding edge modern philosophers. :)
So I had to read this DESPITE that HORRIBLE TITLE. Ego Tunnel? Seriously? I mean, sure, he explains it as the outward connection after we've formulated our internal modality of consciousness, but STILL... EGO TUNNEL?
Enough bitching. And no crude jokes, please. This book is actually some pretty awesome philosophy, metaphysics, and neuroscience. He asks the big questions.
Such as, what is consciousness when it's being ignored by neuroscience or being butchered by quacks?
No laughter. He takes it seriously and it's well worth the effort to ask. We've all been asking it on one level or another, but everyone agrees: consciousness cannot and will not be reducible. No simple explanation will take away the quantity or the quality of anyone's experience. We all recognize our being conscious as highly subjective and reproducible. That's not an issue.
But what is an issue is HOW consciousness is formed. This is important for not only AI research or our damaged selves or any number of psychological needs-based therapy... but because of the fact of knowing causes a qualitative and quantifiable dimension to the nature of what we are. And from there, we have a lot more tools in our toolbox.
The book is a lot denser than I can give good treatment for a review, but let me explain some of my most exciting discoveries.
We are what we say we are. And by "say" I mean unconscious and conscious self-references. If we lose a leg, we might have a phantom limb, but we work around it because we have included our "body" in our reference frame. When we drive and get good at it, we often just "feel" if we'll make a tight parking space because we've included the car in our reference frame. It is our new "body". Pick up a baseball bat or a sword and make it an extension of you. Video games. You become your avatars if you're doing it right.
It is a meta-understanding of your surroundings that is infinitely adjustable. Reality itself is just a shadow, of course, in both physics and in the Platonic ideal, but our conscious and unconscious restructuring of our "body" field gives us better and better understanding of our surroundings. Connecting with other people with meta-narratives, models, modes, is an effort in sidestepping "reality" in order to fit the two models and narratives together. Hence... the tunnel. :)
Cool, right? Next comes the experiments and confirmation, but so much of this feels intuitively RIGHT.
We make up a meta-structure of reality inside our own heads, make our own body, and see if it conforms with everyone else's. The nature of Consciousness is just the self-awareness that springs up from having told a story and seeing whether it works with the observations or whether it needs to be thrown out.
So cool.
Mind you, that's just a minor feature of the whole book, but to me, it's pure gold. :)
You know, I'm not usually one to tout NY Times bestsellers, but in this particular case, I want to mention that...
This kinda should be required readinYou know, I'm not usually one to tout NY Times bestsellers, but in this particular case, I want to mention that...
This kinda should be required reading for everyone.
Why? Because despite the rather innocuous title and no-nonsense factual information being presented, with no less than 750 scientific studies supporting the findings within, the author OUGHT to have been screaming that we're all freaking fools and morons.
Sure, I've heard of some of the studies, such as the ones related to the huge probability of obesity and depression and cancer rates for people who don't get 8 hours of sleep, but when we see all the other facts involved with it are all laid out, I frankly despair. Our societies are made up of complete idiots.
Most of the most powerful and necessary REM sleep happens in the last block of sleep, between 6-8 hours. Most of us are reducing our sleep to 6 or less. Learning and retention and memory decrease as if you're constantly drunk, and the long-term effects short circuit all rational behaviors. We eat more because we act high. We get into more car accidents. Test performance is abysmal, as is our moods, our ability to digest foods properly, and our ability to resist the flu drops from an 18% chance at 8 hours of sleep to a whopping 50% chance when you get less than 6 hours. These are studies, based on people who, in a controlled environment, are swabbed with the sick. Think about that. Add VERY significant numbers to cancer, suicide, and total life dissatisfaction, and the picture becomes very dire.
Oh, and sleeping pills short-circuit the REM cycle. As do drugs for ADHD.
This is the funniest and most horrible thing I picked up here: Teens all have a natural change in their circadian rhythm. They all become night owls. So WTF are we forcing them to get up earlier and earlier to go to school? They AREN'T getting enough sleep. So what happens? They go in, do abysmally in school, show all the same symptoms as ADHD, get diagnosed with ADHD, and then get drugs to help them concentrate while only making the fundamental problem of not getting enough REM sleep WORSE.
*slow clap*
Idiots.
And I'm talking about ALL of us. Long term sleep deprivation is the thing we do to TORTURE PEOPLE WE DON'T LIKE. And yet, there's this thing about rewarding long work cycles, turning people in unthinking zombies with decreasing work productivity JUST BECAUSE we're trying to squeeze out that last hour of work? It's KILLING US. Literally. Our minds aren't working well enough to even realize there's a problem.
Put a STOP to this! Seriously, folks! This is right up there with dancing around in a cloud of radium. Oh, look, it's so pretty!
This is science, folks. Not a fad. Don't be an idiot....more
This is a highly entertaining history of gravity, full of quite interesting anecdotes and the gradual unfolding of our understanding from Newton throuThis is a highly entertaining history of gravity, full of quite interesting anecdotes and the gradual unfolding of our understanding from Newton through Einstein through our quest to reconcile quantum mechanics with the one aspect we're most familiar with but which we understand the least.
From the first page to the last I was enraptured. It's a tour of the inverse square law, the connection between electromagnetism, light, and matter, right down to the physics that keep most theoreticians up late at night even now.
Humorous, insightful, and fairly comprehensive, it focuses on the subject well, describing the manner in which gravity functions and how it behaves. I'd recommend it absolutely as a beginner's book with a special delight for those of us enamored by the LAW. :)
I personally had a great time. Not much new, honestly, but it was a delight. :)...more
This attempts to be a catch-all on everything earthquakes, going through money loss, eyewitness reports, and a pretty substantial expose on dams. As aThis attempts to be a catch-all on everything earthquakes, going through money loss, eyewitness reports, and a pretty substantial expose on dams. As an opener, I suppose it could have had a few more exciting starts... but later on, when we got into the historical accounts of earthquakes, I think it got better.
Especially when we got to fracking.
Later, when we got into the real science of seismology, I really began to enjoy it. I was looking for real science, after all, but, of course, there's plenty about this that still seems to encourage con men. "I will predict! For a low, low cost of..." :)
I hope, one of these days, some REAL money will be poured into the field so we have real data.
This book was okay. Not the best, but it isn't bad....more
I'll be honest and up front, I only wanted to read more into Loop Quantum Gravity.
Say what?!? Well, it's the leading contender against String theory.I'll be honest and up front, I only wanted to read more into Loop Quantum Gravity.
Say what?!? Well, it's the leading contender against String theory. It doesn't try to mash together the main problem area of gravity with quantum mechanics, but rather extends quantum mechanics as a granular geometric equation into the macro realm of what we understand as special relativity.
In other words, Reality is finite, quantifiable, and can be extrapolated from the underpinnings of the general field of quantum mechanics.
If you know anything about the underlying basis of string theory, this idea is both flabbergasting and simplistic. And maybe, it's also correct.
I can't say for certain, and as far as I can tell, neither can the author. Most of the book gives us a survey of the underpinnings of reality physics from the conceptualization of the atom through Einstein's reformulation of heat energy on the equilibrium of those atoms in their environmental matrices. (E=MC squared)
Spin Foam is the name of the minimum Planck distance that forces atoms into discrete and quantifiable distances between each other. It's the reason why atoms don't just fall into singularities like black holes or crushed neutronium states under normal gravitic circumstances. It's not merely probability shells and energy levels, but quantum loops that behave like bubbles forcing certain distances... and therefore forcing Matter to behave the way it apparently behaves... making atomic structure.
The most interesting idea I'm getting from this is the idea of the Big Bounce. In other words, the cause of the great expansion once the Big Bang got lit. It reminds me a lot of how iron molecules make stars burp in the process of digesting (fusion) and cause a nova. Only we're dealing with a quantum state that coaxes atoms into creation through special wave functions behaving like granular notations. You know, like how light behaves like both a wave and a particle.
And beyond this... I'm completely lost. :)
I don't know the math but this book is pretty decent on the conceptual side. The basics are commonplace and I was mainly into it for the later weird stuff.
But all in all? Rovelli is a very, very good writer. Convincing. Clear.
It may not be the answer to the great question of our day and age, but he makes a very good case. :)...more
Take two. Time has swallowed my review. My first one anyway.
I wish I could take back the time, do it over, but entropy hit GR (or at least my internetTake two. Time has swallowed my review. My first one anyway.
I wish I could take back the time, do it over, but entropy hit GR (or at least my internet connection) and something less than the total heat-death of the universe made me realign my perceptions of reality and time.
Oh, wait. That was this book!
Half historical science, some equations, the theoretical underpinnings of quantum loop theory, the role of entropy and heat in the determination of what makes TIME, and half philosophy and what makes our consciousness drag together all the underpinnings of the blur we call reality.
Together, this is physics and metaphysics. The Greeks got it pretty damn close, but then, so did St. Augustine and Heidegger and Kant. Is it all relative? Yep. Thank you, Einstein. Every point on the curve of our universe has its own particular Time. Now is meaningless since the relationship between every point can never intersect with the others. It's all past or future and THAT is all perception. Time is change, too, and not to put too fine a point on it, all we can really do is put a rate on it, never carve it up into its smallest particle.
So what about consciousness? It's all interpretation of what we see, baby. The stratifications of what we work by are just an approximation and it says nothing about how a child sees a day versus how an old person sees it.
Carlo Rovelli combines the two and does an admirable job of trying to reconcile it all.
Impossible, you say? Possibly, but he also gets 9 out of 10 points for style. :) Beautifully written. ...more
No matter who you are or where you're coming from, this should be a must-read.
It doesn't require much in the way of any scientific background, prior kNo matter who you are or where you're coming from, this should be a must-read.
It doesn't require much in the way of any scientific background, prior knowledge level, or anything. BUT it does highlight, in a long series of short essays, the most important thinking we've probably glossed over or never looked carefully at.
As a whole, this non-fiction builds one hell of a glorious picture. Just from core ideas explained clearly, these numerous essays range from something as simple as the need for us all to remember how to COUNT, or knowing Numerical Significance, all the way to the concept of Epigenetics, Semiotics, or an honest plethora of other awesome ideas.
The point here is not to dive deep into any, but at least understand what they are so as to more richly inform ourselves so we might apply THESE SAME IDEAS across all fields.
For me, this is the essence of creativity and righteous thinking. We need to cross-pollinate ideas. Every field grows richer with new thinking. And that includes all us laymen or writers or just plain thinkers.
I enjoyed this book immensely for that reason. :) I think I might need to subscribe to the Edge to get more of this stuff. :)...more
Apart from just a few niggling quips I might have had with a few parts of this absolutely fantastic collection of essays, I think I've found one of myApart from just a few niggling quips I might have had with a few parts of this absolutely fantastic collection of essays, I think I've found one of my most absolute favorite books of all time.
I've read a ton of philosophy over the years and more psychology, thanks to my degree in psychology, but nothing QUITE prepared me for this. What we have here is not just a man in the process of designing, from the ground-up, a nice AI that won't turn around and rationally destroy us all because we're vermin, but a man who has gone ahead and taken the idea of real rationality and turned it not only on his work, his life, and himself, but has gone out of his way to give us the benefit of his experience.
Sound like a self-help book? It isn't. Or, at least, any of us could use it that way, but to me, it's probably the single-most-useful, courageous, funny, and excruciatingly smart book I've read in a very long time.
Does Eliezer have charm? Hell yeah. Does Eliezer champion Bayesian probability? HELL YEAH. Does Eliezer throw a perfectly understandable spotlight on our desperate need to reduce bias and seek truth no matter how painful? Yes. Very much so. And he sends a lot of great light on the whole field of AI research, Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Quantum Physicists, and everyone who might be laboring under faulty models of thought and lazy thinking.
Above all, he's passionate as hell about Thinking Clearly. It also helps that he's fantastically devoted to rigorous standards, correct predictive models, and thorough ethical considerations. This isn't all about AIs although we know he is passionate about it. It's about EVERYTHING.
And he's right. We need rationality, and I mean, REAL RATIONALITY. I mean meticulously and carefully considered thought. Courageous exposing of our own faults. Our stubbornness, our ability to get up when we fail and learn from our mistakes and DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES AGAIN.
This isn't just a primer on logic. It's pretty much a beacon of shining light in the darkness. :) And Eliezer brings it all to us in such a charming and self-deprecating way that I wouldn't be surprised if he gains a cult following of aspiring Rationalists flocking to his cause.
Of course, he would question the HELL out of that. Jeeze... I feel like we have a modern Socrates in our midst. Only, this modern Socrates is building on ALL the myriad scientific foundations of those who have come before and is unwilling to take even a dram of Hemlock. :)
(He already tried that as Eliezer of '96.) :)
So. What am I trying to say here?
Oh, nothing much. I don't care who you are or what you're into. EVERYONE should read this monster of a book and see for themselves. This world is not hopeless. Not when we have such minds in it. Of course, that means we all need to step up to the plate and don't let bias, willful ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty win.
Everyone needs to step up. Even if you don't use Bayesian. :)...more
I've read a lot of non-fiction books that are dry and sometimes gets bogged down in details and others that are very engaging but rather light on the I've read a lot of non-fiction books that are dry and sometimes gets bogged down in details and others that are very engaging but rather light on the meat. And then sometimes, you get a very cogent work with a very rich sampling of science from all different quarters laid out in such a way that it is impossible to believe anything BUT the final summation.
This is one of those works. We are in the middle of the sixth extinction event on Earth. The final result of the dieoff, as of just how many millions of species will succumb to the tipped balance of the biosphere, is yet to be known.
But let's put it this way: if you were just informed that there were no jobs in your town and that everyone else was just told that 1/3 of the jobs would remain for the next six months, and then after that, they would leave as well, you'd decide to move away. Right? So, you try to, only you find out that someone has just destroyed all the roads in or out of your town and there's no supply line for foods or services. Imagine the chaos. How would you survive? How would anyone? Now assume you slow that process down just enough that no one or very few people living there have a clue as to the reality of this situation. Belts tighten, poverty increases, some may try to move away but get crushed under the wheels of a much larger machine.
Now extrapolate that situation to every other town in the world.
And then overlay the problem to every other species in the world. Dice up ecospheres, destroy the homes and habitats there, and only the fleet of foot can survive... but where do they go? They're an invasive species now. They take on and live or die in someone else's backward. If it's a human's backyard, it'll get killed. Rinse, repeat. Add disease, and predatory species filling in stressed niches, and you've got a pandemic. Across all species.
Now, remember, a few hundred years or even a few thousand is just a flash in the pan for extinctions. Not all come from meteorites or volcanoes. We probably didn't kill off the Neanderthals by hunting. Economics works just as well. And even if a tribe hunts down a wooly mammoth every ten years, the gestation is slow enough that it would still bring a downward pressure on the species until it's gone in several thousand years. Period. And this isn't even accounting for the widespread death in rainforests now.
Add global warming, acidification of the ocean, the deaths of the coral reefs, the disappearance of the frogs, the bees, and from there, the tipping point that will eradicate larger species as they begin to wipe out other species because their food is disappearing, too, and we've got a major dieback.
In hundreds of years, or even 50, our world might become a bonefield. An optimistic outlook is 25%-50% of everything dead.
THANOS, ANYONE?
Truly a sobering book. One of the very best I've read on extinction events. Only, this one might be ours.
There are few people outside of the fiction world that I truly admire, but barring some unseen or future tragedy, I think Musk might well be on the waThere are few people outside of the fiction world that I truly admire, but barring some unseen or future tragedy, I think Musk might well be on the way to becoming my hero.
If I didn't know any better, I might be looking at all his stated claims and seeing all the echoes of Asimov and Heinlein being dragged out of the page and brought to life.
Skip the whole Iron Man image for a second.
Let's talk about Ayn Rand.
Musk is John Galt. As in Atlas Shrugged.
Sure, he's also Dagney, too, or perhaps more like Dagney in that he's unwilling to let humanity roll around in the mud despite all the backstabbing and idiocracy, in that he hasn't said, "enough is enough". But the day is young. Wait until we get to Mars. Wait until we really take the man of genius and effort for granted. And THEN we'll see what we'll miss once it is taken away.
Ahhh, I don't want to see this man out of classic SF heroes become anything other than his stated goals.
I'll be honest here. He's giving me real hope for humanity. Maybe optimism *isn't* unfounded after all.
This biography tells me one hell of a great narrative. Is it life imitating art? The best ideals from the grandmasters? Who knows. But right now, I have real hope. I'm holding on to it for my very soul. :)
Let's MAKE the future we wanted. Let's NOT let anything stand in our way!
Maybe this one was just up my alley in all the right ways or maybe the author is pretty spot-on with her mix of science history, humanization of the pMaybe this one was just up my alley in all the right ways or maybe the author is pretty spot-on with her mix of science history, humanization of the players, and just the right dose of scientific explanation for laymen.
Maybe it was both.
Regardless, I seriously enjoyed this non-fiction all about magnetism. It shouldn't come as all that much surprise that it has serious biological roots and it's all about physics and chemistry, but the author balances everything in such a way that it's always interesting. I didn't realize that magnetism was under controversy back in the days of Galileo. The way that it all ties seamlessly into geology should also be obvious, but I never felt uncomfortable in the writing. Indeed, I was pretty much uniformly fascinated.
The big zinger about the poles reversing and the effects on modern society aren't sensationalized, either. There's a big "I Don't Know" in there, but so much of the evidence points to a protracted (say a few thousand years) time of less magnetic shielding as the poles do their thing. The fact they will flip is not in doubt. The fact that we might be undergoing a radical influx of harmful radiation because the Earth isn't going to be blocking solar storms is probably the scariest thing I can imagine.
That's even worse than losing all our electronics. I mean, that's bad enough and I'll have to go buy a bedpan and a shotgun to defend myself in my new dystopian nightmare, but we're talking about a mass-extinction event. Well, assuming we or the animals don't start breeding for rad-tolerant biologies or take rad-x.
Can you imagine a bunch of teens running around with early onset dementia?
Oh, wait, yeah. I've read quite a few YA novels.
Really fascinating non-fiction, here! It's right up there with some of the very best non-technical popular science books I've read! (That's saying a bit. I like good science books. :)
I've read a lot of nonfiction science books that sometimes had equations but mostly did not, but what I really wanThis is some very impressive stuff.
I've read a lot of nonfiction science books that sometimes had equations but mostly did not, but what I really wanted was a cohesive drive, an arrow to spear right through some of the biggest questions of our time... such as What Is Time.
Sean Carroll manages to keep things very sharp between what is perfectly understood and all of the theories that are somewhat understood, and the other Cosmology stuff that's mostly just baffling. :)
Any way you look at it, though, this is not a book that gets derailed or goes off into super strange directions. He lays out all the foundations, from the opening definitions of Time and what we think it means, from the average to the rather advanced notions of space-time and curvature, Einstein's energy equation, speed of light, diliation, moving all the way to Black Holes. This is very solid stuff.
Plus, we have a very coherent definition of Time as Entropy, showing us just how complicated it can get when time's arrow might just be the illusion that Hawking says it is. I really enjoyed that discussion.
Of course, we come up with lots of possibilities and digressions that are always explored in SF, too, but most of these are just bylines, moving quickly by the Grandfather paradox, etc, to get right back on the main track.
Yes. We have Equations. :) Fortunately, the author does a very good job about explaining them and even getting deeper into the extra areas that made this rather more interesting for me since I've read many science books and have heard most of this already.
I recommend this for anyone interested in Time. :) Not time management. Just Time. :) We do touch rather heavily upon Cosmology by the end, too, which was a blast and a half, getting into many-universes theory and string theory, to name a few. And he makes it clear! :)
Seriously. This was some sharp stuff. Very readable. It's not a general overview. You might say it's putting time's arrow right through the heart of a big question and staying on track all the way to the end. ...more
Color me very impressed. I can now see why this is considered to be one of those hugely popular science books I keep hearing about and the reason why Color me very impressed. I can now see why this is considered to be one of those hugely popular science books I keep hearing about and the reason why Dawkins has become so widely known and/or respected with or without his notoriety.
Indeed, the pure science bits were pretty much awesome. We, or at least I, have heard of this theory in other contexts before and none of it really comes as much surprise to see that genes, themselves, have evolved strategies that are exactly the same as Game Theory in order to find the best possible outcome for continued replication. Hence: the selfish gene.
Enormous simple computers running through the prisoner's dilemma with each other, rival genes, and especially within whole organisms which could just be seen as gigantic living spacecraft giving the genes an evolutionary advantage of finding new and more prosperous adaptations.
Yup! That's us!
I honestly don't see the problem. I love the idea that we are just galaxies of little robots running complicated Game Theories that eventually turn into a great cooperative machine where everyone (mostly) benefits, with plenty of complicated moves going way beyond hawks and doves and straight into the horribly complicated multi-defectors, forgivers, and other evolutionary styles that depend on the events that have gone before and the pre-knowledge (or lack of) a set end-date for the entire experiment... in other words, our deaths, whether pre-planned or simply the entire mass of genes just coming to realize that it's no longer in their best interest to keep pushing this jalopy around any longer if they're not getting anything out of it... like further replication. :)
Even when it's not precisely sex, it's still all about sex. :)
Of course, what I've just mentioned isn't the entire book, because, as a matter of fact, the book walks us through so many stages of thought, previous research, developments, mistakes, and upgraded theories and surprising conclusions based on soooooo much observable data that any of us might be rightfully confounded with the weight of it unless we were in the heart of the research, ourselves.
It's science, baby.
Make sure you don't make the data conform to your theory. Build your theory from observable data. Improve upon it as the building blocks are proved or disproved, keep going until it is so damn robust until nothing but a true miracle could topple it, and then keep asking new questions.
The fact is, this theory has nothing (or everything) to do with our lives. We play Game Theory, too, in exactly the same way every gene everywhere does, but we just happen to be able to make models on top of the situations and we're able to choose whether to see through the lies, the hawk strategies, or when to stop cooperating if the advantages work out much better for us if we did. We, like our genes, can choose long-term cooperative strategies or play everything like a Bear market. :)
Even this book says that it's very likely that Nice Guys can win, but just like our lives, the gene lives keep discovering ever more complicated strategies and all eventual strategies become more and more situational.
Isn't that us, to a tea? I wonder if most complaints about this book stem from complaints about Game Theory rather than the perceived conclusion (much better spelled out, not in this book, but in later books)... that atheism rules the day. It really isn't evident here. Instead, we have a macrocosm mimicking the microcosm and no one wants to challenge their comfortable world view.
Things aren't simple. All choices to betray or cooperate are then met with situation and memory and ever complex meta-contexts, the difference between us and genes being that we're self-aware and the genes are not.
Yes, yes, I see where the arguments can start coming out of the closet about self-determination and such, but that's not really the point of this book at all. The point is that it's a successful model that accurately describes reality. It has nothing at all to do with the macro-world except obliquely, and makes no value judgments on our art, our beliefs, or how we think about ourselves except in our uniquely stubborn and self-delusional ways that love to take things out of context and apply misunderstood concepts to our general lives and wonder why everything gets so screwed up. :)
But then, maybe I'm just applying my own incomplete models to yet another and we lousy humans still lack WAY TOO MUCH data to build a really impressively improved model. :)
As the title's extension spells out, this is a definitive (as of '87) rebuttal against all comers in favor of Darwinism, but don't let my saying so prAs the title's extension spells out, this is a definitive (as of '87) rebuttal against all comers in favor of Darwinism, but don't let my saying so prove it. Read it for yourself.
All his arguments are crystal clear, but he takes extra time to caricature the caricature of Darwinists, pointing out exactly how the ad absurdum argument really works while also elucidating the fine points of what Darwinism IS versus what it is NOT.
He steps us through the first third of the book showing us how Selection works: from an energy standpoint, a competition standpoint, and a sexual standpoint... from the basic building blocks of proteins to more and more complex forms of DNA and the combo cells that collect all the wonderful multicellular creations, including bacteria, that eventually wind up creating us. The descriptions are quite beautiful and clear and all the while, we've got all the foundations for life... without Intelligent Design.
The argument is simple, of course. If we can explain everything, and I mean everything that is life and physics, then what purpose does adding a superfluous layer to the explanation serve?
This is ten years worth of hate mail for the author, people. He has been beset on all sides with genuinely curious and well-meaning seekers of the god-fearing sort and inundated with screaming lunatics telling him he'll burn in hell for his first book, The Selfish Gene, which, by the way, didn't really give a rat's ass about creationism or the people who support it. It just laid out a very cogent theory that fit all the copious mountains of data in biology. And yet, after that point, a Mr. Dawkins who professes not to want or need a PR team or lawyers, decides to put his foot down and tackle the problem that has reared its muti-angled head in his direction and DEFEND Darwinism.
He does so beautifully, I might add.
Every step of the way, he defines the complaints with due diligence and proceeds to demolish them sonar-producing batlike grace, with light humor, sharp intellect, and sometimes he makes of his opponents an overzealous meal.
Can you blame him? Granted, by this point it's only been a decade of Creationist hate. Give it a decade or a decade and a half more before we see a truly flame worthy attack from Mr.Dawkins. I'm looking forward to seeing some of it in his books. I hope it's there and not just in his interviews which I still haven't seen. Alas.
Seriously, though, this book is pretty wonderful for its lucid and quoteworthy passages and vivid descriptions of how Darwinism works, from gene level to the kinds of time-spans that can only be described as geological when it comes to real changes in evolution. I particularly loved the fact that he used computer terminology to describe how our genes are nothing more than complex computers. I've heard this before, of course, but the way he laid it out was particularly enlightening.
This stuff is pretty damn great. Just from the science viewpoint, even leaving out the whole defense, it's well worth reading and not nearly as acerbic or rabid as certain other mass-produced troll-attacks make him appear. But then again, I've only read one of his later books, the The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, which was just a charming bi-modal description of science versus magical thinking which also happened to "gently" draw people away from having to add that extra layer of explanation to reality. :) I guess I'll see what the other books bring, no?...more
This is pretty much entirely an autobiography, giving us all the stray bits of Richard Dawkin's childhood through college and, later, his pet projectsThis is pretty much entirely an autobiography, giving us all the stray bits of Richard Dawkin's childhood through college and, later, his pet projects and his interest in programming before later publishing The Selfish Gene.
As a writer, he's always good.
He seemed to have a rather interesting childhood in Africa with loving parents, becoming a rather bullied child in school, getting heavily into religion among other things, including a rather unfortunate sexual event. At least it didn't seem to scar him.
He also took a rather indirect path to his studies, too, but I suppose this is also rather normal, being pushed one way or another by faculty and opportunity, but at least he eventually got into the mode, thanks to the theories that naturally dovetailed between programming and biology, to write his most famous book.
Pretty fascinating. I wouldn't say it's extremely so, but it was certainly edifying.
The first half of the book is his life, of course, but the later sections DO give you a pretty concise summary of the thought experiments and science that led up to the book, so be prepared for at least SOME rather intense science, even if most of the rest of the book is more personable.
Funny story: I read this without reading the blurb. And I thought it was just going to be another science book! Not an autobiography! I felt duped! :) lol live and learn, live and learn... :) ...more
This is a very fun read for all you science nerds... not only being clear and humorous but wide-ranging and careful to build up a number of those neceThis is a very fun read for all you science nerds... not only being clear and humorous but wide-ranging and careful to build up a number of those necessary building blocks of knowledge but doing it precisely in order to slam you with the good stuff later.
Like how you'd DIE IN A BLACK HOLE... :)
To belabor the obvious by the title. :)
Seriously, this book gives us a ton of great ways to die and not just by black hole. I really appreciated that. :)
I'd characterize this book as an easy to intermediate stage science book that's very far from being dull and it has a minimum of equations. I'm sure everyone has heard of thermodynamics and E=MC squared and Drake's equation, after all, but what really thrilled me about this was the truly wide array of subjects and Tyson's conversational tone.
You can tell he is still a very, very good science teacher. :)
I can almost hear him say, "Let's throw out the crap, folks, let's dive right into the good stuff." And he does, ranging from the Big Bang to the Heat Death, kinds of possible life on planets, the building blocks we need to understand science, including a great "stick" analogy for understanding the universe without computers, and he even gets into a bit of politics and religion because let's face it: it's a hot discussion item. But thankfully, it's only there as an afterthought.
I wanted science and I got science, exploring the planets, the sun, even quasars, and especially Black Holes. That's the yummy stuff, after all.
10/10 Black Holes agree! Nom nom nom nom nom.
I totally recommend this for both laymen and the intelligently curious and for anyone else who just likes a bit of the good (science) life. It really, really helps that Tyson's a great writer and clear as glass. The light passes right through it without slowing down at all! Can you believe it?...more
Almost all of my stars on this one is for the ease for which Tyson explains the cosmos, the clarity, and the breadth of astrophysics itself.
The one stAlmost all of my stars on this one is for the ease for which Tyson explains the cosmos, the clarity, and the breadth of astrophysics itself.
The one star that's missing is just because it's all stuff I've read before. :) In other words, it's great if you're looking for an introductory and nearly math-less course on everything from the Big Bang to the formation of the planets to the building blocks and observed results of our search for extra-terrestrial life.
That's it. It's a great refresher, too, if that's your thing, and as for the tidbits like how we're figuring out and classifying the planets turning around other stars, there's even a great explanation for that, too. Hint: doppler shift. :)
All in all, it's very well-written and enjoyable if not crammed with surprises. It's meant to put our feet firmly in the science of we know well and of the others, the ones we understand more or less well, we qualify that we're always on the search for new and better questions in a game of controlled ignorance. :)
I totally recommend this for laymen and the curious....more
Like all of Tyson's books, it's very well written, explaining any number of difficult subjects with clarity and ease, but unfortunately, with this subLike all of Tyson's books, it's very well written, explaining any number of difficult subjects with clarity and ease, but unfortunately, with this subject, we devolve into a catalogue of cultural significance for the poor demoted Pluto and a very long list of rather humorous emails and letters all sent to Tyson because of his role in the decision.
If that's what you're looking for, then, by all means, enjoy this book!
But if you're looking for an in-depth rather than an adequate focus on Pluto rather than our cultural reactions to the planet, then perhaps you should look elsewhere.
I'm not saying this book wasn't fun... and the politics of science and all those pooooooor schoolchildren writing Tyson was both humorous and slightly off-putting at the same time... but it wasn't so much about science as it was about justifying (rightly so, in my opinion,) the need to pluto Pluto. RIP.
Or rather... go play with your new Kuiper buddies. ;)...more
Well, I was expecting something a bit more exciting because of my natural love for Phi, simply because, you know... SPIRALS are EVERYWHERE, Dude.
StillWell, I was expecting something a bit more exciting because of my natural love for Phi, simply because, you know... SPIRALS are EVERYWHERE, Dude.
Still, the author does a palatable job of giving me a fairly decent history of mathematics from the focus of the Golden Ratio, the Golden Triangle, the logarithmic spiral, the Fibonacci sequence... all of which is, of course, the same thing, expressed slightly different with a ton of additional cultural significances.
No surprise here. This is Phi.
However, I did take umbrage against some of the side explanations early on for why ancient or apparently unsophisticated tribes didn't have numbers that counted past four. I mean, sheesh, if we went purely by the mystical importance that the Pythagoreans placed upon the first couple of numbers, we might also believe they couldn't count past five. It's a mistake of the first order, taking a little bit of data and coming to enormous conclusions based on our own prejudices.
That's my problem, I suppose, and he does at least bring up the option that the ancient peoples might have been working on a base four mathematical system, but for me, it was too little, too late. I cultivated a little patience, waiting until we get further along the mathematical histories past the Greeks and into the Hindus and the Arabics where it got a lot more interesting, and then firmly into known territory with the Rennaisance.
Most interesting, but also rather sparse, was the Elliot wave and the modern applications of Phi. I wish we had spent a lot more time on that, honestly.
But as for the rest, giving us a piecemeal exploration of Phi in history, art, and math, this does its job rather well. ...more
To be sure, I need to be clear as to WHY I like this book. It's not like any of the science or reasoning in it is new or unusual, or that I haven't heTo be sure, I need to be clear as to WHY I like this book. It's not like any of the science or reasoning in it is new or unusual, or that I haven't heard many similar reasonings here or there all the way from high school physics courses all the way to certain and strange movies I've enjoyed.
Why I do love this book is simple: it's clear, concise, and it does a very admirable job of setting up magical thinking in all its flavors against the fundamentals of science.
It's a great primer. I think I would have loved reading this when I was 13 or 14. It might have even sparked my interest in science even more than I had been sparked... but that might not be possible. Science Fiction did a perfectly admirable job in that department, with Heinlein and Asimov as my tutors.
Even so, apart from the things I've heard about of Dawkins, this is relatively mild in the religion bashing. He uses logic and reasoning, postulating clearly and setting up the universe as it is, not as we wish it would be. He also makes sure that Occam's Razor is quite sharp.
I certainly have no complaints about this book, assuming I wanted a basic primer, of course.
As for being an adult reading this? It's charming. It's somewhat magical in the sense that I draw a sense of wonder about the universe and our living within it. For that alone I would recommend it as a bit of light reading, assuming you're up to your science snuff. :)...more
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