Recently finished The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose, an Oxford physicist. According to Penrose, the action of the brain is fundamentally different from and cannot, even in principle, be reduced to the working of a deterministic computer. The argument is one I have some sympathy for, though I'm not sure Penrose makes his case completely convincing. Even so, the book is a fascinating trip through issues of computability, determinism, and the mind-body problem that I hadn't considered before.
Most physical laws are deterministic, which means that given the state of a system at one time you can, at least in principle, predict its state for the entire future. But at the quantum level things are a little bit more tricky and certain things (the position of an electron, say) are observed to behave probabilistically. Though most physicists and biologists would argue that quantum effects are not important at the level of human brains, Penrose disagrees and sees this as an opening for the presence of conciousness and free will.
Now may be as good a time as any to reveal that I've started my own blog. I hope no one's offended; it has a different kind of feel from the Crawdad Hole, and I will continue to post here from time to time as I have things to say that seem to fit better here than there.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Hello & Riding the Iron Rooster Review
Greetings to everyone from the newest member of this group. I'm honored to count myself one of the posters to this page. In the spirit of Tree of Valinor's book mandate, I'll begin with a short review of a book I almost finished over Christmas vacation, Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China by Paul Theroux. The fact that I didn't finish it should tell you something. It's a little dated, being over 10 years old, and I found Mr. Theroux's condescending attitude towards his fellow travelers annoying. Whether it was the fat ingorant Americans he began the tour with or the strange, spitting Chinese he spent most of his train time in the company of, it seems like Mr. Theroux had nothing but criticism. In fact, I can't remember a single person he gave an overall positive impression of.
To be fair, travelling is stressful, and sharing a sleeping car with a constantly spitting, loud-talking companion would not be a picnic. And who hasn't had wicked thoughts about people on the bus or in the next cubicle? So we'll give Mr. Theroux points for being honest, and points for writing vivid descriptions of people and places. I will never forget his description of the cold in Harbin. He made me feel it. And any book in which the author spends the majority of his time on steam-driven trains can't be a total loss. Still, in the end, Mr. Theroux's lack of sympathy for his fellow travelers turned me off and allowed me to put the book down before the end. I probably will never pick it back up.
To be fair, travelling is stressful, and sharing a sleeping car with a constantly spitting, loud-talking companion would not be a picnic. And who hasn't had wicked thoughts about people on the bus or in the next cubicle? So we'll give Mr. Theroux points for being honest, and points for writing vivid descriptions of people and places. I will never forget his description of the cold in Harbin. He made me feel it. And any book in which the author spends the majority of his time on steam-driven trains can't be a total loss. Still, in the end, Mr. Theroux's lack of sympathy for his fellow travelers turned me off and allowed me to put the book down before the end. I probably will never pick it back up.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Sunday, January 01, 2006
New year, new blog posts
Happy new year.
The most recent book I read was a collection of short stories, A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies by John Murray. It has a powerful emotional voice, and interesting believable characters, but nothing really happens in any of the stories, that is to say, the plots are less than gripping. All the stories seemed the same; if I had read only one of them I probably would have really liked it, but as a collection it was a little disappointing.
The other book I want to mention from 2005 is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Definitely a bit more lowbrow than what's typically discussed on this blog, but in terms of reading pleasure it's the best book I've read in a while. It has a real story, a fun story, even if it's not a candidate for the National Book Award.
The most recent book I read was a collection of short stories, A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies by John Murray. It has a powerful emotional voice, and interesting believable characters, but nothing really happens in any of the stories, that is to say, the plots are less than gripping. All the stories seemed the same; if I had read only one of them I probably would have really liked it, but as a collection it was a little disappointing.
The other book I want to mention from 2005 is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Definitely a bit more lowbrow than what's typically discussed on this blog, but in terms of reading pleasure it's the best book I've read in a while. It has a real story, a fun story, even if it's not a candidate for the National Book Award.
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