Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 747 posts

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#661

Post by lowdose »

323454 wrote: post #655
bemmu wrote: post #100

"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous. What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not contin…

I loved the concept in permutation city of simulating your own mind out of order, but I think it would only be possible if we can show that consciousness is a pure function. If consciousness isn't pure and therefore depends on some internal state, then simulating out of order isn't possible because you need to go through all the intermediate states to get the right output.

I don't think this is true in a quantum world.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#662

Post by koheripbal »

Balgair wrote: post #344
bemmu wrote: post #100

"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous. What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not contin…

'Very far off to left field' side note: The human brain is still active during unconsciousness. EEG traces of the brain show this. When you are awake, drowsy, asleep, or under anesthesia, the patterns of your brain waves are very different [0,1]. But, the brain is not 'paused', it's just firing differently than when you are awake or drowsy. So, the 'pattern' is not just 3-D, it's 4-D. You need time as well. You'd nee…

> under anesthesia

This one is actually a little different. There is much much less activity under anesthetic vs sleeping. There are even theories that going under general anesthetic actually causes some small degree of brain damage due to the shutdown.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#663

Post by guide42 »

goto11 wrote: post #642
alan-crowe wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most interesting response that I've seen to Lewis's trilemma came from a psychiatric nurse. His experience of working in an psychiatric hospital was that people with delusions, such as thinking they are Napoleon, didn't seem particularly off. They were pleasant, and easy to care for. Over the course of weeks, one would get to know them. It would gradually become apparent that the delusional thinking went very dee…

My take on the trilemma is that Jesus never actually claimed to be God in the first place.

It didn't because declaring it was inconceivable in the Judeo view. But he might well understood he was God.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#665

Post by lappet »

ghotli wrote: post #575

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino Prose poems, short 1-2 page descriptions of fictional cities. It’s a good gift to give and I like to pick it up at random, open to a random one, and sit with the imagery it conjures. If I had a ‘you could bring one thing to a deserted island’ then that would be it.

I love this book and often read a random chapter just for inspiration. The cities described in the book are something else.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#666

Post by torstenvl »

user_0x wrote: post #524
ltiger wrote: post #268

"Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life" by Rory Sutherland Explains why we choose brands over cheaper alternatives, why we're willing to pay a lot more to lock in a deal, why we hate registering before buying the thing (but are more than happy to do so right after), why Sony removed the record button from the first Walkman, and much more. This book forever changed t…

The food rule works for anything, but Detroit. https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2774

Detroit-style deep dish is the best style of pizza, and nothing else is in the same league.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#667

Post by smsm42 »

CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #208

I enjoyed Blindsight by Peter Watts. It explores several different interesting ideas. For instance, what is the point of empathy/friendship/love in a technologically advanced society? These were very useful things for our ancestors to help each other battle the harsh environment, but we have mastered our environment, so why waste brain power on empathy now? The Wikipedia summarizes the books discussion of conciousnes…

"Echopraxia" is the followup that takes it even further. Very dark, but also very thought-provoking.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#668

Post by chairmanwow1 »

eerrt wrote: post #591
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egan is a close second for my all-time favorite sci-fi author. Some of his books read like mathematical dialogues or transcriptions of lectures (lots of the Orthogonal Series is conversations between professors and their grad students reasoning about physics of a world that we don't live in), but he also delves deep into mathematics and fringe ideas and presents them in a vista where you can enjoy the absolute splend…

So who's your favorite sci-fi author?

Ian M Banks. The Culture series is the most splendid collection of books I’ve ever read. Some are better than others but collectively they build an insight into a galaxy spanning civilization.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#669

Post by kangnkodos »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #571
kangnkodos wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darwin's book stayed very clearly away from any talk about religion. Years later religious arguments against Darwin popped up. Dawkins' book addresses these religious arguments head on.

I haven't read that particular book of Dawkins, but I have encountered a mathematical argument I find somewhat troubling, though I don't have the background to really examine it in depth. It's discussed in this interview here: https://youtu.be/noj4phMT9OE Essentially the number of possible configurations of the sequence of a piece of genetic code required to produce the instructions for producing a usable protein are…

I dunno.

In the one Dawkins book I read, the mathematical part definitely gets addressed. It may change your mind about the mathematical part.

I once read elsewhere that almost all the specific details Darwin came up with have been overturned by other scientists. But the new scientific results prove evolution and natural selection even harder.

My own personal speculation is that there may be many simple proteins that have some type of use or another. I would be interested in reading about how they came up with that 10^77 number. Sounds high to me.

On the other hand, I've read scientists make comments similar to your comments. Not in papers, but in casual interviews. Some agree with you and say that even given the current theories, there just wasn't quite enough time on earth to create life from non-life.

It's not an accepted scientific theory at all. More like a crackpot idea that will probably never be proved or disproved. But take a look at the panspermia theory. Small seeds of some kind move from planet to planet. Maybe one landed on earth long ago? It's a crazy idea. But it does address the issues you brought up.

Post reply on HN