This book is a follow-up to Wolf’s previous book, Proust and the Squid, which explored how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way weThis book is a follow-up to Wolf’s previous book, Proust and the Squid, which explored how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. In this book, Wolf writes a series of letters to her readers to share her concerns and hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it adapts to digital mediums.
Wolf raises some difficult questions, such as:
1. Will children learn to incorporate the full range of “deep reading” processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain? 2. Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves? 3. With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know? 4. Will all these influences change the formation in children and the use in adults of “slower” cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives? 5. How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain?...more
Sorry, but I can't take seriously someone who can read the entire Twilight saga four times.Sorry, but I can't take seriously someone who can read the entire Twilight saga four times....more
Sapolsky serves up the most broad-ranging and accessible examination of human behavior. The sheer scope of the book is daunting, but thankfully SapolsSapolsky serves up the most broad-ranging and accessible examination of human behavior. The sheer scope of the book is daunting, but thankfully Sapolsky is an expert guide, taking us one step at a time through how what influences actions, what influences thoughts, how the human brain evolved, how the brain itself did... always one step back at a time - so that the reader is never overwhelmed. (especially by the increasingly inevitable conclusion - of no true free will)
This narrative structure is what makes this book a possibility for even the n00b reader - Sapolsky begins with a simple act which you can do while reading, like reaching for a glass of water, and then works backward to explain it chapter by chapter: one second before, seconds to minutes before, hours to days before, days to months before, and so on back through adolescence, the crib, the womb, and ultimately centuries and millennia in the past, all the way to our evolutionary ancestors and the origin of our moral emotions. Getting deep into the weeds at every single point.
Anyone who has read Pinker's Better Angels, would do well with this corrective dose. Pinker focuses on the human and exalts it, Sapolsky expands our horizon to the whole world and shows us a better vision of what it means to be human and what it means to 'progress'. Sapolsky Vs Pinker is the contemporary Hobbes-versus-Rousseau (Pinker is Hobbes, btw, just in case). Don't miss it.
[Sapolsky agrees with the thesis that our lives have improved, this is a debate of nuance - “Anyone who says that our worst behaviors are inevitable knows too little about primates, including us.”]
This is a book about limits - of the human brain, of human emotions, of human knowledge, capability, altruism, etc. But in those limits, we find the true potential of what it means to be human, at our best and our worst....more
The audacious first act, Sapiens, ended with a wild and apocalyptic prophesy - that the Sapiens were cooking up the next epochal revolutHomo Obsoletus
The audacious first act, Sapiens, ended with a wild and apocalyptic prophesy - that the Sapiens were cooking up the next epochal revolution that will overshadow the previous three: the cognitive, agricultural and scientific/industrial revolutions. Home Deus, the second act, is the full exploration of that prophesy.
Both Sapiens and Homo Deus are compulsory reading in my book, even though the macro-history presented is plenty vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. But then, it might be better to think of these as works of philosophy and not of history. Just like Sapiens is not a History, Home Deus is not a prophesy, both are explorations.
This line can be taken as the transition line that links the first book with the second one: “Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.”
The old enemies of mankind— plague, famine and war—are now under control. Except for the potentially restrictive energy constraint, Sapiens has very little standing in our way now. The result is that the Sapiens are becoming more and more God-like, Harari says, and one is forced to pause and reflect: by any previous standards of our history, are we not already Gods? Have we not already exceeded most wild power fantasies? Well yes, but even more God-like attributes are coming: cheating death and creating new life being primary.
And along with this march towards the godlike we are marching towards being machine-like too, as we outsource more and more of our internal algorithms to better data-based external algorithms. And the march is relentless, Homo Deus is taking birth before our eyes. The tomorrow is already upon us, and so forth.
However, just like the previous three revolutions that infused the Sapiens with power, this revolution too will come at a price, the price of a ratcheting up of inequality. The new Gods will be the techno-super-rich. BTW, reading Harari is good motivation to work on getting rich faster: he hints at a possibility that anyone who is rich enough to afford it, some 50 years into the future, should be able to buy proxy-immortality. And it will probably be a window that closes quickly, since the super-rich would soon take over the monopoly on immortality. So if you are rich enough at the right point in time, then you can be part of Olympus too. That might not be a deal many would want to miss out on…
There is one more catch: as technology takes over most of the functions, even the godlike sapiens will find themselves stuck in a universe devoid of real meaning. Bulk of humanity will have no economic, social or cultural purpose since anything we can do our new creations would be able to do even better. “Organisms are algorithms,” and the new algorithms will be so much better than the imperfect ones we are made of. As Bill Gates asked in his article about the book, “What If People Run Out of Things to Do?” We will be stuck in an immortal meaninglessness, our own creations clearly our betters. We will need a new religion to make sense of all this, since the powerful combo of Humanism+Science will not work in world where the sanctity of being Human has lost meaning. Harari feels that “Dataism” will be the religion that will fill the avoid left by Humanism.
The whole of Humanity, the Earth, and maybe the entire Universe will become servants to data - a huge data-processing system, the eternal all-knowing Atman. And serving this goal will be the only meaningful pursuit left for us.
Immortal, All-powerful, Obsolete: this is the future of the Sapiens....more
We all “know” we need to be organized, to develop good, consistent study routines, to find a quiet place and avoid distractions, to focu Why So Serious
We all “know” we need to be organized, to develop good, consistent study routines, to find a quiet place and avoid distractions, to focus on one skill at a time, and above all, to concentrate on our work.
What’s to question about that?
Carey begins this book with the allegation that most of our instincts about learning are misplaced, incomplete, or flat wrong.
It goes like this:
Want to procrastinate? Good! Can’t focus? Good! No fixed schedule? Good! Can’t study in a fixed place? Good! Forget stuff too easily? Good! Crave distractions? Good! Lazy and sleepy? Good!
Our worst habits, the ones we try so hard to overcome, it turns out, are our brains shortcuts to super learning. Yaay!
Carey tells us that we need no longer think of these “bad” habits as evidence of laziness, or a waste of time, or, worst of all, a failure of will. You can think of all of them as learning too, with your eyes closed while sleeping, for example! It is when we push against these natural learning mechanisms that we go sub-optimal in our efforts.
In short, we misidentify the sources of our frustration: that we get in our own way, unnecessarily, all the time. That is why learning becomes difficult. We just need to learn to get out of our own way more often and let our naturally greedy brain gorge itself on all the learning it needs.
Think about it for a second. Distraction, diversion, catnaps, interruptions—these aren’t mere footnotes, mundane details in an otherwise purposeful life. That’s your ten-year-old interrupting, or your dog, or your mom. That restless urge to jump up is hunger or thirst, the diversion a TV show that’s integral to your social group. You took that catnap because you were tired, and that break because you were stuck. These are the stitches that hold together our daily existence; they represent life itself, not random deviations from it. Our study and practice time needs to orient itself around them—not the other way around.
Let go of what you feel you should be doing, all that repetitive, over-scheduled, driven, focused ritual. Let go, and watch how the presumed enemies of learning—ignorance, distraction, interruption, restlessness, even quitting—can work in your favor.
Get out of your own way, and INDULGE! That is when you will learn best.
Learning is, after all, what you do. Learning is Life, and nothing comes more naturally to you! ...more
`Ultimately,' wrote Jung, `every individual life is at the same time the eternal life of the species.'
This is a readable (almost) introduction to the `Ultimately,' wrote Jung, `every individual life is at the same time the eternal life of the species.'
This is a readable (almost) introduction to the whole of Jung’s cosmology. Partly defensive in its arguments, the book proves useful when it sticks to just presenting Jung’s thoughts and not trying to show how it is still in sync with latest research (esp when it tries to link psychology to modern physics!). Jung and Freud are best read as imaginative writers and it would probably be even more fun to read them while viewing them as collaborators or co-myth-makers. Stein tries his best to hold back from attacking Freud and explaining Jung, but the proverbial slips are a few too many.
The good part is that Stein is a good cartographer. Stein constructs the cosmology slowly with a lot of care and precision. He starts with the Ego and slowly introduces us to its Shadow. Then the Persona and the Animus are introduced. Finally the Self is brought in, the most delicate and easy to misunderstand concept kept for the last. Then we move out of the mind and into the realm of the outer world via Synchronicity and start exploring ESP and such phenomena. In the end, we conclude with the awesome picture of the Collective Unconscious that stretches from inside our psyche to encompass and create/effect the whole universe. It is myth-making at its magnificent best, who wouldn’t be impressed? I was....more
Bostrom is here to imagine a world for us (and he has batshit crazy imagination, have to give him that). TImagine a Danger (You may say I'm a Dreamer)
Bostrom is here to imagine a world for us (and he has batshit crazy imagination, have to give him that). The world he imagines is a post-AI world or at least a very-near-to-AI world or a nascent-AI world. Don’t expect to know how we will get there - only what to do if we get there and how to skew the road to getting there to our advantage. And there are plenty of wild ideas on how things will pan out in that world-in-transition, the ‘routes’ bit - Bostrom discusses the various potential routes, but all of them start at a point where AI is already in play. Given that assumption, the “dangers” bit is automatic since the unknown and powerful has to be assumed to be dangerous. And hence strategies are required. See what he did there?
It is all a lot of fun, to be playing this thought experiment game, but it leaves me a bit confused about what to feel about the book as an intellectual piece of speculation. I was on the fence between a two-star rating or a four-star rating for much of the reading. Plenty of exciting and grand-sounding ideas are thrown at me… but, truth be told, there are too many - and hardly any are developed. The author is so caught up in his own capacity for big BIG BIIG ideas that he forgets to develop them into a realistic future or make any the real focus of ‘dangers’ or ‘strategies’. They are just all out there, hanging. As if their nebulosity and sheer abundance should do the job of scaring me enough.
In the end I was reduced to surfing the book for ideas worth developing on my own. And what do you know, there were a few. So, not too bad a read and I will go with three.
And for future readers, the one big (not-so-new) and central idea of the book is simple enough to be expressed as a fable, here it is:
The Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows
It was the nest-building season, but after days of long hard work, the sparrows sat in the evening glow, relaxing and chirping away.
“We are all so small and weak. Imagine how easy life would be if we had an owl who could help us build our nests!”
“Yes!” said another. “And we could use it to look after our elderly and our young.”
“It could give us advice and keep an eye out for the neighborhood cat,” added a third.
Then Pastus, the elder-bird, spoke: “Let us send out scouts in all directions and try to find an abandoned owlet somewhere, or maybe an egg. A crow chick might also do, or a baby weasel. This could be the best thing that ever happened to us, at least since the opening of the Pavilion of Unlimited Grain in yonder backyard.”
The flock was exhilarated, and sparrows everywhere started chirping at the top of their lungs.
Only Scronkfinkle, a one-eyed sparrow with a fretful temperament, was unconvinced of the wisdom of the endeavor. Quoth he: “This will surely be our undoing. Should we not give some thought to the art of owl-domestication and owl-taming first, before we bring such a creature into our midst?”
Replied Pastus: “Taming an owl sounds like an exceedingly difficult thing to do. It will be difficult enough to find an owl egg. So let us start there. After we have succeeded in raising an owl, then we can think about taking on this other challenge.”
“There is a flaw in that plan!” squeaked Scronkfinkle; but his protests were in vain as the flock had already lifted off to start implementing the directives set out by Pastus.
Just two or three sparrows remained behind. Together they began to try to work out how owls might be tamed or domesticated. They soon realized that Pastus had been right: this was an exceedingly difficult challenge, especially in the absence of an actual owl to practice on. Nevertheless they pressed on as best they could, constantly fearing that the flock might return with an owl egg before a solution to the control problem had been found.
Why does the Judge-penitent address you directly, as if he has found a kindred soul in you?
In this world responsibility is infinite and The Anti-Christ
Why does the Judge-penitent address you directly, as if he has found a kindred soul in you?
In this world responsibility is infinite and that is why The Fall is inevitable - even for a Christ. But back then Christ made a mistake — he saw (was) the nausea of the world, he saw (was) the complete guilt of each man (and his own) and he decided to redeem man (himself) by setting a supreme example. He sacrificed himself because he found himself guilty. It was only an example, a call to action -- to make men recognize and alter their way of life. He wanted man to see the depravity of his own existence by this one magnificent act. But his sacrifice was merely self-elevating, it could not elevate man. For man cannot be elevated before being shown the depths he roils in currently. And man cannot see faults where he looks to see heroes. He cannot see himself in Christ. Man cannot see man in the Ideal.
No, the faults had to be shown through an anti-hero. That is why the prophesy of an anti-christ was our true hope. That is why Christ had to return as the Anti-Christ. The Anti-Christ has to be closer to man, he has to be able to whisper to him as if he was just another man. He has to be able to make man see himself by looking at him. To make you see yourself as you really are by seeing in him yourself — yourself after The Fall.
That is why the Judge-penitent addresses you directly. He has found a kindred soul in you.
The Judge-Penitent
You are personally guilty for every fault that exists in the world. And The Fall is to not acknowledge your guilt — to withdraw from the world into aestheticism (recall Kierkegaard’s A in Either/Or) and make your life’s central concern one of making yourself feel good about yourself and thus about the world.
By the time Jean-Baptiste’s confession is over, you should realize that in fact the Judge-penitent is you. The story was yours. It is time to begin your own confession. It is time to stop being Kierkegaard’s A, and to be the B. To polarize yourself. Time to take responsibility and stare into the abyss.
Of course you might let someone else take The Fall for you, but from then on you would have to worship him. You would have to worship the guilty. You would have to worship the Judge-Penitent. But in this modern religion, to worship is to laugh at The Fallen.
That is the true role of the modern Christ. To take The Fall for you, so that he becomes the mirror in which you see the horror of your life.
The Fall
This necessary and continuous fall is the theme of the novel. It is one unforgiving, vertiginous descent. It is not a story of gradual discovery and ascent as in Sartre’s Nausea. In Nausea you see the picture that you should be painting of yourself. In The Fall you see the anti-thesis that you should use as your anti-model, as the one point which gives meaning to your picture by not being painted.
Here you are made to continuously disagree with a person who goes more and more towards that abyss. You are made to define yourself in your disagreement, to define yourself as a negation. And by doing that you are the one who discovers the nausea of such an existence, even as the narrator finds ingenious and pathetic ways to avoid it. And you are the one who moves away from the abyss.
You are the hero of the story, or at least the would-be hero — the one who is going to have the transformation that will change your world. The polarization is external to the novel.
Jean-Baptiste is one of the most powerful anti-heroes of literature, but you never root for his redemption. Instead you root for him to fall and fall — to Fall as horribly and as deep into the abyss as possible. Because that is the only way to root for yourself. Because the more he falls, the more you can see of what consists the abyss, and the further away you get from it. His Fall will save you. Mon cher, he is your personal Christ....more
On Human Nature Redux. More ants and bees this time. Better constructed but not as readable and thought-provoking as the earlier book. The stages of eOn Human Nature Redux. More ants and bees this time. Better constructed but not as readable and thought-provoking as the earlier book. The stages of eusociality evolution are better explained here. Readers would do well to read On Human Nature first and complement that reading with Part III of this book, which discusses these stages in detail.
The Invention of Eusociality
E. O. Wilson postulates that the invention/Evolution of Eusociality in any species will consist, broadly, of a series of stages:
1. The formation of groups or social arrangements. In the earliest stages of eusocial evolution, in species with already existing predispositions, this leads to superficial dominance hierarchies and crude division of labor.
2. The occurrence of a valuable and defensible nest, which aids survival and hence provides and incentive to increase and improve the crude social cohesion. The nest (early campsites in the case of humans) is the single most important step for Wilson. This is where the future course of the eusocial organism is fixed. The nest guides further evolution and is itself guided by existing predispositions. Much of the book focuses on how human condition changed forever around the earliest campsites.
3. The appearance of mutations that prescribe the persistence of the group, most likely by the knockout of dispersal behavior. Evidently, a durable nest remains the key element in maintaining the prevalence. Primitive eusociality may emerge immediately due to spring-loaded preadaptations—those evolved in earlier stages that by chance cause groups to behave in a eusocial manner.
4. Emergent traits caused by either the genesis of specialized workers or the interaction and division of labour, altruistic behavior, etc, of group members are shaped through group-level selection by environmental forces. Group selection ensures that group-fitness determines survival and not only individual fitness.
5. Group-level selection drives changes in the colony/group life cycle, social structures and social technologies (such as communication, recognition, etc.) often to bizarre extremes, producing elaborate superorganisms, and civilizations! ...more
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