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Cargando... The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and How to Be Happy (2005)por Rudy Rucker
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Some interesting math leads to some half-baked philosophical speculation. I will resist further plays on the word 'baked' but there is a definite whiff of potsmoke emanating from this book. ( ) Rudy Rucker contemplates, at great length, the idea that perhaps the entire universe can be viewed as the working out of a series of computations, something akin to an immense implementation of cellular automata (like the well-known Game of Life, in which grids of light and dark squares follow simple rules to evolve complicated patterns over time). He looks at this idea on many different scales, from the basic laws of physics, to the workings of the brain, to the behavior of human societies. It's hard for me to know quite what to say about this book. On the one hand, it offers some interesting and often quite reasonable and worthwhile perspectives on the world, and it does a good job of expressing some complicated mathematical and scientific ideas, such as chaos theory, in a very condensed way that works surprisingly well. (Although there are sections that get a little more technical, and a basic grounding in math, computer science, or physics might be helpful for some of it.) On the other hand, Rucker's writing is very rambly, and he makes a lot more sense on some subjects than on others. He also includes a lot of musings about his own life and snippets of his wacky SF writing, which I don't think were nearly as interesting to me as to him. Plus, he's got an odd and thoroughly unrepentant mystical streak, which doesn't sit particularly comfortably with me. There's also a big, fundamental flaw at the heart of his whole premise. Namely, he defines "computation," in part, as something fundamentally deterministic. It's difficult to reconcile a fully deterministic universe with the seemingly probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, though, and he does so mostly with a wishful-thinking argument that basically says, oh, well, I think there ought to be some way to get rid of this aspect of quantum mechanics because I don't like it, so I'm just going to assume it can somehow be made go away. For all I know, there's a chance he's right about that, but to call it unconvincing would be a universe-sized understatement. So, yeah, while reading this was kind of an interesting journey, there's a limit to how seriously I'm taking it as a whole. I will say that this is the sort of book that if I'd read it in my high school or college years (not that that's possible, since it was published in 2005, well after I graduated), I might have had a little bit of a "Whoa, you just blew my mind!" kind of reaction. Now, though, I fear my response is much more along the lines of a noncommittal "hmm." Rucker discusses the thesis that everything is a computation, a more complex form of cellular automata, and what that would mean for philosophy. Along the way, he fills us in with a reasonable background in theories of computation, cellular automata, philosophy, and other computer science and mathematical topics. From that description, the book may sound a bit dry, but it’s really quite enjoyable and engaging. Rucker starts each chapter with a short short story related to the chapter’s subject matter, and he sprinkles bits of his other (fictional) writing in where appropriate, as well. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, goes the ancient saying. This concept is at the root of the computational worldview, which basically says that very complex systems -- the world we live in -- have their beginnings in simple mathematical equations. We've lately come to understand that such an algorithm is only the start of a never-ending story -- the real action occurs in the unfolding consequences of the rules. The chip-in-a-box computers so popular in our time have acted as a kind of microscope, letting us see into the secret machinery of the world. In Lifebox, Rucker uses whimsical drawings, fables, and humor to demonstrate that everything is a computation -- that thoughts, computations, and physical processes are all the same. Rucker discusses the linguistic and computational advances that make this kind of "digital philosophy" possible, and explains how, like every great new principle, the computational world view contains the seeds of a nextstep. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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