Part of my “understanding reasoning systems” arc. Stafford Beer was a management school professor who invented a cybernetic approach to organizations he called Syntegrity. He convinced the president of Chile, Allende, to try implementing it before Allende was assassinated. Some really prescient predictions about how the internet would wind up impacting our collective politics and thinking. Worth reading.
It’s a pretty compelling argument that we understand the universe in terms of what matters to us for our existence, not some “reality” thing that is independent or universal in any way. Although he still seems to think that independent universal absolute truth exists somewhere out there for us to Not See, which seems questionable? Anyway I wanted to yell at the book “I GET IT” like 5 times a chapter, but I still think I got something out of reading it.
It’s self-help but I think it’s a good vibe to consider for ppl who are running into an “upper limits” problem. Recommended for people who like @visakanv on Twitter.
Part of my “figure out how morality works” reading kick. A strong entrant. I won’t try to summarize the book here, but Wikipedia has a good article — the fundamental argument is that morals can only be comprehended from inside their context of execution, they have no independent existence or essence. In buddhist terminology I’d say he’s exploring how morality is empty, which seems right.
Wilber is great although I found after finishing each one the remaining books tended to have less incremental value. The ideas are incredibly powerful tho, a really powerful new model for me. If I had to summarize the idea of Wilber’s Integralism, it’s actually a model of development itself. What does it mean for a system to mature? Or at least, that’s the part that was most useful to me. Undertheorized by most and Wilber goes deep. High recommend. Part of my “understanding reasoning systems” arc.
I read this when preparing for this talk and tbh it was kinda interesting but not that helpful for the talk. I liked the history of invention of intellectual technology taken seriously — these kinds of innovations are very powerful but often overlooked in favor of more obvious physical ones.
This was way more helpful when preparing for the talk. The Chinese approach to evidence in court was fascinatingly different and provided a strong contrast to the greek and jewish systems.
This was also interesting but I mostly skimmed it once I realized that it wouldn’t be useful for the talk. A history of indexing is interesting and I think relevant to a bunch of people trying to do things like build community-archive.org who want to understand the history of projects like theirs.
I was on a kick of reading about the history of magic and sorcery and this was part of it. Main takeaway: people were really serious about magic and demons and spells and stuff in the past, even kings!
Incredible book. I read it back to back with Sex Ecology Spirituality and they play very well together. Basically: the neodarwinian synthesis is wrong, evolution is directed and intelligent search rather than random variation with selection. A+ read it.
Part of trying to understand the nature of morality arc. Fascinating and foreign for me. My biggest takeaway was the way ritual is its own teacher, that it is the doing of the ritual and following of the tradition that is important not the conceptual content of it. In some ways Confucius is the ultimate Girardian moralist: if desire is mimetic, then those in charge must conduct themselves in explicitly legible and virtuous ways for others to follow. Thus, ritual.
Part of trying to figure out how morality works. Quite good, and felt more directly relevant to my life than I expected. My favorite part…Krishna telling Arjuna to suck it up.
A satisfying conclusion to the first half of Sanderson’s 10 book magnum opus. The plot was fine, but the whole series is starting to feel a little Flanderized…I hope the time skip to the next 5 book series resets the characters and allows him to start afresh. But I’ll be reading them regardless…Journey before destination, Radiants!
An oppressive earth government exiles its malcontents to an alien world where biology works by very different rules. Sort of a mystery novel where the whodunit is more of a howsitwork about the alien biosphere…if you liked Annihilation or Roadside Picnic or Children of Ruin, give it a shot.
I normally absolutely love Stephenson. This was good but forgettable for me — some fun moments but nothing that stuck with me in a deep way.
I loved Strange & Norrell. I quite liked Ladies of Grace Adieu and Piranesi was a return to form. I was honestly disappointed with this fairy tale, it felt lightweight and I got bored. Not sure if I’m just the wrong audience.
I read it. It managed to hold my interest enough that I didn’t give up part way through. It’s kinda mid space fantasy. Read The Machineries of Empire instead for your dark Space Opera with elements of horror kicks, it’s the same vibe but better.
My friend asked me to read this to assess whether it was actually good or she was just sucked in by the romance hook. I can report that it’s decent as fantasy on its own, but not good enough I’d recommend it if you don’t also love romance. Read The Last Graduate instead.
This was well written but I had to re-read the summary to remember what happens in it, so I guess it didn’t leave that much of an impression. If you like beautiful literary fiction, it’s a good read.
Credit to @isaakfreeman for introducing me to this excellent science fiction book that I had not already read, impressive work given how hard that is. Fun, sprawling sci-fi in an innovative and fresh world. If you liked The Three Body problem you might give it a try.
Corey is back with more popcorn sci-fi. If you liked Old Man’s War or similar you will probably like this.
Bakker tries his hand at near-future sci-fi. If you’ve read The Darkness That Comes Before, you have an idea for the topics he’s interested in: are we just puppets? Is there a meaningful sense in which we make decisions? What does right and wrong mean? This one was a little too dark for me, it lacked the expansiveness and sprawling adventure that offsets the darkness in his amazing fantasy series. But if you want more Bakker, I can definitely recommend it — I just don’t think it’s as much to my taste.
As an avid follower of @drmichaellevin’s work getting to read an Egan novel inspired by it was just so satisfying. It’s an interesting exploration of an alternate way people could be, an alternate biology. Plays well off Alien Clay, if you want to think about swarm intelligences.
I remember it being quite enjoyable but I can’t recall much in the way of detail. That’s often the way with Dick since his writing is sort of dream-like but I found it more true of these than normal. Not my favorite Dick novels but worth reading if you want more Dick!
Popcorn romance fantasy fiction in a fun fake renaissance italy setting. Good, not great, but hooked me enough that I finished it so I suppose I can’t knock it!
Popcorn fiction about Space Marines in the Warhammer 40k world. A classic and excellent example of the genre, delightful fun.
I first read Levy’s tour through artificial life when I was 15 or so and it made a big impact on me. Going back to it not everything holds up to the magic I remembered, but it really is amazing. The stories about Tierra in particular seem fantastical almost and I can’t believe there hasn’t been more prominent follow up research — why did we hit a dead end evolving reasoning systems in this way? Part of my understanding reasoning systems arc.
Just as delightful as the first time I read it, this is Space Opera that I think most would categorize as science fiction with the space ships and such, but which is actually just a fantasy novel in space. But it’s one of the more fresh and fun fantasy novels I’ve read. Popcorn.
A true classic depicting living through the singularity and baseline humanity’s obsolescence. Plus the best version of space vampires, ever. Echopraxia, the sequel, is equally good and plays back and forth with the first world.
Egan’s finest novel-length work, in my opinion (for short stories, Axiomatic is incredible). If you want to understand what it’s like to be an AI from the inside, read this. If you want to understand what it’s like to be an uploaded biological lifeforms, read it. If you want to imagine what might be our future, read it. Delightful and full of incredible ideas.
I liked the part I read it but got distracted like 10 pages in due to work stuff. I should go back. It’s a physical book so I don’t have it with me at random moments when I do most of my reading…maybe I should start carrying a to-read physical book with me everywhere.
Same physical book problem. Also really enjoyed the part I read but I only got 20% of the way through. Will try again.
I started reading this and got distracted and put it down. Still on my list to finish, it was very interesting…I should have bought the ebook.
I started reading this but just couldn’t find the value for myself. FWIW I think Jennifer is right, I just don’t need to read a book about it. Read this if you want a detailed vision for how to bring government into the Information Age.
A follow-up to reading Wilber, where I found the word Holon. Digging in it was coined by Koestler so I got his book…it is DENSE. I like it but ran out of energy. Also it’s a physical book…hm….a pattern…
I think this might have been useful to someone else, but I found the parts that seemed important I already knew, and the parts I didn’t know didn’t seem that important. I’d say it’s not bad if you want a primer on systems theory tho.