“When we feel we freely think or act on our own, is this merely a description the author had written for us, or does he find it to be true of us, his characters, and therefore write it?”

This book is the best way to introduce Philosophy as relevant. Anyone intending to apply philosophy to life will inevitably meet the question "what use is it to me?". When we pose that question ourselves it is comparitively easy to cast around for answers when we already know ways in which it can be applied. To give someone else a response such as "it teaches us to analyse arguments" is rarely helpful. This book however contains lots of little nuggets in easy to read formats such as Lem's fairytales or the musical references each of which will apply to an individual. If the right piece is matched to the right person I have never met anyone who could resist begining to read the few pages of analysis that followed. At that point the person has engaged with the idea and the resistance, not to mention the perception that philosophy is 'boring and for boring old men', is lost. Irrespective of what the person goes on to do if they do it with less fear of 'intellectual study' this will already have been a practical application on philosophy.

Wow! This book will provide you with new ways to look at what it means to be "you". Some of it is heavy lifting but most is breezy, fun and makes you put the book down often to think. A great cerebral workout!

Didn't really care for this book it made some big claims but didn't fill the bill for me can't recommend it actually but hey that's not what I want to talk about right now
Instead let’s talk about Mental illness, I don’t think I’m Mentally ill but I’m not completely well either, Pandemic blues letting the Bitch in the basement take over my mental wifi, Anxiety overload, stress focused and amplified taking my business inventory and freaking out over its shape and direction I think it’s taken me over somewhat. What ever it was that got inside my head I’m kind of getting over it.

The Atlantic one of my favorite magazines says of mental breakdown this: breakdown gave you license to withdraw, claiming an excess of industry or sensitivity or some other virtue. And crucially, it focused the cause of distress on the outside world and its unmeetable demands. You weren’t crazy; the world was. As a 1947 headline in the New York Herald Tribune put it: “Modern World Viewed as Too Much for Man.”

The term nervous breakdown first appeared in a 1901 medical treatise for physicians. “It is a disease of the whole civilized world,” its author wrote. This disquisition built on the work of a Gilded Age doctor, George Miller Beard, who posited that we all had a set amount of nerve force, which could be depleted, like a battery, by the stress of modern life. Beard had argued that an epidemic of nervous disease had been unleashed by technology and the press, which accelerated everything. “The chief and primary cause of this … very rapid increase of nervousness is modern civilization,” he wrote in American Nervousness in 1881.

This idea of the nervous breakdown as a natural response to modern life gained currency through the go-go 1920s, and then achieved cultural ubiquity with the economic collapse of the 1930s. “Is a nervous breakdown a sign of weakness?” asked a 1934 book titled Nervous Breakdown.

Not at all. You have put up a good fight, but the odds were too heavy against you … Nature has warned you and given you respite. The breakdown is a definite indication that you are still functioning, and have within you the material for recovery

OK so I announced that I was taking a break from facebook, and I just stopped altogether with Goodreads, I’m off of Pintress, and tumblr, I logged off my Audible account and my Amazon account and my Apple account. I really tried to close down my digital footprint, and overall I think it’s a good experiment going on here being old school and shutting yourself off from the electronic lease, I don’t think I’m done with this yet I said I was going to give it a year it’s not yet a month and I’m already backsliding, but overall I think it’s a good goal to be social-media-lite not to be so connected I just wanted to let some family and friends know that is what I’m doing and that I haven’t gone completely bonkers.

I had my epiphany on Goodreads, I’ve been charting my book reading for years I read 5 book in January and set a goal of reading 65 this year, I enjoy reading but am I doing this for myself or is it in support of my virtual community of online readers I mean are my actions my own or directly by my online obsession with books? Then add onto that that Goodreads is own by Amazon, Amazon Google and Apple they love my ass I’m a great customer in fact they own my ass, and when I start to look at my accounts well that was when I started letting a small freak-out become a big freak-out and for experiment sake I thought to try to remove as much of my electronic footprint as possible. Also wanted so see what it would be like not to be on the phone every ten minutes of so, not to be using my laptop for anything other than work, to see how I might feel if I quit my intake of news and social media for awhile like going vegan in my mind and not consuming the same old bullshit daily. Nice goals hasn’t been a month yet and I realize it’s going to be very hard to do kind of a day by day thing already feeling bad about my reading goals and on Facebook I know some of my friends have had special social events that I should be commenting on, sorry for missing your grand daughter’s birth, or someone’s hospitalization, or another person’s traffic mishap. I know their is stuff happening in my little social circle, but I’m on an experiment and I’m going to try and stick it out.

This helped Got to love this kids energy.
https://youtu.be/MRvHI8tgx8A

No more political commentary: going dark just before the next second impeachment. Wow well you all know where my attitudes are and I doubt I will have anything really interesting or intelligent to add in these crazy and illogical times. I will leave with one little clip that you might have missed I just thought it was really funny the My Pillow founder on Newsmax check it out.

https://youtu.be/V4jmp_Oxd_M

OK that’s it I’m out of here Goodreads I did enjoy our time together Won't say this is a divorce lets call it a trial separation, and "The Mind's Eye" 'Fantasies and Reflections on self and soul' seem the best place for me to step off for awhile even though I wasn't much into the book it's perfect vehicle for expressing my overall ambivalence towards all things internet, all things economic, all things pandemic, and all that is going on inside my head at the moment. Time to take a break Goodbye

I recommend to anyone who is starting in AI area.

wisdom unlimited bibliography
Not in Libby or CV library

A stellar book by one of philosophy great's. If you're reading (or watching a lecture by) Dan Dennett, be sure to get some popcorn first!

0.5/5.

A superb collection of thought-provoking essays and short stories touching on various aspects of the philosophical side of cognitive science. Hofstadter & Dennett's commentary was always interesting to read - even when I disagreed with them (which was much more often on this year's careful reading than when I skimmed this volume a few years ago), their opposing viewpoint helped me sharpen my own ideas.

Amazing book that woke me up to the mind experiments Douglas invented.

After more than 30 years I still remember the story about replacing every part of a human for a mechanical part and asking yourself when you became someone/thing else. Also the story when a father sits on mars just before an astroid is going to destroy the planet. Luckily just before the impact he can transfer all his thoughts and feelings to a perfect copy of himself on earth. When the copy wakes up the wife and children soon see him as their true father and so does the copy. (un)fortunately, the original survives and returns to earth 7 years later, a bit like A dead person returning from an island after a shipwreck. Who is who and how do they continue? and if you/your sense of self are the original, is your sense of self in the copy too (especially if the original does not survive)?

Questa raccolta di articoli curata dagli spumeggianti Hofstadter e Dennett é da molti considerata, e non certo a torto, il manifesto dell'IA forte, ovvero della convinzione che un giorno si potranno avere dei calcolatori realmente coscienti, più o meno come noi.

La cosa buffa é che questo libro di tecnico ha veramente poco: per lo più si tratta di "esperimenti mentali", o "Gedankenexperiment" per usare il termine corretto, fantasie più o meno bizzarre con l'intento di far riflettere il lettore sulle questione della mente, del cervello, del sé.

Dai racconti di Lem ai dialoghi di Hofstadter, passando per le riflessioni orientaleggianti di Smullyan, non mancano classici della letteratura scientifica in generale come "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" di Turing o "Geni Egoisti" di Dawkins: perle di una chiarezza e genialità rare, imperdibili. Molti degli articoli basterebbero da soli ad indurre l'acquisto di questo libro.

Tutti insieme formano un vero e proprio capolavoro che non puo' mancare nelle librerie di chiunque si interessi anche solo alla lontana, non importa la formazione, dell'argomento.

"How could I convince him that he was really me?" I am not a self but a collection of endless impressions circulating inside my brain. Paradox is real and reality phony.