An accessible, unfailingly interesting look inside the workings of the human brain, celebrating its beguiling nature.
A neurobiological account of consciousness.
“Whether you’re a scientist or not, consciousness is a mystery that matters.” So writes Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex. “For each of us, our conscious experience is all there is.” Some current theories make the mystery all the more mysterious: the notion, for example, that consciousness is a shared hallucination, a thought that would send a Cartesian into fits. What matters, by Seth’s account, is that consciousness arises in the “wetware” of our brains, which “are not computers made of meat” but are instead assemblages of electrical and chemical networks that, crucially, are embodied—i.e., contained within a living being. “In my view,” writes the author, “consciousness has more to do with being alive than with being intelligent.” That said, he depicts the brain as a marvelous thing that we only dimly understand but that has provoked tremendous scientific growth in recent years. In one moving episode, Seth scrubs in for an eight-hour neurological operation that, by exposing the brain to surgical intervention, revealed “the mechanics of a human self.” Exploring the nature and content of consciousness, the author finds it intricately linked with self-consciousness. He also emphasizes its biological nature, suggesting that biotechnology, more than the “fleshless calculus” of artificial intelligence, will bring us further advances into what he calls “synthetic consciousness,” teaching machines to think in more human terms. As for human consciousness proper, it works by means of perception. We perceive the passage of time, and it passes; we perceive the world, and it exists. These are testable notions, he asserts, that help place us in the world and in time, allowing us to accept the inevitable, when “the controlled hallucination of being you finally breaks down into nothingness.” It may not be the most comforting thought, but there are worse.
An accessible, unfailingly interesting look inside the workings of the human brain, celebrating its beguiling nature.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4287-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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