Deep thoughts about deep issues—but not for the faint of heart.
Penetrating account of the connections among consciousness and artificial intelligence, cosmology, and quantum mechanics.
Musser, a contributing editor for Scientific American and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory and Spooky Action at a Distance, obviously has no fear of difficult subjects. This book should not serve as an introduction to human consciousness, but readers who pay attention will learn a great deal. The author begins by pointing out that “we are composed of matter, and we are conscious.” Therefore, he continues, “it must be possible to recognize these two facts.” Scientists specialize in taking things that seem different, such as matter and energy or electricity and magnetism, and showing that “they are essentially the same. Can they do that for matter and mind?” Not yet, notes the author, but they’re making progress, largely by paying close attention to neuroscience, which explores brain function, and computer science, which hit the jackpot last year when researchers demonstrated spectacular AI programs (ChatGPT and DALL-E) that are so creative and communicate so convincingly that experts have concluded only that they are “probably” not conscious. Encountering this conclusion less than halfway through the book, readers may look forward to more insights, and Musser does not disappoint. The difficulty is that consciousness is still an extremely complex problem. A skilled reporter, the author chronicles his travels around the world interviewing experts in many fields (Carlo Rovelli appears throughout the text), showing us how cosmologists muse about the universe; physicists explore information theory and neural networks; neuroscientists wonder how a physical brain produces a mind; and philosophers explore emergence, free will, and causality. Quantum effects are significant, but, like consciousness, no one completely understands them beyond theory. Many consider it possible, in both cases, that we never will.
Deep thoughts about deep issues—but not for the faint of heart.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780374238766
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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