An analysis that will appeal more to engineers than to behaviorists and psychologists: informative, but with a relatively...
Leading neuroscientist Montague takes a biomechanical approach to explain the mental processes that occur in decision-making.
Like computers, the human brain processes data and produces a result—but with a twist, declares the author. The gray area of computational neuroscience lies in the value judgments that occur in biological systems. Nature, Montague posits in his debut, has equipped the biological machine with the added ability to determine the significance of a computation. Moreover, by storing these valuations as a byproduct of computation, the mind adapts and becomes increasingly more efficient. Repeated exposure to a typical risk-reward scenario, for example, causes the mind to anticipate outcomes. Montague revisits many of the old “right-brain” scenarios with a “left-brain” approach. With a graduate student, he replicated the famous “Pepsi Challenge” and found no relationship between the drink selected in the test and the drinks that subjects actually purchased in the stores. Though Montague’s research is thorough, his explanations vary from wry to impenetrably abstract, and the definition of value remains elusive. Value may be a burst of dopamine, a goal created from a pattern of inputs from the environment, an abstract emotion such as trust, or anything in-between. The essence of Montague’s work is that biological machines assign a value “tag” to each piece of data that they process. Whether tiny bacteria or human being, this is what differentiates us from the machines we create. The “soul” of the human machine may be the sum of these value tags. The answer to the titular question is itself a value judgment based on individual experience.
An analysis that will appeal more to engineers than to behaviorists and psychologists: informative, but with a relatively narrow audience.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-94982-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
As much a work of philosophy as of physics and full of insights for readers willing to work hard.
Undeterred by a subject difficult to pin down, Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, 2017, etc.) explains his thoughts on time.
Other scientists have written primers on the concept of time for a general audience, but Rovelli, who also wrote the bestseller Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, adds his personal musings, which are astute and rewarding but do not make for an easy read. “We conventionally think of time,” he writes, “as something simple and fundamental that flows uniformly, independently from everything else, uniformly from the past to the future, measured by clocks and watches. In the course of time, the events of the universe succeed each other in an orderly way: pasts, presents, futures. The past is fixed, the future open….And yet all of this has turned out to be false.” Rovelli returns again and again to the ideas of three legendary men. Aristotle wrote that things change continually. What we call “time” is the measurement of that change. If nothing changed, time would not exist. Newton disagreed. While admitting the existence of a time that measures events, he insisted that there is an absolute “true time” that passes relentlessly. If the universe froze, time would roll on. To laymen, this may seem like common sense, but most philosophers are not convinced. Einstein asserted that both are right. Aristotle correctly explained that time flows in relation to something else. Educated laymen know that clocks register different times when they move or experience gravity. Newton’s absolute exists, but as a special case in Einstein’s curved space-time. According to Rovelli, our notion of time dissolves as our knowledge grows; complex features swell and then retreat and perhaps vanish entirely. Furthermore, equations describing many fundamental physical phenomena don’t require time.
As much a work of philosophy as of physics and full of insights for readers willing to work hard.Pub Date: May 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1610-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that...
Nicely textured account of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared.
Disaster movies have depicted the State of Liberty poking out from the ground and empty cities overgrown with trees and vines, but what would really happen if, for one reason or another, every single one of us vanished from the planet? Building on a Discover magazine article, Weisman (Journalism/Univ. of Arizona; An Echo in My Blood, 1999, etc.) addresses the question. There are no shocks here—nature goes on. But it is unsettling to observe the processes. Drawing on interviews with architects, biologists, engineers, physicists, wildlife managers, archaeologists, extinction experts and many others willing to conjecture, Weisman shows how underground water would destroy city streets, lightning would set fires, moisture and animals would turn temperate-zone suburbs into forests in 500 years and 441 nuclear plants would overheat and burn or melt. “Watch, and maybe learn,” writes the author. Many of his lessons come from past developments, such as the sudden disappearance of the Maya 1,600 years ago and the evolution of animals and humans in Africa. Bridges will fall, subways near fault lines in New York and San Francisco will cave in, glaciers will wipe away much of the built world and scavengers will clean our human bones within a few months. Yet some things will persist after we’re gone: bronze sculptures, Mount Rushmore (about 7.2 millions years, given granite’s erosion rate of one inch every 10,000 years), particles of everything made of plastic, manmade underground malls in Montreal and Moscow. In Hawaii, lacking predators, cows and pigs will rule.
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that nature and humans need to maintain to survive.Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-34729-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
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