The contents of this file pretty much copy the data that can be obtained from http://goodreads.com/manpages Though I’ll certainly post some reviews here that I won’t post to the goodreads, so feel free to follow this gist if you are interested in the aggregated information on what I read. I have started that log at April 20th and plan to continue writing it for as long as I read books. No spoilers. I’m not reading much lately :(
I have always been interested in the modern anthropology, but all the publications I used to read were either childish as hell (that’s the pitfall they tend to fall when trying to popularize the science) or outdated (stating that Lucy is the missed part of the Evolution chain and all that bullshit) What’s good about Markov’s book that it covers whole range of anthropology from the modern point of view, mentioning the ideas behind the Evolution principles that are proposed by the real world scientists.
It gives a gentle yet detailed overview of modern anthropology and tells the reader about some great hypothesis about where we came from and — more importantly — how did it happen. It also weaves some misconceptions about the basic idea of evolution. And after all, it’s a great popular scientific book released in 2011 in Russia. That makes me believe that we’ll see some more mainstream scientific stuff from there.
The author said in the very beginning of the book that he’ll try his best to be objective and hopes that the reader will understand him if he gives more time to one theory than to another based on his preferences. Well, sexual selection theory was dominating all the way in the book. Also the fragmentation of text and the elegency of speech was not that great, but that’s not the thing to spoil the fun of learning anthropology.
The more post-human dreams I have, the more I watnt to actually write some code to implement Knowledge Base-based AI. I have my thoughts and ideas, but I want to get into the ideas of great minds, such as Greg Egan. I wasn’t disappointed at all, the book is very good indeed. Both the plot and the its philosophical counterpart — the concept of the book. The book touches many things that interest any person who thinks about VR/AI. Even the questions that one naturally doesn’t ask oneself like «is there a continuation of a discrete perception?» answering it Egan reveals his very own — as fantastic as quantum physics — theory, called «Dust Theory».
It is mind-blowing and an absolute must-read for any computer geek.
The book has three storylines. It’s not appropriate to say that one or another plot thread is obsolete, but I’d say that Thomas Riemann’s story is way weaker than others.
Thanks a lot for the explanation. I love reading books and the fact that you shared your reading experience is incredibly valuable to me. One of the most recent books that really impressed me was No Country for Old Men, which I found out about using the page https://paperap.com/free-papers/no-country-for-old-men/ Just like in the novel , the film is about a thrilling, adventurous, secret drug dealing plan that goes wrong and a game of cat and mouse between the three main characters.