]]> http://www.riehler.com/what-innovation/feed/ 0 http://www.riehler.com/personal-space-around-the-world/ http://www.riehler.com/personal-space-around-the-world/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000 Richard Riehle http://www.riehler.com/?p=3688 There are some interesting aspects to this idea. First off, I can find plenty of information regarding more abstract ideas such as total population divided by area to create a way to see population density from a (virtual) personal perspective. This could be seen to lead towards the real personal attitudes and cultural underpayments which lead to personal boundaries we have with space.

One of the most interesting aspects to this measurable phenomenon is that there is so little to find online, other than some tepid allusions to the notion that there are cultural differences in how large or small these boundaries are. You would think that this is a topic which would lead to empirical research, but I could find none…

There are some definitions, from modern anthropology, but no studies, just allusions to related or complementary topics (results only, not research). 

Interesting…

Proxemics      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxemics

Cultural Factors

Hall notes that different cultures maintain different standards of personal space. The Lewis Model of Cultural Types indicates the variations in personal interactive qualities, indicating three poles: “linear-active” cultures, which are characterized as cool and decisive (Germany, Norway, USA), “reactive” cultures, characterized as accommodating and non-confrontational (Vietnam, China, Japan), and “multi-active” cultures, characterized as warm and impulsive (Brazil, Mexico, Italy). Realizing and recognizing these cultural differences improves cross-cultural understanding, and helps eliminate discomfort people may feel if the interpersonal distance is too large (“stand-offish”) or too small (intrusive).

Personal space around the world        http://flowingdata.com/2013/04/11/personal-space-per-person-in-various-countries/

By NATHAN YAU

How much space is there per person in different countries? Andrew Bergmann for CNNMoney took a look.

Population density measures the amount of people in a given area, generally per square kilometer or mile. It’s difficult to get a clear image of what these vast spaces actually represent, so I thought that it would be interesting to flip the equation on its head and figure out how much space there is on average per person.

Personal Space      http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/personal-space/

What is Personal Space?      http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-personal-space.htm

Problem with Close-Talking? Blame the Brain      http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1919910,00.html

By John Cloud

Why is it so uncomfortable to stand really close to a stranger? Sure, there are the potentially icky things. Sometimes an elevator car is so crowded that you can smell a fellow rider’s shampoo or chewing gum (or worse). But even when a stranger is perfectly groomed, it’s usually a bit revolting to be pressed against him in public. Why?

Evolution seems to have programmed this discomfort via a brain structure called the amygdalae, a pair of almond-shaped brain regions deep within each temporal lobe that control fear and the processing of emotion. It’s your amygdalae that keep you from getting so close to another person that he could easily reach out, gouge an eye, and then drag your woman off by her hair.

I’m pondering some way to present a number of links related to an initiative to build a starship within 100 years. In some ways this project resembles the 10,000 year clock, in that it has a long timeframe outside of what we would normally consider to be within the range of most specific human endeavors.  

I ran across a vaguely related project, a private enterprise voyage to Mars, and an ongoing effort to create a real colony on that planet. It relates, not only because it is another space voyage, but one of the links related to ‘the 100 year starship’ made a vague allusion to the Mars effort, something to the effect that a mere trip to Mars would be cowards excuse, when confronted with voyaging to the stars…

The more I thought about this effort, the more I realized that when I was young (early teens) I expected an effort like this to take place in the farther reaches of the future. Now, decades later, an initiative to make a starship within a century would be in keeping with that early adolescent schedule. 

So, it seems that I am perplexed only because I have gotten older. One mitigating aspect to my quandary is that since the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986, it always appeared to me (and many others) that NASA was passively relinquishing the reins to space travel, and that the Apollo Moon project was a once in a lifetime experience. 

Of course, this century long project is only being presented as a possibility. We are at what must be the .0005% point in the project, and drawing any more conclusions about the real possibility to make any progress is, for now, missing the point. Right now, this project serves mostly as a focus of dreams and ideas. a project like this also summons up plenty of questions (to draw me into this 

How to build a starship        http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/deep/how-to-build-a-starship#slide-1

By Michael Belfiore

In late 2012 scientists, researchers, and optimists gathered in Houston for the second annual 100 Year Starship Symposium, a Pentagon and NASA-supported­ project to promote the technology needed to construct an interstellar spaceship. Inspired by the audacious enterprise, PM envisioned a spacecraft ready to take 200 people on a 90-year trip to Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star 4.24 light-years away. Astronomers are finding more potentially habitable planets in the universe—humanity just has to figure out how to get to them.

Faster than light drive     http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-03/faster-light-drive?dom=fb&src=SOC

Space travel: Finding the technology to traverse the stars    http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/06/science/la-sci-100-year-starship-20110806

By Amina Khan

What will it take to build a spaceship capable of traveling to the stars? And what if you wanted it to be ready to launch in just 100 years?

It may sound like the premise of a science fiction show or reality TV series. But these are serious questions being asked by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research-and-development arm of the U.S. military.

This fall, DARPA intends to award up to $500,000 in seed money to a group that proves it would do the best job of developing the necessary technologies — whatever they may be — for interstellar travel. The proposals had better be good — if none of them are up to snuff, the agency won’t hand out the money. To stimulate discussion on the research possibilities, DARPA officials will hold a symposium that brings together astrophysicists, engineers and even sci-fi writers so they can brainstorm what it would take to make this starship enterprise a success.

Let’s build a Starship! At last.     http://maxkaizen.com/how-to-build-a-starship/

By MAXIMILLIAN KAIZEN  

How long can our bodies – and sanity – survive beyond the comforting tug of Earth? Thousands of research projects, like the Tomatosphere, are finding how to stretch more than just our own genes beyond their current evolutionary bounds.

Cranking the limits beyond that is The 100 Year Starship, a jointly funded project of DARPA (the good folks who birthed the Internet) and NASA. It’s a call to our collective ingenuity and utterly bonkers audacity. Interstellar flight.
A global collaborative will endeavor to make it so.

100 year starship      http://100yss.org/

Reality check

The concept of humans traveling to other star systems may appear fantastical, but no more so than the fantasy of reaching the Moon was in the days of H. G. Wells. “The First Men in the Moon” was published considerably less than 100 years before humans landed on the Moon (1901 vs. 1969), and the rapidity of scientific and technological advances was not nearly as great as it is today. The truth is that the best ideas sound crazy at first. And then there comes a time when we can’t imagine a world without them.

The 40-Year Itch      http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/10/darpa_s_100_year_starship_symposium_alien_religion_solar_propuls.html

By Konstantin Kakaes 

The fastest a person has ever traveled is just 24,791 miles per hour. The three men of Apollo 10 went that fast on their way back from the moon in 1969.

The fastest a man-made object has ever traveled out of the solar system is 39,000 miles per hour—the speed with which Voyager 1, a space probe launched in 1977. 

David Neyland wants to beat these dusty, decades-old records. Neyland is a tall man, with the bushy beard of a frontier prophet and the measured tones of a mid-ranking bureaucrat. He is both of these things. The head of the tactical-technology office at the military research agency DARPA, he convened a group of more than 1,000 at the Orlando Hilton last weekend to strategize about the next great era in space travel. The mission of the 100-Year Starship Public Symposium: to set about organizing a century-long effort to send a spaceship to another star. Neyland opened the conference to the public, drawing sci-fi fans and space geeks along with professional scientists. Ph.D. or not, all were frustrated with the lack of progress in space. As one wag in the audience would say, we should be having this meeting at the lunar Hilton. There was a sense that, for the just over 40 years since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, nothing new has been done.

What Would a Starship Actually Look Like?     http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/deep/what-would-a-starship-actually-look-like-12869471

By Erik Sofge

Imagine a starship—a vessel capable of ferrying human beings from one solar system to another. Would it have wings and a cockpit? Or would it look like an aircraft carrier hauled out into the void and fitted with flame-belching rockets and glowing ion drives? 

Science fiction has offered us all sorts of visions of interstellar spacecraft, from avian-inspired Klingon birds of prey to hulking masses such as the Borg cube. In general, sci-fi leans toward sleek designs with lines borrowed from planes or cars, since those are the kinds of looks we’ve been conditioned to think of as “fast.” But if there’s no air in space, why make things aerodynamic? Does it matter what a spacecraft looks like? 

Yes, it turns out, and it depends upon what kind of space travel you’re looking to undertake. The reality of starship design is more complex than anything Hollywood has dreamed up and implanted in our collective unconsciousness. 

Not Such a Stretch to Reach for the Stars     http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/science/space/18starship.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

By KENNETH CHANG

“The space program, any space program, needs a dream,” said one participant, Joseph Breeden. “If there are no dreamers, we’ll never get anywhere.”

It was Dr. Breeden who offered the idea of an engineless starship.

A physicist by training, he had most recently devised equations that forecast to banks how much they were going to lose on their consumer loans.

From his doctoral thesis, Dr. Breeden remembered that in a chaotic gravitational dance, stars are sometimes ejected at high speeds. The same effect, he believes, could propel starships.

First, find an asteroid in an elliptical orbit that passes close to the Sun. Second, put a starship in orbit around the asteroid. If the asteroid could be captured into a new orbit that clings close to the Sun, the starship would be flung on an interstellar trajectory, perhaps up to a tenth of the speed of light.

“The chaotic dynamics of those two allow all the energy of one to be transferred to the other,” said Dr. Breeden, who came toting copies of a paper describing the technique. “It’s a unique type of gravity assist.”

Icarus Interstellar      http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/

It’s surprising how many seemingly undecipherable activities and perceptions we have in our day to day lives. Some are ‘big picture’ or seemingly pretentious (aesthetics, ‘what is beauty?’, et.al.), and some are rather insidious. Music is a good example. We all think we ‘know’ what it is, rhythm, harmony, melody… But we seem to never ask the how and when questions though…

Music can gave a profound effect upon emotions, mood, and stress levels. It can evoke recollections, memories, and remembrances from your past. In some situations there can be periods of deep immersion, it can create a sense of solidarity and ‘kinship’ with strangers…merely by listening together. 

Music is also mysterious because it is so ineffable. Beyond trying to figure out what takes place in the brain, the very act of listening or playing music leaves no mark, it is gone like smoke…

I guess that it is no surprise that there is mysticism and mystery associated with many styles, genres, and artists in this realm.

Why Your Brain Craves Music

By Michael D. Lemonick

If making music isn’t the most ancient of human activities, it’s got to be pretty close. Melody and rhythm can trigger feelings from sadness to serenity to joy to awe; they can bring memories from childhood vividly back to life. The taste of a tiny cake may have inspired Marcel Proust to pen the seven-volume novel Remembrance of Things Past, but fire up the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” and you’ll throw the entire baby-boom generation into a Woodstock-era reverie.

Effects of Music on the Mind

By Manali Oak 

The study of how music affects the mind has been a subject of interest for many. The interconnection between music and the physical and mental health of human beings has been researched on since long. Research has concluded that music does have positive effects on our mind. It has the power of healing certain ailments. Indian classical music has been found to have the strongest healing powers. Music has a calming effect on the mind. It is known to speed the recovery of health ailments. It helps fight anxiety and has a soothing effect on the brain.

The power of music

By Oliver Sacks

What an odd thing it is to see an entire species—billions of people—playing with listening to meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call ‘music.’ This, at least, was one of the things about human beings that puzzled the highly cerebral alien beings, the Overlords, in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End. Curiosity brings them down to the Earth’s surface to attend a concert; they listen politely and patiently, and at the end, congratulate the composer on his ‘great ingenuity’—while still finding the entire business unintelligible. They cannot think what goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music, because nothing goes on within them. They, themselves, as a species, lack music.

Clarke likes to embody questions in fables, and the Overlords’ bewilderment makes one wonder, indeed, what it is about music that gives it such peculiar power over us, a power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force.

Music’s Effects on the Mind Remain Mysterious

By Wynne Parry and LiveScience 

While jazz musician Vijay Iyer played a piece on the piano, he wore an expression of intense concentration. Afterward, everyone wanted to know: What was going on in his head?

The way this music is often taught, “they tell you, you must not be thinking when you are playing,” Iyer said after finishing his performance of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” a piece that requires improvisation. “I think that is an impoverished view of what thought is. … Thought is distributed through all of our actions.”

Iyer’s performance opened a panel discussion of music and the mind at the New York Academy of Sciences on Wednesday.

Music elicits “a splash” of activity in many parts of the brain, said panelist Jamshed Bharucha, a neuroscientist and musician, after moderator Steve Paulson of the public radio program “To the Best of Our Knowledge” asked about the brain’s response to music.

As you might see from this blog, I find ideas and questions quite interesting, and I try to capture as many as I can, whenever and wherever I am. A tool which helps this what is known as a ‘spark file’ an idea I got from Steven Johnson’s article on The Writer’s Room. The idea is to create a simple and easy to access text file where you add ideas, thoughts, questions, arguments, and anything else you find worth saving for later. 

This is one of the big reasons I keep my iPhone next to my bed… I sometimes record ideas I have which came from my dreams.

A ‘spark file’ can be done digitally, or you can keep a small notebook and pen with you, almost anything works. The real trick is to push to develop some discipline to get recording these sorts of ideas to become a habit. With that done, this little text file will start to get larger…

Keeping a notebook in the digital age

What is a Spark File?

The Spark File

How to Create and Use a Spark File

Consider what curiosity is, and how it relates to intelligence. Curiosity might not be the only exemplar of intelligence, but it is a part of personality that represents an impulsion to keep searching for things. There are many specific aspects of intelligence which people are attracted to. To be able to deal with a great deal of ambiguity, and to hold countervailing thoughts in one’s mind at the same time is often considered to be a sign of higher intelligence. Obviously, accumulating a great deal of knowledge would signify some other aspects of being ‘smart.’ Being able to deal with brute force mental computation, gymnastics, and some spacial manipulation are all hallmarks of intelligence (according to IQ tests). 

One of the founding principles I have at my blog is questions are often more important than answers, it represents an ongoing process, and that answers merely kill the action. This has led me to broader (open ended) questions, and curiosity is an underlying focus to this whole endeavor. 

I have links which attempt to define what curiosity is, and what are some practical reasons why curiosity has real value…

The Dead-Curious Cat and the Joyless Immortal

By VENKAT

Curiosity does not seem to be a fundamental drive, unlike what I am told are the  three basic biological drives (seeking pleasure, avoiding pain and conserving energy), so it is probably derived. Curiosity requires a certain energy surplus, since its visible signature is a restless dissipation of energy, but it does not seem directly motivated by energy conservation concerns. So is it derived from pleasure-seeking or pain-avoidance or some mix of the two? Does that make a difference?

We instinctively associate idleness with curiosity. It might even make sense to define idleness as the state of having more energy than is needed for the pursuit of immediate ends. In such a state, humans more naturally dissipate than conserve. Saving is a learned behavior, waste is natural.

Mathematicians and engineers sometimes say they try to be creatively lazy by finding shortcuts or formulas that automate tedious tasks. But a little thought immediately suggests that is not energy-saving behavior or efficiency seeking. This is boredom-avoidance.

The fruits of boredom avoidance may be cashed out in the form of increased efficiency, but energy efficiency is not what motivates it.

So what is boredom avoidance?

Boredom is partly a kind of pain, but I’ve concluded that it is more than that. Boredom is also natural curiosity curbed. To view it only as pain is reductive. The natural state of a living human might not be a state of restful equanimity. It might be a state of casual ongoing exploration of the unknown.

4 Reasons Why Curiosity is Important and How to Develop It

BY DONALD LATUMAHINA

But why is curiosity so important? Here are four reasons:

• It makes your mind active instead of passive
  Curious people always ask questions and search for answers in their minds. Their minds are always active. Since the mind is like a muscle which becomes stronger through continual exercise, the mental exercise caused by curiosity makes your mind stronger and stronger.
• It makes your mind observant of new ideas
  When you are curious about something, your mind expects and anticipates new ideas related to it. When the ideas come they will soon be recognized. Without curiosity, the ideas may pass right in front of you and yet you miss them because your mind is not prepared to recognize them. Just think, how many great ideas may have lost due to lack of curiosity?
• It opens up new worlds and possibilities
  By being curious you will be able to see new worlds and possibilities which are normally not visible. They are hidden behind the surface of normal life, and it takes a curious mind to look beneath the surface and discover these new worlds and possibilities.
• It brings excitement into your life
  The life of curious people is far from boring. It’s neither dull nor routine. There are always new things that attract their attention, there are always new ‘toys’ to play with. Instead of being bored, curious people have an adventurous life.

These are the biggest numbers in the universe

By ALASDAIR WILKINS 

In any event, Graham’s number is the upper limit for this minimum number of dimensions. And just how big is this particular upper bound? Well, let’s go back to 3^^^^3, a number so larger that we can only understand the procedure behind it in the vaguest of senses. Now, instead of simply jumping up one more level to 3^^^^^3, we’re going to consider the number 3^^….^^3, in which there are 3^^^^3 arrows between those two threes. At this point, we’re far beyond even the tiniest possible comprehension of what a number like this is, or even how you would go about calculating it.

Now repeat that process 62 more times.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Graham’s number, a number that is about 64 orders of magnitude past the point of human comprehension. This is a number that is so much greater than any number you could possibly imagine – hell, it’s much larger than any infinity that you could ever hope to imagine – that it simply defies even the most abstract of descriptions.

But here’s the weird thing. Because Graham’s number is basically just a bunch of 3′s multiplied together, that means that we can know some of its properties without actually calculating the whole thing. We can’t represent Graham’s number with any familiar notation – even if we used the entire universe to write it down – but I can tell you right now what the last twelve digits of Graham’s Number are: 262,464,195,387. And that’s nothing – we know at least the last 500 digits of Graham’s number.

7 Numbers That Are Just as Cool as Pi

By GEORGE DVORSKY

Graham’s Number

Simply put, this is the largest useful (i.e. non-arbitrary) number known to mathematicians. But it’s an astoundingly large number. Named after Ronald Graham, it’s the upper bound to a certain question that involves Ramsey Theory (a branch of math that studies the conditions under which order must appear). Consequently, it’s the biggest number used for a serious mathematical proof.

This number’s “root” arises from the extreme addition, multiplication, and powering of threes. It’s subsequently a very big power of three, and the number itself is considerably larger than a googolplex. In fact, Graham’s number is so mindboggingly huge that it cannot be expressed using conventional notation of powers, and even powers of powers. It’s so large, that if all the material in the universe were turned into pen and ink it would not be enough to write the number down. Consequently, mathematicians use a special notation devised by Donald Knuth to express it.

It’s so big that it’s physically impossible for our brains to comprehend. AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky put it this way:

Graham’s number is far beyond my ability to grasp. I can describe it, but I cannot properly appreciate it…My sense of awe when I first encountered this number was beyond words. It was the sense of looking upon something so much larger than the world inside my head that my conception of the Universe was shattered and rebuilt to fit. All theologians should face a number like that, so they can properly appreciate what they invoke by talking about the “infinite” intelligence of God.

Interestingly, if not ironically, the lower bound to the Ramsey problem that gave birth to that number — rather than the upper bound — is probably six. Note: A reader alerted me to this study, which suggests a lower bound raised to 11, and then to 13.

Taking the time to do an internet ‘detox’ is one which always has been lurking in the shadows, I say shadows, because there is an amusing irony to this idea..I it is one of the few which can’t effectively be covered online. Sure, there are plenty of sites, which present a trite list of things to do, as if it weren’t obvious, and then plunge into personal anecdotal experiences they may have had… This is quite common on personal blogs…

The broad idea of taking the time to step back and to gain some perspective, to take the time to ‘cleanse one’s pores’ is valid in many areas of life. But for many, there is an insidious aspect to their online habits, it is possible to become habituated to using Facebook to the degree that I can take up too much of your life. It’s possible to become addicted to many of the tools, information, or media that the internet supplies. 

Most of this stuff is quite benign, but it is certainly worth taking the time to see it for yourself.

I’ve seen some articles covering some related ideas, such as the quick access to Google search has had an appreciable  effect upon our memory (why use memory, when the answer is at your fingertips…). In the short term, there is certainly utility in having this sort of tool available, but over time, I wonder if there are emergent problems with this form of laziness brought on by information abundance…

All of this comes down to some questions that you need to answer for yourself. The idea of taking some time off to gauge your ‘need’ to be online might be a game changer…

Internet Sabbatical 

Internet Addiction Test

Little green men from mars have been staples in the world of Science Fiction (OK, maybe hack sci-fi…). Superficially, this idea, that we are not alone, is filled with plenty of fodder for stories. If you read any science journalism, you can see the hint of this presumption. We seem to really want to have a universe with others in it…

Of course, this may be more a part of our psychology, than whether there is anything out there.

The converse to this trope is a messier one to consider. If, for the sake of argument, we can deduce that we are alone, that we are unique in the universe, what does this do to how we think? If we are unique, it puts some philosophical views into stark relief.

I could imagine that this would be seen as bolster to many traditional religious views, it would play havoc with many sci-fi conventions, and for the remaining multitudes, it would have as much impact as it would with gazelles…

Are We Alone In The Universe?

By NPR/TED STAFF

Are we alone in the universe? Alien Life, Alpha Centauri & The Fermi Paradox

By David Brin 

The Fermi Paradox refers to a question posed by the great physicist Enrico Fermi in the 1940s, demanding: “If it seems so likely the universe may host other life forms, how come we haven’t seen any signs?“  Not just of radio beacons, but of mighty structures that our own descendants might someday build out there in space. Or leakage from chatty commerce between civilizations. Or indeed, any trace that the Earth was visited during the 2 billion years that it was “prime real estate” with an oxygen atmosphere, but nothing higher than slime molds to defend it.

It is a fascinating topic . . . perhaps the fascinating topic. For it takes you from pondering the birth and death of stars and planets to the dynamics of atmospheres and the potential origins or life . . . to intelligence (what is it and how many varieties can it come in?) . . . all the way to the stark possibility that few technological species survive their tense adolescence, attempting to cross a minefield of potentially lethal errors, from nuclear war or designer plagues to ecological devastation or cultural stagnation . . .

Are we alone in the universe?

Answered by Jill Tarter, Charles F. Bolden, and 2 others

It’ll be a threshold of pain. At some point, humanity will say, “We’ve tried and we’ve tried and we’ve tried again. Haven’t been successful, so maybe it’s time to accept that extraordinary conclusion that in this one instance we are the only example.” In physics, as we study the universe, we usually count one to infinity, so when you find something new out there you don’t know whether it’s singular, but the moment you find a second one you know there are many.

So we’re sitting here with a singularity, a single case, and number 2 is all important because as soon as we find the second we’ll know that life — intelligent and technology-using life, because that’s what we will have found — is ubiquitous.

Are We Alone In The Universe? infographic by visually.

It’s always a wonderful experience to find a great book. In realm of nonfiction, I’ve found three which fit together in some obvious and some strange ways. There should be some calendar pages spinning as I hearken back to the late 1970s. Back then I found, through a review in Psychology Today, a fascinating book by Julian Jaynes. The title is rather off-putting to many, so for now, I’ll merely allude to the book. The premise, from Dr. Jaynes was that what we perceive as consciousness is a rather new phenomenon. In tribal societies (i.e. Bronze age, at best) we humans were more like networks of functioning schizophrenics (quite literally). The logic and arguments he used in his book about the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (hint, this is part of the title) were very well stated. This book about the Origin of Consciousness (the other half of the title) was seen as rather heretical, but it couldn’t be dismissed, if only because these matters are rarely provable.

I loved this book because it presented ideas, perspectives, and thought directions that I had never considered.

In some ways this first of three books led me, and prepared me to consider Douglas Hofstadter’s classic Godel, Escher, and Bach: a Golden Braid. This book dealt with, not the origins of consciousness, but rather many subtle arguments to try to define what it is. Of course, this leads to a book which is almost impossible to define in any deeper and better sense than the thumbnail I just gave. This book is a masterpiece in how to (attempt to) define something by deeply examining what its boundaries are. If consciousness, or anything else as ineffable as this can’t be adequately defined, the first place to go would be to look where it is, and where it isn’t… 

In troubleshooting or sleuthing, this is an obvious method, but Hofstadter made some many subtle and interlocking thought experiments that are still a fast way to get intellectually dizzy.This book burrowed deeply into my head (in a good way, not the bacterial infection way…).

I’ve heard that this book is on more bookshelves of scientists than nearly any others… If you find consciousness something worthy of study, this is a great start, it is also a great example of how to think…

Guy Deutscher’s book on language, and some of the competing ideas are in the realm of linguistics completes this trio for me. Through many illustrations and ideas, he brings us (subtly, but continuously) to consider some of the underpinnings in what language has been and what it might be.  An example would be his overview of the study of words used to denote colors. This is a topic that sounds more than a little mundane, but it will open up your mind… This book connects with my other two favorites, by referencing consciousness, only by it’s most obvious exemplar…speech.

So, it is always a wonderful thing to find a great book, but finding three which work together, may be better…

Julian Jaynes

Julian Jaynes’ Theory of the Evolution of Human Consciousness

Consciousness In The Cosmos: Perspective of Mind: Julian Jaynes

By Dr. Khalid Sohail 

Jaynes discussed that animal consciousness passed through the stage of the bicameral mind in which humans had Half God/Half Human consciousness, before there was a development of the full human consciousness. During this phase of a few thousand years, human minds routinely heard the voices of gods, angels, spirits and their dead relatives. During that time, the right brain was more active than the left brain. The right brain that heard God’s voice was the executive half, and the left brain, the follower half, received those directions from the right brain and acted on those orders without questioning them. That was the time human minds had not yet developed the capacity to question and challenge. During that phase of evolution, gods were more important than humans. The bicameral mind was not only reflected in the personal lives of people but was also present in their social lives. In bicameral cultures, God was at the centre of people’s lives. In many such cultures God’s house, whether a mosque or a church, a temple or a synagogue, was built in the centre of the town, and people built their houses all around it. Even in people’s homes, humans built a room for God and put different idols there to represent different gods. In bicameral cultures, gods were at the centre and humans were at the periphery.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind [Kindle Edition]

Douglas Hofstadter

Book review: “Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid”

By Eli Bendersky 

What is it, then? Well, I feel that the single most important theme of this book, it’s ultimate goal, is to show that “meaningful” consciousness can emerge from “meaningless” formal systems, with very simple rules. That complexity can
rise from trivial governing laws of small-scale systems.

Hofstadter artfully approaches this topic from multiple angles simultaneously. First, formal systems are introduced. These systems are “typographical” – i.e. their rules and
forms can be expressed on paper. This is essential to make the author’s point, as he develops these systems on the pages of his book. 

A discarded review of ‘Godel, Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid’

By lukeprog

Recently I began to write a review of Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach, until I realized that the book defied summary more than all the other books I had previously said “defied summary.” Thus, I gave up on reviewing the book after not too long. I present my discarded review below just in case it motivates someone else to pick up this masterful tome and let it enrich their life. 

Of Hofstadter’s GEB, Eliezer once wrote:

This is simply the best and most beautiful book ever written by the human species…

I’m not alone in this opinion, by the way. For one thing, Gödel, Escher, Bach won a Pulitzer Prize. Or just pick a random scientist and ask ver what vis favorite book is, and 1 out of 5 will say: “Gödel, Escher, Bach.” No other book even comes close.

It is saddening to contemplate that every day, 150,000 humans die without reading what is indisputably one of the greatest achievements of our species. Don’t let it happen to you.

Sure, if you’re just an average person, you might not understand everything in this book – but when you’re done reading, you won’t be an average person any more.

It’s easy to see GEB’s effect on Eliezer’s writing: the “concrete, then abstract” pattern, the koans, the puzzles, the conversational coverage of technical concepts in math and computer science…it’s all here in spades in GEB.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [Paperback] 

Guy Deutscher

THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

Deutscher enjoys himself in this romp through research and theory. Although Hebrew is his native language, he uses English artfully—and playfully—to make points, provide examples and slay sacred cattle

 To illustrate, he examines three major concepts: color (why are Homer’s color descriptions so odd?), orientation (some languages identify locations that are egocentric, others geocentric, others both) and gender (some languages employ gender heavily, others little or not at all). The author swiftly summarizes the theory and research in each area, then shows that for each, current thinking seems to have settled on a fundamental principle: “culture enjoys freedom within restraints.” He does not accept the notion of “universal grammar” fiercely advanced by Noam Chomsky, nor does he believe that culture determines all. He also takes Steven Pinker to task, declaring that his “facts are hardly quibbleable with [but] his environmental determinism is unconvincing.”

Guy Deutscher on ‘Through the Language Glass’

By Mark de Silva

Have you ever asked someone if the hot water is in the uphill tap? Maybe you’ve warned a friend of the fire ants north of his foot. Or perhaps you’ve merely suggested, with all delicacy, that your date might like to brush the cake crumbs from her mountainward cheek. Doesn’t make any sense? Maybe that’s because you don’t speak Tzeltal, Guugu Yimithirr, or Balinese. InThrough the Language Glass, Guy Deutscher discusses these and other differences in thought and perception occasioned by the world’s many tongues.

Words Cannot Express

By DEREK BICKERTON

Deutscher starts with the puzzling fact that many languages lack words for what (to English speakers) seem to be basic colors. For anyone interested in the development of ideas, Deutscher’s first four chapters make fascinating reading. Did you know that the British statesman William Gladstone was also an accomplished Greek scholar who, noting among other things the surprising absence of any term for “blue” in classical Greek texts, theorized that full-color vision had not yet developed in humans when those texts were composed?

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages [Kindle Edition]