How the Mind Works

Of the books I've read this year, the fiction ones that stand out to me would be: 1. The entire Sprawl Trilogy by Gibson, and the entire Bridge Trilogy, also by Gibson. The former I'd read before (multiple times) while the latter I had not read all the way through until now. Neuromancer I've read probably 7 or 8 times total in my life by now. I'm not as crazy about Gibson's later stuff, but the Sprawl and Bridge books are great. 2. The rest of the HHGTTG "trilogy" besides the first book. I'd read the first book a couple of years ago but never got around to reading the rest until this year. Note that when I say "the rest" I'm excluding that one book that was written by another author after Douglas Adams' passing. I may still read it one day, but I'm not in any hurry to do so. In terms of non-fiction: Real-World Reasoning: Toward Scalable, Uncertain Spatiotemporal, Contextual and Causal Inference by Ben Goertzel, Nil Geisweiller, and Lucio Coelho is the stand-out of the lot. How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker and How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? by John R Anderson are also worthy of a mention.

I'm working my way through Steven Pinkers "How The Mind Works", it's a really interesting perspective on the brain and how it theoretically might produce human intelligence and consciousness. I didn't expect to be exercising my CS background while reading it, but it's very heavy on CS techniques and jargon despite being a psychology book (the author spends a solid chunk of the first chapter walking the reading through creating what turns out to basically be Prolog). On the fiction side, I'm on my third Discworld book and loving them (Men At Arms).

Yes! Would highly recommend that one or 'How the Mind Works' by Pinker. I'm constantly blown away by how few people are aware of modern cognitive science and just how much we DO understand about the operation of the mind. It's also super useful if you do any kind design, UX, marketing or interact with other humans.

Reading 'How Mind Works'. Do you think his proposal matches the recent discoveries in neuroscience? Till now(120 pages in) he seems to be an evangelical of Computational theory of mind

The best book I read in 2009 was The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It's surprisingly accessible (I've never taken a biology class), and talks a lot about evolutionary game theory which I found fascinating. Some other books I read last year: How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. It was a great book, Pinker's writing is accessible and entertaining. Much more so than On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. More with Less: Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight by Paul Ciotti. I really enjoyed this one, it was the story of the first team to cross the English channel with human-powered flight. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. I liked this one better than Gladwell's other books. There is less theorizing and arguing a point and more telling stories, which is what Gladwell excels at. The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. If you are patient with what is sometimes (in my humble opinion) pointlessly arguing semantics, some of the sections are interesting.

How about... How the mind works (Pinker) Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Pirsig) Sophie's World (Gaarder)