Reddit reviews How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

Ishmael - If you ever wondered what it would be like to be a telepathic gorilla, this will probably give you the closest answer.

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking - The INTP Toolbox.

The Willpower Instinct - Because we all know we could use a bit more of it around here...

Emotional Vampires - A survival guide to protect your Fe

How To Create A Mind - Since it's ultimately the only thing we really seem to care about, it's interesting to think how we could theoretically create a 'backup' for it eventually

The Talent Code - In case you haven't quite figured out how to go about mastering skills yet.

I don't know who is doing PR for this book but they are amazing. It's not a good book.

My review on Amazon:

> The most interesting thing about this book is how Bostrom managed to write so much while saying so little. Seriously, there is very little depth. He presents an idea out of nowhere, says a little about it, and then says [more research needs to be done]. He does this throughout the entire book. I give it two stars because, while extremely diluted, he does present an interesting idea every now and then.

Read this or this or this instead.

Most of my stuff is going to focus around consciousness and AI.

BOOKS

Ray Kurzweil - How to Create a Mind - Ray gives an intro to neuroscience and suggests ways we might build intelligent machines. This is a fun and easy book to read.

Ray Kurzweil - TRANSCEND - Ray and Dr. Terry Grossman tell you how to live long enough to live forever. This is a very inspirational book.

*I'd skip Kurzweil's older books. The newer ones largely cover the stuff in the older ones anyhow.

Jeff Hawkins - On Intelligence - Engineer and Neuroscientist, Jeff Hawkins, presents a comprehensive theory of intelligence in the neocortex. He goes on to explain how we can build intelligent machines and how they might change the world. He takes a more grounded, but equally interesting, approach to AI than Kurzweil.

Stanislas Dehaene - Consciousness and the Brain - Someone just recommended this book to me so I have not had a chance to read the whole thing. It explains new methods researchers are using to understand what consciousness is.

ONLINE ARTICLES

George Dvorsky - Animal Uplift - We can do more than improve our own minds and create intelligent machines. We can improve the minds of animals! But should we?

David Shultz - Least Conscious Unit - A short story that explores several philosophical ideas about consciousness. The ending may make you question what is real.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Consciousness - The most well known philosophical ideas about consciousness.

VIDEOS

Socrates - Singularity Weblog - This guy interviews the people who are making the technology of tomorrow, today. He's interviewed the CEO of D-Wave, Ray Kurzweil, Michio Kaku, and tons of less well known but equally interesting people.

David Chalmers - Simulation and the Singularity at The Singularity Summit 2009 - Respected Philosopher, David Chalmers, talks about different approaches to AI and a little about what might be on the other side of the singularity.

Ben Goertzel - Singularity or Bust - Mathematician and computer Scientist, Ben Goertzel, goes to China to create Artificial General Intelligence funded by the Chinese Government. Unfortunately they cut the program.



PROGRAMMING

Daniel Shiffman - The Nature of Code - After reading How to Create a Mind you will probably want to get started with a neural network (or Hidden Markov model) of your own. This is your hello world. If you get past this and the math is too hard use this

Encog - A neural network API written in your favorite language

OpenCV - Face and object recognition made easy(ish).

I found this book great for a solution that could replace our current economic and political systems:

http://www.amazon.com/Open-Source-Everything-Manifesto-Transparency-Truth/dp/1583944435/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406124471&sr=1-1&keywords=steele+open+source

This book is great as well. It is, Ray Kurzweil, explaining how the human brainn function as he attempts to reverse engineer it for Google in order to create an AI.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0143124048/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406124597&sr=1-1&keywords=kurzweil

I read a lot of these as a neurophysiologist on my way to transitioning into an ML career! My favorites (which aren’t already listed by others here) are Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths and How to Make a Mind by Ray Kurzweil. While it’s a bit tangential, I also loved The Smarter Screen by Jonah Lehrer and Shlomo Benartzi, which deals with human-computer interaction.

This is the absolute must fucking-awesome time to be alive. The world is accumulating knowledge at an amazingly increasing rate. Right now, the world's amount of aggregate knowledge doubles every 1.5 years. We are really close to having self-driving cars. Things that were computationally intractable 10 years ago are now trivial today. And, the rate of growth there is accelerating as well. Imagine in 10 years, the best supercomputing cluster may be able to simulate a brain as complicated as a dog. 10 years later, designing and simulating brains will probably be a video game that kids play, e.g. design the most powerful organisms and have them battle and evolve in a changing environment.

Go to /r/automate and /r/futurology and see what is coming. Get How to Create a Mind and read that, it is a book by a scientist who is now the chief scientist of Google, and he has an extremely optimistic view of the future.

Congratulations, you have just freed your mind! Now, use it to do something awesome, make a shit load of money, find meaningful relationships, and contribute something to humanity.

> Ray kurzweil

http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0143124048

While all his books are great. He talks a lot about exponential growth in "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" and "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology"

His most recent book, "How to Create a Mind" is also a must read.

Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil

The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers

John Dies at the End by David Wong

Yes. I read a lot of books at the same time. Yes, I regularly finish books. Doomed I just finished about a week ago, and I am currently in the middle of all the other books. So far I've enjoyed all of these books immensely.

Kurzweil tries to do this all the time

http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0143124048/

Well I'm not sure that's entirely true:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0143124048/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

At the very least, he's trying to understand the brain.

If he were trying to understand the brain, instead of explaining it in a way that matches his assumptions - he would stand the shoulders of neuroscientists who are writing on the topic. But I get it, e.g., it's difficult to describe the brain as a computer when in a brain processing and storage are the same thing.

> http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0143124048/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed By Ray Kurzweil. Ray is world renown for predicting the outcome of upcoming technologies with stunning accuracy. Not through psychic powers or anything, but through normal predictive means. He predicted when the first machine would be capable of beating the best chess player in the world. He is predicting that we will approach what is called the technical singularity by 2040. Its amazing. He is working with Google on a way to stop aging, and possible reverse it one day. Something I recommend for sure.

EDIT: Books are awesome