Notes from Books

Current: Consciousness and the Brain

Must Reads: The Righteous Mind, Happiness Hypothesis, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Consciousness: Confessions, Neuroscience of Human Relationships, Human: What Makes us Unique, Blank Slate, Info Viz & Perception, On Intelligence, The Quest for Consciousness, The Stuff of Thought.

See Also: Social Conquest of Earth, Conceptual Spaces Cheat Sheet, Swarm Intelligence, Meca Sapiens/Strnge Loop, Clock of the Long Now, Consciousness: a user's guide, The Space Between Our Ears, Book Notes.

Big Questions

What does it mean to be human?
Why are we here?
Do we have Free Will?
Does Evolution have a direction?
What's the deal with Religion, Group Selection and stuff?
How many legs does the The Elephant And The Rider Metaphor have?

Older Notes

Aside from religious texts, which can give us sense of what we are doing here on this earth, and political texts, which can tell us the rules by which we are supposed to be playing, there are also many books which I have found useful for thinking about how to live my life. This is not a very disciplined approach. Sorry.

7 habits, Stephen Covey:

  • Be Proactive - responsible for yourself
  • conceptualize - begin with end in mind
  • first things first - always measure importance
  • think win/win - do not make bad deals for you or others
  • see to understand, then to be understood
  • synergize... errr...
  • retool, keep learning, "who ain't a busy livin is a busy dieing"
  • 5 disciplines - Peter Senge - Fifth Discipline

  • team learning -
  • shared values -
  • systems thinking - you need to understand as much of the big picture as you can.
  • personal mastery - the basic 7 habits stuff
  • mental models -
  • 9 laws of god - Kevin Kelly - Out of Control

  • distribute being - eggs in one basket...
  • control from the bottom up -
  • cultivate increasing returns
  • grow by chunking
  • maximaize the fringes
  • honor your errors
  • seek persistent disequilibrium (poised systems)
  • change changes change
  • Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher, William Ury

  • separate people and problems
  • focus on interests not on positions
  • invent options for mutual gain
  • insist on using objective criteria

  • I should reread this and take notes. Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

    Here are some notes on Two Independent Axes of Depression.


    2013.09.08 (started 17-OCT-97 jch)