I read this heady tome in college. I think I’ve completed it three times? It alternates between whimsical stories and theory, building a case that thought and meaning are emergent properties of the brain. It deals heavily with the idea of self-reference, which is the main theme uniting the three people in the title. Although he discounts the possibility of the immaterial aspect of reality as unknowable, Hofstadter introduced me to many interesting ideas and his book is a delightful journey, if you are prepared for it.
These stories contain so much richness. One theme that stuck with me emerges in Out of the Silent Planet and is repeated in Perelandra: that good things can be spoiled by overconsumption. Something that is pleasant or satisfying stands by itself, and doesn’t need to be repeated or hoarded. In fact, the drive to capture, concentrate, and control pleasant things can cheapen them, and could be at the root of many of our troubles.
This book painted for me a vivid picture of the mechanics of selfish and self-centered thinking. It describes in detail the ways that we blind ourselves, especially in interpersonal communication. The result of internalizing the concepts in this book is a sort of secular elaboration of “Love your neighbor”, but even though it misses (or omits? subtracts?) the spiritual core of things, it still rings quite true and the tools found in this book and others from the Arbinger Instutute are fantastically valuable. If this is of interest, you may also enjoy Marshall Rosenberg’s “Non-violent communication” or my article on needs-based communication.
This book synthesizes many pieces of the zeitgeist as I have seen it develop in my life. It touches on nihilism, the charismatic movement, yoga, eastern and new-age spirituality, and the UFO phenomenon. All these things are contextualized into a movement towards an upcoming religious synthesis, and contrasted with eastern Orthodoxy. Fr. Seraphim has a clear, academic writing style which I found easy to read, and this book answered many questions I had not even thought to ask. I also recommend his book/pamphlet Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, which is slightly drier than this but sets a good foundation for it, and The Soul After Death for its sober and thorough approach to understanding things most people have not witnessed directly.
This is the fascinating true story of a young man’s experiences with occult eastern gurus, the amazing adventures and troubles he had, and his conversations and visits with Elder Paisios of Mount Athos. He tells the story without embellishment, speaking plainly about the fantastic things that he saw and his thoughts and feelings as he struggled to find peace.
This book functions not only as an engaging story, but a primer for digital security as a whole. If it doesn’t make you an outright cypherpunk, you will at least understand the movement better.
A sympathetic main character, heaps of style, a hacker aesthetic, an evocative and lived-in setting, and non-stop action. This book magnified my love of the written word as a literal creative force. Digital reality and baseline reality are both shaped by language, but in different ways, and this story explores that distinction vigorously and memorably.
The illustrations in this surreal children’s book stuck with me my whole life. I like all this author’s illustrations, but this book especially captured my imagination.
This was my first programming book. My grandfather Clarence gave it to me along with a Radio Shack PC-2 handheld computer. That evening I managed to make a program that produced “music”, a random sequence of tones. I was hooked.
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+Books - joshua.seigler.net
Books
These books had a big influence on my thinking and taste.
I read this heady tome in college. I think I’ve completed it three times? It alternates between whimsical stories and theory, building a case that thought and meaning are emergent properties of the brain. It deals heavily with the idea of self-reference, which is the main theme uniting the three people in the title. Although he discounts the possibility of the immaterial aspect of reality as unknowable, Hofstadter introduced me to many interesting ideas and his book is a delightful journey, if you are prepared for it.
These stories contain so much richness. One theme that stuck with me emerges in Out of the Silent Planet and is repeated in Perelandra: that good things can be spoiled by overconsumption. Something that is pleasant or satisfying stands by itself, and doesn’t need to be repeated or hoarded. In fact, the drive to capture, concentrate, and control pleasant things can cheapen them, and could be at the root of many of our troubles.
This book painted for me a vivid picture of the mechanics of selfish and self-centered thinking. It describes in detail the ways that we blind ourselves, especially in interpersonal communication. The result of internalizing the concepts in this book is a sort of secular elaboration of “Love your neighbor”, but even though it misses (or omits? subtracts?) the spiritual core of things, it still rings quite true and the tools found in this book and others from the Arbinger Instutute are fantastically valuable. If this is of interest, you may also enjoy Marshall Rosenberg’s “Non-violent communication” or my article on needs-based communication.
This book synthesizes many pieces of the zeitgeist as I have seen it develop in my life. It touches on nihilism, the charismatic movement, yoga, eastern and new-age spirituality, and the UFO phenomenon. All these things are contextualized into a movement towards an upcoming religious synthesis, and contrasted with eastern Orthodoxy. Fr. Seraphim has a clear, academic writing style which I found easy to read, and this book answered many questions I had not even thought to ask. I also recommend his book/pamphlet Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, which is slightly drier than this but sets a good foundation for it, and The Soul After Death for its sober and thorough approach to understanding things most people have not witnessed directly.
This is the fascinating true story of a young man’s experiences with occult eastern gurus, the amazing adventures and troubles he had, and his conversations and visits with Elder Paisios of Mount Athos. He tells the story without embellishment, speaking plainly about the fantastic things that he saw and his thoughts and feelings as he struggled to find peace.
This book functions not only as an engaging story, but a primer for digital security as a whole. If it doesn’t make you an outright cypherpunk, you will at least understand the movement better.
A sympathetic main character, heaps of style, a hacker aesthetic, an evocative and lived-in setting, and non-stop action. This book magnified my love of the written word as a literal creative force. Digital reality and baseline reality are both shaped by language, but in different ways, and this story explores that distinction vigorously and memorably.
The illustrations in this surreal children’s book stuck with me my whole life. I like all this author’s illustrations, but this book especially captured my imagination.
This was my first programming book. My grandfather Clarence gave it to me along with a Radio Shack PC-2 handheld computer. That evening I managed to make a program that produced “music”, a random sequence of tones. I was hooked.
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@@ -695,7 +695,7 @@ We also usually brown some canned chicken and add it at the same time as the but
2025-04-24T00:00:00Zhttps://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/<p>There’s an exchange early in the classic '80s movie <a href="https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/97-tron" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TRON</a>. Some scientists are talking shop:</p>
-<p><picture><source type="image/avif" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--125.avif 125w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--250.avif 250w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--500.avif 500w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--1280.avif 1280w" sizes="var(--content-width)"><img alt="Still from TRON, left to right Linda, Alan, and Gibbs, in conversation." title="null" loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--125.jpeg" width="1280" height="621" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--125.jpeg 125w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--250.jpeg 250w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--500.jpeg 500w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/DYlrbvNwH--1280.jpeg 1280w" sizes="var(--content-width)"></picture></p>
+<p><picture><source type="image/avif" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--128.avif 128w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--384.avif 384w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--1152.avif 1152w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--1280.avif 1280w" sizes="auto"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--128.jpeg" alt="Still from TRON, left to right Linda, Alan, and Gibbs, in conversation." width="1280" height="621" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--128.jpeg 128w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--384.jpeg 384w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--1152.jpeg 1152w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/DYlrbvNwH--1280.jpeg 1280w" sizes="auto"></picture></p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>ALAN:</strong> I tell ya, ever since he got that Master Control Program, system’s got more bugs than a bait store.</p>
<p><strong>GIBBS:</strong> Ehh, you gotta expect some static. After all, computers are just machines, they can’t think…</p>
@@ -717,7 +717,7 @@ We also usually brown some canned chicken and add it at the same time as the but
<p>Science fiction is littered with cautionary tales about inhuman intelligence. For that matter, so is myth: genies give people whatever they want, but because people have self-destructive desires (like the desire to avoid work), it goes wrong. In TRON, Infocom has the MCP (Master Control Program), an overgrown chess program that is given access to whatever information it can consume, until its intelligence and capabilities are seemingly endless. The company leadership comes to rely on the program so completely that it becomes their entire interface for understanding and operating the business. There is also the irony that Infocom’s success was built on the misuse of intellectual property, much as LLM companies have done <span class="aside"><a href="https://sites.usc.edu/iptls/2025/02/04/ai-copyright-and-the-law-the-ongoing-battle-over-intellectual-property-rights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AI, Copyright, and the Law: The Ongoing Battle Over Intellectual Property Rights </a>, <em>IP & Technology Law Society</em><br>
<a href="https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem</a>, <em>Harvard Business Review</em></span>.</p>
<p>I don’t think I am wise enough to safely use a genie in a bottle. And I don’t want to outsource my creative efforts to an addictive, bullshitting alien intellect, even if it might save time and effort in the short term.</p>
-<p><picture><source type="image/avif" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-125.avif 125w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-250.avif 250w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-500.avif 500w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-1280.avif 1280w" sizes="var(--content-width)"><img alt="End of line" title="null" loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-125.jpeg" width="1280" height="575" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-125.jpeg 125w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-250.jpeg 250w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-500.jpeg 500w, https://joshua.seigler.net/img/-IYuxB_Iur-1280.jpeg 1280w" sizes="var(--content-width)"></picture></p>
+<p><picture><source type="image/avif" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-128.avif 128w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-384.avif 384w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-1152.avif 1152w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-1280.avif 1280w" sizes="auto"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-128.jpeg" alt="End of line" width="1280" height="575" srcset="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-128.jpeg 128w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-384.jpeg 384w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-1152.jpeg 1152w, https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/thinking-machines/-IYuxB_Iur-1280.jpeg 1280w" sizes="auto"></picture></p>
