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Review: Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It

Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It by Christof Koch My rating: 5 of 5 stars Christof Koch’s latest book gives a good overview of his work in neuroscience spanning several decades. Koch always likes a bet, and talks about settling his 25 year wager with David Chalmers: in June 2023 he handed over a case of fine Madeira wine for failing to have identified the neural correlates of consciousness in the preceding 25 years. He thinks he is closer in the elusive search for the seat of consciousness, with the hunt narrowing towards the back of the neocortex, and reckons the next 25 years or so should see it pinned down further. In terms of ‘how’ consciousness works, he is now a fervent advocate of the ambitious Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Giuilio Tononi, a theory that more than 100 consciouness researchers have branded pseudoscience. The chapter on IIT is, unsurprisingly, the most dense. The rest of the book is ...
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Review: The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was both amazed and perplexed by the Library of Babel. For such a slim book, it has an immense and almost infinite depth to it. I had to re-read the story several times (which is why I thought it worthy of a separate review, even though it formed part of a collection of stories in a Penguin Classics 1998 collection I received from my mother as a Christmas Present). ‘By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters…’ Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt 2, Sec II, Mem IV. The preface quote is from a 1621 book by Robert Burton, a scholar and a clergyman writing under the pseudonym “Democritus Junior” (the full title of Burton’s work is delightfully long and reflective of its time: The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics, and Several Cures of it. In Three Partitions, with their Several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophi...
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Review: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book offers an intriguing exploration into an alternate architecture of intelligence, drawing from Hawkin's extensive background in neuroscience and computing (he helped design the Palm Pilot). The book is divided into three parts, each tackling a distinct aspect of brain function and its implications for artificial intelligence and beyond. The book's first part is a compelling dive into the world of cortical columns. It focuses on the importance of the brain's cortex (the crumpled outer layer), which is thought to have evolved later than the older 'reptilian brain', which the author dismisses throughout the book (despite the fact it keeps him and other humans alive). Hawkins suggests that if you spread the brain's 'newer' neocortex out on a table into its 2.5mm thick extra-large pizza size, you would be looking at 150,000 simil...
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