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It changed my life as well -- along with other great books he wrote: "The Mind's I", a collaboration with Daniel Dennett, is a more light read than Gödel Esche

by lucastx 12y ago

It changed my life as well -- along with other great books he wrote: "The Mind's I", a collaboration with Daniel Dennett, is a more light read than Gödel Escher Bach which also talks about consciousness, emergence and cognition. "Metamagical Themas" is a collection of fascinating articles he wrote for Scientific American after Martin Gardner stopped publishing his "Mathematical Games" (do you see what he did here?) I can perceive the influence his ideas have in the way I raise my child, relate to people and act in the world. I would go as far as to say that my spirituality was sparked by his texts, specially those related to Zen and consciousness. Sure, YMMV -- this is entirely subjective (as everything in life, really).

dominotw 12y ago
>It changed my life as well - Lots of people are saying this here. May I ask how it changed your life?
- lucastx 12y ago
  It introduced me to cognition as a emergent phenomena (specially the chapter "Prelude ... Ant Fugue" [1]). It made me think about various philosophical topics such as holism vs reductionism and syntax vs semantics, the meaning of "meaning", intelligence, cognition... ...and then absolutely blew them all with the Zen approach to life. [1] http://themindi.blogspot.com.br/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.html http://themindi.blogspot.com.br/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-a...