What are you reading lately? | Forum

I have a harder time enjoying movies lately though because it's more difficult for me to ignore the fact it's just people acting. I go more for the reality stuff lately.

Still love the Marvel and DC Comics stuff though.

I wanted to switch it up from reading true crime (because that's been my kick lately) and I started "The Woman In Cabin 10" by Ruth Ware a couple days ago. So far, it is a great read. Too bad I've been busy with life for a couple days. I'm looking forward to getting a chance to read more soon.

Oh and if you were wondering, I do recommend "Love As Always, Mum." However, her inexperience in writing comes through quite a bit and more than a few typos. I wonder who the editor was?

I have been reading a few things lately. I pick something up and then put it down and pick up something else, but I only have 3 books which I am reading at one time. Am currently reading:

The Golden Chain: an Anthology of Pythgorean and Platonic Philosophy, selected and edited by Algis Uzdavinys

The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment, selected and translated by Brian Copenhaver

Nietzsche’s New Darwinism by John Richardson  

Do you think humanity is capable of developing a theory linking relativity and quantum theory? 

Incidentally, when I finish Dracula, I plan to read some non-fiction. Like you, I oscillate between fiction and non-fiction.

MatthewJ1, I'm tempted to buy the book you're reading: Nietzsche's New Darwinism. I'll wait to hear your review before I decide. My question will be: Are the author's points obvious or insightful? When I think about the subject, it seems to me that the book practically writes itself. Except for this pesky fact: If we're not talking about adaptation as it relates to death and/or reproduction, we're really not talking about Darwinism. Nietzschean Darwinism would boil down to eugenics, which I don't think Nietzsche promoted, but I haven't read every word he ever wrote, so maybe I missed his eugenics diatribe.

Cheers Wolfie - just in regards to Richardson’s book. I’m about a 3rd way through. It’s pretty good.

I’m of the opinion that natural selection is a subset of will to power. Richardson however is arguing that will to power should be regarded as a product or element of natural selection. He believes that will to power needs to be grounded in natural selection in order to retain its importance as a concept.

He argues that Nietzsche must assume a subject and a system of representation, because will to power implies a telos i.e. power as an end, and therefore the will is a will towards some definite outcome. That seems to assume that belief in will to power implies a form of absolute idealism. Richardson believes that Nietzsche never intended for a subject or a system of representation or a form of idealism to be read into his work. I agree.

Richardson believes will to power as ontology cannot stand up to critical scrutiny. He believes will to power needs to be minimized and seen as subset of a “power-biology” and hence then a part of natural selection. Will to power is selected or it comes through as an element because it is a part of a success strategy. That’s what I’m getting out of the book right now.

There is no discussion of Social Darwinism yet. I think it is addressed later in the book.

I am reading Fox in Socks. 

I find it to be quite illuminating on the subject of beetle paddle battles and poodles eating noodles, or what you would call the amalgamation of all those things.  

And the real answer is The Andromeda Strain By Michael Crichton.

Geraldo, I haven't read nor even heard of Fox in Socks, but I've read Andromeda Strain, which was the first book that brought to my attention the sorts of difficulties that can arise when trying to determine if some unknown object is a form of life. When you get to that part, I'll be interested in your thoughts.

Read it, rereading it because I don't own many books. And I don't care enough to switch accounts so just pretend this is the smile rat answering. 

I think it's right up your alley. Even the selective panspermic alien pathogen had that will to find it's ideal environment and do what necessary to get it.  Reminds me of the ultimate invasive species. 

Though I still cant understand an organism that exists without amino acids, and DNA, but he gets a break because it was 1971 when he wrote it. 

I think he had an underlying motif of "no matter what form.it takes anything that lives mutates and adapts. 

As for the question of how we determine if an object is a form of life, the relevance will become readily apparent over the next two decades, as machine learning advances into AGI (artificial general intelligence). Will computers who've achieved AGI be identified as life forms? If not, why not? I wonder if Crichton foresaw this exact application of his fictional thought experiments. 

It's mocking all those who make subversive sock accounts to try to spread their idea. The process of using the these toss away accounts to serve some change one wants to make in the world.  Mine don't seek to accomplish anything, and mostly ends up me having a joke that is only funny to me.  

The best way to describe it is like an interactive online game instead of a forum. I realize it's a view that absolutely dehumanizes everyone, but with so many liars and shit peddlers you might as well see it on the same level of disconnection from real life as GTA Online. 

People don't use their real names, might as well use something like GhostKiller83. It's just more on par with a fantasy gamer world to me.  

My statement that there's really nothing to accomplish in an environment of hollow faces. 

Using Andromeda Strain it mutated and started eating through its containment vessel and moving towards the surface. 

With AI it will be along the lines of exceeding the program. I disagree with the Turing test with the identifier of AI. It would just have to exceed the programming it's programming. 

Once it programming mutates without command it's a form of life.