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Free Will Angelmakers
Apr. 18th, 2012 10:30 pmHi,
So I zipped through a couple more books and here's what I think.
First up, Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. Mr. Harkaway was responsible for the amazing Gone Away World I read a few years ago so when I saw he had this new book out, I was anxious to pick it up.
So Angelmaker is mostly about Joe Spork, clockmaker and reluctant heir to a criminal empire his father started. Yes, his last name is Spork and it's a thing. Everyone has an odd last name. Anyway, Joe has been working on this intricate clockwork device that his pal Billy Friend has almost certainly not stolen from somewhere. Then mysterious people start asking after the device. Then people turn up dead. Then things get interesting.
Meanwhile, Britain's oldest super-spy reflects on her lifetime of adventure and whether it's all been worth it and what she has left to do to try and set things right.
Meanwhile, a madman plots to become God.
Meanwhile, golden mechanical bees are spreading across the Earth wreaking havoc with the power of Objective Truth.
The writing is simply delicious. Lovely turns of phrase and great imagery. It was a real treat to read. Certainly I think it'll appeal to a fair number of people -- especially if you're a fan of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett (although the fantastic is turned way down and the adventure turned way up). Good stuff all around.
After that...well, it's hardly a book, it's more like a long essay. It's called Free Will by Sam Harris and its central conceit is that you don't have any...free will that is. We think of ourselves as being able to choose our actions and reactions, but the truth is that the decision-making process is buried in the Senate of our Subconscious. Genetic tendencies, evolutionary adaptations, past experiences, and a host of other factors promote a chorus of differing opinions on what you should do next. The mechanisms of your brain lets one opinion rise to the top and suddenly your conscious mind is aware that you've "decided". Harris cites several neruoimaging studies showing how our decision process is completed sometimes well before we become aware of it.
The rest of the book is a short discussion about what it means if we accept that our free will is an illusion and what implications that has in terms of justice, politics, and our identity of self. Harris feels that we can drop the illusion of free will without automatically replacing it with a robotic view of humanity. His analogy is that we don't generally look at people as collections of atoms, we look at them as people and physics and chemistry are still just as true. He personally finds it freeing since it means that no matter what he's done in the past, there's still a chance for tremendous change and growth in the future. A cynical me would argue that there's just as much chance for things to go wrong and it's hard to see how a brain can make a significant change without a great deal of change in it's environment (i.e. I'm not more likely to become a better person if my friends and associates are all criminals). Yes, people do experience miraculous turn arounds in their lives, but that's often down to luck or freak chance and it seems like you should be able to build a better you without relying on the luck of the draw.
Anyway, it's a slim little volume and quite thought-provoking so I'm sure my philosophy-geek friends will find it interesting.
later
Tom
So I zipped through a couple more books and here's what I think.
First up, Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. Mr. Harkaway was responsible for the amazing Gone Away World I read a few years ago so when I saw he had this new book out, I was anxious to pick it up.
So Angelmaker is mostly about Joe Spork, clockmaker and reluctant heir to a criminal empire his father started. Yes, his last name is Spork and it's a thing. Everyone has an odd last name. Anyway, Joe has been working on this intricate clockwork device that his pal Billy Friend has almost certainly not stolen from somewhere. Then mysterious people start asking after the device. Then people turn up dead. Then things get interesting.
Meanwhile, Britain's oldest super-spy reflects on her lifetime of adventure and whether it's all been worth it and what she has left to do to try and set things right.
Meanwhile, a madman plots to become God.
Meanwhile, golden mechanical bees are spreading across the Earth wreaking havoc with the power of Objective Truth.
The writing is simply delicious. Lovely turns of phrase and great imagery. It was a real treat to read. Certainly I think it'll appeal to a fair number of people -- especially if you're a fan of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett (although the fantastic is turned way down and the adventure turned way up). Good stuff all around.
After that...well, it's hardly a book, it's more like a long essay. It's called Free Will by Sam Harris and its central conceit is that you don't have any...free will that is. We think of ourselves as being able to choose our actions and reactions, but the truth is that the decision-making process is buried in the Senate of our Subconscious. Genetic tendencies, evolutionary adaptations, past experiences, and a host of other factors promote a chorus of differing opinions on what you should do next. The mechanisms of your brain lets one opinion rise to the top and suddenly your conscious mind is aware that you've "decided". Harris cites several neruoimaging studies showing how our decision process is completed sometimes well before we become aware of it.
The rest of the book is a short discussion about what it means if we accept that our free will is an illusion and what implications that has in terms of justice, politics, and our identity of self. Harris feels that we can drop the illusion of free will without automatically replacing it with a robotic view of humanity. His analogy is that we don't generally look at people as collections of atoms, we look at them as people and physics and chemistry are still just as true. He personally finds it freeing since it means that no matter what he's done in the past, there's still a chance for tremendous change and growth in the future. A cynical me would argue that there's just as much chance for things to go wrong and it's hard to see how a brain can make a significant change without a great deal of change in it's environment (i.e. I'm not more likely to become a better person if my friends and associates are all criminals). Yes, people do experience miraculous turn arounds in their lives, but that's often down to luck or freak chance and it seems like you should be able to build a better you without relying on the luck of the draw.
Anyway, it's a slim little volume and quite thought-provoking so I'm sure my philosophy-geek friends will find it interesting.
later
Tom
