[extropy-chat] Rudy Rucker's "The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul"

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Rudy Rucker's "The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the
Soul<http://www.rudyrucker.com/lifebox/>"
is out and you can buy it on
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1560257229/qid=1126797757/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3992980-6151265?v=glance&s=books&n=507846>.
There is also a pdf book
sample<http://www.rudyrucker.com/lifebox/lifeboxsample.pdf>with a few
chapters. This is one of the books that I most wanted to read - I
have bought the hardcopy and am reading the pdf book sample. From the
introduction on the book's website:
We're presently in the midst of a third intellectual revolution. The first
came with Newton: the planets obey physical laws. The second came with
Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws. In today's third revolution, were coming
to realize that even minds and societies emerge from interacting laws that
can be regarded as computations. Everything is a computation.
Does this, then, mean that the world is dull? Far from it. The naturally
occurring computations that surround us are richly complex. A tree's growth,
the changes in the weather, the flow of daily news, a person's ever-changing
moods --- all of these computations share the crucial property of being
gnarly. Although lawlike and deterministic, gnarly computations are --- and
this is a key point --- inherently unpredictable. The world's mystery is
preserved.
Mixing together anecdotes, graphics, and fables, Rucker teases out the
implications of his new worldview, which he calls "universal automatism."
His analysis reveals startling aspects of the everyday world, touching upon
such topics as chaos, the internet, fame, free will, and the pursuit of
happiness. More than a popular science book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and
the Soul is a philosophical entertainment that teaches us how to enjoy our
daily lives to the fullest possible extent.
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