Book

In this book Noam Chomsky tries to answer the question the title poses. Being a linguist, he attempts to answer this question from a linguist’s perspective. Taking a deep dive into the meanings and relationship between language and thought Chomsky tries to summarize years of linguistic research and some conclusions he has come to in his experience. One of the most interesting conclusions is that to him it appears as if instead of the ancient idea that “language is sound with meaning” Chomsky believes that phrase should be reversed to say that “language is meaning with sound”. He attempts to demonstrate how language is actually a couple layers deeper into the structure of the brain than previously thought. In fact, we may in some ways “think” in a language. So perhaps without language we could not “think” at all?? This feels intuitively true to me. The book then addresses a line of thinking that could be called “mysterianism”. Put simply it is that we face two types of problems. The first type are problems we can solve. The second type are problems we will never solve. Otherwise known as mysteries. This second type of problem Chomsky claims we are not the right type of creatures to solve. Similarly, to how rats are not the right kind of creatures to solves for prime numbers. To support this argument, he brings up the story of how Newton not only fundamentally changed physics but changed science entirely when he introduced the concept of “Force”. Newton himself could not wrap his mind around what this force was only, how it worked. From then on strict materialism was out. No one could explain in strictly mechanical terms how the universe worked. This book contains some interesting anecdotes as well as compelling theories. At points the writing can get a little long in the tooth for a non-linguist but over all very interesting. ...

This is a story that takes place entirely inside a hotel in Moscow from just after the Bolshevik revolution to just after World War 2. The main character is a man who was part of the bourgeoisie, a count. He is spared summary execution by the red army because he had penned a poem that helped start the revolution. For this reason, instead of being executed he was sentenced to live the rest of his life inside an iconic hotel that is a block away from the Kremlin. The story is told from his perspective. That is to say from someone that is watching his entire world be turned upside down. Reading this book will make you nostalgic for an Era that can never be recreated. Whereas you could argue that the bourgeoisie still exists the gentlemen that used to occupy it (at least in our imagination) have been replaced with people named Chad who drive their daddy’s BMW. I also had watched a couple episodes of the show “The Great” around the same time (which is very loosely based on Catherine the great) which cemented this idea. The show is set largely in a palace, with fancy ball parties and what not. But it was upsetting me to watch because the language of the show is modern and casual. Littered with penis jokes and modern curse words. Which was in keeping with the shows aesthetic but annoyed me for some reason. I think that reason is after reading this book the main character is an example of best-case scenario of nobility. He is well read, charming, respectful, and honest. So, when those folks are given wealth, it seems natural like fish in water. But when we see people like the characters in “The Great” it reminds one of a pearl necklace on a pig. Of course, the latter is probably more common, but the former is what we like to remember.

Finally checked this one of the list, of course that raises the question of what I mean by “finally”. The word obviously indicates a sequence of events and sequence indicates time and time indicates a required conscious observer. So, in a sense I’ve read this book both before, after and not yet. Jokes aside this book raises a lot of interesting questions, making you think about things a little differently than you had before. And that is the most and best that you can ask from a book. The writing in the book is kind of poor and a little self-aggrandizing at points but the ideas are original enough to make that not too difficult to look past. This book also made me want to read Emerson. While some of his conclusions and observations have in recent years been “proven” wrong (most notably the experiment of being able to read someone’s intentions up to 10 seconds before they actually make a decision) there still seems to be plenty of latitude in the field of consciousness to allow for his ideas to have value. Good suggestion has given me a lot to think about.

Rachel Evans has done all the research on the bible that you probably meant to do but never got around to. Like researching the canonization of the Bible, comparing different types of those canonizations. Researching the similarities to other older religions and the Bible generally trying to figure out what its deal is and why people still give a fluff about it. The author comes from a similar-ish background to what I did, but since she is a woman the things that made her start questioning the stories she was told were different than the ones that caused me to question. Her’s I would guess started with the treatment of women in the Bible. So, she tries her best, like we all do to honestly question what we are supposed to do with the “good book” in the year of our lord 2020. She has some interesting insights and gives me plenty to think about. It is always really weird to me to hear from someone who has such a completely new translation of what the bible means to them as opposed to what we were raised in. When you hear the same thing in the same way for so many hours you get the idea that there is only one way to read something. And even though you know that is not true you don’t know how else to read it. At any rate this is a decent book. It seems pretty fairly written with manageable biases here and there.

This book is easy reading and goes by fast. It’s about a lawyer who represents death row inmates as well as other mostly poor black folks and children. The stories contained in this book are enough to make anyone’s blood boil and want to start a civil war against the Alabama court system. The book is more than just the complaints of a black lawyer though. Bryan Stevenson has a lot to say about the death penalty and the way we enforce crime in general. This book at times was profound, at other times sad. Most of the time it provided a fairly even take on mass incarceration. I do think the book in general is similar to listening to an emergency room doctor in New York talking about covid, or a general in Iraq talking about the Taliban. What he is saying is definitely true, but also definitely not the case for everyone everywhere IMO. I’ll end this review with a compelling quote on the death penalty which is probably old news for you folks but was the first time I’ve heard it put so succinctly. This quote comes after he personally witnesses the execution of a convicted criminal “We would never think it was human to pay someone to rape people convicted of rape or assault and abuse someone guilty of assault or abuse. Yet we were comfortable killing people who kill, in part because we think we can do it in a manner that doesn’t implicate our own humanity, the way that raping or abusing someone would. I couldn’t stop thinking that we don’t spend much time contemplating the details of what killing someone actually involves.”

Judea Pearl is one of the fathers of modern Bayesian Networks which are pretty much used everywhere these days. So, in my pursuit to find a book talking about AI, I stumbled across this book. This book explains Judea’s latest contribution to computer science which is a mathematical approach to modeling causality. In the book he starts by explaining where the phrase “correlation does not equal causality” comes from. His argument is that with statistics you will never be able to define causation, because statistics does not have the language or framework to make such statements. As such statistics and big data can only go so far in their abilities to provide answers for our questions. Instead of approaching problems with the esoteric methods of regression, data stratification and trying to control for various values based on intuition, he proposes that we should try to approach problems more like human beings. He breaks the idea of causality into three rungs on a ladder. He proceeded to explain a sort of calculus that quantifies the effects that different causal relations have on the outcome of a situation.

This book was published after Crime and Punishment. Pretty good, definitely not my favorite of Dostoevsky. This book is I think his first iteration on the idea of a beautiful soul. The main character (Prince Myshkin) is a man who is guileless and deeply compassionate. As a result, everyone he comes in contact with assumes he is an idiot. The simple soul is dropped into the current of crazy Russians and you are left to watch what happens and where the soul ends up. While personally I feel like the character of the prince was perfected in story the brothers Karamazov, some of the transcendent goodness of father Zosima and Alyosha can be seen here. Enough of it is visible to make you wish you were a little more like the prince even though the consequences would be unbearable. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man, I don’t even know where to begin with this book. I had started this book last spring but took a break for a couple months. Even during the sabbatical, thoughts from this book would recur in my head until I eventually picked it back up about a month ago. Written towards the end of Tolstoy’s life it was banned from Russia so initially it was printed in Germany. This book comes at a very interesting point in history. About 30 years after Das Kapital, and only 20 years prior to a world war that the book predicts without intending to, but almost as an inevitability. While people were arguing and continue to argue the virtues of Communism over Capitalism or vice versa, Tolstoy presents a possible third choice… neither. Tolstoy’s fundamental belief springs from the nonresistance taught in the sermon on the mount. As a result, he draws striking conclusions about governments and the people who support them. He draws a consistent line from this single doctrine to show that a government of any kind is incompatible with this belief. When I say to anti capital punishment people something like “if you are against the death penalty, then disband the army”. Tolstoy would say yes, absolutely and also defundThePolice. As such his ideas were inherently anarchistic, but in the most compelling and consistent of ways. He makes his argument that human’s moral development is in stages. The first stage is that of a savage where one only cares about themselves. The second stage is that of a citizen where one only thinks of the group they belong to (family, nation, etc.) the third and final stage is that of divinity when one cares for the entire world. Whereas this might sound cliche, he backs it up with brilliant reasons, and allegories to elaborate his thinking. It is a very interesting pairing to read this book directly after Just Mercy. The two of these books have me again questioning crime and punishment, death penalty etc. I will be thinking about points in this book for some time to come. ...

This is the book that I think the idea of Freudian slips comes from. It is an investigation into brain farts basically. He investigates various mental mistakes like not being able to remember a person’s name and the circumstances that cause these mistakes. This book was surprisingly practical for the most part, especially when compared to the psychology of dreams. I found that a lot of his explanations for things made sense in a logical way and didn’t seem to be too much of a reach. The format of this book is he would basically dedicate a chapter to a particular mistake, take misplacing things for example. He would then explain what he thought the reason for this was and then he would offer between 10 and 20 anecdotal stories that helped to solidify his point. Overall, a pretty interesting read that will make you stop and ask yourself next time you stub your toe: “was this just an accident? Or did I secretly not want to have kids and gave expression to this wish by kicking that wall” ...

Another suggested book that I probably wouldn’t have stumbled across normaly. Provided a decent break from the last book I read. The three-body problem refers to the difficult mathematical problem of predicting the orbit of a 3-planet system. It turns out there are very few stable configurations of these, and predicting their orbit is difficult because of all the variables that go into their movement. This ambitious sci-fi book is the first of a trilogy. It starts in China during communist revolutions in the 70s and progresses to modern day where the fate of humanity is threatened by disenfranchised humans and a dispassionate race of advanced ETs whose home planet is about to be destroyed. The author seems to be very familiar with quantum physics, computer science and basic radio wave theory. This knowledge imbues the book with a believable “almost within reach feel”. Where you could imagine some of the inventions described being created in our lifetimes. All in all, very light reading but pretty entertaining.