annotate org/goodlit.org @ 136:46bc0f596b91

ideas from reading /life in the frozen state/.
author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Sun, 07 Sep 2014 21:35:52 -0700
parents 414a10d51d9f
children
rev   line source
rlm@109 1 #+TITLE: Good readables
rlm@109 2 #+AUTHOR: Dylan Holmes
rlm@109 3 #+EMAIL: rlm@mit.edu
rlm@109 4 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
rlm@109 5 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
rlm@109 6 #+MATHJAX: align:"left" mathml:t path:"http://www.aurellem.org/MathJax/MathJax.js"
rlm@109 7 #+
rlm@109 8
rlm@109 9 * Non-narrative books
rlm@109 10 | Title | Author | About |
rlm@109 11 |----------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
rlm@109 12 | Formal Theories of the Commonsense World | Hobbs \amp{} Moore | Essays about the rules of intuitive physics---how we naturally reason about the physical world before we learn about (for example) molecules, inverse square laws, and quantum mechanics. |
rlm@109 13 | Vision | Marr | Describes successes in computer vision, and outlines effective policies for thinking about and researching intelligence. |
rlm@109 14 | The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (SICM) | Sussman \amp{} Wisdom | This book uses programming as a tool for analysing otherwise-intractable physical systems, and as a medium for explicit, unambiguous expression of ideas\mdash{}as an alternative to mathematical notation, the meanings of which often depend on implicit conventions. |
rlm@109 15 | The Computer Revolution in Philosophy | Sloman | Elucidates the essential role of philosophy in science, and the newfound revolutionary role of computers and computational language in philosophy (especially in philosophy of mind). |
rlm@109 16 | Freedom Evolves | Dennett | An eminently readable book on how free will can develop within a deterministic universe in general, and in mechanistic robots in particular. |
rlm@109 17 | Philosophical Investigations | Wittgenstein | A seminal, if disconnected, philosophical treatise which describes how meanings of sentences arise through learned, lazily-evaluated \ldquo{}choreographies\rdquo{}. |
rlm@109 18 | The Emotion Machine | Minsky | A wonderful compendium of ideas about the construction of intelligence, presented in clever, non-technical language. |
rlm@109 19 | The Myth of Mental Illness | Szasz | A thought-provoking look at mental illness/treatment as a form of social control. |
rlm@109 20 | BUGS in Writing | Dupre | A whimsical and erudite handbook for writing clearly, with an emphasis on writing for science/technology. |
rlm@109 21 | The Visual Display of Quantitative Information | Tufte | A learned tour of good practices for organizing information and communicating large amounts of it with minimal clutter. |
rlm@109 22 | The Algebra of Programming | Odgen \amp{} de Moor | An abstract but deep textbook which describes how programs can be described, combined, optimized, and analyzed using a new kind of algebra. |
rlm@109 23 | Probability Theory: The logic of science | Jaynes | A heterodoxical textbook which presents probability theory as a kind of logical inference. |
rlm@109 24 | Category Theory | Awodey | Friendly and thorough introduction to the ideas of category theory \mdash{} less imposing than (but a good companion to) MacLane's /Categories for the Working Mathematician/. |
rlm@109 25 | Algebra: Chapter 0 | Aluffi | Friendly and thorough introduction to the ideas of abstract algebra\mdash{} less imposing than MacLane \amp{} Birkhoff's /Algebra/. |
rlm@109 26 | Principles of Quantum Mechanics | Shankar | A careful, solid introduction to quantum mechanics. Less chatty than Griffith's /Introduction to Quantum Mechanics/. |
rlm@109 27
rlm@109 28
rlm@109 29 * COMMENT Articles, etc.
rlm@109 30
rlm@109 31 | Title | Author | About |
rlm@109 32 |---------------------------------------+----------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
rlm@109 33 | A Computer Model of Skill Acquisition | Sussman | Sussman explores learning how to do things as the process of developing and debugging programs to do them. He finds that this paradigm is an effective way to think about learning; for example, with each lesson, his program learns something new. He incidentally also concludes that automatic program-writers are impracticible, because ideas are often developed in a /cycle/ of suggesting/coding/debugging. |
rlm@109 34 | A Universal Banach Space | Leinster | Very brief, but neat: integration is a \ldquo{}universal object\rdquo{} (in the terminology of Category Theory.) |
rlm@109 35 | | | |
rlm@109 36
rlm@109 37
rlm@109 38 * Narratives
rlm@109 39 | Title | Author | About |
rlm@109 40 |--------------------------------------+---------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
rlm@109 41 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Doyle, Arthur Conan | An austere and brilliant detective who possesses razor-sharp skills in observation, analysis of character, and collecting mundane facts. I particularly like the Sherlock Holmes novels because Holmes's talents are apparently attainable through practice. |
rlm@109 42 | The Lives of Christopher Chant | Jones, Diana Wynne | An excellent story, with wonderously fun magic and enjoyable characters. Part of the /Chrestomanci/ series. |
rlm@109 43 | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Adams, Douglas | A subtly hilarous existentialist novel about how bureaucratic incompetence leads to the destruction of planet Earth, and about the lone unfortunate British man who survives. |
rlm@109 44 | Matter | Banks, Iain | An epic science fiction novel. As with all novels in the /Culture/ series, /Matter/ is remarkable for the following: (1) Tangibly portraying the vastness of space and the incomprehensibility of advanced intelligence, (2) Artful diction, (3) Fearless use of unorthodox narrative structure. |
rlm@109 45 | The Magicians | Grossman, Lev | An approximate analogy: \ldquo{}The Magicians\rdquo{} is to \ldquo{}Narnia\rdquo{} as \ldquo{}Wicked\rdquo{} is to \ldquo{}Oz\rdquo{}. A gritty realistic book about a perennially morose overachiever and his adventures in relentlessly unsentimental places. |
rlm@109 46
rlm@109 47 # Aaron Sloman
rlm@109 48 # Dennet's humor book
rlm@109 49 # Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop
rlm@109 50
rlm@109 51 # Woolf's The Waves
rlm@109 52
rlm@109 53
rlm@109 54
rlm@109 55
rlm@109 56 # * Books Relating to Artificial Intelligence
rlm@109 57
rlm@109 58 # ** The Emotion Machine, by Marvin Minsky
rlm@109 59 # ** Formal Theories of the Commmonsense World, by Hobbs and Moore
rlm@109 60 # ([[http://books.google.com/books/about/Formal_Theories_of_the_Commonsense_World.html?id=aUO2PCw-vdgC][link to Formal Theories]])
rlm@109 61
rlm@109 62 # ** Vision, by David Marr
rlm@109 63
rlm@109 64 # ** Philosophical Investigations, by Ludwig Wittgenstein
rlm@109 65
rlm@109 66 # ** Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, by Edwin Jaynes
rlm@109 67
rlm@109 68 # ** The Algebra of Programming, by Odgen and de Moor
rlm@109 69
rlm@109 70
rlm@109 71 # * Other Exemplary Books
rlm@109 72
rlm@109 73 # ** Real and Complex Analysis, by Walter Rudin
rlm@109 74 # This book is a model of terseness in exposition --- it's theoretically
rlm@109 75 # elegant, though pedagogically impenetrable.
rlm@109 76
rlm@109 77 # ** Category Theory, by Steve Awodey
rlm@109 78 # This book is a friendly and exciting introduction to category theory.
rlm@109 79
rlm@109 80 # ** Principles of Quantum Mechanics, by Ramamurti Shankar
rlm@109 81 # Rigorous yet engaging.
rlm@109 82
rlm@109 83 # ** Algebra: Chapter 0, by Aluffi
rlm@109 84
rlm@109 85 # ** BUGS in Writing, by Lynn Dupr\eacute{}
rlm@109 86
rlm@109 87 # ** The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward Tufte
rlm@109 88
rlm@109 89 # # Piaget
rlm@109 90 # # Hans Freudenthal
rlm@109 91 # ** How to Solve It, by Polya
rlm@109 92
rlm@109 93
rlm@109 94 # #* Interesting Papers
rlm@109 95
rlm@109 96 # #** A Universal Banach Space, by Tom Leinster
rlm@109 97 # A short paper in which the set of Lebesgue-measureable functions on
rlm@109 98 # [0,1] emerges as the initial object in a category of Banach
rlm@109 99 # spaces, and in which integration is a catamorphism.
rlm@109 100
rlm@109 101 # #** The Eudoxus Real numbers, by R. Arthan
rlm@109 102 # This paper constructs the real numbers in terms of
rlm@109 103 # proportionalities.
rlm@109 104
rlm@109 105
rlm@109 106 # http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0405454
rlm@109 107
rlm@109 108 # #** Tolerance Space Theory and Some Applications, by Sossinsky
rlm@109 109
rlm@109 110 # #Tolerance spaces
rlm@109 111 # #The Eudoxus real numbers
rlm@109 112
rlm@109 113
rlm@109 114 # # AARON SLOMAN