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What books are you reading?

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TaoPhoenix:
I'm happy to be done with "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed" by Ray Kurzweil

You can file this one away as another famous narcissist with money getting more famous with a self-indulgent book that is mostly empty of insight and full of self promotion. Blech. Terrible.
-mouser (March 04, 2014, 12:00 PM)
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Blech?

Terrible?

You're far too kind. For some reason the phrase "sucks out loud" keeps popping into my head every time I think back on reading that book.
 ;D
-40hz (March 04, 2014, 01:27 PM)
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I dunno. Even books that "repeat" stuff have value for me. Let's say you begin to suspect that it's like that ... then just skim it. Then you can just learn the few new nuances.  Going sideways this is the true key to that old "Library vs Purchase" discussion - you borrow the Kurzweil book, make your ten pages of new notes, and then give it back. For a really good book, you buy it because you plan to want to look at it for a long time!

mouser:
Just finished Les Valiant's book "Probably Approximately Correct: Nature’s Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World".
Sorry to say, another crap book almost devoid of useful content.  Could be boiled down to a 5 page paper without loss.



Valiant's past contribution to machine learning was a useful way of formalizing some guarantees about a class of "Probably, Approximately Correct (PAC)" algorithms.  His attempt at branding that as a theory of intelligence falls painfully short.

allen:
Just finished Tread Lightly: Form, Footwear, and the Quest for Injury-Free Running, it was pretty interesting. Although it was rather inconclusive, it did dispel some things I'd taken for granted.

I may not finish The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing -- there's a ton of great info in here, but he's extraordinarily long winded and repetitive and I'm starting to think I've gleaned all I'm gonna...  as with your book there mouser, I feel like it could have been boiled down to a few pages. (Actually, it has. By the same author. )

Finally, I'm reading Ancillary Justice and it's a bit mind blowing. I haven't enjoyed a sci-fi book so much in a very long time.

Vurbal:
Valiant's past contribution to machine learning was a useful way of formalizing some guarantees about a class of "Probably, Approximately Correct (PAC)" algorithms.  His attempt at branding that as a theory of intelligence falls painfully short.
-mouser (March 07, 2014, 09:29 AM)
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Intelligence is such a difficult thing to put your finger on. In a lot of ways I think I understand it better than most so-called experts, as if there really was such a thing. The problem is I can't really explain what I think I've figured out for the same reason I was able to figure it out - because it's so complex.

mouser:
Just finished "The Code Book" by Simon Singh:


Good stuff. Gives a nice history of cryptography up to the present.

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