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From: atae@spva.ph.ic.ac.uk (Ata Etemadi)
Subject: Re: Roger Penrose's new book
Message-ID: <1994Oct26.194134.12802@cc.ic.ac.uk>
Nntp-Posting-Host: icmag1.sp.ph
Reply-To: atae@spva.ph.ic.ac.uk
Organization: Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine, London, England
References: <1994Oct21.084708.23299@driftwood.cray.com> <Cy6uHC.84n@hdl.ie>
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 94 19:41:34 GMT
Lines: 47

In article <Cy6uHC.84n@hdl.ie>, tony@hdl.ie (Tony Veale) writes:
|> Alan Kilian (kilian@cray.com) wrote:
|> : Roger Penrose has a new book out that is the sequel to
|> : _The Emperor's New Mind_ and it's REAL hard.
|> 
|> : It's got everything from real Truing machines to quantum physics
|> : to brain structure in it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|> Yup, the chump's new book is called "Shadows of the Mind",  published
|> by Oxford Press. He goes back into his silly theories of quantum-mechanical
|> foundations of consciousness, and expounds much the same populist tripe
|> that made his first book so financially successful.
|> 
|> The funniest thing is that he opens the book with a chapter called
|> 
|> "1. Why we need New Physics to understand the Mind"
|> 
|> ... and he has the gall to call A.I. the "Emperor's new Clothes" ?
|> __________________________________________________________________________

Hey come on Tony. You are being too kind :-) His new book should be 
called "The Emperor's New Mind part II: How to make even more money 
writing a load of unsubstantiated crap". Far better to get Edelman's 
book which I heard about on this very newsgroup a year or so ago and 
enjoyed very much. Edelman is a Nobel prize winner and you can tell 
why. Penrose is just full of it and you can tell why too. I suffered 
through his book (just so I could express an opinion) and its riddled 
with sections where he is clearly trying to hide his ignorance by a 
barrage of words and unnecessarily complicated "examples" *specially* 
when it comes to Turing machines. I don't know about his expertese
with Truing machines however, so I may be prematures ;-) If a book is 
HARD its usually because the person who wrote it did not know the 
subject well enough to make it EASY for the reader. I do however 
recommend Penrose's book for propping up your coffee table if you have 
like an inch or so gap. Also an ideal Xmas present for people you 
can't stand.

	adios
		Ata <(|)>.
-- 
         Dr Ata Etemadi, Blackett Laboratory,
         Space and Atmospheric Physics Group,
         Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine,
         Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BZ, ENGLAND
Internet/Arpanet/Earn/Bitnet: atae@spva.ph.ic.ac.uk
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