Cover Image: The True Creator of Everything

The True Creator of Everything

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Member Reviews

The True Creator of Everything is a book you have to invest some time in, because it’s dense with the type of narrative and data that takes some thinking about. Even with a background in science I had to apply all my powers of concentration to work through the conceptual complexity of the experimental work and conclusions.

I’ve never highlighted more passages in a book to go back to, but the herculean effort of reading the book was worth it, because what The True Creator of Everything lays out is something worthy of an intense and challenging science fiction novel with an expansive plot and cast. Except this is a work of non-fiction.

When I was at university (a longer time ago than I care to admit), much was made of how complex the different neurotransmitters of the central nervous system were compared to the peripheral nervous system. The received wisdom at the time was that these varied neurotransmitters hinted at how the intricate mechanisms of the brain worked and taking a closer look at them would answer all the unknowns.

This was soon found to be far from the truth. With the improvement in technology, intricate software investigations have forged their way into a whole new realm. Even so this book still raises more questions than it answers, but provides tantalising conceptual stepping stones to explore.

The Creator of Everything does reassure us that we aren’t going to run into a HAL or a Terminator at our front door any time soon, because despite all the sophistication of AI programmes they are still too linear. As a biological organism, the brain can draw on far more resources than simple AI when it comes to the subtleties of output we experience in the outside world. Indeed, it is obvious to anyone who knows little about science but is prepared to stop and think about it for a moment, there is something very nuanced at work as we live our daily lives, which is far from linear and transcends a simple neuronal networking system.

This is where Miguel Nicolelis indicates his train of thought by considering that the energy from the sun that trees harness to grow and thrive, is dissipated into this living organism as embedded information in its physical structure. He calls this concept Gödelian information, named after the logician Kurt Gödel who demonstrated that formal systems have inherent limitation. In other words, a logical process of arguments which lead to a conclusion in a linear fashion is an incomplete way of thinking about a particular situation and there may be another non-linear way of thinking about it.

At least I think this is what it means, given my limited grasp of mathematics (I’m sure someone reading this post will be able to provide a better explanation I can insert in here). Thinking about the tree they encountered on their walk during a conference lead Nicolelis and his mathematician friend and colleague Ronald Cicurel to apply Gödelian principles to the function of the human brain.

Whereas digital computers dissipate all the work they do into heat, human brains pour this into storage of what Nicolelis calls Gödelian information. The more complex the organism, the more this will be done.

An added twist to this remarkable hypothesis is that Gödelian information isn’t processed, but immediately recognised by the human brain.

So, this is indeed a book which provides a very different way of thinking about the way the brain works. It has given me plenty to think about. But I will need to revisit the book repeatedly to fully grasp everything it has to offer.

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DNF @ 5%

I am SO interested in this topic, but the copy I received is so badly formatted that it's painful to read. I must put it down for now, but am interested in the prospect of reading a correctly formatted copy.

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This was a very detailed book that I just couldn't get into. I had a hard time understanding some of the concepts the author writes about. I give it 3 stars since it is a genre I typically do not read.

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Another "different" book on the brain, but this time it is about the way our brain shaped the world around us, plus some other interesting insights about AI and computers.This one is also a not so easy book, but even if you are not expert on the subject, the whole concepts are really well explained and gave me a lot of food for thoughts.

Un altro libro "diverso" sul cervello, che racconta il modo in cui il cervello stesso ha "forgiato" il mondo intorno a noi, piú alcuni interessanti insights sull'intelligenza artificiale e i supercomputer. Anche questo non é un libro facile, ma anche per i non esperti sull'argomento, i concetti sono ben spiegati e soprattutto fanno riflettere parecchio.

THANKS NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

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