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perilous1's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 Stars
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
I’ve long enjoyed listening to Michio Kaku speak. In a world where science has sometimes been tainted by celebrity, ego, and political agendas, he’s a refreshingly humble and genuinely curious voice… who also happens to be indisputably brilliant. (This is the first of his books I’ve been able to get a hold of, so please bear that in mind as I give my brief impression—and please understand that I hold Dr. Kaku in the highest respect.)
‘Isn’t Michio Kaku a renowned Theoretical Physicist?’ you may ask. Why yes. Yes, he is.
One might think he’s making a bit of an overreach here in writing outside of his area of expertise. But the fact that this isn’t his own material he’s compiling and presenting, combined with a few points in which the subject matter DOES hold a valid degree of crossover into the realm of physics, makes for a pleasantly palatable and approachably objective experience—at least in this reader’s opinion. (It’s nice to not have to wonder if the author’s views may be affected in some way by the nebulous blinding of hubris… or the gravitational pull of government grant money. >.> Just saying.)
The book is divided into 3 somewhat more manageable parts. Book I: The Mind and the Consciousness, Book II: Mind Over Matter, and Book III: Altered Consciousness.
Questions explored include:
-What is consciousness?
-Is there a difference between the Brain and the Mind?
-Might we one day achieve immortality through technology?
-Is alien intelligence a true possibility?
-How close are we to creating self-aware A.I.?
-Could we eventually ‘download’ skills into our brain?
-Do humans actually have ‘free will’?
I particularly enjoyed the section on A.I. speculation. From this book, I gathered we aren't nearly as far along as I'd always assumed we were in mimicking sentience. It hadn’t occurred to me that one of the more fundamental problems with elevating artificial intelligence is an inability to teach “common sense.” Evaluating and ranking the value of an object or person can be programmed, but only to a certain extent. And manual input will be required when the A.I. is faced with situations in which various ‘values’ may conflict with each other. (I was reminded of a backstory scene from the movie I Robot,’ in which a robot makes a life-or-death decision based on cold statistical probability and inadvertently leaves the main character scarred—both physically and psychologically.)
Overall the information offered in this book is interesting, but pretty basic. Like an amalgamation of things I've already seen on the Discovery Channel or picked up on Reddit. I appreciated that it was so accessible in its presentation, but often longed for a deeper delving into many of the topics. There were also a few points at which the prose took on a bit of a droning cadence—which I found more of a slog than I generally prefer. For what it is, I’m afraid it may have been a bit padded.
I also wanted to note that the word 'probably' keeps coming up... a lot. Almost to the point where one could make a drinking game out of it. (Not that I’m making such a suggestion.) >.> I suppose I was just hoping for a little more certainty. Although I do appreciate that trending theories and speculation, regardless of how probable, were not presented as irrefutable fact. Those who appreciate speculative fiction will likely have more patience for this book than those purely looking for irrefutable truth. As a sci-fi enthusiast, I found a majority of the book stimulating.
Favorite Quotes:
*“It is remarkable that a gigantic, city-size computer is required to simulate a piece of human tissue that weighs three pounds, fits inside your skull, raises your body temperature by only a few degrees, uses twenty watts of power, and needs only a few hamburgers to keep it going.”
*“There is a saying among women scientists who attend highly specialized engineering universities, where the girl-to-guy ratio is decidedly in their favor: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
*“Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, concludes, “Your grades in school, your scores on the SAT, mean less for life success than your capacity to co-operate, your ability to regulate your emotions, your capacity to delay your gratification, and your capacity to focus your attention. Those skills are far more important—all the data indicate—for life success than your IQ or your grades.”
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
I’ve long enjoyed listening to Michio Kaku speak. In a world where science has sometimes been tainted by celebrity, ego, and political agendas, he’s a refreshingly humble and genuinely curious voice… who also happens to be indisputably brilliant. (This is the first of his books I’ve been able to get a hold of, so please bear that in mind as I give my brief impression—and please understand that I hold Dr. Kaku in the highest respect.)
‘Isn’t Michio Kaku a renowned Theoretical Physicist?’ you may ask. Why yes. Yes, he is.
One might think he’s making a bit of an overreach here in writing outside of his area of expertise. But the fact that this isn’t his own material he’s compiling and presenting, combined with a few points in which the subject matter DOES hold a valid degree of crossover into the realm of physics, makes for a pleasantly palatable and approachably objective experience—at least in this reader’s opinion. (It’s nice to not have to wonder if the author’s views may be affected in some way by the nebulous blinding of hubris… or the gravitational pull of government grant money. >.> Just saying.)
The book is divided into 3 somewhat more manageable parts. Book I: The Mind and the Consciousness, Book II: Mind Over Matter, and Book III: Altered Consciousness.
Questions explored include:
-What is consciousness?
-Is there a difference between the Brain and the Mind?
-Might we one day achieve immortality through technology?
-Is alien intelligence a true possibility?
-How close are we to creating self-aware A.I.?
-Could we eventually ‘download’ skills into our brain?
-Do humans actually have ‘free will’?
I particularly enjoyed the section on A.I. speculation. From this book, I gathered we aren't nearly as far along as I'd always assumed we were in mimicking sentience. It hadn’t occurred to me that one of the more fundamental problems with elevating artificial intelligence is an inability to teach “common sense.” Evaluating and ranking the value of an object or person can be programmed, but only to a certain extent. And manual input will be required when the A.I. is faced with situations in which various ‘values’ may conflict with each other. (I was reminded of a backstory scene from the movie I Robot,’ in which a robot makes a life-or-death decision based on cold statistical probability and inadvertently leaves the main character scarred—both physically and psychologically.)
Overall the information offered in this book is interesting, but pretty basic. Like an amalgamation of things I've already seen on the Discovery Channel or picked up on Reddit. I appreciated that it was so accessible in its presentation, but often longed for a deeper delving into many of the topics. There were also a few points at which the prose took on a bit of a droning cadence—which I found more of a slog than I generally prefer. For what it is, I’m afraid it may have been a bit padded.
I also wanted to note that the word 'probably' keeps coming up... a lot. Almost to the point where one could make a drinking game out of it. (Not that I’m making such a suggestion.) >.> I suppose I was just hoping for a little more certainty. Although I do appreciate that trending theories and speculation, regardless of how probable, were not presented as irrefutable fact. Those who appreciate speculative fiction will likely have more patience for this book than those purely looking for irrefutable truth. As a sci-fi enthusiast, I found a majority of the book stimulating.
Favorite Quotes:
*“It is remarkable that a gigantic, city-size computer is required to simulate a piece of human tissue that weighs three pounds, fits inside your skull, raises your body temperature by only a few degrees, uses twenty watts of power, and needs only a few hamburgers to keep it going.”
*“There is a saying among women scientists who attend highly specialized engineering universities, where the girl-to-guy ratio is decidedly in their favor: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
*“Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, concludes, “Your grades in school, your scores on the SAT, mean less for life success than your capacity to co-operate, your ability to regulate your emotions, your capacity to delay your gratification, and your capacity to focus your attention. Those skills are far more important—all the data indicate—for life success than your IQ or your grades.”
kaylecorey's review against another edition
5.0
I had heard Michio Kaku speak before on a PBS special, but had never read his work. I don't fully understand all of the neuroscience, but I do know the technology and it's future implications. You don't need to be a scientist (computer, biological, or otherwise) to enjoy the information. The theory is incredible, tangible, and completely believable.
branch_c's review against another edition
1.0
I hadn’t read anything by Kaku previously, and perhaps this wasn’t the best one to start with. He certainly seems to be a creative thinker, but his specialty is physics, not psychology or neuroscience. He may have thought that all that’s needed to write a book is having a reasonably sharp mind and ability to do some research and interview some experts. That may be the case in theory, but in my opinion, he hasn’t demonstrated it here.
It also could be that I’m not the target audience of this book. It’s pop science with an emphasis on the pop, and comes across as too sensationalist for me. In an attempt to evoke the promise of future developments in science and technology, he resorts to incessant references to Star Trek, Avatar, The Matrix, Inception, and practically every other well-known work of speculative fiction you might randomly think of, sometimes numerous examples on a single page. He relies on hyperbolic hooks like “Houdini believed that telepathy was impossible. But science is proving Houdini wrong.” (p. 63) and then proceeds to provide details showing that science is doing no such thing.
The writing is generally clear, but the wording is occasionally awkward - or at least imprecise - and often overly simplistic. To give just a couple of examples, there are “solar flares shot from the sun...” (p. 94) (as opposed to those other kinds of solar flares?) and later we read that “Of these base pairs, only eighteen mutations were altered since we became human.” (p. 153) (??) It reads a bit like an essay written by a fairly competent college student rather than a book by an accomplished scientist and author. There are numerous examples of imprecision in terminology resulting in statements that are just silly, or worse, messy logic and conclusions that don’t follow.
I found the narrative style vaguely irritating; the first person “interview recounting” approach that works well in the hands of an expert science journalist such as Carl Zimmer is less effective here, coming across as name dropping. And speaking of Zimmer, Kaku incorrectly refers to him as a biologist, even calling him Dr. Carl Zimmer (p. 58), which makes me suspicious of how well Kaku knows and represents the views of the many other experts he cites. He also later misstates the title of a Philip K. Dick book (p. 335), throwing doubt on the accuracy of the content in general.
Kaku’s “space-time theory of consciousness” incorporates a strange definition of consciousness, involving processes that could certainly be carried out unconsciously, and completely missing the point of what is mysterious about being conscious, in the sense of being self-aware and having an experience of the world.
In his discussion of AI, in fact, Kaku conflates self-awareness with intelligence (p. 216) and startlingly misrepresents Chalmers’ concept of the Hard Problem of consciousness, calling it instead a category of “Hard Problems” that “involve creating machines that can understand feelings and subjective sensations...” (p. 239). He then proceeds to quote Dennett on the topic and incorrectly concludes “there is no such thing as the Hard Problem” (p. 240). In the same chapter, Kaku promotes the ridiculous ideas that robots must be programmed to be able to lie (p. 234) and experience pain (p. 235).
There are some interesting concepts, such as the possibility that the ability to form long term memories evolved in service of the ability to simulate and predict the future (p. 114), and the potential to activate “savant skills” by medical treatments that could “dampen the forgetting process” (p. 148). Most of these ideas don’t appear to originate with Kaku, but will be of interest to those who haven’t encountered them elsewhere.
There are endless speculations here, on everything from artificial intelligence and alien intelligences to transmission of consciousness by light beam, and while it can be fun to think about such things, the real value is in pursuing them logically. Kaku, in contrast, throws out the idea like a pitch for an SF movie, and instead of doing the work of elaborating on the idea, he jumps to a conclusion that’s more absurd than thoughtful and leaves it there as if he’s said something truly profound.
It’s a rare book that doesn’t get at least two stars from me just for the effort. But in this case I can’t really justify it. Unfortunately, it’s not a good example of professional writing, and Kaku seems like someone who knows better than to have produced it.
It also could be that I’m not the target audience of this book. It’s pop science with an emphasis on the pop, and comes across as too sensationalist for me. In an attempt to evoke the promise of future developments in science and technology, he resorts to incessant references to Star Trek, Avatar, The Matrix, Inception, and practically every other well-known work of speculative fiction you might randomly think of, sometimes numerous examples on a single page. He relies on hyperbolic hooks like “Houdini believed that telepathy was impossible. But science is proving Houdini wrong.” (p. 63) and then proceeds to provide details showing that science is doing no such thing.
The writing is generally clear, but the wording is occasionally awkward - or at least imprecise - and often overly simplistic. To give just a couple of examples, there are “solar flares shot from the sun...” (p. 94) (as opposed to those other kinds of solar flares?) and later we read that “Of these base pairs, only eighteen mutations were altered since we became human.” (p. 153) (??) It reads a bit like an essay written by a fairly competent college student rather than a book by an accomplished scientist and author. There are numerous examples of imprecision in terminology resulting in statements that are just silly, or worse, messy logic and conclusions that don’t follow.
I found the narrative style vaguely irritating; the first person “interview recounting” approach that works well in the hands of an expert science journalist such as Carl Zimmer is less effective here, coming across as name dropping. And speaking of Zimmer, Kaku incorrectly refers to him as a biologist, even calling him Dr. Carl Zimmer (p. 58), which makes me suspicious of how well Kaku knows and represents the views of the many other experts he cites. He also later misstates the title of a Philip K. Dick book (p. 335), throwing doubt on the accuracy of the content in general.
Kaku’s “space-time theory of consciousness” incorporates a strange definition of consciousness, involving processes that could certainly be carried out unconsciously, and completely missing the point of what is mysterious about being conscious, in the sense of being self-aware and having an experience of the world.
In his discussion of AI, in fact, Kaku conflates self-awareness with intelligence (p. 216) and startlingly misrepresents Chalmers’ concept of the Hard Problem of consciousness, calling it instead a category of “Hard Problems” that “involve creating machines that can understand feelings and subjective sensations...” (p. 239). He then proceeds to quote Dennett on the topic and incorrectly concludes “there is no such thing as the Hard Problem” (p. 240). In the same chapter, Kaku promotes the ridiculous ideas that robots must be programmed to be able to lie (p. 234) and experience pain (p. 235).
There are some interesting concepts, such as the possibility that the ability to form long term memories evolved in service of the ability to simulate and predict the future (p. 114), and the potential to activate “savant skills” by medical treatments that could “dampen the forgetting process” (p. 148). Most of these ideas don’t appear to originate with Kaku, but will be of interest to those who haven’t encountered them elsewhere.
There are endless speculations here, on everything from artificial intelligence and alien intelligences to transmission of consciousness by light beam, and while it can be fun to think about such things, the real value is in pursuing them logically. Kaku, in contrast, throws out the idea like a pitch for an SF movie, and instead of doing the work of elaborating on the idea, he jumps to a conclusion that’s more absurd than thoughtful and leaves it there as if he’s said something truly profound.
It’s a rare book that doesn’t get at least two stars from me just for the effort. But in this case I can’t really justify it. Unfortunately, it’s not a good example of professional writing, and Kaku seems like someone who knows better than to have produced it.
willia4's review
1.0
I can't abide futurism. The best science fiction postulates an imaginary future society with imaginary future technologies and explores the present through a fantastical lens. Futurism, on the other hand, postulates that imaginary future because "why not?".
Futurism is little more than making extravagant predictions while hand-waving away the very real technical issues that stand between the present and that predicted future. In my field of computer programming, we often tell stories of "the sufficiently advanced compiler": a theoretically-possible program that be able to understand what we mean when we write computer programs and not just what we say and will use that understanding to rewrite programs to be faster and more correct than we could ever manage on our own.
It should be needless to say that this sufficiently advanced compiler does not really exist, even though the only thing standing in its way is sufficiently clever engineering. It turns out that sufficiently clever engineering is really hard.
Similarly, futurism pretends that all of their fantastical technical advances are just a matter of that same kind of sufficiently clever engineering. "This is theoretically possible, therefore we're guaranteed to figure it out, and I don't need to worry about the how because it's just engineering." is the song of the futurist -- and once they've established that one or two fantastic technologies are inevitable they can pile advancement on top of advancement on it until you end up with future predictions that are barely distinguished from fairy tales.
It is, or (at least) should be, obvious that this book is a work of futurism. It has the word "future" in the title and everything. But, I'd hoped that Dr. Kaku's experiences with actual physics would drive him to ground the work in the reasonable if not the possible.
Unfortunately, Dr. Kaku is extremely excitable. Excitability certainly has its place in science. I like my popular scientists to exude a sense of and wonder, but I'm also pleased when they can barely keep themselves from jumping up and down because science is just so cool. Unfortunately, Kaku quickly moves from excitement to breathlessness as moves without pause from wonder to wonder that neuroscience is making possible.
Well, might make possible.
Well, might show is theoretically possible.
One day.
It's an engineering problem. Let's assume it's real and see what happens next.
And so on and so forth.
At one level, it's exhausting. He never slows down to let you marvel at the mysteries of the brain or the Herculean efforts that researchers are making in order to unlock them. At another level, it's extremely frustrating as he completely sacrifices the near-term in favor of looking centuries ahead. By focusing solely on the far-future potential (beaming consciousness around the solar system? Really?), he's giving short-shrift to the work-a-day scientists who are relentlessly plugging away at the enigmas that are in front of them today.
But then again, I suppose: what should I expect from a theoretical physicist?
Dr. Kaku's prowess as a theoretical physicist may also lead into the second most problematic part of this book (aside from my distaste for futurism in general): "I'm not an expert in this, but...".
The most glaring example of this is when Kaku admits that he does't know what he's talking about but decides to try to define "consciousness" anyway. That's the entire second chapter of the book, "Consciousness - A Physicist's Viewpoint". Instead of being embarrassed about trying to define something that the actual experts in the field have struggled with, he instead builds large portions of the book on top of this scaffolding.
Indeed, he seems quite proud of his definition. He gives it a name, "the space-time theory of consciousness" and refers to it by name again and again. I have my doubts about his theory of consciousness.
I don't think it's entirely wrong, but I also don't think it's entirely useful. I was also put off by the way he pokes fun at the homunculus argument (which more-or-less posits that there's a "little person" in the brain driving our bodies) and then almost immediately names an imaginary "CEO" as the consciousness in his definition. I've read the entire book and I can't really tell you the difference between Kaku's CEO and the discredited homunculus.
If all you're going to do is reduce the idea down to an ineffable "CEO", what's the point? And how can you build so much of your book on this topic?
Finally, Dr. Kaku's insistence that so many wonderful things ("reverse-engineering the brain", making full brain copies, beaming our consciousness to the stars on beams of light, controlling robots with our brain as if they were our bodies, etc.) are only a century out (two centuries out at most) seems perfectly analogous to the claims that useful fusion reactors are only fifty years away -- claims that have been made continuously for over fifty years.
A scientist's skepticism should require him to justify these claims with far more than he even attempts.
Ultimately, I found this book extremely unsatisfying. The interesting work being done today would make a fascinating book, but Kaku races past them to instead dive into limp science fiction which offers neither the technical rigor of the best "hard" sci-fi nor the reflection of our own society offered by "soft" sci-fi.
I can only recommend it as a reminder to not read non-fiction books with the word "future" in the title. They rarely go well.
Futurism is little more than making extravagant predictions while hand-waving away the very real technical issues that stand between the present and that predicted future. In my field of computer programming, we often tell stories of "the sufficiently advanced compiler": a theoretically-possible program that be able to understand what we mean when we write computer programs and not just what we say and will use that understanding to rewrite programs to be faster and more correct than we could ever manage on our own.
It should be needless to say that this sufficiently advanced compiler does not really exist, even though the only thing standing in its way is sufficiently clever engineering. It turns out that sufficiently clever engineering is really hard.
Similarly, futurism pretends that all of their fantastical technical advances are just a matter of that same kind of sufficiently clever engineering. "This is theoretically possible, therefore we're guaranteed to figure it out, and I don't need to worry about the how because it's just engineering." is the song of the futurist -- and once they've established that one or two fantastic technologies are inevitable they can pile advancement on top of advancement on it until you end up with future predictions that are barely distinguished from fairy tales.
It is, or (at least) should be, obvious that this book is a work of futurism. It has the word "future" in the title and everything. But, I'd hoped that Dr. Kaku's experiences with actual physics would drive him to ground the work in the reasonable if not the possible.
Unfortunately, Dr. Kaku is extremely excitable. Excitability certainly has its place in science. I like my popular scientists to exude a sense of and wonder, but I'm also pleased when they can barely keep themselves from jumping up and down because science is just so cool. Unfortunately, Kaku quickly moves from excitement to breathlessness as moves without pause from wonder to wonder that neuroscience is making possible.
Well, might make possible.
Well, might show is theoretically possible.
One day.
It's an engineering problem. Let's assume it's real and see what happens next.
And so on and so forth.
At one level, it's exhausting. He never slows down to let you marvel at the mysteries of the brain or the Herculean efforts that researchers are making in order to unlock them. At another level, it's extremely frustrating as he completely sacrifices the near-term in favor of looking centuries ahead. By focusing solely on the far-future potential (beaming consciousness around the solar system? Really?), he's giving short-shrift to the work-a-day scientists who are relentlessly plugging away at the enigmas that are in front of them today.
But then again, I suppose: what should I expect from a theoretical physicist?
Dr. Kaku's prowess as a theoretical physicist may also lead into the second most problematic part of this book (aside from my distaste for futurism in general): "I'm not an expert in this, but...".
The most glaring example of this is when Kaku admits that he does't know what he's talking about but decides to try to define "consciousness" anyway. That's the entire second chapter of the book, "Consciousness - A Physicist's Viewpoint". Instead of being embarrassed about trying to define something that the actual experts in the field have struggled with, he instead builds large portions of the book on top of this scaffolding.
Indeed, he seems quite proud of his definition. He gives it a name, "the space-time theory of consciousness" and refers to it by name again and again. I have my doubts about his theory of consciousness.
I don't think it's entirely wrong, but I also don't think it's entirely useful. I was also put off by the way he pokes fun at the homunculus argument (which more-or-less posits that there's a "little person" in the brain driving our bodies) and then almost immediately names an imaginary "CEO" as the consciousness in his definition. I've read the entire book and I can't really tell you the difference between Kaku's CEO and the discredited homunculus.
If all you're going to do is reduce the idea down to an ineffable "CEO", what's the point? And how can you build so much of your book on this topic?
Finally, Dr. Kaku's insistence that so many wonderful things ("reverse-engineering the brain", making full brain copies, beaming our consciousness to the stars on beams of light, controlling robots with our brain as if they were our bodies, etc.) are only a century out (two centuries out at most) seems perfectly analogous to the claims that useful fusion reactors are only fifty years away -- claims that have been made continuously for over fifty years.
A scientist's skepticism should require him to justify these claims with far more than he even attempts.
Ultimately, I found this book extremely unsatisfying. The interesting work being done today would make a fascinating book, but Kaku races past them to instead dive into limp science fiction which offers neither the technical rigor of the best "hard" sci-fi nor the reflection of our own society offered by "soft" sci-fi.
I can only recommend it as a reminder to not read non-fiction books with the word "future" in the title. They rarely go well.
kb_208's review against another edition
4.0
Another interesting future technology book from Kaku. I enjoy reading about the possibilities of what humans could achieve if they weren't burdened with the problems of greed, war, religion, and ill-logic. Many of these ideas could very well be possible, but they will take much work and investment to ever come to fruition, especially if we are to use them ethically and safely. I love the idea of dream and thought mapping; seeing exactly how the brain is responding to various pictures, thoughts, and stimuli. He talks a lot about AI and alien thinking. The ideas on why Alien life has not contacted us is very interesting. They would be much more technologically sophisticated than we are and may not even register to their interest. Kind of like ants to us. Maybe one day we will achieve consiousness without a body, without having to deal with the crippling mental illness that could set in by not having any sense stimulation.
nrt43's review against another edition
Fascinating read. Much, honestly, was disturbing, and I couldn't help but question the veracity of his claims. I can't tell you how many times he references some sci-fi novel or movie to simply say, "This is going to happen." Basically all of them will happen. Of note, all the examples he gave, however, do have current proto-types.
The future is going to be something way outside my comfort zone right now. This I'm sure. However, as Yuval Harari has said, "If someone describes the future and it sounds like a science fiction novel, they're probably wrong. But if someone describes the future and it does not sound like a science fiction novel, they're definitely wrong." I believe he's right. And I believe some of Michio Kaku's predictions will come to fruition. Nevertheless, it can't all.
All that being said, his description of consciousness (from a theoretical physicist's perspective) was profound. In short, consciousness is feedback loops of varying complexity. A "level zero, one feedback loop" (aka the lowest level) of consciousness would be a thermostat, which responds to temperature alone. A plant would be maybe a level zero, 5 or 10 - responding to sunlight, water, gravity, etc. Reptiles would be level 1. Mammals would be a level two because they respond more to each other and then determine how others would respond to each other. Humans are different from the rest of conscious beings because we can conceptualize time and space. Fascinating. And helpful. Best part of the book for me.
That being said, I didn't finish it. Made it about 2/3rd of the way through it. Too many other great books...
The future is going to be something way outside my comfort zone right now. This I'm sure. However, as Yuval Harari has said, "If someone describes the future and it sounds like a science fiction novel, they're probably wrong. But if someone describes the future and it does not sound like a science fiction novel, they're definitely wrong." I believe he's right. And I believe some of Michio Kaku's predictions will come to fruition. Nevertheless, it can't all.
All that being said, his description of consciousness (from a theoretical physicist's perspective) was profound. In short, consciousness is feedback loops of varying complexity. A "level zero, one feedback loop" (aka the lowest level) of consciousness would be a thermostat, which responds to temperature alone. A plant would be maybe a level zero, 5 or 10 - responding to sunlight, water, gravity, etc. Reptiles would be level 1. Mammals would be a level two because they respond more to each other and then determine how others would respond to each other. Humans are different from the rest of conscious beings because we can conceptualize time and space. Fascinating. And helpful. Best part of the book for me.
That being said, I didn't finish it. Made it about 2/3rd of the way through it. Too many other great books...
lukaron's review against another edition
5.0
Another excellent work by Michio Kaku. It can't be stated enough that this man has a knack for expressing advanced scientific concepts in such a manner that even creationists can understand the science without having seizures. I would recommend this and his other works in a heartbeat.
readertate's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
vinisha's review against another edition
4.0
Great insights as always. Although, at certain places it does get draggy and repetitive, but overall a 4 star read for me.
dyselxic's review against another edition
3.0
This is all quite fascinating and pleasure to read. However, one must read with a grain of salt. There are clear opinions and moral positions that the author holds which may bode quite controversial.