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Excellent book but with some glaring misconceptions

Revisado: 04-27-25

I liked the book overall both for its content and its pace. I was especially excited when at the beginning the author specified that he doesn’t agree with the anthropocentric view of humans as higher intelligence and that only by necessity of writing a book on human-like AI he won’t go into the other types of intelligence. Unfortunately, the anthropocentric view still came through in various chapters through the statement like “even advanced invertebrates such as crabs, ants or bees can’t do this or that or the other thing”. I don’t mind such statements per se if they’re correct, but there have been some major misconceptions. Here’s one of a few examples: author claim that bees and ants don’t have a spatial map then cites an outdated experiment with ants not being able to find their way home. Now we know that these old experiments suffered from anthropocentric view on how the spatial maps are formed. Once bees’ way of sending the world around them was taken into account, experiments definitely showed their ability to form, remember and utilize space maps (this was back in 2005, with a lot of research since then, so the author can’t claim ignorance). This is a missed opportunity in the book: once you show the independent emergence of complex characteristics you can then use the differences between the systems to boil down the neural patterns to few common links.

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Required reading for all Americans

Revisado: 03-25-23

I believe that this book, in addition to “Roots” and “People’s History of the United States” should be required reading for all Americans. Knowing how your country came about can strongly influence individuals actions as to where the country will go next. For that to happen we must let go of “manifest destiny” and whitewashed versions of history and embrace the truth, no matter how it makes us feel. It’s the only way we will achieve any growth as a nation.

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Cautionary book against modern rewriting of history

Revisado: 01-13-23

An excellent retelling of a life and works of a man who has been glorified and vilified for one stance he took and drove relentlessly at the end of his public career to the exclusion of all else that he achieved. History will repeat itself to those who seek to erase it instead of contextualizing and understanding it.

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