Foundation
Book Review on of Isaac Azimov’s “Foundation” Books 1 & 2
The Isaac Azimov’s series “Foundation” depicts a future galaxy, in which two groups of people were are sent to two ends of the galaxy, and through the historical predictions of Hari Seldon, the founder of the two “Foundations”, they are to become the future empires. The empire which rules is bound to fall, and Hari Seldon predicts a long period of barbarism to follow. As a remedy, Seldon seeks to accelerate the process of a new empire being formed and the galaxy falling back into a state of peace.
“Psychohistory” created by 31st century mathematics professor Seldon, is the ability to calculate the probability of certain events happening in the future. It is achieved by consideration of all the sources of input that could influence the results in this calculation, and finally arriving to at a probable result.
Hence, Hari Seldon has already predicted the most likely events to happen in the future, and whenever the time comes when a crisis hits the two Foundations, a time capsuale capsule is opened, and a prerecorded video of Seldon is shown to the people, providing them a solution.
During the first three centuries, the Foundation which the book starts from its point of view at has experienced being surrounded by barbarous worlds, hindered by a lack of resources while being attacked by the opposing empire which was still thriving as well as lack of materials.
Through methods such as developing religion in order to control the hearts of mobs from other worlds, and creating sophisticated trading systems on which worlds started to rely too much on, the Foundation’s power among the worlds around it and its esteem around the Galaxy grew by the day. Since the very best scientists from the old empire were attracted and placed on the two Foundations, the level of our Foundation or the “First Foundation” easily surpassed its neighbors and soon the empire itself.
However, in the second book, a mutant ruler named going by the name of “The Mule” has destroyed Seldon’s plans. This mutant has great powers – particularly his ability to persuade. Without having to use With little much effort, The Mule easily defeated defeats one of the Foundations -- and sets his eyes upon the empire.
The Foundation was ruled by tyrany as well, the leader being given his power not by through election, but instead by by virtue of his father being the mayor. The last leader of this foundation Foundation was week weak and soft, and surrendered easily under the force of the The Mule. The Second Foundation seemed to be the biggest hope of the First Foundationers. Amongst the First Foundation, only three worlds were still resisting the Mule’s control, all independent trading worlds which had supposedly rebelled and were exiled by the First Foundation. Two men and one women set of to the original empire’s capital Trantor, with the task of finding the Second Foundation, and saving the First Foundation as well as the Seldon Plan
Asimov’s Foundation series has been interesting. Depicting future worlds is not something new, but the fassion of the author and his writing , as well as the charecters and events that he depicts, and his tendency to give readers big suprises has been new, and makes his books attractive
The series itself experienced huge ups and downs. When the first three books were published, they formed the Foundation Trilogy and in the 1950s weren’t exactually the most famous trilogy. However, a publishing company found the trilogy, throught it was interesting and compiled it into one hardback book. After publishing the series through this publisher, the book became famous almost instantly and was a huge hit. Since the author had already moved on, he did not want to spend time writing this series anymore, and was caught by suprise when suddenly huge amounts of fans started requesting for new books of the series.
Finally, under both pressure by the publisher and readers, he picked up his pen and started to continue the series almost 30 years after the first book of the trilogy was published.
This huge time lapse in the publishing of the third and fourth Foundation book will prove interesting. Through these thirty years not only has the author changed, but the world has also changed much. Technology has developed, and the main idea of a world in which psychohistory, or the ability to read minds and use the knowledge of such to predict the future has also had somewhat developed. Hence, I am interested about what the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh book will contain that might be different to the trilogy.
I think the author’s tone and style of writing is brilliant and incredible. His writting always manages to give readers a slab of something unexpected. Even though sometimes it might be unappreciated, but his writting is logical and reasonable, and almost every detail and small event is important in the great scheme and result. Nothing is out of order and everything seems to go by plan, while at the end a completely unexpected result happens. Even so, once readers look back upon past events under this new light of knowledge, everything seems to be directly leading the the result.
Asimov’s ideas are interesting in another way that they are somewhat reasonable while still are imagination. Technologies such as intersteller travel through hyperspacial jumps, and everyday technology using nuclear power seems to be accomplishable in the reasonable future, but are still important and possibly hard degrees of technology to reach.
However, the most interesting and important aspects are Asimov’s views about the field “physohistory”. It may well be that in the future mental powers will be valued far greater than physical powers for their ability to change, predict and create, and may allow human intelligence to reach a higher level. Animals are often heard calling to each other but mostly when companions are not present, such as to warn from far distances about predators. However, when creatures we view as primitive come together they seldom resort to sound or pictures, but instead use a series of intricate actions, such as the wolf’s droop of the tail and the cat’s fur standing, in order to communicate something that could be less precise but more important than human language. Hence, the ability to perceive small actions and movements of other human beings could stand interesting and be able to result in better communication.
The perception of body language has long been a profession in which many masters have existed. It may well be that such perception is related more to mental rather than physical aspects, since small movements are instinctual and are direct results of ideas and emotions, while language may be deceptive.
Even so, mental workers and students who study in this field may have a long way to go until they develop the ability to read minds and mold them, or to be able to predict the future course of history through calculation.
Overall, the Foundation series will be a very interesting read and I will recommend it to all interested in a good piece of work.
Other Minds
Book review on “Other Minds”
Counsciousness has long been defined as a trait only of humans and no other species of animal. However, humans rarely think about this question and whether it is true, and instead take it for granted. However, Peter Godfrey brings this question into consideration, doubting that other animal species may also have similar degrees of thought, processing ability and counsciousness, as well as power over its own body. Being a philosopher and a naturalist, the author combines his own special combination of knowledge, and explains not only counsciousness in octopuses, but also seeks to define the term “consciousness” iteself.
The book starts from the path of evolution, looking for the common ancester between anthropods, which are us, and octpuses. Around 660 million years ago, such an animal existed, which had the most basic receptors, eye spots, which were used solely as perceptors of light. Soon, some of these kinds of animals left the ocean, while some did not, and these two branches eventually all developed a certain small branch, which was a complex and huge nervous system. Human beings and anthropods have central nervous systems, which have absoulute control across the whole body. This is why humans can have fast reflexes. However, octopuses have another body plan. While they also have a central nervous system, it is much less complex and smaller than the one’s anthropods have, as well as being able to have less control. Instead, each of its arm has a seperate nervous system, which they use to fine tune their movement, reaction and has an individual form of mind. Hence, when the central system dispatches an order, the smaller systems of every arm act somewhat like and individual, having their own choice of how to fine-tune the exact movement but still having to obey the orders of the central nervous system. This means every single octopus is actually made up of many clusters of nervous systems, and this also results in the fact that sometimes octopuses may seem to act strangely or haphazardly. Being interested in octopuses, the author himeself has spent many years, observing octopuses and cuttlefish. He also quotes many experiments during his book, as well as the work of other famous naturalists and philosophers. One certain action of octopuses has given me an exceptionally strong impression. When octopuses were given food that they disliked, they intentionally waited for the researchers to get near, and then stuffed the food down the sink when they were passing by. Also, octopuses have been written to have squirted ink at people who they did not recognize in labs. Octopuses in both these contexts show an amazing ability of both recognition and reaction. These actions may even border humor if one thinks about them in a certain way, which makes it something even more spectacular. Humans have long wondered whether other intelligent beings have existed out of earth, but we may be missing out on such animals right now.
Cousciousness is the ability to define one’s own actions not out of complete control of one’s own body, but instead of one’s own thought. Instead of working simply as a reaction and control system, the central nervous system and the ladder nervous system of animals such as humans and octopuses have developed the ability to defy natural wants, to create new ideas and to escape the gravity of simply hunger. Even though every animal is bound to basic needs, such as the want to survive or the be not hungry, as well as to be happy, human and octopus minds have created a different context, which wants different things and can put away some of our most basic needs in order to acheive something that was developed in our brains and is more important to us. A good example may be a warrior fighting for his or her own country. While fighting, a good warrior is not afraid of death, since he or she has a greater ambition or goal, which can allow that warrior to go against the most basic needs Hence, consciousness is developed. Only managing to input and output information is not “having consciousness”, and certainly managing to feel does not count as having consciousness. Hence, what we consider as animals may also have consciousness, and it is not simply a trait that anthropods have naturally, but instead something that can be developed, that has been developed in anthropods especially, but can also develop among other animals. Since, octoposes and cuttlefish might also have the possiblity to devlop such intelligence. It’s fun and magical to think of the world from this perspective, to realize how much possiblities that the world has had, instead of seeing the world through human eyes, we are seeing it from a god’s perspective.
Outliers
Book review on “Outliers”. Outliers is a book about the small and unobvious facts behind successors and the seemingly trivial reasons that causes differences between great successors and normal people. Using huge amounts of numbers and examples, managing not only to illustrate his point but also striking deep thought within his readers. He focuses mainly on a few facters, including cultral, age, time and oppurtunities. He explains with great detail how these factors manage to decide who becomes great successors. He overthrows many conventional ideas and notions, and asserts his points in direct opposition to the normal view most people have. While most people believe the tycoons and famous in all fields are famous only since they are much more talented than others and put in more hard work, Gladwell argues that success depends much more on a sequence on coincidents and oppurtunities more than just talent and grit.
To start with, Gladwell introduces Canadian and Chez ice hockey players. He uses a few set of numbers, mostly focusing on the birth dates of the members in the highest-tiered ice hockey squads in both countries. He leads readers to notice that in fact, most of the players in the best teams are all born at the start of the year, concentrating around January, Febuary and March, while kids born in December, November and October almost do not appear in the list. He explains that, in both countries, the standard cut-off for age groups is January 1st, which means that children born in the start of the year are often put with chilren born much more later, and hence are more under-developed than they are. When the coaches from good teams come around the country in search of talented players, they are much more liable to choose the bigger players, and in better teams, they get much better and longer training, finally leading to a huge lead over their counterparts. He explains the term “accumulative advantage”, which is a term he also uses much in talking about other oppurtunities and chances successors have over their peers. He uses this example as a kind of demonstration, and forms a structure for his other examples and the other points he tries to prove later on in the book. Then, the author moves on to Bill gates. Similar to the Chez and Canadian ice hockey team. Bill Gates had exceptionally different oppurtunities than most of his peers. First of all, he was born around the golden age for programming, not too early to already have a family and not too young to not be in high school and college. What’s more, his high school had the most developed computers of the age, a kind of computer which most colleges did not have yet. He was a fanatic of computers, and spent days and nights inside the computer room. He also had the chance to go to a computer programing company to test their code. Hence, he got lots of practice, which in the end led him to create such a great company. The author states that most successors in all fields put in at least 10000 hours into their field. Hence, Bill Gates was definitely not lucky in this area, as he did work extremely hard and stayed on the computer almost all of the time during high school and college. However, the oppurtunities that Bill Gates did have—the exact area, age, family he was born him, the chances he went to the private school that had the best computers among high schools, and that he was so attracted to programming are all essential reasons he can become successful. He also focusses on artists and musicians, showing that the difference between professionals and amatuers is the amount of time put into their field. For pianists, violinists and more, 10000 hours is a kind of division between people who can really become successful and the ones playing just for fun. The author then again talks about the Beatles, one of the historically most famous bands in the world. Much like Bill Gates and professional musicians, the band put in around 10000 hours during a period of time in which they started to become famous. Next, the author writes about the advantages and disadvantages that culture has in success. The author examines different cultures and the impact they have on people and their actions, starting with the culture of honor in South America. Since the immigrants who have came here lived in harsh conditions, they could not plant crops for a living and instead everyone had their own sheep and cattle. Hence, protection of these animals was extremely important. While plants could not be “stolen”, animals could easily be led away if their owners seems weak and incompetent of protecting their own animals. Hence, the protection of one’s own honor was extremely important, meaning that the people leaving in South America frontiers were easily piqued and could get into a fight without much provocation at all. He uses an experiment to show that, even today, in which Southern Americans do not live by sheperding, the heart of honor is still prominent along peers. A group of young men from a renowned university attended several tests, some Southerners while others from elsewhere, and the results showed that even after many many generations without sheperding, the cultural effect still caused Southerners to be much more easily angry than the other young people. He uses this idea to infer the reasons behind a few continous plane crashes by Korean air. Korea’s culture has heavy regulations on the young and subordinate, which means that most of the times, the co-pilot, first officer and flight engineer listen to the pilot and can only hint at errors. When the pilot encounters a big mistake, and is completely concentrated on it, the other officers’ comments and hints that should have enough meaning to remind the pilot then turn into pure remarks, and combined with coincidences such as bad weather, small mechanic problems and not fluent enough english combine and cause plane crashes. In the end, Korean air brought in a completely different manager, a famous western manager who managed to save Korean air through reformation and the destruction of cultural limitations inside all the Korean officers. Hence, Korean air has become a new air comopany, and it has a pristine record since 1996. One last point that I’m especially interested in is the arguments the author holds concerning IQ and success. Normally, people with high IQ are considered as different and innate successors, since they have more power inside their brains. However, the author refutes that IQ is more like a kind of threshold, similar to a basketball player’s hight. After a player’s height reaches a level, additional height is kind of useless, just as in IQ, after a person’s IQ reaches a certain height, the extra amount is not as important. A good example might be Einstein himself. Even though his IQ might not be legendary, at a number at 150 which isn’t that overly crazy considering all the talented people that have IQs at around 200 and 190. However, he is renowned for the huge amounts of world-changing ideas that he has proposed. The author makes us realize that success is not only related to innate talent, such as IQ, but also related to oppurtunities and coincidences, as well as culturle background, family and also the willingness to work hard.
In conclusion, I think that “Outliers” is definitely a new, different and fun book. The author uses fun examples to illustrate his points, which provocate deep thought inside readers. It inspires me to think much more about myself and the environment around me, also the oppurtunities I might have and need. Though sometimes, I think the author puts the reasons behind success and failure much too easily, I still think that the author has led us to think more amount the smaller things that could have a large effect on our lives.
