The Emperor's New Mind

Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

By: Roger Penrose

Narrated by: Julian Elfer

For decades, proponents of artificial intelligence have argued that computers will soon be doing everything that a human mind can do. Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do?

In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. The book's central concern is what philosophers call the "mind-body problem". Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness. He is among a growing number of physicists who think Einstein wasn't being stubborn when he said his "little finger" told him that quantum mechanics is incomplete, and he concludes that laws even deeper than quantum mechanics are essential for the operation of a mind. To support this contention, Penrose takes the listener on a dazzling tour that covers such topics as complex numbers, Turing machines, complexity theory, quantum mechanics, formal systems, Godel undecidability, phase spaces, Hilbert spaces, black holes, white holes, Hawking radiation, entropy, quasicrystals, and the structure of the brain.

©1989 Oxford University Press; Preface copyright 1999, 2016 by Roger Penrose (P)2019 Tantor

This is great news. Good Job Nobel Prize Winner!

It would appear that Nassim Haramein with Walter Russell's work compounded and the fact that Walter has just received the Nobel Prize. I am exited to read Nassims new paper he is about to release on the compounding effects with the Iching and the ability of the biorhythms of humanity....

Excellent book, terrible adaption to audio book

This is one of the most profoundly interesting text in existence. Few people in the world are able to raise and investigate this intellectual territory, with the credibility of Roger Penrose. However, he himself expresses (in this book!) how hard he finds it to achieve an understanding of mathematical ideas through verbal communication. Ironic then, the editors of this book decided to read every single equation. This is incomprehensible and quickly becomes irritating.

Suggest future editors consider supplying an accompanying PDF download for the equations, diagrams and illustrations as they are an essential part of the content necessary to understand the author’s ideas.

fascinating

great narrator, interesting ideas. the math was over my head and the long part where all the binary numbers are read out was rough to listen to but the rest was really interesting and thought provoking especially now that AI is in the news constantly

Not appropriate for an audio format.

This book is filled with illustrations and equations. The illustrations are of course just skipped over but so are sections of text that refer to the illustrations. This means that sometimes the audio will be describing some concept and will suddenly skip to another concept abruptly. The audio tries to read the equations but, not being simple equation and using Greek letters and symbols more common to advanced physics, the equations often turn into a garbled mess. I ended up getting a hard copy of the book in order to follow what was going on.

The breadth of Penrose’s weaving of ideas is breathtaking.

This is a wonderful book for those who wish to see an intelligent person deal with the question of the hard problem of consciousness within the boundaries of standard physicalist scientific metaphysics. But read the actual book, because although the narrator does a great job reading repetitive numerical sequences, the audio format simply doesn’t translate well.