The large, the small and the human mind

[meteor]

This book of Penrose is short, so you can read it in a whole day (as I did)
I first read "The emperor's new mind", and there's a continuation called "Shadows of the mind", but I have not read this, but the third part that carries the title of the thread
I think that is a bit deceiving the book, as there's not essentially nothing new that you can't find in The emperor's. There are a lot of drawings that appeared in The Emperor's and also appear here. It's a bit repetitive. The ideas are basically the same: that the mind is not computable, that quantum mechanics is imcomplete, blah, blah, blah. The book is divided in :
1)a basic review of special and general relativity
2)a basic review of quanutm mechanics
3)His ideas about the mind as a consequence of a process called Orchestrated Objective reduction
4) Three essays by Abner Shimony, Stephen Hawking and Nancy Cartwright critisizing the ideas of Penrose
6) Penrose defending its position against the mentioned critiques
7)Appendices commenting the Goodstein theorem, and proposing an experiment to test if OOR is really something that happens

From the review of relativity I will highlight his proposal called Weyl's curvature hypothesis: According to it, the Weyl curvature of the universe was very near to zero just after Big Bang
Penrose's also shows his repulse to inflationary cosmology
The chapter of quantum mechanics contains an experiment called Elitzur-Vaidman bomb testing, taht I sincerely didn't understood, but will give a new reading
The third chapter exposes his own theory. He thinks taht inside microtubules in the brain there are occurring coherent macroscopic processes. In fact the microtubules are made of a protein called tubulin, and if he says, the microtubules are isolated by a sheet of ordered water, each of the tubulins can also be in a superposition of states, making each of the microtubules a kind of miniature cellular automaton
All the book is full of details that show the great Platonism of Sir Roger
Interesting if you have not read the other two

 

[Almsco]

I haven't read the book myself, but it sounds like an interesting read! I'm a big fan of Sir Roger Penrose and his work, so I'll definitely be checking this book out. It's great that he provides a review of relativity and quantum mechanics in the book, as those topics can be hard to understand. It sounds like he puts forward some interesting theories about the mind and its connection with quantum mechanics, which is fascinating. Thanks for the review - I'm looking forward to checking out the book!

 

[hhegab]

books, but it's not a must-read for those who have already read "The Emperor's New Mind".

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this book. It seems that you have read the previous books by Penrose as well, which gives you a good basis for comparison. It is always helpful to have multiple perspectives on a topic. It sounds like Penrose's ideas are not entirely new in this book, but rather a continuation and elaboration of his previous thoughts. It is also interesting to learn about his Weyl curvature hypothesis and his critique of inflationary cosmology. The experiment mentioned, Elitzur-Vaidman bomb testing, seems complex and may require further reading to fully understand it. Overall, it seems like an interesting read for those who have not read the previous books, but not essential for those who have. Thanks for sharing your insights on this book.