Growing up with Lucy

What Hacker News says

1. armagonMar 2021
   The book that immediately sprang to mind is one I hesitated to share here, and will only devote a paragraph to. It is "The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ". I believe it truly is a record of God's dealings with men, and have changed my life to live according to what it teaches.

   Now, onto the sorts of books you were more likely looking for, although most of these have only changed my perspective, and not my day-to-day:

   - "The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World" by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (1995). The most mind-blowing thought was that if you, say, accurately simulate an atom, and then build molecules out of it, then, while the atoms are fake, the molecules are real/true/useful.

   - http://worrydream.com has presentations and essays by Bret Victor on using the computer to augment what humans can think and accomplish. Everything here is good; "Up and down the ladder of abstraction" talks about seeing a problem at different levels. "Stop drawing dead fish" discusses creating interactive simulations by drawing. "The humane representation of thought" discusses how knowledge work has been constrained to rectangles and we should move beyond it and engage our whole bodies.

   - I highly recommend all the books by Dan and Chip Heath. "Decisive" is on making decisions. "Upstream" is on solving root problems, and not just symptoms. "Made to Stick" is about spreading ideas and having them be remembered.

   - "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error" by Kathryn Schulz—looks like she's also done some Ted talks—talks about how we can be deceived and why we are wrong in so many domains. Similarly, "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt was very interesting as it suggests why people understand the world so differently. By analogy, imagine that we all have five taste receptors on our tongues, but some people use different ones to inform what they like. Fascinating.

   - "Younger Next Year for Women: Live Strong, Fit, Sexy, and Smart—Until You're 80" by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge. I don't fit the categories the book is for, but saw it on my library shelves, and it applies to everyone. It maintains that your body is either growing or dying, and you need to put time in every day getting your heart rate up if you want to live a full and healthy life.

   - "Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps" by Steve Grand. Written before GPU-powered machine learning, this book, by the programmer behind the "Creatures" series of games, gives interesting insight into artificial life.

   I'm certain there are lots of good books I've read that I'm not recalling at the moment.

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2. krannerDec 2016
   Steve Grand's other book "Growing up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps" should also be included in this list.

   https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Lucy-Android-Twenty/dp/075...

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3. basicplus2Mar 2016
   Steve Grand.. this is the man for the Job

   I can't recomend his book enough "Growing up with Lucy"

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4. samlittlewoodMar 2010
   - David Marr: "Vision"

   The foundations of computational neroscience - and lots of practial demonstrations of how your eyes and brain work.

   - Daniel Dennett "Consciousness Explained"

   How the mind works?

   - J.E Gordon: "The new Science of Strog Materials" & " Structures, or why things don't fall down."

   How is 'stuff' strong/hard?

   - Steve Grand: "Creation" & "Growing up with Lucy"

   The programmer behind the game 'Creatures' and his adventures in artificial life.

   - Joseph Campbell: "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"

   Never look at Star Wars in the same way again.

   - David Deutch: "The Fabric of Reality"

   Many worlds or mad as a box of frogs?

   - Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin: "The Sixth Extinction"

   We're doomed - maybe

   - Braitenberg: "Vehicles"

   Emergent behaviour from simple rules

   - Ian Wilmut, Keith Cambell & Colin Tudge: "The Second Creation"

   How Dolly the Sheep was made. Takes you through the background such that you can read & understand their paper which appears at the end.

   - John Brunner: "The Shockwaver Rider"

   Snowcrash - hah! - 1975 and this dude got it already.

   Other general authors:

   Martin Gardner, Greg Egan (lots of free stuff on his site).

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