The first is Stanislaw Lem's "Imaginary Magnitude."

Most stories there are written as sort of prefaces to non-existent technical/scientific books, papers, articles, etc. The last one, Golem XIV, goes a bit beyond and includes an entire lecture.

The content is incredibly detailed and technical, Lem knew his Technology and Science for sure, so sometimes it's incredibly accurate and prophetic. Even though it was written in the 1970's, Lem was already describing things that look uncannily like neural networks, emergent communication systems, and machine-generated literature, decades before they existed.

And... most of them are also really really funny.

Here are small summaries that ChatGPT helped me write for some of the stories there:

---- Eruntics ---- A faux-scientific introduction to a field studying “erunts”: biological (or semi-biological) agents, think bacteria/neural colonies, that can learn to read, write, and communicate.

These bacterial colonies learn to communicate through several learning iterations across many mutations and generations, much like, say, Neural Networks, and they even develop their own proto-language as they evolve.

Eruntics is a sort of "meditation" on emergent intelligence and how writing or meaning might arise in nonhuman systems.

---- A History of Bitic Literature ---- Purports to be a critical history of literature produced not by humans, but by machines or other non-human authors, the fictional discipline of bitistics.

It treats computer-generated texts as a full literary tradition, with schools, tropes, and structural analysis.

It also goes into detail on how at a certain point Bitic Literature required models to read what other models had generated and "validate" what they had written, since the complexity they reach in terms of things like neologisms, subtext, and interconnectedness to other texts and ideas, becomes so absurdly high that no human being can even attempt to read them or make sense of them.

---- Golem XIV ---- This is like half of the book, and oh boy...

It presents itself first as a report/lecture series from a U.S.-military supercomputer, framed with forewords, editorial notes, “instructions,” etc, but it quickly shifts into the machine’s own philosophical monologues about humanity, evolution, intelligence gradients, and existential insignificance/significance.

It contains some really iconic phrases, in particular during Golem's "Lecture":

" 'The meaning of the transmitter is the transmission' [...] To be sure, the corollary holds: 'The meaning of the transmission is the transmitter.' But the two members are not symmetrical."

" 'The construction is less perfect than what constructs' [...] Let us give it more substance: 'In evolution, a negative gradient operates in the perfecting of structural solutions'"

Golem XIV becomes a genuine “book within a book,” a hard, speculative essay on what a post-human intellect might think.

The second set of "books" that I would recommend are kinda related, even in tone:

Masamune Shirow's "Ghost in The Shell" and its sequel "Ghost in the Shell: Man-Machine Interface."

ChatGPT summaries:

--- Ghost in the Shell ---

At its core, the original Ghost in the Shell manga is a cyberpunk procedural about identity in a hyper-connected world.

It follows Major Motoko Kusanagi, a fully cybernetic government operative working for Public Security Section 9, a counter-cyberterrorism and intelligence unit. The cases involve:

- cyberbrains and identity hacking

- political corruption

- AI autonomy

- blurred boundaries between human and machine

- networks where memories, skills, and consciousness can be stolen or overwritten

The central philosophical arc centers on Project 2501, the “Puppet Master,” an emergent artificial consciousness born from networked information systems rather than human intention. It challenges the legal, biological, and metaphysical definitions of “life.”

The manga’s key concern:

When minds become software, what counts as a person? What counts as being alive?

It’s high-speed political action wrapped around deep questions about autonomy, embodiment, and consciousness.

--- Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface ---

Man-Machine Interface is not a continuation in the conventional sense, but more of a "post-human" sequel.

Here, Motoko Kusanagi, the main character from Ghost in The Shell, no longer exists as a single embodied entity. After merging with the Puppet Master at the end of the original story, Motoko becomes something new: a distributed, multi-bodied, evolving posthuman intelligence often referred to as Motoko Aramaki or Motoko 2.0.

The sequel follows her as:

- a partially decoupled consciousness running across networks

- an entity capable of switching avatars, bodies, and instantiations

- a mind that operates above nation-states, legal frameworks, and even human-scale cognition

Plot-wise, it deals with:

- AI-industrial warfare

- megacorporations fighting over distributed intelligences

- metaphysics of identity in a world of multiple selves

- data-ecologies and collective minds

- the emergence of “post-persons”

But the real shift is tone and philosophy.

Where the first manga explores the crisis of identity, the sequel explores post-identity.

Its main question:

What does “self” mean when consciousness is fluid, redundant, multi-threaded, and no longer tied to one body or one narrative?

Man-Machine Interface is dense, maximalist, metaphysical, and sometimes abstract , much closer to Lem’s Golem XIV in its treatment of posthuman consciousness than the first part.

Third, another set, Peter Watts’ Blindsight and its sequel Echopraxia.

--- Blindsight ---

Hard sci-fi first-contact novel about a crew sent to investigate an alien signal. The aliens they encounter demonstrate astonishing intelligence and adaptability, but seemingly zero consciousness. The book’s central question is brutal:

Does consciousness provide any evolutionary advantage at all? Or is it an expensive, unnecessary hack?

It’s one of the most rigorous modern explorations of intelligence without awareness, cognition without qualia, and post-biological life. Also features resurrected vampires as humanity’s most efficient problem-solvers.

--- Echopraxia ---

A follow-up set in the same universe, focusing more on Earth, zombies, hive-minds, military religious cults, and what Watts calls baseline humans becoming obsolete. It complements Blindsight by following the implications of a world where non-conscious “intelligence engines” outperform conscious humans.

Finally...

--- Greg Egan's Permutation City ---

At its core:

A group of people upload themselves as software (“Copies”) into a virtual environment where consciousness is implemented as a computational process. But Egan pushes the idea far past “mind uploading” into deep mathematical and philosophical territory.

The central premise:

If consciousness depends only on logical consistency, not computation performed in real time, then a simulated mind does not require a universe running on stable physics or an external computer at all.

Egan calls this the Dust Theory.

What the novel explores:

1. Copies — software persons - Human consciousness is scanned and instantiated as a digital mind. These Copies struggle with:

- psychological trauma from being disposable

- questions about their moral status

- fears of erasure

- pressure to perform labor for “real” biological humans

They are conscious, but economically and ontologically precarious.

2. The “Autoverse” A lifelike world governed by artificial chemistry and evolution. It explores how complexity and life can arise from arbitrary rules, not carbon-based biology.

3. Dust Theory A mind is simply a pattern, not a process. If any arrangement of matter in the multiverse instantiates that pattern, even for a moment, consciousness exists.

This implies that a mind could “run” without a computer — as long as the pattern exists somewhere, even scattered across physical chaos (“dust”).

Permutation City becomes a sandbox for minds that no longer require a substrate.

4. “Permutation City” itself The ultimate simulation, constructed to be self-sustaining in a way that breaks free from dependence on any external reality. Inside it, Copies evolve new forms of existence beyond human constraints.

Why it’s important:

It’s one of the most serious, mathematically grounded attempts in fiction to grapple with:

- the ontology of simulated minds

- the meaning (or irrelevance) of physical reality

- identity as a computational equivalence class

- consciousness divorced from biology or substrate

- universes that exist because their patterns are self-consistent

It anticipates debates around:

- substrate independence

- functionalism

- consciousness as pattern-matching

- AI personhood

- anthropic reasoning

- simulation theory

Before most of those ideas entered mainstream discussion.

"Moby-Dick was Cormac McCarthy's favorite book"

... and mine too...

Thank you.

For Mandelbrot, I'd recommend starting with The (Mis)Behavior of Markets. For Taleb, maybe start with The Black Swan.

With those books you'll be able to fully understand why even if/when AI becomes sentient, it will still not help avoid blow ups.

(One reason among many others is, for example, that there are things that cannot be properly forecasted, no matter how hard you try or how advanced your model is, doesn't matter, there's a limit to what we can know and what we can't know about the future...)

Extra: Check out also Thorp's A Man for All Markets.

I don't remember it exactly, but I think near the end Richard solves the situation by building a (fake?) music app that detected that the song that had made the Patent Troll rich was actually a ripoff from another song that Richard had acquired the rights to, so now Richard could technically sue the Patent Troll for all the money he had made...

If anybody has a link to that scene it would be great.

(In case it's not super clear, I'm kinda jokin' here...)

John Von Neumann once said to Felix Smith: "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." This was a response to Smith's fear about the method of characteristics.

It took me a while to fully grasp what he meant, but after diving into Mathematics and Physics for a while, I now hold it as one of the capital T truths of learning.

(see "Ripley Underground" by Patricia Highsmith for more info...)

:)

As San Juan climbs Monte Carmelo, he finds nothing at the base of the monte, then he finds nothing at the middle, but then, at the cusp, he finds Nothing (capital N Nothing).

See the following image for reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monte_Carmelo_Juan_d...

There's quite a bit of parallels between proper "Catholic Mystics" and Zen teachers...

I highly recommend both the San Juan de la Cruz works, in particular Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night, along with The Cloud of Unknowing, which was an inspiration for him.

For those curious about learning more about Koans, I cannot recommend this other book highly enough: https://www.amazon.com/Two-Zen-Classics-Gateless-Records/dp/...

The book contains a collection of Koans along with Mumon's (et al) Commentary, Mumon's Verse, as well as modern day notes that help us understand some of the concepts hidden behind what looks like "poetical nonsense" at first, as well as giving the context for historical and mythological figures that are mostly unknown for those "outside the loop." What I love about the notes is that they still leave you with the opportunity to explore the koan further, properly, so they don't really take away all the fun.

Example Koan from the book:

##########################################################################

Case 4 The Western Barbarian with No Beard

Wakuan said, "Why has the Western Barbarian no beard?"

Mumon's Comment:

Study should be real study, enlightenment should be real enlightenment. You should meet this barbarian directly to be really intimate with him. But saying you are really intimate with him already divides you into two.

Mumon's Verse:

Don't discuss your dream before a fool. Barbarian with no beard Obscures clarity.

NOTES (abridged)

- The Western Barbarian: The Western Barbarian stands for Bodhidharma, who brought Zen to China from India. He is always depicted with a beard. The case therefore means, "Why doesn't Bodhidharma, who has a beard, have no beard?"

- Meet this barbarian directly: This is not really a meeting but a becoming. You should yourself become Bodhidharma. Then if you have a beard, Bodhidharma has a beard; if you have no beard, then neither had Bodhidharma. But can you say that you are in truth Bodhidharma?

[...]

- Obscures clarity: Words, concepts, and other inventions of the mind only obscure the truth. Do not cling to shadows, but catch hold of truth itself.

##########################################################################

You get the idea.

Enjoy!

I think handwaving comes in different flavors:

- Handwaving and not knowing what they are doing, when they know they don't know:

This is arrogance and/or fear of people thinking you are a fool. Bad practice. Professionals who do this are status chasers and not fun to be around. Students who do this are mostly insecure, and they might just need some help with their self-esteem. Help them by letting them feel comfortable with being wrong. Foster a good environment so that the arrogance and fear fade away.

- Handwaving and not knowing what they are doing, when they don't know they don't know:

I believe this is a good thing, in particular for Students, if they are within a nurturing environment. It can lead to interesting ideas and to discussions of innovative ways to move forward. I believe this to be a way of actually "training your intuition muscle" both for Students and Professionals. It lets them know not to fear moving on, tackling the thing that captures their attention the most at first, and later on filling some of the gaps, which I feel is common practice for people who have been working on the field for a while. However, if the gaps are left unattended it can lead to bad things... Environment matters.

- Handwaving and knowing what they are doing, when they know they don't know:

For trained Professionals only... :) This modality kinda kicks in when deep in mathematical work. It's the path that leads to the Eureka moments... Pure trained intuition acting almost as a separate entity to oneself. We are facing the unknown and something tells us that certain aspect can be handwaived, we don't fully know why but we feel it is. Later on it becomes clear why we could do the handwave. It works itself out.

- Handwaving and knowing what they are doing, when they don't know they don't know:

For trained Professionals only... Kind of a stretch, but might be where our intuition either fails us completely, or completely takes us by the hand to turn the unknown unknowns into known unknowns, then it goes back to the previous category.

This isn't set in stone by the way, just some thoughts I had while reading the article...

Any ideas or suggestions for modifications more than welcomed.

Haven't read a single bad contribution from him. And I've read quite a bit...

Really sad news...

It's a fun area.

They also help sometimes in getting the "musicality" of a work. I didn't know how musical Moby Dick was until I heard the audiobook narrated by Frank Muller. He transformed the whole thing. Like when one reads Shakespeare and only afterwards watches it live.

I tend to have audiobook+book combos for almost every book I love, since it's also a good way to continue "reading" even when ones eyes are tired...

Jaynes' book is a game changer, but I particularly love that you mentioned Barbour and his work.

On Barbour's work: Apart from being an incredibly interesting book, I was amazed that he was a sort of "outsider" writing papers and books "on his own" (or at least outside of Academia) while making money through technical translations is just a really clever way to be able to explore any interesting avenues one might find. Einstein had the right idea too...

(Sadly, it's also something that wouldn't be as feasible nowadays, but who knows...)

I had spotted some errors here and there, but it's always good to have them in one place.

I think we are all in the same wagon when I say that even with those rough edges Jaynes' book is kind of a transformative experience for everyone who has already been "conditioned" to other Probability texts.

For example, for me Feller is a great intro to "start working with Probability," but Jaynes is where one starts actually "thinking in Probability."

The whole Maximum Entropy thing was mind blowing for me.

Maths often get a bad rep, but at their core they are probably the most interesting thing to learn, on par with music in my opinion.

I encourage anyone interested in Mathematics (regardless of your level) to check out Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality. I know it's technically a physics book, even though Penrose was originally a Mathematician, but trust me, he explains things in a way that open up your mind, even for seasoned veterans. He begins with basic calculus, but ends up covering Groups, Topology, Complex Analysis, Differential Geometry, etc etc etc.

And, on parallel, check out John Baez's guide on how to learn Maths and Physics: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html

I love all of Baez's pages and work, he does some really interesting mathematics: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/

I'm also a big fan of Tai-Danae Bradley's work: https://www.math3ma.com/

Anyway, I hope people find these recommendations interesting or useful...