Download or read book I Am a Strange Loop written by Douglas R. Hofstadter and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the key to understanding ourselves and consciousness is the "strange loop," a special kind of abstract feedback loop that inhabits the brain.

Download or read book I is a Strange Loop written by Marcus du Sautoy and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alone in a cube that's glowing in the darkness, X is content within its little universe of infinite thought. This solitude is disturbed by the appearance of Y, who insists on exposing X to the richness of the physical world. Each begins to long for what the other has, luring them into a strange loop.In this play for two variables, Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould use mathematics and theatre to navigate the furthest reaches of our world. Through a series of surreal episodes, X and Y tackle some of life's greatest questions: where did the universe come from, does time have an end, do we have free will?I is a Strange Loop was first performed by the authors at the Barbican Pit, London, in March 2019.'I is a Strange Loop is a play that plays... with ideas, concepts, abstractions and relationships that are, usually, hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals, articulating the ineffable, incarnating the incorporeal, revealing the inconceivable... it makes us feel we know a great deal more than we do.... and is also very funny, utterly compelling and marvellously human.' Simon McBurney

Download or read book A Strange Loop written by and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Vocal Selections). Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical, Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning blisteringly funny masterwork exposes the heart and soul of a young artist grappling with desires, identity, and instincts he boths loves and loathes. This collection features 15 songs from the show arranged for vocal line with piano accompaniment. Songs include: Boundaries * Didn't Want Nothin' * Exile in Gayville * Inner White Girl * Intermission Song * Inwood Daddy * Memory Song * Periodically * Precious Little Dream / AIDS Is God's Punishment * Second Wave * A Strange Loop * A Sympathetic Ear * Today * Tyler Perry Writes Real Life * We Wanna Know.

Download or read book The Programmer s Brain written by Felienne Hermans and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A great book with deep insights into the bridge between programming and the human mind." - Mike Taylor, CGI Your brain responds in a predictable way when it encounters new or difficult tasks. This unique book teaches you concrete techniques rooted in cognitive science that will improve the way you learn and think about code. In The Programmer’s Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition you will learn: Fast and effective ways to master new programming languages Speed reading skills to quickly comprehend new code Techniques to unravel the meaning of complex code Ways to learn new syntax and keep it memorized Writing code that is easy for others to read Picking the right names for your variables Making your codebase more understandable to newcomers Onboarding new developers to your team Learn how to optimize your brain’s natural cognitive processes to read code more easily, write code faster, and pick up new languages in much less time. This book will help you through the confusion you feel when faced with strange and complex code, and explain a codebase in ways that can make a new team member productive in days! Foreword by Jon Skeet. About the technology Take advantage of your brain’s natural processes to be a better programmer. Techniques based in cognitive science make it possible to learn new languages faster, improve productivity, reduce the need for code rewrites, and more. This unique book will help you achieve these gains. About the book The Programmer’s Brain unlocks the way we think about code. It offers scientifically sound techniques that can radically improve the way you master new technology, comprehend code, and memorize syntax. You’ll learn how to benefit from productive struggle and turn confusion into a learning tool. Along the way, you’ll discover how to create study resources as you become an expert at teaching yourself and bringing new colleagues up to speed. What's inside Understand how your brain sees code Speed reading skills to learn code quickly Techniques to unravel complex code Tips for making codebases understandable About the reader For programmers who have experience working in more than one language. About the author Dr. Felienne Hermans is an associate professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She has spent the last decade researching programming, how to learn and how to teach it. Table of Contents PART 1 ON READING CODE BETTER 1 Decoding your confusion while coding 2 Speed reading for code 3 How to learn programming syntax quickly 4 How to read complex code PART 2 ON THINKING ABOUT CODE 5 Reaching a deeper understanding of code 6 Getting better at solving programming problems 7 Misconceptions: Bugs in thinking PART 3 ON WRITING BETTER CODE 8 How to get better at naming things 9 Avoiding bad code and cognitive load: Two frameworks 10 Getting better at solving complex problems PART 4 ON COLLABORATING ON CODE 11 The act of writing code 12 Designing and improving larger systems 13 How to onboard new developers

Download or read book Strange Loops written by Liz Harmer and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Enthralling. . . . A story that burns with intensity and daring." —Iain Reid A propulsive novel about the power and paradoxes of desire, from the acclaimed author of The Amateurs. As small children, Francine and her twin Philip shared a seemingly unbreakable bond—but in adolescence the connection frayed, and in adulthood the siblings are locked in a repeating loop of complex, destructive emotions. Matters have reached a breaking point, and Francine, now in her thirties and the married mother of two small boys, is convinced that Philip’s teenaged infatuation with religion and subsequent ongoing obsession with his sister’s “moral impropriety”—sparked by his discovery of her involvement in a forbidden relationship—are to blame. As storm clouds of resentment and mutual betrayal gather ominously, threatening to upend both siblings’ lives and damage their families, Francine unexpectedly finds herself in a situation that mirrors her earlier transgression: stirred and unsettled by her attraction to a wildly inappropriate man. And the one person who suspects is the last person she trusts—her disapproving twin. With the plot twists of a thriller, lean prose crackling with intensity, and big ideas explored alongside the messy truth of human relationships, Strange Loops simultaneously shocks and thrills the reader, all while asking vital questions about faith, love, and desire.

Download or read book G del Escher Bach written by Douglas R. Hofstadter and published by Penguin Group(CA). This book was released on 2000 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'What is a self and how can a self come out of inanimate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Douglas Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. In order to impart his original and personal view on the core mystery of human existence - our intangible sensation of 'I'-ness - Hofstadter defines the playful yet seemingly paradoxical notion of 'strange loop', and explicates this idea using analogies from many disciplines.

Download or read book The Little Typer written by Daniel P. Friedman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to dependent types, demonstrating the most beautiful aspects, one step at a time. A program's type describes its behavior. Dependent types are a first-class part of a language, and are much more powerful than other kinds of types; using just one language for types and programs allows program descriptions to be as powerful as the programs they describe. The Little Typer explains dependent types, beginning with a very small language that looks very much like Scheme and extending it to cover both programming with dependent types and using dependent types for mathematical reasoning. Readers should be familiar with the basics of a Lisp-like programming language, as presented in the first four chapters of The Little Schemer. The first five chapters of The Little Typer provide the needed tools to understand dependent types; the remaining chapters use these tools to build a bridge between mathematics and programming. Readers will learn that tools they know from programming—pairs, lists, functions, and recursion—can also capture patterns of reasoning. The Little Typer does not attempt to teach either practical programming skills or a fully rigorous approach to types. Instead, it demonstrates the most beautiful aspects as simply as possible, one step at a time.

Download or read book High Infatuation written by Steph Davis and published by The Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2007-03-09 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * A collection of vivid, intimate essays and prose poetry on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing * 40 percent of these pieces debut here for the first time * Davis has been profiled in publications including Outside, Men's Journal, W Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. Throughout her life, Steph Davis has chosen to take risks, to trust her impulses, to make decisions based on what feels right inside -- and never look back. Studying to be a concert pianist, she quit music the day she was introduced to rock climbing. Later, she abandoned the respectability of university life and pursuit of a law degree to become a "dirtbag climber," living out of her grandmother's hand-me-down Oldsmobile sedan with Fletcher, a heeler mix dog. Today, through courage and perseverance, Davis is a high-profile athlete whose sponsors have included Patagonia, Mammut, Clif Bar, Five Ten and Cascade Designs. In High Infatuation, Davis writes on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing. We wait with her in the tent through weeks of rain, wind, snow, and sleet, hoping for the weather to improve in the mountains of Patagonia, then race with her up a towering rock wall of Yosemite's El Capitan in a single day. More than adventure stories, these pieces reveal Davis' soul. They draw us into her struggles with safety, independence, ambition, and compassion. By following the journey of this remarkable woman, we learn what it means to live a truly adventurous life.

Download or read book Surfaces and Essences written by Douglas Hofstadter and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how analogy-making pervades human thought at all levels, influencing the choice of words and phrases in speech, providing guidance in unfamiliar situations, and giving rise to great acts of imagination.

Download or read book The Amateurs written by Liz Harmer and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the style of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Dave Eggers' The Circle: a post-apocalyptic examination of nostalgia, loss and the possibility of starting over. Allow us to introduce you to the newest product from PINA, the world's largest tech company. "Port" is a curiously irresistible device that offers the impossible: space-time travel mysteriously powered by nostalgia and longing. Step inside a Port and find yourself transported to wherever and whenever your heart desires: a bygone youth, a dreamed-of future, the fabled past. In the near-future world of Liz Harmer's extraordinary novel, Port becomes a phenomenon, but soon it is clear that many who pass through its portal won't be coming back—either unwilling to return or, more ominously, unable to do so. After a few short years, the population plummets. The grid goes down. Among those who remain is Marie, a thirtysomething artist living in a small community of Port-resistors camping out in the abandoned mansions of a former steel town. As winter approaches the group considers heading south, but Marie clings to the hope that her long lost lover will one day return to the spot where he disappeared. Meanwhile, PINA's corporate campus in California has become a cultish enclave of survivors. Brandon, the right-hand man to the mad genius who invented Port, decides to get out. He steals a car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother. And there he meets Marie. The Amateurs is a story of rapture and romance, and an astoundingly powerful tale about what happens when technology meets desire.

Download or read book Strange Tools written by Alva Noë and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves In his new book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.

Download or read book Network Oriented Modeling for Adaptive Networks Designing Higher Order Adaptive Biological Mental and Social Network Models written by Jan Treur and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the challenging topic of modeling adaptive networks, which often manifest inherently complex behavior. Networks by themselves can usually be modeled using a neat, declarative, and conceptually transparent Network-Oriented Modeling approach. In contrast, adaptive networks are networks that change their structure; for example, connections in Mental Networks usually change due to learning, while connections in Social Networks change due to various social dynamics. For adaptive networks, separate procedural specifications are often added for the adaptation process. Accordingly, modelers have to deal with a less transparent, hybrid specification, part of which is often more at a programming level than at a modeling level. This book presents an overall Network-Oriented Modeling approach that makes designing adaptive network models much easier, because the adaptation process, too, is modeled in a neat, declarative, and conceptually transparent Network-Oriented Modeling manner, like the network itself. Thanks to this approach, no procedural, algorithmic, or programming skills are needed to design complex adaptive network models. A dedicated software environment is available to run these adaptive network models from their high-level specifications. Moreover, because adaptive networks are described in a network format as well, the approach can simply be applied iteratively, so that higher-order adaptive networks in which network adaptation itself is adaptive (second-order adaptation), too can be modeled just as easily. For example, this can be applied to model metaplasticity in cognitive neuroscience, or second-order adaptation in biological and social contexts. The book illustrates the usefulness of this approach via numerous examples of complex (higher-order) adaptive network models for a wide variety of biological, mental, and social processes. The book is suitable for multidisciplinary Master’s and Ph.D. students without assuming much prior knowledge, although also some elementary mathematical analysis is involved. Given the detailed information provided, it can be used as an introduction to Network-Oriented Modeling for adaptive networks. The material is ideally suited for teaching undergraduate and graduate students with multidisciplinary backgrounds or interests. Lecturers will find additional material such as slides, assignments, and software.

Download or read book Java Puzzlers Traps Pitfalls And Corner Cases written by Bloch and published by Pearson Education India. This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Metamagical Themas written by Douglas R. Hofstadter and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hofstadter's collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think.

Download or read book Dark Matter written by Blake Crouch and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • COMING SOON TO APPLE TV+ • A “mind-blowing” (Entertainment Weekly) speculative thriller about an ordinary man who awakens in a world inexplicably different from the reality he thought he knew—from the author of Upgrade, Recursion, and the Wayward Pines trilogy “Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the kidnapper knocks him unconscious. Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before a man he’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.” In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible. Is it this life or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how will Jason make it back to the family he loves? From the bestselling author Blake Crouch, Dark Matter is a mind-bending thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.

Download or read book The Loop written by Jeremy Robert Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A small town in Western Oregon becomes the epicenter of an epidemic of violence as the teenage daughters and sons of several executives who happen to work at the biotech firm nestled in the hills have become ill, and oddly, aggressively, murderous"--Provided by publisher

Download or read book Strange Loops and Gestures of Creation written by Joseph Chilton Pearce and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strange Loops and Gestures of Creation brings the lifetime work of Joseph Chilton Pearce into symphonic resonance, sounding all of the themes that have made him one of the most significant thinkers of this time. The book, however, hardly repeats his previous work. Here it is framed in intimate, spiritual, and personal ways that open us to surprising revelations. Joseph Chilton Pearce confronts, more clearly, precisely and convincingly than any previous writing, our dire cultural situation --- we live in a collective, society that lacks true meanings of nurturing in every way. He, with equal intensity, points toward the inherent capacity of the heart – the physical heart – to bring the survival oriented brain, functioning through violence, astute manipulative sensing and perceiving, and calculative cleverness, into balance and, indeed to new creative capacities. The key to a creative culture lies in the phenomenon of the ‘strange loop’ between potential and actuality, the relation between the heart as the palpable presence within us of the universal, and the mind as the individual aspect of things. The many examples, ranging from biographical sketches of individuals to neurological research to intimate and personal stories, bring home the inescapable conclusions – we must find again the way to a holy science, that the spirit can be approached with all of the rigor of observational science, and the spirit is not ‘out there’ in the universe, but within our very being, both heart and brain.