Books like How to Create a Mind

01

The Master Algorithm

Pedro Domingos · Science

The Master Algorithm is Pedro Domingos's survey of machine learning — the field of computer science that creates algorithms capable of learning from data — organized around a central speculative thesis: that there exists, or may be found, a single master algorithm from which all learning can be derived.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

02

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · Psychology

Brian Christian is a writer and Tom Griffiths is a cognitive scientist, and together they argue that computer science has worked out rigorous solutions to many of the problems humans face every day — when to stop searching for a better option, how to manage your schedule, how to sort your memory — and that these solutions are both interesting and useful.

A kindred science read.

03

A Mind for Numbers

Barbara Oakley · Self-help

A Mind for Numbers is Barbara Oakley's guide to learning hard subjects effectively, written primarily for students struggling with mathematics and science but drawing on cognitive science principles that apply to any demanding field.

A kindred science read.

04

Our Mathematical Universe

Max Tegmark · Science

Our Mathematical Universe is Max Tegmark's argument for what he calls the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis: the bold claim that the universe is not merely described by mathematics but is a mathematical structure.

A kindred science read.

05

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas Hofstadter · Science

Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, published in 1979, asks how meaning can arise from formal rules — how a biological machine can think, feel, and experience self-awareness.

Shares artificial intelligence and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.

06

How to Change Your Mind

Michael Pollan · Science

Michael Pollan came to psychedelics late in life, as a skeptic.

Shares neuroscience and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.

07

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Max Tegmark · Science

Life 3.0 is Max Tegmark's accessible survey of the questions raised by the prospect of human-level and superhuman artificial intelligence: What are the plausible paths to AGI?

Shares artificial intelligence and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.

08

The Emperor's New Mind

Roger Penrose · Science

The Emperor's New Mind is Roger Penrose's argument that human consciousness cannot be reproduced by any computational device — that the mind is not, in the relevant sense, a computer — and that understanding consciousness will require fundamental advances in physics, particularly in reconciling quantum mechanics with general relativity.

Shares artificial intelligence and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.

09

The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

V. S. Ramachandran · Science

The Tell-Tale Brain is V.

Shares neuroscience and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.

10

Consciousness Explained

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Consciousness Explained is Daniel Dennett's attempt to replace what he calls the Cartesian Theater — the intuitive picture of consciousness as a single unified stream of experience observed by a self — with a model he calls Multiple Drafts.

Shares neuroscience and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.

11

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Antonio Damasio · Psychology

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist at USC whose work challenges the centuries-old idea that reason and emotion are separate faculties, with reason the reliable guide and emotion the unreliable interference.

Shares neuroscience and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.

12

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · Psychology

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford who argues that the conscious self is a late, small, and largely uninformed participant in the brain's activity.

Shares neuroscience and consciousness with How to Create a Mind.