thoughts: Foundation

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.’ I’ll improvise.”
-Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov is one of the most well known science fiction authors of all time. The period in which he wrote became known as the golden age of science fiction, due to the quality and progressiveness of his novels, along with the work of a few other renowned authors: John W. Campbell, Kurt Vonnegut, and Robert A. Heinlein to name a few. 

In was during this period that Asimov produced his most well known work, the Foundation series. Originally published in the 50's as a trilogy of novels, the series was later expanded, some 30 years later, to encompass 4 more novels; bringing the total to seven novels published over the course of four decades. Asimov also had a PhD in biochemistry, and he was a professor at Boston University (he eventually stopped teaching to pursue writing full time). Evidently, his academic background and high level of education convinced everyone that his books should be classified as a more legit version of science-fiction, and thus they are normally categorized under a genre referred to as hard science-fiction. How is it different than regular SF? As far as I can tell, it sounds like when your invented science and technology is believable enough, your work gets to be classified as hard science-fiction. Precisely who gets the privilege of deciding which sub-genre your science fiction belongs in, I am not sure.

I just finished reading Asimov's first hard SF novel, Foundation. It was recommended to me by my roommate Sam, so right away I knew it was probably going to be shit..but alas, even a broken clock makes good book recommendations twice a day.¹ I quite enjoyed Foundation, despite not experiencing the same sort of emotional engagement I do with other good sci-fi and fantasy novels. This is mainly because the book is actually structured as a number of unconnected (or loosely connected) stories, taking place in chronological order but involving mostly different characters and different places. As such, I wasn't able to invest as much into the characters when their development was limited to 30-50 pages or so.

The upside, however, is that this different sort of book structuring is one of the main reasons I liked it. I don't think I've ever read a SF novel like Foundation. The scale of time over which the story takes place and the multiple jumps in time to different eras should make it more difficult to feel any sort of plot continuity or momentum within the story, especially since many of the characters die within the time span covered. But it works because you are interested in a cause not limited or pursued by one singular individual, but a cause being pursued by generations of individuals - the establishment of a galaxy-wide empire! It is a really unique concept and it raises different sorts of questions and ideas than your typical hero-centric SF novel might.

The idea I thought about a lot is the concept of determinism in Foundation. Determinism is the notion that our actions and decisions are not of our own volition; instead they have already been predetermined and our future is already set in stone, it just hasn't happened yet. The rationale behind this line of thinking could be based in either science or religion (or in a bowl of alphagetti for that matter), but the psychological consequences are the same. 

From a religious perspective, Christian theology to be specific, the evidence for determinism is certainly indirect - as in God never out right said he already decided everything for you, but you can still find some pretty suggestive passages from the good ol' Holy Textbook:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremih 29:11

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16:9

Now, these are obviously quite subjective, and you could make a case that even if The Big Guy has set out a plan for you, you are not destined to follow it. But if we also take into account that God is said to be omnipresent and omniscient, i.e He exists at all points in time and is not temporally bound, then it's hard to logically reconcile this idea with the notion that we still have free will and the autonomy to change our futures. I haven't decided what I'm going to have for dinner yet, but God, in principle, should be able to tell me using his omniscient superpowers.

There is also an argument to be made for determinism from a scientific basis. It is based on the assumption that our brains are constrained by the same causal relationship that all physical matter is grounded in, in other words that our decisions are an effect of a set of preceding causes, and thus can be predetermined. As far as I understand the argument boils down to these assumptions:

1. Our brains, and by extension our minds, are governed solely by the laws of physics and our decisions are the result of an insanely complex interaction of chemical, electrical, and physical forces
   
2. The entire universe and all things within it are bound by the laws of physics.
3. The universe started from an initial point in time with a specifically defined set of conditions (big bang)
4. The laws of physics are objective, deterministic, and can be mathematically described

∴ The entire state of the universe can be calculated at any point in time, given a sufficiently powerful calculator.

Basically, the same way we can calculate the trajectory of a flying projectile, given its initial position and velocity, we could also calculate what I'm going to decide to have for dinner tonight if we knew: the laws of physics perfectly (which is possible according to assumption 4) and the complete initial conditions during the big bang (assumption 3).

Now I'm quite sure that the discovery of quantum mechanics and it's probabilistic nature has taken the wind out of determinism's sails - but my point is that the theory of determinism is an old concept, and one not completely without merit.  It has some interesting philosophical consequences, and I think that Asimov was trying to touch on some of these ideas when writing Foundation. I found that the story is very much thematically rooted in determinism, in a way. 

The basis for a deterministic universe in Foundation is the existence of a branch of science called psychohistory. Psychohistory is basically social statistics on steroids. By examining the state of society and various "forces" in motion, psychohistorians are able to mathematically make predictions about the future with extraordinary accuracy. Granted, psychohistory is not able to make accurate predictions about an individual's actions, as the science is still statistically based and deals with masses of humans. It follows the law of large numbers, so the bigger the population under analysis - for example the population of an entire galaxy - the more accurate the results will be. Asimov describes psychohistory in Foundation thus:

Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. [—] The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reaction of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be achieved.

In the story, Dr. Hari Seldon is the greatest and most important contributor to the science of psychohistory ever, and he plays a central role in the novel's plot. So how is this the same as absolute determinism? Its not, technically, but I think it has similar psychological repercussions on the characters who understand and know of it. That's what I found quite interesting in the story - the actions of characters who are fully aware of the future course of events. They act in accordance with this knowledge to support the realization of these predictions, and I wonder if that is born out of a sense of obligation, or because they believe it is inevitable, or possibly because it fulfills them with a sense of purpose?

To provide some context, at the start of Foundation we meet the previously mentioned Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian working at the University of Trantor, on the planet of Trantor, which is the capital of the galactic empire. Seldon is unshakably sure in his prediction that the empire will collapse within 300 years, and his attempts to prepare for this situation are seen as treason in the eye's of the empire, and because of the public nature of his predictions, they decide to arrest him. As the result of a somewhat but not really judicious trial, the empire decides to send Seldon and his associates, who number in the tens of thousands, to a planet to work on their preparations (of course Seldon actually manipulated those in charge of sentencing into reaching this desired decision). This planet, named Terminus, happens to be at the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and their "preparations" are, by Seldon's insistence, the development of an encyclopedia with the entirety of the galaxy's collective knowledge within it, and definitely not the organization of an anti-imperial army to overtake the galaxy.

After the resolution of Seldon's trial, the story jumps to 50 years later on the planet Terminus. Seldon has died, yet before he did he established a way of communicating messages to his followers at predetermined intervals in the future, in order to relay additional guidance and information. It is here that the "encyclopedists" as they are called, hear Seldon's first postmortem message, and we find out that his plan all along was to organize an anti-imperial army to overtake the galaxy.  Seldon also describes how much their decisions have already been determined by him: 

To that end we have placed you on such a planet and at such a time that in fifty years you were manoeuvred to the point where you no longer have freedom of action. From now on, and into the centuries, the path you must take is inevitable. You will be faced with a series of crises, as you are now faced with the first, and in each case your freedom of action will become similarly circumscribed so that you will be forced along one, and only one, path.

So after all that time, we find out the encyclopedia was merely a ploy, and all the men involved with its development over the past 50 years had the pleasure of hearing that first-hand from Seldon's holographic voice. I can't imagine what they must have said when they went home and their wives asked them how their day was. 50 years. 50 years of your life dedicated to something, and then a hologram of a dead old man appears and tells you he was just kidding.

The story of Foundation encompasses such a grand timescale and scope that it's easy to not pay attention to these small details, or the absence of them. I think its interesting though that Hari Seldon is portrayed in a god-like way in the story. His word is law, because he can "see" into the future, despite being dead for most of it. This brings me back to my main point about determinism, in that the characters in the story know about Seldon and of their role in his great plan to bring about a new galactic empire. They also are aware of its approximate completion date, which is 1000 years, which means they know they will be long dead before the plan is fully realized. So I'm curious as to the main motivation that drives these generations and generations of individuals to continue working in the name of Seldon, despite all of them playing such a cosmically insignificant role in its progression.

Now the main counter-argument to this might be that if you look at the actions and decisions of the "main" characters in the story, it would seem that their actions did have significant repercussions on the fate of Seldon's predictions. However, I still consider these actions trivially meaningful because, according to Seldon, psychohistory predicts outcomes for large masses, and due to its statistical nature the outcomes cannot, by definition, depend upon the actions of any individual. In other words these developments were inevitable and there were larger forces working to bring the events to fruition. Just because Salvor Hardin happened to be the one to overtake the scientists in charge of Terminus and lead the Foundation into its first militarized era, and just because Limmar Ponyets happened to be the trader that brought nucleic technology to planet Askone, this doesn't mean that their actions were pivotal and essential to the progression of the Foundation's fate which Seldon planned. The only way Seldon's predictions could be so accurate is if these events, or ones with similar consequences, were likely to happen anyways. If you line 1000 people up the same distance from a red button and tell them whoever presses it first will get $5, it doesn't matter who touches it first, but you can be quite certain before they start running that the button will be pushed. 

Given this, I think the real question becomes, if these characters are intelligent and rational actors with knowledge of psychohistory and it's nature, they could come to the same conclusion I just described, and realize that their efforts in the name of Hari Seldon's plan are not actually necessary to its success. They could cease to exist completely and the new empire would continue to progress and grow. With this in mind, why do they still devote their lives to the advancement of Seldon's grand cosmic predictions? Maybe it's because, as I alluded to with the red button analogy, there is personal gain to be found in being the individual who pushes the red button, or leads the Foundation into a militarized era, or brings nucleic technology to the outer reaches of the galaxy

It's hard to really say whether the knowledge of these grand plans, or rather predictions I should call them, really have much effect on the motivations and decisions of all the individuals that are involved in their realization throughout. According to Hari Seldon, one of the basic tenets of psychohistory is the assumption that the populations being analyzed are not aware of the results of such analysis, otherwise it may alter the predictions, the assumption is that "the human conglomerate be itself unaware of psychohistoric analysis in order that its reactions be truly random".

In Foundation, it is never made explicitly clear how much the general public of Terminus knows about the course they are on, but it seems that only a select few high-ranking members of the Foundation are privy to the details of Seldon's predictions. Certainly anyone on planets other than Terminus (where the "Foundation" is established) do not have the slightest inkling of this future course of events, and my guess is that the small number of informed persons will not have a detrimental effect on the probability that the predictions are accurate. This raises an interesting point that actually contradicts my previous reasoning where I concluded, due to the statistical nature of psychohistory, that no individual could have a significant effect on the probability that a psychohistoric prediction is realized because all individuals are equally powerless to oppose the "forces" that are factored into psychohistoric analysis. However, if you had knowledge of accurate psychohistoric predictions for the future, you would be in a far better position to affect it than an uninformed individual would. This would support the notion that the actions of the characters we meet in the story have significance and non-trivial effects on the future course of events. 

 

 Regardless of the philosophical implications on the psyche's of the characters, the strange science of psychohistory made for an interesting element in the world of Foundation. I think it was a really novel concept to base a science-fiction around, and I can see why it is such a recognized and lauded series. It clearly made me think, and even now I don't think I have fully fleshed out my thoughts on psychohistory, maybe I should read the rest of the series before attempting to dissect is philosophy any more. 

I enjoyed Foundation because it introduced me to an extremely rich and detailed world that Asimov invented. The story, although structured differently than a typical science-fiction novel, was thoroughly intriguing and I am curious to find out what happens in the next novels. 

Foundation

Fiction Scoring
Imagery: 4 / 7
Entertainment: 5.5 / 7
Writing: 4.5 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: slow-roasted braised beef au jus on a fresh baguette

¹ just kidding bby :)

highlights: Everything and More

Everything and More is a non-fiction novel about the history and understanding of infinity in mathematics. It is written by renowned post-modern novelist David Foster Wallace, the author of two novels I've previously read: Infinite Jest and The Pale King. Everything and More was part of a series of novels about science and mathematics, commissioned by the publisher, W.W Norton, called "Great Discoveries" - the intention of which was to allow contemporary fiction writers to take on such subjects. I have not read any of the other books in the series, but if Everything and More was any indication, they probably should have left the technical writing to the experts. 

David Foster Wallace is well known for his literary style and distinctly post-modern writing techniques; this includes the rampant use of acronyms and abbreviations, footnotes, and what I would call "flexible prose", i.e the use of unique words and phrases, non-conventional syntax and semantics, liberal re-purposing of punctuation and run-on sentences like this one. Basically his writing intends to make the reader put in some effort so as to not be spoon fed the important information. I can appreciate the merit of writing in this style - it pushes the boundaries of writing and also engages and challenges the reader. However, it is unfortunate that Wallace decided that writing a non-fiction novel about an immensely complex and intricate subject was no reason to change this style.

The goal of a book like this should be to confer a greater understanding of the subject matter, and hopefully illuminate the significance and value of the subject  to the reader. By not sacrificing his artistic integrity for the sake of clarity, I feel that DFW has lost on both fronts in this case. I would have probably gained more from reading a more conventional text on infinity in math, of which there seems to be a multitude.  That's not to say I regret reading Everything and More, in fact I thought I learned quite a bit about the history of infinity as a concept, and it was taught through the words of one of my favourite writers. Although I wouldn't advocate for DFW to write any math textbooks, his writing is nonetheless very colourful and expressive. 

I feel like I may be in a better position than most to have enjoyed this book, seeing that I was exposed to some pretty advanced math during my undergraduate studies, therefore a lot of the concepts and arguments Wallace talked about were familiar to me. For someone with little math background, I can imagine it would be somewhat of a nightmare trying to comprehend the math while having to deal with parsing Wallace's writing as well. Which leads to my other advantage in that I've read a bit of DFW before, which if expressed as a Venn diagram in conjunction with my semi-advanced math background I would guess the overlap would be quite narrow. Therefore, as much as I didn't very much enjoy the book, I am confident most readers would enjoy it much less.

I don't have too much else to say about Everything and More. Despite learning about some of these mathematical concepts in school I am by no means in any position to critique the veracity of Wallace's proofs and explanations. However, from reading a couple reviews[LINKS] of the novel by people who are in such a position, it sounds like there are quite a few mathematical inaccuracies; both reviewers were also in agreement that the writing comes off as unnecessarily confusing - both were quite negative overall.

One of my favourite parts of the book was the introduction actually, written by science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson. It was a light-hearted and intriguing explanation of Wallace's character and how it was influenced by the nature of his upbringing. Stephenson describes the cultural identity of a MACT - a Midwestern American College Town, which is where both he and Wallace grew up:

"The premise of this introduction, which will be nailed to the mast very shortly, is that in Everything and More David Foster Wallace is speaking in a language and employing a style of inquiry that might strike people who have not breathed the air of Ames, Bloomington-Normal, and Champaign-Urbana as unusual enough to demand some sort of an explanation. And that, lacking such background, many of DFW’s critics fall into a common pattern of error, which consists of attempting to explain his style and approach by imputing certain stances or motives to him, then becoming nonplussed, huffy, or downright offended by same. It’s a mistake that befuddles MACT natives who see this book as simply what it is: one of the other smart kids trying to explain some cool stuff."

The first half of the introduction is essentially a look into the characteristics and peculiarities of a MACT, and how this is evident in both Wallace's persona and his writing. The second half is an analysis of the category that a book like Everything and More would belong to; unique in that it's a heavily technical non-fiction book, written with a causal slang-laden style by a fiction novelist with no technical background. Stephenson writes,

"To begin with, DFW was arguably a science fiction writer (Infinite Jest), although he probably would not have classified himself as such. Of course Everything and More is not SF, or even F, at all, pace some of its detractors, but the mere fact of DFW’s having been an SF kind of guy muddies the taxonomic waters before we have even gotten started. Novelists—who almost by definition hold motley and informal credentials, when they are credentialed at all—make for an uneasy fit with the academic world, where credentials are everything. And writers who produce books on technical subjects aimed at non-technical readers are doomed to get cranky reviews from both sides: anything short of a fully peer-reviewed monograph is simply wrong and subject to censure from people whose job it is to get it right, and any material that requires unusual effort to read undercuts the work’s claim to be accessible to a general audience. So in writing a book such as Everything and More, DFW reminds us of the soldier who earns a medal by calling in an artillery strike on his own position, with the possible elaboration that in this case he’s out in the middle of no-man’s land calling in strikes from both directions."

As for the actual text, Wallace does a fair job of exploring the history and progress of infinity as a concept throughout time. I learned a lot about the problems that philosophers and mathematicians alike have grappled with in the past as the definition of infinity has changed and been refined. Heavyweights like Aristotle, Pythagoras, Kant, and others have all had their hand at trying to rationalize and rigorously define infinity, but most ended up either shoehorning it into the existing axiomatic systems of math, or just hiding it's existence using words. For example, summarizing Aristotle's viewpoints from his Metaphysics, Wallace writes:

"The distinction is between actuality and potentiality as predicable qualities; and Aristotle’s general argument is that ∞ is a special type of thing that exists potentially but not actually, and that the word ‘infinite’ needs to be predicated of things accordingly, as the Dichotomy’s confusion demonstrates. Specifically, Aristotle claims that no spatial extension (e.g. the intercurb interval AB) is ‘actually infinite,’ but that all such extensions are ‘potentially infinite’ in the sense of being infinitely divisible."

It's only as this historical tour of infinity reaches the 19th and 20th centuries that Wallace's explanatory coherence begins to wane. Perhaps it's because the arguments of Cantor and Weierstrauss and Dedekind were too complex and technical for Wallace to explain them concisely. Or maybe they are too advanced for me. Either way, I found the last few sections rather tedious to get through, which is unfortunate as the ideas Wallace introduced were described as being solutions to the centuries-old intractable problems that had plagued infinity. Cantor's Set Theory finally provided a rigourous proof of the infinitely dense, continuous nature of the number line, which had been an underlying assumption of calculus but had never been officially proven until then. It was especially important for justifying the use of differentials, i.e the little "dx" you see sprinkled throughout calculus problems, which has some strange arithmetical properties like dx*y/dx = y and y + dx = y

Cantor proved, by deduction from first principles, that the set of "real" numbers (rational + irrational) comprise a type of infinity which is greater than the infinity of the "natural" numbers (only rational numbers). This proof put the assumptions about continuity and motion, as formulated in calculus, on solid footing for the first time. In my mind I think of it as the irrational numbers providing the "glue" which bridges the rational numbers, as there are an infinity of irrational numbers in between any two rational numbers. That is pretty mind blowing if you think about it. Irrational numbers are essentially unending sequences of numerical specificity (3.14159...), so I imagine this property, which prevents them from ever being precisely "located" at a zero-dimensional point is what allows them to connect their rational neighbours. Of course this explanation is entirely unsubstantiated, but I think it is decently intuitive, and provides somewhat of an answer for why the existence of irrational numbers is so necessary.

All in all, Everything and More wasn't awful. I suspect it'll probably end up being my least favorite book DFW ever wrote, but that's okay because now I know. I'm still going to read the rest of his stuff. The subject matter and tone was similar to that of Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, which is one of my favourite books of all time, so it was definitely nice to delve into these ideas again. Unfortunately Wallace did not deliver the same level of insight and depth that Hofstadter managed to. Oh well. I'll end my review of Everything and More with its own final words:

If you’re interested, Gödel’s own personal view was that the Continuum Hypothesis is false, that there are actually a whole ∞ of Zeno-type ∞s nested between  and c, and that sooner or later a principle would be found that proved this. As of now no such principle’s ever been found. Gödel and Cantor both died in confinement bequeathing a world with no finite circumference. One that spins, now, in a new kind of all-formal Void. Mathematics continues to get out of bed.

Non-Fiction Scoring
Value: 2 / 7
Interest: 3 / 7
Writing: 4 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: Tuna salad mixed with egg salad mixed with potato salad on toasted multigrain bread

thoughts: The Alchemist and Siddhartha

Meaning and being did not lie somewhere behind things; they lay within them, within everything

- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha 

I just finished The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer most known for said book after it became an international hit. After receiving a modest level of acclaim in his home country of Brazil, it was translated into English and picked up by an American publisher. Its popularity grew significantly after receiving endorsements by several notable figures, including the President at the time (Clinton). I decided to read it because one of my favourite musicians said in an interview that it was his favourite book. The musician is Anderson .Paak, and he makes some pretty great music if you've never heard of him before, imaginary reader of my blog.

So The Alchemist. I didn't like it. I think this would be the first book I'd have written a negative review for. But as it turns out I've decided not to do that, instead I'm going to write a comparative analysis between The Alchemist and another book I've read in the past 12 months, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I decided to do this firstly because they are both fairly short books, and secondly because I found them to be quite similar in theme and plot, yet I enjoyed Siddhartha much more; I am going to try to figure out why.

Both The Alchemist and Siddhartha follow the life of a boy who leaves home at a young age to follow some sort of dream, seeking personal fulfillment. In the Alchemist, the dream is literally a prophetic dream about treasure. While in Siddhartha, the protagonist is seeking enlightenment and spiritual self-discovery. In essence though, both stories are about destiny and the journey of man. I say man specifically, even though the lessons and themes within both these books do not exclusively relate to males, however I think the prototypical story of someone on a individual quest to find meaning and personal success seems to resonate deeply with young males like myself. I don't know if perhaps this is due to cultural stereotypes shaped by the numerous instances of this parable in books, movies, and other media. Or maybe it is simply that our self-indulgent illusions of grandeur and purpose are natural and intrinsic aspects of the male psyche. It's probably a bit of both. Regardless of the reader's gender, I think mostly everyone believes, at some level, that they are awesome and meant to accomplish great things. So stories that revolve around this idea invite us to project ourselves onto the protagonist, in the hope that we may learn something we could apply to our lives. The success that follows very much depends on how much truth the lessons actually contain.

Where the two novels differ most greatly is in the message each author was trying to convey to the reader. I think Coelho and Hesse had differing viewpoints on the plight of man, and where one should look to find their purpose and happiness. Hesse's Siddhartha, which takes place in the ancient city of Kapilavastu (located somewhere in Northeastern India), is influenced thematically by Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, while Coelho's Alchemist aligns more so with modern Western ideologies, especially capitalism. Both novels are trying to answer the same question though - how does one find meaning in their life in a world with infinite possibilities?

The Alchemist begins with the introduction of a young boy named Santiago, who some time ago decided to move away from his parent's home and become a shepherd so that he may roam the countryside and see new places. His decision was met with little resistance from his father, whom had initially wanted him to become a priest. The boy recalls, 

“The people who come here have a lot of money to spend, so they can afford to travel,” his father said. “Amongst us, the only ones who travel are the shepherds.”
“Well, then I’ll be a shepherd!”
His father said no more. The next day, he gave his son a pouch that held three ancient Spanish gold coins.
“I found these one day in the fields. I wanted them to be a part of your inheritance. But use them to buy your flock. [..] And he gave the boy his blessing.

Now contrast that with the beginning of Siddhartha, where the main character, Siddhartha, also wanted to leave home at a young age to pursue a dream. Siddhartha wants to become a member of the Samanas, a nomadic group of ascetics who attempt to achieve nirvana through the rejection of physical dependencies and temptations. They seek to separate the mind from it's imperfect and material body. They eat once a day by means of alms given to them from whichever town they are closest to. Although no less noble and with about the same prospects for becoming wealthy as being a shepherd might, Siddhartha's decision was met with much more resistance from his father,

Said Siddhartha, “With your permission, my father. I have come to tell you that it is my wish to leave your house tomorrow and join the ascetics. I must become a Samana. May my father not be opposed to my wish.” [...] the father said, “It is not fitting for a Brahmin to utter sharp, angry words. But my heart is filled with displeasure. I do not wish to hear this request from your lips a second time.”

 His father initially forbade him completely from pursuing this goal, so Siddhartha went to great lengths to persuade him otherwise. Siddhartha proved his dedication to his decision through a self-sacrificial act of physical and mental endurance,

And in the last hour of night before day began, [Siddhartha's father] got up once more, went into the room, and saw the youth standing there; he looked tall to him and like a stranger.
“Siddhartha,” he said, “why do you wait here?”
“You know why.”
“Will you remain standing here, waiting, until day comes, noon comes, evening comes?”
“I will remain standing here, waiting.”
“You will grow tired, Siddhartha.”
“I will grow tired.”
“You will fall asleep, Siddhartha.”
“I will not fall asleep.”
“You will die, Siddhartha.”
“I will die.”
“And you would rather die than obey your father?”
“Siddhartha has always obeyed his father.”
“So you will give up your plan?”
“Siddhartha will do as his father instructs him.”
The first light of day fell into the room. The Brahmin saw that Siddhartha’s knees were trembling quietly. In Siddhartha’s face he saw no trembling; his eyes gazed into the distance straight before him. The father realized then that Siddhartha was no longer with him in the place of his birth. His son had already left him behind.
The father touched Siddhartha’s shoulder.

Siddhartha was so committed to his choice that he stood silently, without moving for an entire night in order to receive his father's permission.

Right away, I think these two beginnings mark a clear contrast between how each author chose to present life and reality. Siddhartha's actions towards his goals are a struggle. He must fight and overcome great challenges before he has even left his home. Hesse is reminding us of the struggle and suffering that pervades all existence. Life is uncomfortable, and action is intrinsically harder than non-action. 

Paulo Coelho, on the other hand, presents the world as a limitless selection of opportunities. Your destiny is within your control as long as you make the right decisions to progress towards it. In the Alchemist, Santiago meets an old man who claims himself to be a king. The king provides Santiago with essential information that will direct the remainder of the boy's journey and lead him to Africa in search of treasure. He introduces the concept of a Personal Legend™ - something everyone has in life but most people never achieve. The king claims it is your "mission on earth", and you will never be truly satisfied unless you fulfill your Personal Legend™. Before parting ways, the king provides the boy with some additional wisdom,

To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one.
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

An optimistic perspective indeed - comforting to know that the entire universe will help you along on the way as you work towards your goals. This concept will become the major motif throughout the rest of the novel. Around every corner, Santiago is greeted with a helping hand that allows him to progress closer and closer towards his goal. His only real obstacle throughout the novel is his own self-doubt and trepidation. That's not to say he had no part in his success; when Santiago arrives in Africa he is robbed of all his money, so he then decides to work in a crystal shop at the top of a hill to make his money back. Santiago has many great ideas to increase sales, and despite initial hesitation from the old crystal shop owner, his ideas are all put into practice. Within a year of working there, the shop is selling more than ever and Santiago has made enough money to continue his journey. So although his success is due to his effort and ingenuity in this case, he still does not have to feel failure. In fact, Santiago does not experience any sort of set-back or failure throughout the whole story. This level of fortune and favour makes for an exciting story, but I feel like it is unrealistic and emotionally manipulative towards the reader.

Siddhartha, on the other hand, experiences much failure and misfortune as he progresses towards his goal. Granted, this novel encompasses a much larger time span, almost the entirety of Siddhartha's life, but I still think it's a valid contrast. For many years, Siddhartha abandons his life as an ascetic and becomes obsessed with materialism and carnal pleasures. He becomes a successful merchant who loves making money and gambling, and he also develops a romantic and sexual relationship with a woman. None of these things are inherently bad, but in the context of Siddhartha's desire for spiritual enlightenment, his actions were bringing him farther and farther away from this goal. Siddhartha realizes this one day - he had become a slave to his desires. He had nearly forgotten who he was due to the distractions of his consumption and physical comforts. He posits,

He noticed only that the bright and certain inner voice that once had awoken within him and accompanied him unceasingly in his days of glory had fallen silent.
The world had captured him: voluptuousness, lust, lethargy, and in the end even greed, the vice he’d always thought the most foolish and had despised and scorned above all others. Property, ownership, and riches had captured him in the end. No longer were they just games to him, trifles; they had become chains and burdens. A curious and slippery path had led Siddhartha to his latest and vilest form of dependency: dice playing. [...] That fear—that terrible and oppressive fear he felt while rolling the dice, while worrying over his own high stakes—he loved it. Again and again he sought to renew it, to increase it, to goad it to a higher level of intensity, for only in the grasp of this fear did he still feel something like happiness, something like intoxication, something like exalted life in the midst of his jaded, dull, insipid existence.

So he decides to leave everything behind and journey back where he came from, trying to undo what he had become. He comes across a river he had crossed many years ago and is greeted by the same ferryman who had carried him across the river then. Siddhartha, realizing this ferryman was wiser than he looked, decides to stay with him. Siddhartha learns much from the ferryman, and much from the river as well. The river teaches him of the oneness and infinitude of all things, and how life is also like this,

The river is in all places at once, at its source and where it flows into the sea, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the ocean, in the mountains, everywhere at once, so for the river there is only the present moment and not the shadow of a future [..] And once I learned this I considered my life, and it too was a river, and the boy Siddhartha was separated from the man Siddhartha and the graybeard Siddhartha only by shadows, not by real things. Siddhartha’s previous lives were also not the past, and his death and his return to Brahman not the future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has being and presence.”

Siddhartha understands that overcoming the suffering and hostility of the world is achieved through overcoming time. He learns of the essential balance in all things; for every thing that is true, the exact opposite is also true. He achieves enlightenment after seeing that all that exists is perfect and balanced; the distance between "world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between evil and good" is only an illusion. Siddhartha finally realizes that his whole life was essential to achieving this understanding, including his time as a boy, as a Samana, and even as a gambling merchant,

The sinner who I am and who you are is a sinner, but one day he will again be Brahman, he will one day reach Nirvana, will be a Buddha—and now behold: This one day is an illusion, it is only an allegory! The sinner is not on his way to the state of Buddhahood, he is not caught up in a process of developing, although our thought cannot imagine things in any other way. No, in this sinner the future Buddha already exists—now, today—all his future is already there. In him, in yourself, in everyone you must worship the future Buddha, the potential Buddha, the hidden Buddha. The world, friend Govinda, is not imperfect, nor is it in the middle of a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect in every moment; every sin already carries forgiveness within it, all little children already carry their aged forms within them, all infants death, all dying men eternal life.

Sure, I totally understand that this all sounds like Buddhist mumbo-jumbo. But taking the lessons out of the context of the story will strip away some of their meaning. Hesse even comments on this apparent inability to transmit wisdom perfectly, a little later on:

Words are not good for the secret meaning; everything always becomes a little bit different the moment one speaks it aloud, a bit falsified, a bit foolish

If I could put it in my own foolish words, I think the main take-away is the importance of acceptance. Acceptance of every aspect of your life as essential to your existence. There are no inherently wrong actions or decisions in the grand scheme of things. Regret of the past can be poisonous, and obsession with the future can also be poisonous. The present is all you can affect. That's what I learned by reading Siddhartha.

I'd say The Alchemist has a more easily digestible ending. Santiago eventually does reach the pyramids, where his prophesied treasure was to be found. Instead of finding it however, he instead learns that the treasure is actually buried underneath a sycamore tree in an old abandoned church back in the hills of Andalusia. This miraculously turns out to be the exact same church that Santiago slept in as a shepherd, and also where he first dreamt of treasure. This ironic twist of fate leaves the reader amazed and delighted as they realize that Santiago was literally sleeping under his treasure the whole time, and that he never had to travel to Africa and go through all he did for it. But of course, the lesson here is that finding the buried treasure was not Santiago's actual destiny, it was the journey itself that defined Santiago's Personal Legend™. Santiago realizes this as well and is quite well-humoured about the whole thing actually. Of course he does go back and get the treasure though, and he also makes the decision to then go to Egypt and be with the woman he fell in love with during his journey. Happy ending.

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a happy ending. The Alchemist was an entertaining story and I can see why people would like it. My main gripe with it was the underlying message it conveys. It is meant to be an allegorical story about achieving one's dreams, but I feel like it falls flat on delivering any useful advice. Like I said previously, Santiago experiences little to no actual turmoil or conflict on his way to his treasure, and I felt like the novel was trying to sell this as reality. It is also sprinkled with tons of repetitive phrases and vague concepts like Personal Legend™, good and bad Omens, Language of the World, Soul of the World, and others that makes it feel like more of a self-help guide than an actual story. All in all though, I personally liked Siddhartha much more and would recommend that first for sure.

Maybe it's because I think most people would be better off reading and learning from stories like Siddhartha rather than stories like The Alchemist. I think it would be hard to find a real tangible lesson, one that could apply to seven billion people, in a story about a boy serendipitously finding buried treasure by receiving help from a multitude of strangers, including literally the Sun and God himself. Statistically, not everyone is going to achieve their dreams, no matter what they read. That's why I think instead it may be more beneficial if we thought about the lessons that Hesse is trying to convey in Siddhartha: Materialism can be a drug. Our infatuation with personal success is a biased and narrow-minded perspective. We exist as part of a infinite interconnected system of forces, and understanding your place and context gives you the power to accept it, and I think acceptance is the best tool we have at finding happiness.

Siddhartha
Fiction Scoring
Imagery: 5 / 7
Entertainment: 4 / 7
Writing: 6.5 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: single grain of rice


The Alchemist
Fiction Scoring
Imagery: 3 / 7
Entertainment: 3 / 7
Writing: 4 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: Subway 6-inch meatball sub

highlights: A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age

Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his lack of comprehension of the forces which make it work—of the principles which relate his gadgets to the forces of nature, to the universal order. It is not central heating which makes his existence “unnatural,” but his refusal to take an interest in the principles behind it. By being entirely dependent on science, yet closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian.

- Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation” 

A willingness to learn and understand how the world around you works is important, not only because of the personal benefit you gain, but also because it is a sign of respect to those whose ideas and effort built the world around us. I don't mean to say we should strive for complete understanding of every technology that we use in our daily lives, as this is impossible. However, it is not an understatement to say that our modern existence is largely a result of the work of a handful of great minds. I find it enriching to gain some level of understanding behind the ingenious ideas that have propelled us to these great heights of prosperity.

If nothing else, I think the men and women behind these ideas would be grateful that those who benefit from them make the effort to understand their inception. As humans we all want to be remembered and recognized for the impact we've had on the world around us. However, I think it is also common for those responsible for such important accomplishments to yearn for more than just recognition. Fame, wealth, awards and prestige are all fair to expect if you are the individual behind an important breakthrough or invention. This is what makes Claude Shannon's indifference to all those aspects that come with the territory of being such an accomplished scientist so interesting. He had no desire for the spotlight, because he did not solve the problems he did for recognition; he simply was a curious mind that wanted to understand and formulate the underlying patterns of the world around him.

A Mind At Play is a biography of Claude Shannon's life. It was authored by two individuals, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman - both of whom have no formal technical background. They were inspired to write the book after learning about Shannon from a friend, and they found it intriguing someone considered one of the founding fathers of today's digital age, and the inventor of the most important theory in communications is largely unknown to the general public. Although his impact is arguably comparable to the likes of Einstein, Tesla, and Von Neumann, he is normally not included in this scientific pantheon. I myself had not heard of him before hearing of this book, so it goes without saying that I was certainly interested after hearing of his accomplishments. As the title suggests, Shannon is most known for ushering in the era of digital communication due to his groundbreaking thesis, A Mathematical Theory of Communication. His theory, commonly referred to as Information Theory, completely revolutionized how scientists and engineers viewed communication.

Claude Shannon's paper accomplished two important things that would eventually revolutionize communications. Firstly, he formalized an abstraction which can be used to describe ANY type of communications medium. And secondly, Shannon devised an ingenious schema (with proofs to support it) that allows for ANY message to be sent without error, no matter how noisy the transmission channel is.

His first accomplishment provided the ability to talk about any transmission medium using the same language. This includes telegraphy, telephony, TV, radio, human speech, and anything which involves the transfer of information from a source to receiver. The features that Shannon decided are the integral components of communication are illustrated in the block diagram below, taken from his original paper:

These components would serve as the base from which Shannon would introduce his new theory of information, and would also become the standard vernacular for all communications in the years to come. 

As part of this abstraction, Shannon needed to rigorously define what was meant by "information", and how to quantify it. This actually proved to be one of his most astounding leaps in ingenuity, because before him it was assumed that the amount of information in a message is tied to the meaning of the message. Shannon showed that it is only based off the encoding with which you use to send it; it is simply the content of the message which determines the amount of information it contained, not how the receiver is to interpret it. This may sound quite obvious to our modern ears, but you should understand that our abundance of information technologies, and their agnostic nature to the type of information they manipulate, has shaped our intuitions much differently than in Claude Shannon's era. In his own words, information is the "resolution of uncertainty".

In other words, sending a letter from a set of 26 possible letters is objectively more information than sending a binary digit (choosing from only 0 or 1). Furthermore, in the context of transmitting English writing, the sending of the letter "Q" provides more information to the receiver in contrast with sending an "S". This is because Q is much less likely to appear in English text than S, so a Q tells the receiver more. To illustrate this better, imagine receiving the following message from someone :

I hid the keys underneath the [S|Q]...

where the final letter is either an S or a Q. If for some reason the end of the message was cut off before you could receive the rest, your chances of finding the hidden keys would be much different depending on what that final letter received was. Since there are far more words which start with the letter S than with the letter Q¹, you would actually have received  more information if the final letter was a Q. I can think of only a handful of things you may find in a house which begin with a Q (Quilt, Qur'an, Quiche), but I definitely would not want to begin checking underneath everything in my house that begins with an S for the keys. 

Similarly, say the letter was a Q but you actually received one more letter of the word after that - would you be able to guess what it is? Of course you would because nearly every occurrence of the letter Q in the English language is followed by a "U". Because of its predictability, it is also fair to say that the "U" carries very little information with it. These patterns of redundancy in English are very common, so much so that Shannon once estimated that as much as 80% of all English text on earth could be stripped away without us losing any information! As I will explain shortly however, in the communications realm this redundancy serves an important purpose.

With the basic components of communication as well as a new, more useful definition of information at his disposal, Claude Shannon could now solve two important problems that has plagued the transmission of information up until then. The first was, how do you transmit information through a limited bandwidth channel in the most efficient way possible. The advantage of knowing such a solution I believe are quite obvious, especially for Shannon's employer at the time and the owner of the largest telephone infrastructure network in America, Bell. The second problem he solved was how can you ensure a message will be received accurately over a noisy channel, essentially limiting the rate of error to be as arbitrarily low as desired. This was an enormous achievement in the field of communications, providing accuracy to noisy channels such as Trans-Atlantic undersea cables which had not had much success up until that point, or even the millions of kilometres of open space which separate Earth and a voyaging spacecraft.

As it turns out, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Or more directly, you can't have perfectly efficient information transfer without (the risk of) errors too. As it is with most technologies, desirable qualities usually come at a trade-off. It is not a mutually exclusive trade-off however, as a transmission encoding can still utilize Shannon's theorems and see gains in both efficiency (or "speed") and accuracy.

I won't get into the technical details in this review, mostly because I don't know them, and I'm also on a subway right now so I can't look them up. But I'll explain what I understand of these ideas from a high-level.

To achieve the most efficient transfer of information possible,  you must first understand the domain of information that you want to transfer, and how you want to represent that information in a finite set of symbols. You must then determine how often the symbols appear on average, which is the tricky part as information transfer is a stochastic process, which means it is partly random and partly deterministic. The better you can predict these frequencies, the better your encoding scheme will be. 

For example, if you want to develop an encoding for English text, your set of symbols would consist of the alphabet, plus maybe digits and punctuation too. The next question you ask is how do I transform these symbols into units of information (most likely sequences of bits) for transfer over a physical channel. Well you may start with letter frequencies and determine that you should use the least amount of bits to represent an "E" and more bits to represent rarer letters like "Q". This will guarantee better transmission rates. The exact procedure for making these codes was first proposed by Shannon in his paper, and later improved by Robert Fano and then David Huffman.

The hard part is optimizing your encoding scheme, because as you optimize it more and more you begin a trade-off with error likelihood. As an example, suppose you notice that even certain words appear far more often than the rare letters, like "the" or "to" - so you may consider assigning them shorter bit sequences than those rare letters, essentially expanding your set of symbols which you use to represent the information. What could be wrong with that? 

Well,  nothing is wrong with that technically. If you extend this idea further, there is essentially nothing wrong with using single symbols to represent entire sentences and paragraphs! If you can identify these common patterns and assign them unique encodings which are shorter than their corresponding encodings would have been with our original letter symbols, you will certainly become more efficient.

The problem arises when you consider that encodings composed of discrete sequences of information units (think "bits"), and there is only a finite domain of possible permutations of these units. So as you begin to utilize this domain more the symbol encodings begin to back onto one another, or rather they become quite similar to each other perhaps only differing by a single bit. At this point your über efficient encoding scheme is now vulnerable to errors! 

Every physical transmission channel is subject to some amount of noise. If you are in a loud room speaking right beside a friend, your conversation is still (literally) subject to noise and the chance of a misunderstanding is definitely non-zero. Some channels are inherently noisier than others, but what is a tolerable error rate is based on the application and context. How do you reduce it though? The answer is you get rid of those silly encodings for entire sentences and you instead move in the opposite direction, you add bits to your encodings! 

Figuring out what sort of encodings reduce error is where mathematical rigor is really going to help the most. As far as I know, there are two main strategies, the first being simple redundancy. Repeating yourself will inherently protect your information from failing due to single transient errors, and that shouldn't be too hard to grasp. The second strategy involves how you actually design your encoding scheme and how much "distance" you have between different codes. Some really smart people took Shannon's ideas and formalized this strategy, in particular another Bell Labs alumnus, Richard Hamming, invented a generalized family of linear-error detecting and correcting codes called Hamming codes. These sorts of codes can be "resistant" to a certain amount of error; they can be single-error tolerant, double-error tolerant etc.

And that's basically it - as far as my understanding of Shannon's information theory goes. I think the really important consequence of Shannon's thesis was that he showed everything can be digitized, every communication, every type of information.  This was a groundbreaking revolution in what was still largely an analog world at that time. He laid the first stone in what would eventually become the vast digital landscape we find ourselves in today.

How about the book? I normally write about the book but I think I've mostly tried to explain information theory so far, which I'm hoping turned out somewhat coherent. Anyways, I found A Mind At Play to be a pretty interesting read. I think that's largely in part due to my interest in the subject as well as the type of person Claude Shannon was. I enjoy reading about extraordinary individuals and their personalities. I found a lot to admire about Shannon, especially his indifference to fame and wealth. By all accounts it seems like Shannon was driven by his curiosity in how things work; he couldn't live with a problem and not knowing the solution. That's the sort of motivation I aspire to attain and maintain throughout life. Shannon's other defining characteristic was his playful nature and his fascination with toys and games. What was remarkable was when these two qualities intersected. Shannon would do things like write papers and build machines to explore the games he was interested in. I actually decided to build a chess engine after reading his 1965 paper about how one would go about programming one, long before it was possible to do so. His explanation seemed so clear and simple that I decided to give it a try. 

The book itself wasn't the greatest non-fiction I've ever read, nor even the best biography I've ever read. I enjoyed Steve Jobs biography more, I think it did a better job of exploring his character. A Mind At Play felt a little too encyclopedic at times, maybe spending too much time on details that don't tell you anything new about Claude Shannon. This might be because it is a postmortem biography, and most of Shannon's life occurred half a century ago. Overall though, the book kept me entertained and engaged throughout its entirety. If you are interested in technology at all I'd definitely recommend it.

In keeping with tradition for my non-fiction reviews, I'll highlight a few of my favourite quotes.

From the God’s-eye view, there is a law of tides; from our earthbound view, only some petty local ordinances.

Nice way of expressing the idea of perfect information and the deterministic nature of the universe. I think of the complexity of forces and interactions which govern the movement of the oceans, and how it would be impossible to model it perfectly, yet we see the microscopic results of these enormous forces in every wave and small ripple that rolls towards shore. The "law of tides" are the aggregate effects of every law of physics acting on the particles of water at all times, something we can know in totality, yet something we can approximate with our "local ordinances". Our laws cannot predict the motion of each wave rolling in to every beach on earth, yet their existence is proof of their obedience to all these forces acting upon them.

At the same time, Bush’s influence in the engineering world won Shannon’s thesis the unfortunately named Alfred Noble Prize (unfortunately named, because this is the point at which every writer mentioning it points out that it has no relation to Alfred Nobel’s much more famous prize).

This is hilarious.

I’m a machine and you’re a machine, and we both think, don’t we?

Asked in 1989 whether he thought machines could "think," Shannon replied with the question above. Shannon's stance towards artificial intelligence seemed to shift throughout the years, from optimism to a sort of indifferent misanthropic view. He stated that if machines were meant to take over control of humanity, then they should, and he even listed some of a machines better nature's which would make them better leaders than us. Besides this slightly depressing take on the future of AI, it is still interesting to note that one of the founding fathers of our digital age was very certain of not just the possibility, but also the eventuality of the existence of thinking machines. He held this mindset over half a century ago no less.

  Years earlier, Shannon had set his mind to the question of this funeral—and imagined something very different. For him, it was an occasion that called for humor, not grief. In a rough sketch, he outlined a grand procession, a Macy’s–style parade to amuse and delight, and to sum up the life of Claude Shannon. The clarinetist Pete Fountain would lead the way, jazz combo in tow. Next in line: six unicycling pallbearers, somehow balancing Shannon’s coffin (labeled in the sketch as “6 unicyclists/1 loved one”). Behind them would come the “Grieving Widow,” then a juggling octet and a “juggling octopedal machine.” Next would be three black chess pieces bearing $100 bills and “3 rich men from the West”—California tech investors—following the money. They would march in front of a “Chess Float,” atop which British chess master David Levy would square off in a live match against a computer. Scientists and mathematicians, “4 cats trained by Skinner methods,” the “mouse group,” a phalanx of joggers, and a 417-instrument band would bring up the rear.
This proved impractical. And his family, understandably, preferred a tamer memorial. Shannon was laid to rest in Cambridge, along the Begonia Path in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Reading about Shannon's wishes for his funeral procession shows the type of he was, in a weird ironic way. Shannon was consistently averse to any sort of extravagence and celebrity when it came to him and his work. Shannon had no desire for fame and adulation from anyone for what he accomplished, even though he most certainly deserved it. Which is why it is hilarious to me that he desired the most over-the-top pompous circus of performances to accompany funeral procession. His written explanation was that he wanted the occasion to call for "humour", not grief, and that essentially he just wanted everyone to have a good time. I think this is probably partially true, but I also think Shannon had a dark humour, and deep-down he understood the needless overtures and traditions we use to remove ourselves from our mortality, but that this is also very much an expression of our human nature. We shy away from death and treat funerals with such delicacy that I think Shannon sought to "break the ice" with regards to his own funeral anyways with a loud, colourful display of outrageous proportions.

Non-Fiction Scoring

Value: 5 / 7

Interest: 4 / 7

Writing: 3 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: Montreal-style bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon

¹http://funbutlearn.com/2012/06/which-english-letter-has-maximum-words.html