What non-Go book are you reading right now?

General Chat
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As someone with some physics knowledge I’m also curious why your friends think Asimov violates Bell’s Theorem.

It says that the peculiar randomness of quantum mechanical entanglement demands “spooky action at a distance” and is incompatible with models in which particles mind their own business when separated by meters or even light years.

I find much of the series (which I sadly still need to finish) unlikely or impossible but never thought quantum mechanics had anything to do with it. As an analogy, we can model the flow of air or water using complex equations even though the motion of individual particles is fundamentally quantum mechanical and unpredictable, and even when there is the chaos of turbulence at the edges.

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I’m not physicist, and my understanding of it may be flawed, but I think the implication of it is that complex events are ultimately not perfectly predictable. Chaos theory seems to have reinforced this, because random macro events can spontaneously and unpredictably give rise to order.

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As far as I understand it, I think chaos theory basically says “there are some functions that depend so strongly on their initial conditions, that a very small difference in the initial conditions can lead to a very different outcome.”

For instance, take the trajectory of a ball on a rectangle billiard table. If you shift the initial conditions (the initial position and speed of the ball) by a very small margin, then you should expect the resulting trajectory to also be changed by a small margin. As a very concrete example, if you shift the initial position of the ball by 1 cm in any direction, and don’t change its initial speed, then the new trajectory will be entirely parallel to the old trajectory, and shifted by exactly 1 cm. So, we can say that there is no chaos on a rectangle billiard table with a single ball, and that trajectory of the ball is easy to predict.

However, if you do the same thing on a billiard table with a round obstacle in the centre, then even a very small shift in the initial conditions can result in a widely different trajectory after the ball has hit the round obstacle. So, with a round billiard table or a round obstacle, there is chaos.

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Billiard with round obstacle, from https://www.chaos-math.org/en/chaos-v-billiards.html

This doesn’t mean that the trajectory of the ball cannot be predicted when there is a round obstacle. It just means that the math is more complex, and that the trajectory is a lot more sensitive to the initial conditions. Geometrically, given perfect information about the initial conditions, a middle-school student should have the tools to solve the problem. However, if you account for measurement errors in the initial conditions, like physicists do, then the problem becomes much more complex and the small incertitude on the initial measurements translate into an incertitude so huge in the final position of the ball that the prediction is useless.

Similarly, when you roll a die, you can pretty much assume that the result is fully random. In a sense, it is not, and if you had all the data describing the initial conditions, then it should be possible to predict which face the die would land on. However, the math is very complex, and the result is so sensible to the initial conditions that you’d need extremely precise data; not just the initial position and speed of the die, but also its initial 3d rotation on itself, its elasticity, etc.

Likewise, weather forecasts become very inaccurate if we try to predict the weather more than a few days in the future, because the weather is so sensible to the initial conditions, and the initial conditions include so much data: pressure, temperature, wind speed, etc, at every point of the globe all around the world.

Quantum physics does introduce some unpredictability, for instance in the form of Bell’s theorem or Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, but I think the impact of this on the observable world have been greatly exaggerated. How hard it is to predict the behaviour of one individual particle is typically not very related to how hard it is to predict the behaviour of a body at a larger scale.

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Jurassic Park(Parque dos dinossauros) de Michael Crichton.

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I’ve been reading Tess of the D’Urburvilles by Thomas Hardy. That novel along with Jude the Obscure alienated Hardy from what had been a very loyal following. Tess is a rape victim, and although Hardy approaches the thing itself as obliquely as possible, using all the smoke and mirrors available to a novelist, still the very existence of a rape victim in a work of fiction was more than his readers could bear. Hardy would turn away from novel writing and devote the rest of his career to poetry.

In this novel, the blame the victim mentality operates at full force, cutting across class and gender lines. When Tess attracts the admiration of an educated and progressive-minded young man, it seems that her deliverance may be close at hand. But conventional thinking is painfully slow to evolve, and it becomes doubtful that the young suitor is sufficiently ahead of his time. Much misery follows on both sides, all of it driven by rigid adherence to an idea that, in Hardy’s estimation, has no basis in nature.

I’ve really been dragging my feet with this, seldom reading more than ten or fifteen pages at a time. There are many detailed descriptions of the English countryside and English country life, all marvelously written, but not necessarily germane to the story. Unless there’s a ton of symbolism that I’m just not getting.

I feel a bit inadequate just writing this. Hardy, after all, is revered as one of the great novelists, and a forerunner of the modern movement. Sometimes as a reader you just feel what you feel, and unfortunately my main takeaway here is that the concept of less is more just doesn’t seem to cut any ice with Victorian writers. Maybe I should have read The Water Babies or Through the Looking Glass instead.

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I read Tess of the D”Urbervilles in a graduate course at college, “The 19th-Century British Novel.” I took the course to force myself to read such blockbusters as Middlemarch and Bleak House. At 4,000 pages in 12 weeks, in addition to 6 hours per day of practice on my instrument, rehearsals for chamber music and orchestra, and other classes, it was quite a strain.

Tess was the last book we read, and to my surprise I liked it. Yes, the nature description, which is common in Hardy (as I understand it), is regarded as symbolic not in a one-to-one sense, but in the sense of conveying a primal, paganistic drama. I found that it did indeed enhance a kind of brooding feeling. It is the only Hardy I’ve read, although I have almost all his novels (from my dad’s library).

I was very taken with Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, in a 7-part dramatization starring Alan Bates, on Masterpiece Theater in 1978. It has been dramatised two more times since (1994 and 2003). Many consider that his best novel. I twice started to read it but got distracted each time. I still have hopes of reading it one day, but it is true that Hardy is very dense. Much harder to read than Dickens, I think.

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SF again:
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

This is the first of the “Zones of Thought” Series:

The second book is “A Deepness in the Sky”, which I have read (enjoyed) already, is a faintly connected prequel, it’s almost like reading just two different books.

Awesome world-building, awesomely imaginated extraterrestrial species, lots of fun for Tom :slight_smile:

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I don’t know who Tom is, but A fire upon the deep is the best science-fiction novel I’ve read.

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Tom is trohde.

A Fire Upon the Deep, which I think won a Hugo, is still sitting on my shelf unread. Really must get to it.

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thanks for the puzzle. there are some correct asnwer, but I pick this 2 books

-chess book
-shogi book

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My job is as an engineer. I started reading Isaac Newton’s “PRINCIPIA” Japanese Edition for daily use of classical mechanics. To my surprise, it is an easy-to-understand explanation using Euclidean geometry. This seems to be because Newton wrote the book according to the people’s comprehension at that time.

Newton-Principia-Mathematica_1-500x700
Newton-Principia-Mathematica_1-500x700500×700 58.3 KB

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I am currently reading Search for Philip K. Dick, 1929-1982 (revised and expanded, 2009), a memoir by his third wife, Anne. This is a well-written and exceptionally frank account of their life together and his literary work during his most important period. It goes beyond the typical memoir, because the author gathered information from many of his friends and from two other surviving wives (one was dead and one didn’t respond). It’s a treat for afficionados because of the wealth of information about the various novels, which incorporate much autobiographical detail. I was especially tickled to learn that The Crock of Gold by James Stephens was one of his favorite novels. That book, as I have mentioned in a previous post, is also one of my favorites, and it was a great favorite of C. S. Lewis as well. What an unusual brace of admirers.

It also confirms and details what we have long known about PKD’s serious mental problems. The tragic quality of this material is so troubling that I find it a relief every night to turn to Raymond Chandler’s murder mysteries, my current fiction reading.

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Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day.

Pynchon is absolutely brilliant. I think Inherent Vice might be my favourite book of all time. The movie based on it is probably in my top 3 movies, as well.

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I recently read Stefan Zweig’s short story Der Zwang. It paints quite a vivid image of Europe at the dawn of World War I.

This is the story of an Austrian couple who fled to Switzerland a few months before the mobilisation for the war. The man is profoundly pacifist and doesn’t want to have anything to do with the war.

The man receives a letter telling him to report to the consulate to get his mobilisation orders.

For months before receiving the letter, he is agitated. He knows that he’s about to receive this letter. When he finally receives it, he completely breaks down. He tries to explain to his wife that he feels compelled to obey, even though he intellectually knows that Switzerland is not at war and that the Austrian government has no authority at all, and can do nothing more than send him letters. His wife goes through all possible emotions, alternately being supportive, being hurt because he’s ready to abandon her and destroy their life just because some anonymous civil servant sent him a letter, trying to physically prevent him from going, etc.

He hides from her and reports to the consulate. This part is quite a comedy. First a house servant slams a door in his face because he arrived too early in the day. Then he plans his whole speech, before he faces the consul, he even buys a full costume to look and feel like a more important person, too busy and too wealthy to be bothered by the war. Of course, nothing goes as planned. He becomes a complete doormat in front of the consul, agreeing to everything and thanking him for everything. He goes so low as agreeing to waive the travel reimbursements that all soldiers are entitled to, and even thanks the consul for suggesting that. He comes home with a mobilisation order.

I think the greatest comedic part about this is the doorslam at the beginning, and the fact that he’s not sent immediately to the train station, but rather sent home with the mobilisation order. There is such a blatant contrast between the authority that he’s feeling and that’s eating him, on the one hand, and the absolute absence of physical force coming from the government, on the other hand. Not only are they not forcing him to go, but first they close the door in his face, and then they send him home!

Once home, he has to face his wife a second time. It’s the same thing as the first time, but with even deeper emotions and stronger arguments. His wife is extremely upset, tries everything to stop him from going, alternates between support, hostility, and despair. He completely buries himself in submission to the mobilisation, and in denial, trying to convince himself that he’s only going to war for a few week, that he probably won’t get hurt and won’t have to kill anyone, and that he’ll soon be back to his wife. His wife makes it pretty clear to him that if he leaves her, she will not accept him back.

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Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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I’m really enjoying my ongoing reading of Raymond Chandler now. I have finished two novels and two collections. Marlowe’s wisecracks are delightful, and the characters, locations, and situations are endlessly inventive. Fortunately, my public library has all of his books.

I do think that Hammett is the better writer, however, due to his versatility and restraint. Hammett’s work strikes me as much more believable, if less exciting, than Chandler’s, which I attribute to his real-life experience as a detective. Marlowe is constantly getting sapped, not reporting murders, and withholding evidence, which seems a stretch even for the 1930s.

I’m now reading The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend by Lyman V. Rutledge (1965). This is obscure local history about 18 tiny islands, little more than nubs of rock, about 10 miles off the Maine-New Hampshire-Massachusetts coast. Much of it is dry and filled with detail I don’t care about, but it does have a few nice legends of ghosts, pirates, and miracles by clergy, as well as more mundane, interesting sidelights, such as colonial tax evasion and the islands’ evacuation during the Revolutionary War (some people dismantled their houses and floated them across the sea to the mainland).

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Just finished Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help by Larissa MacFarquhar. Kind of interesting look at individuals who have gone above and beyond to help strangers.

Just started Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee.

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There was an affecting story of a tragedy at the end of The Isles of Shoals (see my previous post). In 1902 an open excursion boat sank close to shore, drowning 14 passengers. It capsized and, because it was heavily ballasted, sank almost instantly, sucking everyone down with it. Heroic efforts by some fishermen in dorries saved two women and, ironically, the skipper of the boat. Weirdly, the skipper could not swim despite 30 years at sea. The catastrophe occurred because the skipper had ignored warnings of a visibly approaching storm. This brought to mind a great passage in Synge’s The Aran Islands: “The old man gave me his view of the use of fear. ‘A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned,’ he said, ‘for he will be going out on a day he shouldn’t. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.’”

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I like her music and dance a lot, so I read her book…

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Did you like the book? What did you think about it?

(Note: I only ask because I’m interested. It’s completely fine if you don’t want to answer.)