How to Create a Mind
The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
by Ray Kurzweil · first published 2012
28% recommend64% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Argues that intelligence is largely pattern recognition and prediction, with a model of how the brain might be reverse-engineered; suits readers curious about AI, cognition and where machine intelligence is heading.
Common criticism: Critics say its neuroscience is shallow and its AI forecasts rest on weak reasoning.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Explores the limitless potential of reverse-engineering the human brain, outlining the controversial implications of increasing intelligence in order to address global problems while comparing emotional and moral intelligence and considering the origins of consciousness.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2012–2021The Hidden Pattern
Ben Goertzel
Recommended by 1 · mentioned by 21 recommend · 2 mention1 recommend · 21 recommend
2007–2026On intelligence
Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee
Recommended by 114 · mentioned by 173114 recommend · 173 mention114 recommend · 173114 recommend
2014–2024After Dark
Jayne Ann Krentz
Recommended by 3 · mentioned by 33 recommend · 3 mention3 recommend · 33 recommend
How to Build a Brain
Chris Eliasmith
Recommended by 1 · mentioned by 51 recommend · 5 mention1 recommend · 51 recommend
2012–2023The zenith angle
Bruce Sterling
Recommended by 1 · mentioned by 31 recommend · 3 mention1 recommend · 31 recommend
Holy Fire
Lynn, David
Recommended by 5 · mentioned by 95 recommend · 9 mention5 recommend · 95 recommend
2008–2026The age of spiritual machines
Ray Kurzweil
Recommended by 13 · mentioned by 5013 recommend · 50 mention13 recommend · 5013 recommend
…rate of advancement is now far, far, far surpassing any other time in the known history. The PC (1975), Web(1991), FB(2004), iPhone(2007) have created such an enormous change so fast. Have a look at "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought" by Ray Kurzweil to see how crucial sciences nowadays are advancing by the month.
on “Command & Conquer in HTML5 with multiplayer” ↗…somewhere recently (actually, I think it was here on HN) and I kinda want to read that. FWIW, I'll share a short list of my own, including stuff I've already read, am reading, or plan to read soon: 1. How To Create A Mind - Ray Kurzweil. (already read) Not a literal "how to" on creating a mind, but an interesting read from an AI pioneer. Coming at it as an "AI layman", I found it thought provoking and suggestive of other…
on “My Summer Reading List” ↗…intelligence for a short period, they are limited by their format, and would ultimately be overtaken by superior designs. With regards augmentation prostheses, Kurzweil makes a strong case in his book "how to Create a Mind", that anything you plug into your brain is bandwidth limited by how much information the brain can actually process at a time, in a similar way to how most things in our visual field are immediately…
on “Humans with Amplified Intelligence Could Be More Powerful Than AI” ↗I'm no AI expert, but after reading both Hawkins' On Intelligence and Kurweil's How To Create A Mind, I'm pretty sold on the idea that our minds are basically pattern-matching machines. Lately I've been trying to spend a lot of time "thinking about thinking" and recognizing how I form thoughts, relate…
on “Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?” ↗Non-fiction: On Intelligence - Jeff Hawkins How To Create A Mind - Ray Kurzweil The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker The Origin of Wealth - Eric Beinhocker The Signal and the Noise - Nate Silver The Money Culture - Michael Lewis Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations…
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2013” ↗I will probably be down voted for this.. But I enjoyed Kurzweil's "How to create a mind" and "on intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins . Even though these books aren't super scientific i really like how these guys think about consciousness and intelligence.
on “Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People” ↗ray kurzweil how to create a mind (it helped me to change my point of view to my behaviors for example I stopped to watch reality show started to take a design session for 1 hour everyday etc)
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?” ↗A few favourites of mine I read recently. Rushkoff's book is my favourite and there is lots of insight in Rushkoff's book. The others are mandatory reading for technologists IMHO How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, by Ray Kurzweil http://amazon.decenturl.com/make-a-mind Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, by Douglas Rushkoff http://amazon.decenturl.com/ten-commands…
on “Ask HN: Good business or technology book recommendations?” ↗We should figure out intelligence before speculating on super-intelligence. I think Kurzweil and Hofstadter have a compelling model in 'How to Create a Mind' and 'Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking', but it's not exactly rigorous and we still haven't created anything that could pass the Turing test which wouldn't even require…
on “Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People” ↗…a couple of the others are sort of pointedly "anti Kevin" in their bias. Maybe it all balances out in the end if you read them all). The Cyberthief & the Samurai - Goodell The Cuckoo's Egg - Stoll How To Create A Mind - Kurzweil On Intelligence - Hawkins Engineering General Intelligence (volumes 1 & 2) - Goertzel The Hidden Pattern - Goertzel Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity - Wallace
on “Ask HN: What are some must read books?” ↗If you want a deeper dive on this concept read Ray Kurzweil's How to create a mind. Ray pioneered a lot of the concepts speech recognition and his book is a fun read and greatly expands on these concepts as well as Ray's ideas on how to build AGI.
on “Our brain is a prediction machine that is always active” ↗Have you read Ray Kurzweil's how to create a mind? His definition of our mind is something similar along the lines. Pattern matching/ predictions are all that we do, according to him. I didn't think we'd come so far when I read it a few years ago. Agi…
on “Ask HN: Will AI put programmers our of work?” ↗…dive into... -Computer Vision -Natural Language Processing AClustering vs classification in machine learning -Neural nets (convolutional, recursive, hyerparameters and optimizTion techniques) Read "how to create a Mind" by kurtzweil Related (but distinct topics) -Understand rise (and fall) of semantic web -Open/Linked data -Relational vs NoSql databases -distributed/parallel processing (MapReduce ->hadoop-> spark)…
on “Ask HN: AI is going to be big. How should we learn?” ↗I was introduced to this phenomenon through Kurzweil's book "How to create a mind". He claims that the brain is massively parallelized pattern recognition machine, with consciousness being a censor that filters results. While in hypnagogia, this censoring function is suppressed and…
on “MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’” ↗After reading halfway through Kurzweil's new book How to Create a Mind and getting all of the detailed explanations of hierarchical hidden Markov models and why they are better than neural nets, I am surprised to see so much news about neural nets. How do Spaun's neural…
on “Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain” ↗