Vehicles, experiments in synthetic psychology
by Valentino Braitenberg · first published 1984
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Short, playful thought experiments building up simple sensor-motor vehicles into complex behavior; praised as an inspiring, quick read for engineers and tinkerers who want intuition about psychology without heavy math.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I read a lot of books this year but these are my favorites: The Post Capitalist Society - Peter F. Druckert The War of Art - Pressfield, Steven Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (Bradford Books) - Braitenberg, Valentino The Art of Doing Science and Engineering - Hamming, Richard W. (this book is even better if you are good with math, which I am not) it's still fairly inspirational.…
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012” ↗"Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" by Valentino Braitenberg is a quick read, and fun thought experiment. It's inspirational for engineering tinkering types.
on “Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?” ↗…the nature of creativity. "Getting to Yes" is a great book about business negotiation, but is lessons about shifting discussions from zero-sum to positive-sum are things I use a lot. Braitenberg's "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" is a way of thinking about psychology (and our inference of mind) by examining imaginary robots. "The Toyota Way" and other books on Lean Manufacturing are about running extremely effective manufacturing…
on “Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?” ↗Only slightly offtopic, a really great book I'd recommend is "Vehicles, Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" by Valentino Braitenberg. He uses the term "Vehicles" to represent simple biologically inspired robots and how we perceive them. Coding simulated vehicles from his book would be a really cool programming…
on “Ask HN: Teaching programming in computational biology?” ↗This sort of reminds me of the book "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" by Valentino Braitenberg. In this book the author starts a series of thought experiments by constructing small "vehicles" which drive around on a table top. The vehicles start with very simple behaviors,…
on “A single cell slime mold makes decisions without a central nervous system” ↗…complicated mechanisms involved in implementing them (i.e. the simplest possible explanation/implementation) and hence these sort of books really interest me. Any more recommendations? PS: You might find Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg interesting if you don't already know of it.
on “Ask HN: What are the foundational texts for learning about AI/ML/NN?” ↗…there are no simple building blocks that we can point to and say "yes, I can see how more of these would produce consciousness". If you are open to have your view on this changed, I urge you to read "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" by Valentino Braitenberg (1986).
on “It's time to admit that genes are not the blueprint for life” ↗I am forever indebted to this book for pointing me to Valentino Braitenberg's Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262521123/vehicles/) where very simple autonomous sensor/actuator machines combine to exhibit complex behaviour which maybe mistaken for "Intelligence". Makes you really…
on “The Nature of Code (2nd Edition)” ↗"Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psychology" by Valentino Braitenberg. Has shaped my outlook on artificial intelligence more than anything else, and this was written in 1984, long before GPT-3 was a thing. Absolutely "mind-blowing" in that it…
on “Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?” ↗Gonna grab those, thanks for the recommendation. If you are interested in the opposite point of view, I can really recommend "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" by V. Braitenberg. Basically builds up to "consciousness as emergent property" in small steps.
on “You are the scariest monster in the woods” ↗…of inspiration. " The sparks that we assembled in this article are based on a series of thought experiments by the neuroscientist Valentino Braitenberg described in his delightfully quirky 1984 book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology."
on “Simple circuits can create complex behaviors” ↗…the math in the book I still read it to the best of my ability. Another book that I did understand and which made me understand Weiners book a little better conceptually was Valentino Braitenbergs "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" a fantastick book for math morons like myself. Thank you so much for your little story.
on “Bose founder makes big stock donation to MIT” ↗> He told us people often thought it was far more complex, but that's really all there was to it. You should check out Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. It describes an "ecosystem" of vehicles powered by solar collectors linked to their motors via simple neural networks. One of the big takeaways from it is that, even with incredibly simple networks,…
on “AI Programmer’s Bookshelf” ↗…implementation [0] contains a whole taxonomy tree of variations, of which Conway's Game of Life is but a branch. It's certainly an ecosystem of mathematical "life" forms. Reminds me of one of my favorite books, Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology [0]. [0] https://chakazul.github.io/Lenia/JavaScript/Lenia.html [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vehicles
on “Lenia – Biology of Artificial Life” ↗…ideas and all the improvements over the last ~40 years were just the necessary scaling/tuning for actually approaching human performance levels... This is also where I have to recommend V Braitenbergs "Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psychology" (from 1984!) which aged remarkably well and shaped my personal outlook on the human mind more than anything else.
on “Simply explained: How does GPT work?” ↗