Customer Reviews

The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind

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The Hidden Pattern author Ben Goertzel is nothing if not ambitious. In this book, he is proposing a unified philosophy of the mind and intelligence. He's been thinking about this problem since he was sixteen, more than twenty years. It's all about pattern. Everything is pattern. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. I think. To be honest, I'm in over my head with this book. But if Goertzel has the chutzpah to take on all of human intelligence (and beyond), then I guess I can review a book that I don't really understand.

Inspired partly by Douglas Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach; Goertzel as a teenager came up with a theory of patterns, much as Hofstadter came up with an idea of interconnected braids when he was thirteen. When Hofstadter, in his 20th anniversary edition preface, complains that the reviewers didn't accurately describe what his book was about, he finds that it takes him quite a few pages (the whole book, in fact) to describe what the book is actually about. So when I say Goertzel's book is about how everything is pattern (as he puts it), that doesn't do it justice. However, the only way even he can explain his theory is to write an entire book. The blurb on the back, the preface, the conclusion, none of the usual places for a quick summing up, give us any help. We just have to dive in and read the book.

The Hidden Pattern takes us all over the place, with forays into logic, mathematics, science fiction, physics, linguistics, metaphysics, and more. Those darned patterns are everywhere. Goertzel spends a fair amount of the book talking about his pet project, the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) that is truly human-like, or better. He wants to create an intelligence that can think original thoughts and create new ideas. So far, artificial intelligence has been limited to things like voice recognition and dealing with huge amounts of information. But a few people are working toward creating what can only be described as an actual brain. Goertzel has spent some ten years working on the software that will be this new brain, called Novamente. It's very exciting, and the skeptical among us will protest that this kind of artificial intelligence is about as likely to come about as time travel. But Goertzel does believe that time travel is possible. He also believes that telekinesis and immortality are attainable. Anything is possible!

But back to the patterns. Look, I'll admit right here that I still don't know what the whole pattern thing is about. There were sections that I just didn't get at all, due to serious gaps in my education, such as physics. But there was still plenty that made me think. Goertzel probably hasn't come up with the answers to everything any more than Hofstadter did or, for that matter, Aristotle. But they all make you think. You may want to read the book, or at least parts of it, more than once. (This is where an index would come in handy, but there isn't one.)

Goertzel writes The Hidden Pattern in a conversational tone, only resorting to formulas and diagrams when absolutely necessary. (He's written many technical books and papers on AI and mathematics, so he has academic street cred.) He admits that he may not succeed in creating the AI he imagines. But he figures that the quest will be so interesting that it will be worth it even if it doesn't pan out the way he envisions. Which is exactly how to approach The Hidden Pattern: with complete understanding as your noble goal, but with a thoughtful and challenging read as an excellent consolation prize.

I think this may be one the greatest books ever written, at least that I have read. Though, it is a philosophy book, I think it is highly speculative. The writer gives wonderful insights into reality (not so much the physical level of the world). This is the first book for me that lays down the frame work that up roots the objectivist ideal of the primary of the physical world. It may have just moved the primary to existence( higher/quantum=pattern space]) alone, in as much that observing/subjective reality plays a more important role in the make-up of the world. But this is not to say that consciousness as an entity is real or primary. As I understand Patternism, the subjective AND the objective together make patterns. And it is patterns that are primary, in the sense of pre-quantum world becoming real not in the minds of conscious beings, but in the dynamics of its own surroundings, thereby loosing its de-coherence in the measurements thereof. If the event can be measured from it's effects then it looses it pre-quantum state (wave state), thereby becoming real. It is the measurements of things that are the important aspect of entities. Once an object has properties/qualities it can no longer go back into the non-measured world/pre-quantum world. Qualities and measurements makes things real, not the stuff that it is made of. The qualities and measurements are the real parts. The parts that cannot be touched is what makes things stand out in our world. i.e. time, straightness, colors, etc. These things are the real things, not the things that are measured. (WONDERFUL!).... The measurement of things is what is real. Not the things that we normally think is real. From this I have come to a thought that electrons themselves have no substance in themselves, it is only the measurement of them or it's properties that is what we come to know as the electron. The world is made of measurement and relationship. Then again, I may have this all wrong.
Dr. (and I usually reserve this title for M.D.s) Goertzel goes further to show that language is a measurement. It is the bridge between the subconscious and conscious. My take on this is the subconscious equates to the quantum world and the physical world to the conscious. (again....WONDERFUL!)
As a philosophy Dr. Goertzel doesn't present Patternism as structured as the other philosophies i.e. Objectivism but he does cover most of the topics. i.e. metaphysics, ethics, not so much aesthetics (art) and epistemology(reason)
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Like so many of the books that stand out to me as great intellectually, there is so much in this book that I wish I could only retain a fraction thereof and I would be happy.
....The man is a genius.

... As for the person/people who gave this book a low rating; They should have read the whole book before judging it so harshly. Or maybe they just did not understand what they were reading. :)

This is a wonderful book.. exciting, well written, logical and brilliant.
I'd recommend it to anyone interested in ideas, social networks, political
development or in psychology, history, philosophy or just about anything
because this guy really knows how to 'connect the dots'!

I didn't finish this book as I considered that some of his assumptions were not correct and the book was a waste of time for me.