From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do?

Sapolsky’s storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person’s reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
 
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs–whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person’s brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.

Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person’s adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual’s group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old. 

The result is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do…for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.

Source: www.amazon.com

iGod is a science fiction novel with heroes, love, defeat and hope. But it is much more than that. This book aims to explore how societies may develop, given the technologies that we see at present. As Dirk Helbing describes it in his introduction: We have come to the conclusion that neither a scientific study nor an investigative report would allow one to talk about certain things that, we believe, need to be thought and talked about. So, a science fiction story appeared to be the right approach. It seems the perfect way to think “what if scenarios” through. It is not the first time that this avenue has been taken. George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” come to mind, or Dave Eggers “The Circle”. The film ‘The Matrix’ and the Netflix series ‘Black Mirror are good examples too. “iGod” outlines how life could be in a couple of years from now, certainly in our lifetime. At some places, this story about our future society seems far-fetched. For example, in “iGod”, all citizens have a Social Citizen Score. This score is established based on their buying habits, their communication in social media and social contacts they maintain. It is obtained by mass-surveillance and has a major impact on everyone’s life. It determines whether you are entitled to get a loan, what jobs you are offered, and even how long you will receive medical care. The book is set in the near future in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Lex is an unemployed biologist. One day he is contacted by a computer which, gradually reveals the machinery behind the reality we see. It is a bleak world. Together with his girlfriend Diana and Seldon, a Professor at Amsterdam Tech, he starts the quest to regain freedom. Excerpt: ‘Clever way out, Lex! I did not expect your solution in this episode of the game at all. You are the first person to come up with it. This makes me curious.’ Lex looked puzzled at his screen. This direct and personal intervention was not how game managers would normally address the users of MultiLayer. Lex responded puzzled: ‘Who, who are you?’ ‘I thought you would never ask’ – a low, raspy but still velvety feminine voice sounded in his apartment. Lex checked where the sound came from. If he was not mistaken, the voice employed the same sound devices he used for his games and his communication with the SmartHouseProgram. ‘I like to call myself “I am”. I am the mastermind behind what happens in the world.’ Lex was too surprised to respond. ‘Or, to put it more down to earth: I am the Artificial Intelligence behind your MultiLayer game and behind your SmartHouseProgram and a lot more things… This should suffice for the moment’, the low voice continued. Lex got up and paced from one corner to the other. ‘Wow. Did I get it right? You are a female AI system that was all the time hidden in my MultiLayer game and my SmartHouseProgram?’ ‘Well, whatever you prefer. I can also express myself like this…’ Lex heard a male voice. ‘Ok, I got it. You are trying to create the impression of an Artificial Intelligence system making fun of me. But how do I know that someone didn’t just hack the sound system of my SmartHouseProgram?’ ‘So far, so good, Lex.’ She switched back to the mature female voice again, much to Lex’ approval. ‘You are a smart guy, and you will get to know me better. Trust me – you will soon know that I am more than just a hack or a computer program. At this moment I will need your trust and patience – as in any relation.’ ‘I am neither strong in the trust part nor in the patience part.’ ‘Let’s give it a try, Lex. I am sure your curiosity will win.’ ‘You seem to know me well. But in order to be able to relate to you, I need to know your name.’ ‘ “Universal program” or “Singularity” does not do the trick, I presume?’ the voice asked coyly. ‘Not really, no.’ ‘You humans are so romantic – as if a name would change anything. I am known under many different names. What is your name for someone who is present everywhere and who knows everything?’

Source: www.amazon.com

“From Matter to Life: Information and Causality”
Edited by Sara Imari Walker, Paul C. W. Davies and George F. R. Ellis
Cambridge University Press, 2017

Recent advances suggest that the concept of information might hold the key to unravelling the mystery of life’s nature and origin. Fresh insights from a broad and authoritative range of articulate and respected experts focus on the transition from matter to life, and hence reconcile the deep conceptual schism between the way we describe physical and biological systems. A unique cross-disciplinary perspective, drawing on expertise from philosophy, biology, chemistry, physics, and cognitive and social sciences, provides a new way to look at the deepest questions of our existence. This book addresses the role of information in life, and how it can make a difference to what we know about the world. Students, researchers, and all those interested in what life is and how it began will gain insights into the nature of life and its origins that touch on nearly every domain of science.

Cambridge University Press access to PDFs: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316584200
Cambridge University Press hardcopy listing: http://bit.ly/2mcjB2t
Amazon listing: http://amzn.to/2n3Ap9i

Source: www.cambridge.org

This invaluable book is the first of its kind on “selforganizology”, the science of self-organization. It covers a wide range of topics, such as the theory, principle and methodology of selforganizology, agent-based modelling, intelligence basis, ant colony optimization, fish/particle swarm optimization, cellular automata, spatial diffusion models, evolutionary algorithms, self-adaptation and control systems, self-organizing neural networks, catastrophe theory and methods, and self-organization of biological communities, etc.

Readers will have an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of selforganizology, with detailed background information provided for those who wish to delve deeper into the subject and explore research literature.

This book is a valuable reference for research scientists, university teachers, graduate students and high-level undergraduates in the areas of computational science, artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, engineering science, social science and life sciences.

 

Selforganizology
The Science of Self-Organization
By: WenJun Zhang

Source: www.worldscientific.com

Between 2011 and 2014 the European Non-Equilibrium Social Science Project (NESS) investigated the place of equilibrium in the social sciences and policy. Orthodox economics is based on an equilibrium view of how the economy functions and does not offer a complete description of how the world operates. However, mainstream economics is not an empty box. Its fundamental insight, that people respond to incentives, may be the only universal law of behaviour in the social sciences. Only economics has used equilibrium as a primary driver of system behaviour, but economics has become much more empirical at the microlevel over the past two decades. This is due to two factors: advances in statistical theory enabling better estimates of policy consequences at the microlevel, and the rise of behavioural economics which looks at how people, firms and governments really do behave in practice. In this context, this chapter briefly reviews the contributions of this book across the social sciences and ends with a discussion of the research themes that act as a roadmap for further research. These include: realistic models of agent behaviour; multilevel systems; policy informatics; narratives and decision making under uncertainty; and validation of agent-based complex systems models.

Source: link.springer.com