reviews
Jan 05, 2011
Bumberings
rated it: 
I read 'The Recursive Universe' after finishing one of Poundstone's other novels 'Fortune's Formula'. The book is a detailed view of cosmic order and gives a foundation for the (currently) intractable question of whether life/human existence can be synthesized into two fundamental physical constants know as the the Grand Unified Theory (reductionist). The notion of whether life, while seeming arbitrary, is therefore inevitable hinges on the answer of whether increasing complexity can grow recurs
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Jul 11, 2009
Nick
rated it: 
Amazon 2008-11-30. Apparently out of print, but I found a beat-up hardback for less than $5, so all's well. I'm sure I've heard of this before; it's reviewed like a cult classic, ala Minsky's Perceptrons or Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, the latter of which I enjoyed very much. Hopefully it'll arrive soon, as I intend to get a lot of reading done between the end of finals and the new year!
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Dec 28, 2010
Ilya
rated it: 
This book tells about the Game of Life and John von Neumann's self-reproducing automata accurately enough, as far as I can tell, but when Poundstone talks about Maxwell's demon it is clear that he has never heard of Rolf Landauer's explanation of the demon's impossibility made 24 years earlier. Isn't it lame when a popular science writer isn't aware of 24-year-old science?
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