{"id":259,"date":"2005-09-18T20:20:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-19T00:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=259"},"modified":"2005-10-18T08:37:19","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T12:37:19","slug":"jaron-laniers-review-of-the-road-to-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"Jaron Lanier&#8217;s Review of The Road to Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A correspondent points out to me that the latest issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanscientist.org\/template\/CurrentIssue\">American Scientist<\/a> has a wonderful <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanscientist.org\/template\/BookReviewTypeDetail\/assetid\/45919\">review<\/a> of Roger Penrose&#8217;s new book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0679454438\/\">The Road to Reality<\/a> by computer scientist, author, artist, etc. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advanced.org\/jaron\/\">Jaron Lanier<\/a>, much better than my own <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=154\">effort<\/a> along these lines. Despite not being a theoretical physicist, Lanier does a great job of recognizing and explaining what is great about Penrose&#8217;s book.  He also is dead-on about string theory (&#8220;mob mentality&#8221;, &#8220;pompous triumphalism&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>The same issue of American Scientist also has a very good <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanscientist.org\/template\/BookReviewTypeDetail\/assetid\/45917\">review<\/a> by Lee Smolin of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0226113787\/\">Gravity&#8217;s Shadow: The Search For Gravitational Waves<\/a> by Harry Collins.  It also contains a nowhere near as good <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanscientist.org\/template\/BookReviewTypeDetail\/assetid\/45927\">review by yours truly<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0691121397\">Sneaking a Look at God&#8217;s Cards<\/a>, a book about interpretational issues in quantum mechanics by Giancarlo Ghirardi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A correspondent points out to me that the latest issue of American Scientist has a wonderful review of Roger Penrose&#8217;s new book The Road to Reality by computer scientist, author, artist, etc. Jaron Lanier, much better than my own effort &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=259\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}