ok, so who is jim holt and why does he keep showing up in my life?

so the nyt review of anthony dimasio’s new book reminded me of how much i’ve learned from his books, but also how even the truth can be biased. actually, how the truth is necessarily biased. need to really define this word. reminds me of scott. how he would use any technicality or any little specifically worded piece of information to find a way to exclude what the ‘truth’ of the situation is. and maybe that is one of the main reasons i loved him — because he challenged my moral view of life. damn.

anyway, as i was reading the review, i did a HARD STOP at the view of consciousness. lots of people think about this i guess, but it is sooooo disavowing of any possible non-human consciousness. which marxe and i were just talking about and how dismissive of other life these neurobiologists can be. and here’s hard proof.

“many animals — propbably all mammals — have conscious minds, but plants and bacteria do not.” nah nah nah hon. recent and fascinating research about the hive mind of trees shows differently. and this is just a review. so i looked at the author of the review, and it’s jim holt. that name actually rang a very faint bell and i thought about it for a couple minutes. looked him up in my books read list (good subject for another blog post) and there he is in 2019 with “why does the world exist?: an existential detective story” and i write brief comments about each book i’ve read to help jog my memory when i try to refer back to it (actually, a situation just like this) and next to this book was “whew”. that’s it. i usually give either a brief summary or something memorable about it. but all i wrote next to jim holt was whew. so this is the SECOND time he’s done that to me. guess i need to investigate further.

i do remember reading that book, though. why is there something rather than nothing? lots of stuff like that. i really liked it. wonder why he believes that other life forms don’t have consciousness. could be a type of consciousness that we lack the ability to understand.

here’s a cute boba picture, taken during warmer days.