Kevin's Watch

Thought I'd give it its own topic instead of continuing to mention it in the Prince of Nothing threads.
This new book by Bakker is a psychological thriller set in near-future New England, and it's about the argument against free will.
Here's the synopsis.

Tom's life is not what it once was. His marriage to the beautiful Nora is on the rocks and he now sees his two young children only on her say so. His best friend - and best man - Neil has moved away to California to teach neurology and he barely sees him. He has one successful book - on human psychology - but he now wiles away the time trying to teach bored grad students things that they are often not equipped to understand. But that all changes when Neil comes back into his life. For it seems that his best friend was no teacher - he was working for the US government, cracking the minds of suspected terrorists. But now it is Neil himself that has cracked and gone AWOL - what's more he has left behind evidence that he has been employing his unique skills on civilians - obsessed with the idea that he can control the human brain. Thus begins a terrifying sequence of events as Neil starts to kidnap and mutilate people with a connection to Tom. He damages their brains selectively and then releases them - often leaving them mad. But it is only when he gets near his ultimate target does he reveal the full horror of his plan...

And just today, FantasyBookSpot has posted the whole first chapter online. You can read it here.


Neuropath comes out in May; I'm really looking forward to this one.

Jesus, looks awesome! Never read any Bakker, but am dying to. I'll check it out. (sounds like something Loremaster would really like )

I'm currently reading the Prince of Nothing series - it's great! I'll have to check this out. Thanks for the link

Here's the response of Peter Watts, author of the Hugo-nominated Blindsight, after reading this book.

I've just finished reading a draft of R. Scott Bakker's soon-to-be-released Neuropath. Holy shit.

The neurology of consciousness. The advantages of nonsentience. People neurologically stripped of their behavioral constraints so that they can make the necessary Big Decisions of life and death without getting caught up in touchy-feeling shackles like conscience and morality. All the major themes of Blindsight and a bunch of those from the rifters trilogy thrown in for good measure...

And does he stick them in a hard-sf spaceships-and-aliens chassis that only hardcore skiffy geeks will read? Does he locate his story in a future so close to the Singularity's event horizon that society itself has grown strange and forbidding to the average reader? Does he present his arguments through characters so twisted and specialised that most readers have no choice but to regard them as more alien than the aliens they encounter?

No. He sets it a mere decade into the future, in the context of a serial killer police procedural. Instead of aliens and freaks he uses sexy FBI agents and divorced psychologists. This guy is basically writing about Blindsight-type issues, but is aiming them squarely at a da Vinci Code audience. He is dealing with the same existential questions, but has rendered them accessible for beach readers. He has done exactly what I would have done, if only I'd been smart enough.

At least Blindsight came out first. I can cling to that. Because trust me: when Neuropath hits the shelves, it's gonna be "Peter who?"

The first chapter is very good-looking forward to reading this.

Anyone actually read Blindsight? I have. Decent book with some amazing concepts. The ending is incredibly, existentially, bleak and the characters are cool.

I've heard great things, but haven't gotten round to reading it yet.

I love Bakker. I hate arguments against free will.

I believe the book is online for free at his website. You can download and print it or read it online here . If you check out his website make sure you listen to the multimedia presentation on vampire domestication here. It's a fascinating listen!

He's giving his book away for free? Is he crazy?

[Edit: oh, I see you're not talking about Bakker. But still, giving a book away free is strange for any author.]

It's happening more and more often these days. Signs indicate giving the book away online often results in a small increase in hard copy sales (in many cases; not all).
Since I already have about ten books on my computer that I've downloaded from various legit sources in the last few weeks, might as well add Blindsight to the list; thanks for the link, Brinn.

I can attest for myself that giving a book away free online can make me buy the same book in dead-tree format if I like the book. It's a similar thing to how libraries increase sales, and I've bought WAY many books because of libraries. I initially found SRD in a public library, for example.

I read the first chapter of Neuropath, and even though I liked Prince of Nothing I didn't like that one so much. I thought the message was really obvious

By the way, it sounds like I agree with Bakker, but I still believe I have free will because I use a different definition. I define free will as the property of chaotic behavior in a chaotic system that is conscious of itself.

(The self-consciousness requirement is there because otherwise one would be able to construct a very simple mechanism that would have "free will". Just rig a pressure sensor under a chaotically dripping faucet, and add a simple electric circuit that turns on or off a space heater in another room every time a drop of water spalshes on the pressure sensor.

I define self-consciousness as the property of system having a mental model of itself in its mental model of the universe.)

(The chaotic behavior here is behavior according to the mathematical chaos theory - deterministic but so complex that an infinitesimal chance in the system's initial values can lead to a wholly different behavior later on.)

If choices wouldn't follow from the real-world circumstances, what would be the point? Is effective randomness that great?

Nerdanel, as I said above, I don't like Bakker's arguments against freewill that I've read so far (interviews, Prince of Nothing), though I haven't read this one yet. However, I haven't met one that I've liked, and that's counting the ones from serious philosophers, too.

I agree with you in spirit, but I think you've got some problems with your definitions. First of all, aren't we still free when we behave rationally and predictably? Surely freedom isn't limited to chaotic behavior.

Secondly, I think your definition of self-consciousness misses the fundamental element of self-consciousness (SC for short). SC isn't merely having a model. I can draw a model which has a model of itself (might look a lot like a fractal). Or write a recursive mathematical formula. These aren't conscious, much less SC. But more importantly, SC isn't a model. It doesn't portray anything. SC is a state of being in relation to oneself, not a conceptualization of that being. States of being can be conceptualized or modeled, but models and conceptualizations aren't themselves states of being. They are objects within Being. A model is an object. A SC entity is a subject. These are existentially (as opposed to conceptually) distinct. Even your qualifier "mental" in front of "model" doesn't help. This model, though "in your head," is still just a conceptualization, an object of consciousness, but not that consciousness itself. I am not a model of myself.

Our consciousness is inherently self-reflective (in fact, I think all consciousness is, to a degree). This reflection isn't something extra added onto it in the form of a conceptualization (though we can conceptualize it, too, in order to talk about it).

Malik,

You might find Blindsight an interesting read. It's the free book I linked earlier in this discussion. It's pretty hard Sci-Fi and it has a very interesting take on free will.

Humans are really surprisingly bad at (abstract) logic when you consider our level of brainpower. That's because our brains don't work that way deep down and have to emulate it. This emulation comes at a hefty cost in speed and overhead. It's like what always happens when a computer is emulating a different computer. But more than that, because of our brains' chaotic mode of operation, the results aren't always completely accurate. If you say you've never made a simple math error you should have been well able to avoid, I don't believe you.

It is important to note that even though our brains are chaotic, that doesn't imply that every result is as likely as every other. There are these things called "strange attractors" by chaos theory which represent points near which the system's state tends to wind up a lot of the time. In doing math in your head, the correct answer is a strange attractor. If you are well practiced and the math is trivial enough, the probability for a wrong answer may end up so low that it never comes up.

All I can say is: Read Neuropath!

Patrick
www.fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com

I finished Neuropath yesterday. What can I say? It's a very good read, takes the tropes of the genre and uses them to good effect. There's plenty of the Argument in there, which will really get you thinking, but it would probably have a more visceral effect on one who truly believes in consciousness and free will than it did on myself.
I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in the topic, and anyone who's ready to have their assumptions challenged.

am reading this now. bout 4 chpts in. thus far its a good read.
i'll tell you what i think of the argument after i've read it.

Thought you had given up on Bakker. Neuropath is very bleak and disturbing. Psychologically damaging. But fun!

nope. gave up on prince of nothing series. didn't ever think bakker was a bad writer. i like his writing, i just didn't care enough about that particular series to continue reading it. you never know tho, i may eventually go back and try it again. it just didn't hold a candle to erikson for me.

and i liked the premise of neuropath as soon as i'd heard about it.

as i said tho, i'll tell you what i think when i've finished.