The Mind's Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context by Timothy Ferris

The Mind's Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context Reviews

• 
  Bob Nichols

  This is not Ferris' best book. It's a loose collection of his thoughts about consciousness in a cosmic context, and I don't know what that really means.
  
  If there's consciousness out there, it most likely is not like ours, at all, Ferris argues. If there are aliens with consciousness, the author fears that they will "bludgeon us into a dog's life or into extinction." There's a good Demon image here and the reference to a "dog's life" is about its subservience as opposed to being wild and free - as if humans are, what, free from myth and illusion, conformity and our own alphas, and fakery and manipulation?
  
  Ferris explains mystic consciousness (unity) in terms of the "internal architecture of the brain" and its "integration program - that is responsible for presenting the multipartite functions of the brain to the conscious mind as a unified whole." But if we push too hard, he writes, "the result might be direct exposure to the cacophonous voices of many inharmonious programs, speaking in a wild diversity of codes for which we have as yet no translation - and that hazardous voyage might well rob any but the most adept explorer of his sense of a coherent self and a coherent universe. Here lies the territory of divine madness...." I liked that.
  
  Referring to Darwin, Ferris writes that "Random genetic mutation creates unique individuals within each species; natural selection sometimes favors the survival prospects of these atypical individuals" who go on to form new species traits. That's a standard understanding but what Ferris is not saying is that before everyone acquires such traits, we are "unique individuals" with variations in our inborn dispositions and will remain such so long as these tendencies and traits are not harmful to survival, prior to reproduction. In other words, there's room for an in-born biological character within each of us.
  
  Toward the end, Ferris notes some interesting studies suggesting that catastophes hit the earth every 26 million years, wiping out species galore. At that point, there's a good chance that earthly consciousness goes dark, leaving consciousness to aliens, if they exist.
• 
  Ernest Dempsey

  Ferris covers a lot of ground in one book—science, art, philosophy, and culture—while exploring the broader question of intelligence in universe. The chapters in the book are full of interesting and illustrative examples of observations that have been explained or attempted so by scientific principles and theories.
  
  Reviewed at
  http://www.ernestdempsey.com/book-rev...
• 
  Pat

  Loved it.
• 
  WRXtacy

  I initially thought this would be a tough one to get through, however I was pleasantly surprised how insightful this was and how much I enjoyed it. Loads of thought provoking material and definitely presented in a way that got me thinking.
• 
  Josh

  This book blew my little mind when I first read it many years ago with its informed speculations about the human brain, SETI, and more. The idea that our brains includes modules for rationalizing our own actions and making them seem the result of conscious choice, and for creating a sense of a unified self out of a disparate set of drives and subconscious motivations, seems to explain a lot about human behavior and religious experience. I think it was my first introduction to the Drake equation and some of its ramifications. His take on laughter is convincing. It's a little long on speculation and short on data, but it never crosses the line into New Agey mysticism (despite the title and the cover).
• 
  Brandon

  Pretty good book, some parts better than others. I especially liked the idea/chapter about his alien self-replicating probe network, storing data, sending it among probes and to civilizations across the galaxy. He painted it so well, and then talked about such a thing becoming conscious, and of it expanding between galaxies, among the galactic clusters and superclusters, an intelligence spanning the universe. It blew my mind, and makes this book worth reading all by itself.
• 
  Jordan Dodson

  Enjoyed the discussion of an autonomous galactic communications network - seems highly plausible. Also, the last chapter on information theory as a bedrock of all science. For having written that before the Web took off, Ferris was spot-on. (Although, I think his focus on the Copenhagen interpretation and meaning-making observations would have benefited from a dash of many-worlds thinking).
• 
  Chazzle

  A pleasant surprise - quite interesting. Desiring a smooth ride, I skipped a couple of chapters of the final section. Although some of the book is slightly dated, I still feel the book merits four stars.
  
  
• 
  Rona

  The study of multiple intelligences, mixed with the study of the search for intelligent life in the universe. I skipped the SETI stuff. But this was the first readable exposure to multiple intelligences that I came upon. If you have tried to read Howard Gardner, start here.
• 
  Wendy

  Love Timothy Ferris's stuff.
• 
  Noel

  gcb
• 
  John Hawkins

  Some interesting stuff.