Michael

This entire book was a journey through the ego of the author- fanciful nonsense with no real substance or real advice offered anywhere. It was mostly stories of him talking about people with undesirable traits (a few of which seem word for word taken from David Mcraneys book/podcast, ‘You are not so smart,' so I'd be inclined to assume he did the same for other books), and bragging about his very likely made up conquests in his 20's under the guise of self deprecation- those are interspersed with a bubblegum understanding (and mostly wrong at that) of psychology and evolutionary biology to make anyone, with even a base understanding of these topics, cringe every time he adds his inane personal views on ‘research'.

Better titles would be, ‘The subtle art of fundamentally misunderstanding how statistics and research works,' or ‘The subtle art of having a terrible vocabulary, so use the word fuck as much as you can,' or ‘The subtle art of I read a book on Stoic philosophy and Buddhism once, misunderstood it, and now I'll write a book preying on people with low self esteem,' or ‘The subtle art of if I quote smart people, and word for word take my stories from Wikipedia and plagerise other books, people will think what I'm saying is smart too.'

After reading so many rave reviews, I was expecting this to offer something valuable. It spectacularly failed. I'm glad it seemed to help some people- but I'm sceptical that it helped anything beyond an initial feeling of ‘wow I do that too,' then forgetting about it entirely a year later.

1/5 fucks given.

As someone who wasn't overly familiar with AI to begin with, this book was a rather dense read.

There were many ideas expressed in this that gave me a lot to think about, and truly admire. Bostram's in depth look at neurological structure and referencing that to the expression of super computers/intelligence was awe inspiring and has left me with wanting to look into the subject further. It is clear he is passionate about the topic, and put a great deal of effort in making sure the information was well researched and thoroughly expressed.

At times though, Bostram's writing got quite clunky, and was filled with terms and concepts that required a lot of referencing to really get the most out of his ideas. It's difficult for me to say whether that is my failing due to my limited understanding of the topic, or if it is a lack in clarity of the prose.

I really wanted to love this, as in movies, I'm a huge fan of Tom Hanks. It's clear he has ability when it comes to the written word. His characters were believeable, and felt like they came from somewhere. Unfortunately though, there wasn't a lot to them. They all had the same speech patterns in the end, and were mostly bland and uninteresting. Hopefully he keeps at it though, and grows his craft like we know he can. If he can bring his writing up to where his acting is. We are in for a treat.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of meditation- to a degree some of the most free times I've spent is through playing music and at those moments of completely removing ones self from ones surroundings and surrendering to the moment- most musicians will understand this feeling. The emotional connection to everyone around you and to the music. It's exhilarating, and the only way I've managed to explain it properly to non musicians is to compare it to the moment of making love to someone, when the world disappears and your only goal is to merge with that person before you. The moment is all that matters, then and there.

Now what does this have to do with the book? Quite simply, through some of the meditative exercises
Harris offered in this. I managed, whilst only briefly, to achieve a similar feeling. It lasted only seconds, but it was there- and these exercises, combined with music practice have been having some effect on personal anxiety and well being recently.

It may not be for everyone, and this book really only serves as a basic introduction, but I'll definitely move forward and read more on the subject. Especially in light of reading some of the studies on the subject that Harris quoted in the book. The evidence towards mindfulness and meditation is growing, and being thoroughly explored within neuroscience and Psychology now- and in combination with stoic philosophy, I can see it have a positive effect personally.

I'd recommend this to anyone, like me, who is sceptical but interested in meditation and its benefits.