Every computer divides itself into its hardware and its software, the machine host to its algorithm, the human … - David Berlinski

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I find myself writing protagonists who do feel pretty cut off from others but who want to make connections and aren't very good at it.

David Berlinski

Every computer divides itself into its hardware and its software, the machine host to its algorithm, the human being to his mind. It is hardly surprising that men and women have done what computers now do long before computers could do anything at all. The dissociation between mind and matter in men and machines is very striking; it suggests that almost any stable and reliable organization of material objects can execute an algorithm and so come to command some form of intelligence.

Command, Long, Men, Organization, Reliable, Surprising

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At some time in the history of the universe, there were no human minds, and at some time later, there were. Within the blink of a cosmic eye, a universe in which all was chaos and void came to include hunches, beliefs, sentiments, raw sensations, pains, emotions, wishes, ideas, images, inferences, the feel of rubber, Schadenfreude, and the taste of banana ice cream.

Cream, Eye, Ice Cream, Images, Pain, Rubber

More than sixty years ago, mathematical logicians, by defining precisely the concept of an algorithm, gave content to the ancient human idea of an effective calculation. Their definitions led to the creation of the digital computer, an interesting example of thought bending matter to its ends.

Years, Ideas, Interesting, Creation, Precisely

Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather.

Dark, Dungeons, Marx, Nether, Quite, Theory Of Evolution

While science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherent body of thought. . . . There is recompense for suffering. A principle beyond selfishness is at work in the cosmos. . . I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.

Religious, Community, Suffering, Body, Selfishness, Certain

There are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead. No paleontologist. . denies that this is so. It is simply a fact, Darwin's theory and the fossil record are in conflict.

Forms, Fossils, Gaps, Intermediate, Nothing, Records