Hofstadter & Dennet - "The Mind's I"
Series of essays on self, AI, consciousness, intelligence, ... with Dennet and Hofstadter commenting them. It gives an excellent introduction in the subjects, and a lot of food for thought.
Long time ago since I read that. Maybe I should re-read it and see if it's as good as I can remember...
I'd have to add just about everything else by Hofstadter, especially Gödel, Escher, Bach.
This has been discussed in passing several times, but I thought it might be worthwhile to collect a list of recommended reading for new members and/or aspiring rationalists. There's probably going to be plenty of overlap with the SingInst reading list, but I think the purposes of the two are sufficiently distinct that a separate list is appropriate.
Some requests:
Happy posting!
PS - Is there a "New Readers Start Here" page, or something similar (aside from "About")? I seem to remember someone talking about one, but I can't find it.
1"Everything Eliezer has ever written (since 2001)... twice!" while likely a highly beneficial suggestion for every single human being in existence, is not an acceptable entry. A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation is fine. If you're not sure whether to classify something as "an essay" or "a blog post", there is a little-known trick to distinguish the two: essays contain small nuggets of vanadium ore, and blog posts contain shreds of palladium. Alternatively, just use your best judgement.