April 2013 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Mathy LWers will probably love Scott Aaronson's Quantum Computing Since Democritus, which is funny, insightful, cutting-edge, and just as LW-ish as Gary Drescher's Good and Real.

In addition to lots of stuff on quantum mechanics, quantum computing, theory of computation, computational complexity, cryptography, and cosmology, it also includes:

A steel-manning and then rebuttal of Penrose on AI.
A discussion of free will and Newcomb's problem
A discussion of anthropics (Bostrom's SIA vs. SSA) and the doomsday argument

It's based on his 2006 lecture notes but has been updated in response to new discoveries, and one section of the preface explains all the new stuff that has happened that required revising the manuscript (e.g. fully homomorphic encryption, and Chiribella et al.'s proof that quantum mechanics is the only set of rules consistent with some general axioms of probability theory and one additional axiom.

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April 2013 Media Thread

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April 2013 Media Thread

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