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I'm reading the selfish gene and it's quite cool. Can you reccomend me something to read after i finish this? It can be both a book of pure scientific theory (i'm particularly interested in neurology and genetics, but everything biology-related is fine) or some biopunk fiction. Thanks!

>>1109 god DAMN that picture is unnerving, I can't look away from it But more on-topic, Twig is a biopunk alternate-history web serial. It's by the same guy who wrote Worm. It's pretty good, but I feel like the ending will be weak, as is usual for this author (it should be ending soon-ish). Link: https://twigserial.wordpress.com/about/

bump i finished Dawkins' book and i dunno what to read next

This book. Popp was a legit loopy-loo, who invented ransomware, tried using it to hold the world's AIDS research to ransom like a real supervillain, and wore a cardboard box on his head in court, and wrote DOCTOR POPP IS BEING POISONED on a lawyer's briefcase in marker. In between all this he wrote a crazy book on how to ensure your genes survive you, basically by dedicating the rest of your life to knocking up as many women as humanly possible.

>>1212 In terms of genetics, Watson himself wrote a book The Double Helix so get it from the horse's mouth. Siddhartha Mukherjee's book The Gene is supposed to be a very good modern treatment, though I've only read his book about cancer. James Gleick has a book about the history of information theory, which makes some nice links between genetics and computer science (although it's long and could have done with a bit more editing). In terms of neuro, I think there's a lot of quackery/grossly pop-sci stuff out there, and I don't really know enough to make a good recommendation in pure neurobiol. I'm personally into complex systems, so I can speak from that perspective. Ilya Prigogine is (was?) one of the foremost thinkers in this area and from him I would recommend From Being to Becoming, which is about biological complexity (I haven't read this but have read others of his and he's great). Stuart Kauffman has also written extensively about consciousness and evolutionary complexity. He's well-liked, though I find him a bit totalizing. Douglas Hofstadter is another popular name in this sphere, e.g. I Am a Strange Loop, but that's well away from the wet laboratory and more into armchair discussion. OK so that's a lot of recommendations, I hope at least one of them is helpful. As I say, it's a topic that's extremely complex and poorly understood, but also very popular, so there's a lot of nonsense out there. Choose a good book, though, and it'll blow your mind!

why not play Metal Gear

This one is pretty good. It makes a case for the origins of life in, not bubbles of amino acids that somehow learned how to self-replicate, but as self-perpetuating chemical reactions that grew skins. Like, a paradigm of life as a verb, not as a noun.

>>1109 A good jumping-off point after The Selfish Gene is Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett It examines the implications of Darwin's theories in the context of culture and their impact on perceptions within society, and explains at least in part why the Darwin pill is so tough to swallow for so many. I enjoyed it even more than The Selfish Gene.

Good book, somewhat related.

This was a hella good read. I hardly ever hear anybody talk about it.

>>1216 Or deus ex; it's got a lot do with transhumanism, and it's cyberpunk.

>>1109 Attached is pretty great in that area. "In the novel, renegade biotechnologist Vergil Ulam creates simple biological computers based on his own lymphocytes. Faced with orders from his nervous employer to destroy his work, he injects them into his own body, intending to smuggle the "noocytes" (as he calls them) out of the company and work on them elsewhere. Inside Ulam's body, the noocytes multiply and evolve rapidly, altering their own genetic material and quickly becoming self-aware. The nanoscale civilization they construct soon begins to transform Ulam, then others."

>>1109 I wonder what the story behind the cover art is. It's very google dream vision, and more importantly, they both resemble psychedelic visualizations you experience on mushrooms. Who made it and why for this book????

highly recommend godel escher bach. it gets a lot of soykaf in some circles, but i think it's great.

>>1262 wew that book is amazing, but i think it got too high level for me when i first read it, and i have to reread it.

>>1109 The sequel, The Extended Phenotype.

I Am a Strange Loop. Pretty good.

>>1587 is this worth reading if you've alread read GEB? i heard it's basically just a restatement of a lot of the ideas in that book. i did really like GEB though.

>>1305 >>1262 Honestly the math got way beyond me, way before the end too. I'm much more inclined to art, music, poetry, mythology and the like so I understood those sections much more easily. At least I could grasp the notion that the three main threads in the "braid" were parallel in uncanny ways, even if I suck at one of them. That's the strength of the book. Different people understand different parts better than others so the discussions between readers afterwards can be endless.