If you are reading this in the first couple of decades of the third millennium of the common era, chances are that (1) the human brain is the most complex toy you'll ever come near, let alone get to play with, and (2) you're trapped inside one for the foreseeable future.
And then, on page 78, we get this teaser for what's to come later:
Claim: the brain is a programmable digital computer. If this were true, the brain would be like hardware to the mind's software. This claim does not stand up to scrutiny, mainly because in the brain it is not possible to separate the "program" from the architecture that executes it. It is very important to remember, however, that a digital computer can simulate the operation of a brain (because a digital computer can simulate any physical system down to an arbitrary precision), and hence the mind. The ramifications of the realization that the mind is what the brain does are far-reaching and profound; I shall describe and discuss them in later chapters.
He had me long before page 78, though. He quotes Karl Popper throughout the book. This book is amazing in clarity, it's funny, and it's mind-opening.
