I like Sean Carroll's take that free will is an emergent phenomenon: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/07/13/free-wil...

I also liked his book, "The Big Picture".

Via the The Big Picture by Barry Ritholtz "Retired and want to try day trading? Read this first: the overwhelming pattern is for them to eventually lose much of their winnings." Marketwatch https://www.marketwatch.com/story/retired-and-want-to-try-da...

As a layperson with only basic undergraduate physics (not necessary for the book; just, I'm no expert), I'll second Carroll's The Big Picture.

A good economic blog I like is 'The Big Picture' by Barry Ritholtz: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/

I acquired a finance/economics blogroll during the financial crisis. The ones I still read are:

'Naked Capitalism", "Yves Smith", https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

"The Big Picture", Barry Ritholtz, https://ritholtz.com/

"Calculated Risk", Bill McBride, https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/

2016 was the year I ended up reading most books that I have ever read in any year of my life so far! These are the ones I liked the most:

1. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch. It makes a bold claim that we will always be at the beginning of the infinite progress that lies ahead. History has proven again and again that whenever people said all progress has been made, so much more progress unfolds. I liked this book so much that we gifted this book at my startup to the entire team of 170 people!

2. The Innovator's Solution by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor. This is a sequel to the popular Innovator's Dilemma book. I like the sequel much better because it tries to give solutions to the dilemma. The book packs tons of counter intuitive insights. Highly recommended.

3. The Big Picture by Sean Carrol. The best cosmology book I have read in a long while

4. First break all the rules. If you are a first time manager, I highly recommend reading this book.

5. Deep Work by Cal Newport. This book changed my working habits and life. I was constantly distracted before, and now I am able to focus a ton.

6. Feeling Good. This classic is again a must read. Even if you are not depressed, it will help build your mental immunity against future depression.

7. Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark. A very interesting book that makes the claim that our universe is actually just mathematics. No physical reality exists because physics and mathematics are interchangeable.

There were many other interesting books I read (I read a total of 60 books in 2016!) For those who are interested, here's my entire list of books that I read in 2016: http://shelfjoy.com/paraschopra/books-ive-read-in-2016

The "Simulation Argument" by Nick Bostrom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs

Even if it is true, it changes nothing. Since this is the world we have to deal with and there is no indication we can influence the (supposed) simulation. If our world/universe is a simulation, it is simply too good.

I also recommend to read "The Big Picture" by Sean Carrol, chapter 11 "Is It Okay to Doubt Everything?" deals with these kinds of thought experiments (including Bostrom).

The 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate was about "Is the Universe a Simulation?":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgSZA3NPpBs

Rationally I feel like we have to accept a Daniel Dennett view: with what we know about the brain, all human behaviour is consistent with the laws of physics, and changing the brain very much changes "what it's like" to be - it doesn't take very many experiences with drugs, even alcohol, to realize this. Consciousness, then, has no explanatory power whatsoever. A lot of people argue at this point, but they have nothing substantial to stand on. Maybe they just want to believe that Free Will is something special.

However, I think the Hard Problem is a knot that can never go away. I notice physicists are willing to explain much of the properties of the universe (like time having a direction) just by saying there was a very specific initial condition, a very low entropy state that (by definition) is extraordinarily unlikely. So what about saying there's another constraint on conditions of the universe, where we have physical laws that create consciousness. Is this just an anthropic principle of some sort?

I was listening to Sean Carroll's "The Big Picture" audiobook. He argues that I can't really be sure I'm not a p-zombie. But I think I can: I'm with Descartes on this one - it's the one thing I actually _can_ be sure of. I'm sure I have an inner experience (that explains nothing scientifically to anyone else) but I can easily imagine not having it, with no change to the laws of physics.

Does anyone know of a good read that isn't full of jargon that fleshes out these ideas some more?

Quantum mechanics deals with very small particles interacting with very strong forces. Gravity is so weak it can be ignored.

Relativity deals with so much gravity that spacetime is warped.

Neither is appropriate for the other and they are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Classical physics is useful in the middle at "human" scale.

What would be nice is a simple theory that covers it all. Nothing we currently have is able to stretch to be useful in all situations.

Sean Carroll's _The Big Picture_ was useful for me, as was the older _A Brief History Of Time_ by Stephen Hawking

Practically no evolutionary biologist thinks that. All organisms living today have evolved for equally long.

You've described a criteria - "logical brain" - and then evaluated currently living organisms based on that, and determined humans to be the highest on that. That's not the same thing as being "most evolved".

Evolution has no "direction", no goal beyond the ability to survive. It's dysteleological.

Recommend The Big Picture by Sean Carrol for an overall overview of related questions.