Publication date for The Book of Why is now just one week away! Here are some upcoming events and articles about our book.
May 9: An interview of Judea will be published at Quanta. I will provide a link to the article as soon as it comes out. This is a super-interesting interview that goes into some of the deep philosophical questions we touch on at the end of our book: Can we endow a machine with the perception of free will? Why should we? Can a machine tell the difference between good and evil, and how can we tell if a machine is capable of doing evil? I think that Judea takes the freshest look at these questions since Isaac Asimov, and it’s well worth reading. Update 5/9/2018: The Quanta article has been moved back to May 15.
May 9: The National Association of Science Writers published my short article on the back story of The Book of Why, in their regular column “Advance Copy.” While this column is written specifically for an audience of fellow writers, I think that the back story (written from my point of view) will be of interest to all readers.
Saturday, May 12: We’ve been working very hard for the last few weeks on an op-ed that will appear in The Wall Street Journal. Originally this was going to be a book excerpt, but the editor asked so many good questions that we have written most of it from scratch, I think it will be a great jumping-off place for readers who want to know what our book is about and why it’s important. Update 5/10/2018: The Wall Street Journal article has been rescheduled to May 19.
Tuesday, May 15, 2:00 pm: Judea’s book launch party, at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA. Books will be available for signing and for purchase.
Tuesday, June 4, 6:00 pm: “Mind Over Data: The One Thing You Know and Machines Don’t.” I will give a book reading and discussion at the Aptos Public Library, 7695 Soquel Drive, Aptos, CA.
Looking forward to the book. It’s not showing up in many library catalogs yet, but I’ve suggested it be purchased by those in the Los Angeles area.
I’ve heard Pearl’s “Causality” touted on line among the rationality community for years. I hope I can at least get the gist of it through your book (my highest math was calculus and it has a couple decades of rust on it).
Good luck with it.