What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Self-Assembling Brain’ by Peter Robin Hiesinger

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Updated 11 November 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Self-Assembling Brain’ by Peter Robin Hiesinger

How does a neural network become a brain? While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in artificial intelligence strive to achieve this through technology. “The Self-Assembling Brain” tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: What information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network?
As Peter Robin Hiesinger argues, “the information problem” underlies both fields, motivating the questions driving forward the frontiers of research.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Python Practice Lab’

Updated 07 December 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Python Practice Lab’

Authors: Angelica Lim and Victor Cheung

This classroom-tested, workbook-style text teaches basic programming by guiding readers to write Python programs that mimic interactive chatbots. 

Unlike textbooks with opaque examples explained in dry, monotonous code, Python Practice Lab engages readers immediately, with more than thirty motivating and hands-on examples. 

Readers learn by writing fun, working programs that gradually become more difficult as new concepts are introduced.