The Revelations by Erik Hoel

Book 2 — 1 star. Also, synopses of better novels about consciousness.

I first learned of Erik Hoel on Sam Harris’s podcast, discussing consequentialism. I was instantly intrigued by his bio, a professor-turned-full-time-blogger with a novel out about his topic of scholarship, consciousness. So I borrowed The Revelations and read it over New Year’s weekend. He’s described the book as “by far the best thing [he’s] ever done” and the “most important”, intriguingly strong claims from somebody who’s published a few scientific theories related to consciousness.

Briefly back to Sam Harris: what I’ve appreciated the most about his podcast is how, through hours-long conversations, one can build a deep impression of somebody’s intellectual rigor and honesty. Third-person accounts simply become obsolete, and rightly so given their likely ideological or cultural bias. My fondest experience of this was seeing Sam Harris live in San Francisco a few years ago, where he brought out a guest who wasn’t announced beforehand. The guest turned out to be somebody named Ben Shapiro, who I honestly had never heard of within my bubble, so I had the privilege of being introduced to him without any prejudice and judging him only on the merits of the conversation. It turns out that once the conversation got into the weeds of Ben’s fundamentalist religious convictions, I had heard all I needed to hear to deem him epistemologically bankrupt. Only later did I learn about the things he’s actually notorious for.