This is another book which comes at things from lots of angles—it talks about Conway’s Life, Maxwell’s Demon (in several variations), self-reproduction … it clears up a number of apparent paradoxes in an engaging and understandable way and explains a lot of really cool concepts on the way to understanding how patterns can arise from noise.
Reaching the specified limit: The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge by William Poundstone.
This is another book which comes at things from lots of angles—it talks about Conway’s Life, Maxwell’s Demon (in several variations), self-reproduction … it clears up a number of apparent paradoxes in an engaging and understandable way and explains a lot of really cool concepts on the way to understanding how patterns can arise from noise.