Reverb

So I received this book as a Christmas gift and it’s a relatively quick read. The content however is mighty clever. It’s written by Scott Adams, who I’m sure you’re probably familiar with his work. He’s the creator of Dilbert. Yup that witty office humour that everyone can relate to.

After reading this book Scott Adams is someone I’ll have to add to my continuing fascination with humourists who are incredibly talented and clever when it comes to more serious things. I’m determined to figure out the correlation. I mainly witness it with media celebrities. Perhaps it’s simply raw talent, but take these few people for example. Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler, and Jamie Foxx.

They’re all known for their comedic work, yet when it boils down to it they all give killer serious performances.  I would almost argue they give better performances than so called “serious” actors.  Jim Carrey has The Majestic and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Robin Williams has Good Will Hunting, House of D, and a numerous others. Adam Sandler has Punch Drunk Love and now Reign Over Me. Jamie Foxx has Collateral, Jarhead and Ray of course.

Anyways, back to the book. It’s a designed to “make your brain spin around inside your skull”.  The book is filled with numerous notions of why life is life, the world is the world, and things are the way they are.  It’s a story which calls into question our perceptions of reality, God, science, physics, the world around us.  Much like the move Matrix, it makes you think about what reality is.

The story is about meeting an old man, that happens to know literally everything.  He has an explanation for everything you’ve ever wanted to know.  Things about evolution, God, light, psychics, phenomenons, probability, free will, pattern recognition, relationships and more.  The book is filled with his explanations of all these topics.

As the book warns, although it has no violence or sex the ideas are powerful and not appropriate for readers under fourteen. It also warns that the main character has a view about God that you’ve probably never heard before.  So if you think you’d be easily offended by this character’s view then also don’t read this.

Scott Adams penned this book to be a thought experiment.  His experiment is this: “Try to figure out what’s wrong with the simplest explanations”.

Furthermore he encourages you to share God’s Debris with a smart friend and then discuss it while enjoying a tasty beverage.  So that’s what I’m doing here.  Go out and get it and read it then come back here and rant   It’s a quick read, takes less than a day. Large type, short sections, limited pages.