# The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose

3 Hacker News commenters recommended The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People cite it as Roger Penrose's argument that machines cannot be conscious, written by a leading physicist.

## Why people recommend it

- Argues against machine consciousness (1 comments): "There are good arguments for this (in)possibility, like those presented by Roger Penrose" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247814))
- Written by a leading physicist (1 comments): "one of the (if not the ) greatest physicists alive wrote two books on a subject which you consider extremely boring" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45810799))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter](https://hackerapproved.com/p/g-del-escher-bach.md): 47 recommend
- [Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman](https://hackerapproved.com/p/thinking-fast-and-slow.md): 17 recommend
- [Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows](https://hackerapproved.com/p/thinking-in-systems.md): 17 recommend
- [The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins](https://hackerapproved.com/p/selfish-gene.md): 14 recommend
- [Cosmos by Carl Sagan](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cosmos.md): 13 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0099771705?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9780099771708) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose", https://hackerapproved.com/p/emperor-s-new-mind/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).