A collaborator attempts to whitewash their actions and pretend, likely to themselves, that they aren't propping up an evil machine. Anyone lackingA collaborator attempts to whitewash their actions and pretend, likely to themselves, that they aren't propping up an evil machine. Anyone lacking self awareness while serving a callous and destructive leader could have written this generic and bland book as a way to soothe their conscience. If Trump is the danger that the author claims he is, and the book is very inconsistent on this, claiming at times that Trump would never leave office while at other times that we should support him as the president, why would anyone work for him to ensure that his policies go through and that he continues to hang on to power. The author(s) claim to have a background in history, but they ignore the most basic lessons of political history: a large number of corrupted collaborators always prop up a smaller and evil leadership. ...more
A book of wildly varying quality with a huge amount of repetition (one could easily cut out 1/3rd of the book without losing any content). It's aA book of wildly varying quality with a huge amount of repetition (one could easily cut out 1/3rd of the book without losing any content). It's a collection of independent chapters about about half of which are good.
Chapter 13 by Lynette A. Hart and Mariko Yamamoto was notably so bad I wanted to throw out the book and give it 1 star. It's a mixture of infantile observations -- like the fact that dogs are good companions because they can't speak so they can't offer opinions, how deep! -- and ablist views of people with disabilities....more
This book is disappointing and intentionally mismarketed. I doubt most people would read it after anRacist, narrow, ahistorical, shallow, and lazy.
This book is disappointing and intentionally mismarketed. I doubt most people would read it after an honest description. The vast majority of the book is just looking at the same Greek myths over and over again reinterpreting them in absurd and ahistorical ways. There's just about one chapter to do with technology or machines here. Otherwise it's only myths and only Greek myths, as if there was nothing else in the ancient world.
Pretending that nothing else exists and that you can write and market a book about general ideas shared across societies like this and only use Greek myths is shameful and frankly racist. Even the small amount of text to do with China and India (a few paragraphs) implies that all their ideas on machines came from the West.
The book is so committed to its narrow minded and racist ideology that it goes to absurd lengths. Even the most trivial examples, of say, Japanese manga are carefully chosen to be those that are set in the West, and designed to make it seem as if the genre originated there. A cursory look on Wikipedia shows one how ridiculous this is.
I won't even comment on how misguided and poorly researched the last chapter that attempts to connect with AI is....more
Sloppy thinking with a lot of bad arguments and butchered misreadings of history. The most painful parts are without a doubt every time politics orSloppy thinking with a lot of bad arguments and butchered misreadings of history. The most painful parts are without a doubt every time politics or economics are brought up. These are trivialized beyond belief in ways that don't even remotely resemble reality anymore. So much bullshit evolutionary psychology to cloak trivial economic facts, e.g., people don't make up stories about animals due to some evolutionary storytelling imperative we do it because exploiting animals is economically useful. Another great example of this is the writeup about the Chinese famine. No, it's not just an error in recordkeeping that resulted in a famine.
No fact cannot be irresponsibly bent and no story cannot be insultingly trivialized to serve the insane arguments put forward in this book....more
I love the topic and agree with the message. The book is too lightly researched and relies far too much on the same anecdotes over and over again toI love the topic and agree with the message. The book is too lightly researched and relies far too much on the same anecdotes over and over again to make the same repetitive points. Would have been great at 100 pages instead of 300....more
This book twists facts, makes them up, and then completely baseless speculation as fact about the past in order to push the author's story &This book twists facts, makes them up, and then completely baseless speculation as fact about the past in order to push the author's story & agenda. There's no evidence for most of the story in the book. For example, the idea that we have any clue about the daily agenda, thoughts, skills, and education of some hominid 2 million years ago or 50,000 years ago is absurd. Facts everywhere are twisted to fit the story, like the history of colonialism which is whitewashed to be seen as a natural consequence of the scientific prowess of the colonizers. Or the fact that racism today is downplayed as cultural rather than based on skin color....more
An amazing book that puts Columbus and the "discovery" of the new world by genocidal maniacs into context. You should skip the last two chapters, theyAn amazing book that puts Columbus and the "discovery" of the new world by genocidal maniacs into context. You should skip the last two chapters, they might as well be from another book. A pretty crazy one....more
Poorly written and poorly argued. I wanted to like this book but it turned out to be repetitive and without substance. Sad, because we do need a muchPoorly written and poorly argued. I wanted to like this book but it turned out to be repetitive and without substance. Sad, because we do need a much better discussion around metrics....more
Really a pymc tutorial. Read with students over the summer school. Lots of misinformation and many mistakes to be a real book about probabilisticReally a pymc tutorial. Read with students over the summer school. Lots of misinformation and many mistakes to be a real book about probabilistic programming....more
Explains why both extreme environmentalists and free-market extremists sound crazy, how we got here, and why it's so hard to make any meaningfulExplains why both extreme environmentalists and free-market extremists sound crazy, how we got here, and why it's so hard to make any meaningful progress. ...more
Loading...
