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| 0226320618
| 9780226320618
| 0226320618
| 4.16
| 23,887
| Sep 18, 1944
| Oct 15, 1994
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did not like it
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He inspired Milton Friedman. There´s nothing to add to that, it´s just making one speechless. As soon as abstract, not measurable, highly abstract, not He inspired Milton Friedman. There´s nothing to add to that, it´s just making one speechless. As soon as abstract, not measurable, highly abstract, not concrete concepts and words such as freedom, justice, right, etc. are used, it´s often a highly alarming sign, signal, and warning that something is going terribly wrong, that the author has left reality and entered the spheres of speculation, guessing, or just doing as if subjective, in the best cases just eccentric, DIY creative problem solving ideas can be implemented in larger systems or even the world. It reminds me of playing Chinese whisperers, silent post, for two reasons. First, because those pseudo fringe science wannabe intellectuals are as arrogant as possible while behaving like stubborn kids and second, because one begins with a stupid idea that gets copied and modified and mutates to more and more idiotic, tragically real-life appliances. It´s also a bit like a brainstorming, a creative technique, an idea constructing session completely getting out of control. I´ll give it a try. Let´s say that I am biased and hate capitalism such as Hayek hated socialism without any reason, mixed it with pseudo psychology and constructed his crude and inhuman theories. So I want anything in the property of the state, ban private companies, install a system such in China or with communism. Does one see how stupid and onesided that is, this black and white, good and bad, evil economy and friendly economy? But wait, if we instead say that our economic system is as onesided and stupid as communism, that´s, of course, unacceptable treason. One could produce thousands of stupid fringe theories while misusing social sciences and humanities. Oh wait, that´s permanently done, my mistake. I´ve said most about this topic in my reviews of Roslings´ Factfulness https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Pinkers´ Enlightenment Now https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and Friedmans´ Capitalism and Freedom. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... These books are just a repetition of the same yada bla without any accuracy or legitimacy. Some facepalm quotes: “I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.” “Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism.” „Wir verdanken den Amerikanern eine große Bereicherung der Sprache durch den bezeichnenden Ausdruck weasel-word. So wie das kleine Raubtier, das auch wir Wiesel nennen, angeblich aus einem Ei allen Inhalt heraussaugen kann, ohne daß man dies nachher der leeren Schale anmerkt, so sind die Wiesel-Wörter jene, die, wenn man sie einem Wort hinzufügt, dieses Wort jedes Inhalts und jeder Bedeutung berauben. Ich glaube, das Wiesel-Wort par excellence ist das Wort sozial. Was es eigentlich heißt, weiß niemand. Wahr ist nur, daß eine soziale Marktwirtschaft keine Marktwirtschaft, ein sozialer Rechtsstaat kein Rechtsstaat, ein soziales Gewissen kein Gewissen, soziale Gerechtigkeit keine Gerechtigkeit – und ich fürchte auch, soziale Demokratie keine Demokratie ist.“ Because of much talk and discussion about the replication crisis with friends and in general, I will add these thoughts to all following nonfiction books dealing with humanities in the future, so you might have already seen it. Sorry folks, this is one of my last rants, I am sick and tired of this and want to focus on true science and great fiction instead, not this disturbed fairytales for adults who never had the chance to built a free opinion because most of the media they consume to stay informed and get educated avoids any criticism of the current economic system. Without having read or heard ideas by Chomsky, Monbiot, Klein, Ken Robinson, Monbiot, Peter Singer, William McDonough, Ziegler, Colin Crouch, Jeremy Rifkin, David Graeber, John Perkins, and others, humans will always react to people like me, condemning the manipulation Hayek was practicing with terrifying success, with anger and refusal. These authors don´t hide aspects of the truth and describe the real state of the world that should be read instead of epic facepalms like this. They don´t predict the future and preach the one only, the true way, ignoring anything like black swans, coincidences or the, for each small child logical, fact that nobody knows what will happen, and collect exactly the free available data people such as Hayek wanted to ignore forever. Some words about the publication crisis that even have some positive points at the end so that this whole thing is not that depressing. One could call the replication crisis the viral fake news epidemic of many fields of science that was a hidden, chronic disease over decades and centuries and has become extremely widespread during the last years, since the first critics began vaccinating against it, provoking virulent counterarguments. I don´t know how else this could end than with nothing else than paradigm shifts, discovering many anachronisms, and a better, fact- and number based research with many control instances before something of an impact on the social policy gets accepted. A few points that led to it: I had an intuitive feeling regarding this for years, but the replication crisis proofed that there are too many interconnections of not strictly scientific fields such as economics and politics with many humanities. Look, already some of the titles are biased towards a more positive or negative attitude, but thinking too optimistic is the same mistake as being too pessimistic, it isn´t objective anymore and one can be instrumentalized without even recognizing it. In natural sciences, theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, physicians… that were friends of a certain idea will always say that there is the option of change, that a discovery may lead to a new revolution, and that their old work has to be reexamined. So in science regarding the real world the specialists are much more open to change than in some humanities, isn´t that strange? It would be as if one would say that all humans are representative, similar, that there are no differences. But it´s not, each time a study is made there are different people, opinions, so many coincidences, and unique happenings that it´s impossible to reproduce it. Scandinavia vs the normal world. The society people live in makes happiness, not theoretical, not definitive concepts. One can manipulate so many parameters in those studies that the result can be extremely positive or negative, just depending on what who funds the study and does the study wants as results. One could use the studies she/ he needs to create an optimistic or a pessimistic book and many studies about human nature are redundant, repetitive, or biased towards a certain result, often an optimistic outcome or spectacular, groundbreaking results. Do you know who does that too? Statistics, economics, politics, and faith. I wish I could be a bit more optimistic than realistic, but not hard evidence based stuff is a bit of a no go if it involves practical applications, especially if there is the danger of not working against big problems by doing as if they weren´t there. A few points that lead away from it: 1. Tech 2. Nordic model 3. Open data, open government, 4. Blockchains, cryptocurrencies, quantum computing, to make each financial transaction transparent and traceable. 5. Points mentioned in the Wiki article 6. It must be horrible for the poor scientists who work in those fields and are now suffering because the founding fathers used theories and concepts that have nothing to do with real science. They worked hard to build a career to just find out that the predecessors integrated methods that couldn´t work in other systems, let's say an evolving computer program or a machine or a human body or anywhere except in ones´ imagination. They are truly courageous to risk criticism because of the humanities bashing wave that won´t end soon. As in so many fields, it are a few black sheep who ruin everything for many others and the more progressive a young scientist is, the more he is in danger of getting smashed between a hyper sensible public awareness and the old anachronism shepherds, avoiding anything progressive with the danger of a paradigm shift or even a relativization of the field they dedicated their career to. There has to be strict segregation between theories and ideas and applications in real life, so that anything can be researched, but not used to do crazy things. The worst bad science practice includes, from Wikipedia, taken from the article about the replication crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica... 1. The replication crisis (or replicability crisis or reproducibility crisis) is, as of 2020, an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce. The replication crisis affects the social sciences and medicine most severely.[ 2. The inability to replicate the studies of others has potentially grave consequences for many fields of science in which significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work. The replication crisis has been particularly widely discussed in the field of psychology and in medicine, where a number of efforts have been made to re-investigate classic results 3. A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments).[8] In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did. 4. „Psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power." 5. Firstly, questionable research practices (QRPs) have been identified as common in the field.[18] Such practices, while not intentionally fraudulent, involve capitalizing on the gray area of acceptable scientific practices or exploiting flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting, often in an effort to obtain a desired outcome. Examples of QRPs include selective reporting or partial publication of data (reporting only some of the study conditions or collected dependent measures in a publication), optional stopping (choosing when to stop data collection, often based on statistical significance of tests), p-value rounding (rounding p-values down to 0.05 to suggest statistical significance), file drawer effect (nonpublication of data), post-hoc storytelling (framing exploratory analyses as confirmatory analyses), and manipulation of outliers (either removing outliers or leaving outliers in a dataset to cause a statistical test to be significant).[18][19][20][21] A survey of over 2,000 psychologists indicated that a majority of respondents admitted to using at least one QRP.[18] False positive conclusions, often resulting from the pressure to publish or the author's own confirmation bias, are an inherent hazard in the field, requiring a certain degree of skepticism on the part of readers.[2 6. Secondly, psychology and social psychology in particular, has found itself at the center of several scandals involving outright fraudulent research, 7. Thirdly, several effects in psychological science have been found to be difficult to replicate even before the current replication crisis. Replications appear particularly difficult when research trials are pre-registered and conducted by research groups not highly invested in the theory under questioning. 8. Scrutiny of many effects have shown that several core beliefs are hard to replicate. A recent special edition of the journal Social Psychology focused on replication studies and a number of previously held beliefs were found to be difficult to replicate.[25] A 2012 special edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science also focused on issues ranging from publication bias to null-aversion that contribute to the replication crises in psychology.[26] In 2015, the first open empirical study of reproducibility in psychology was published, called the Reproducibility Project. Researchers from around the world collaborated to replicate 100 empirical studies from three top psychology journals. Fewer than half of the attempted replications were successful at producing statistically significant results in the expected directions, though most of the attempted replications did produce trends in the expected directions. 9. Many research trials and meta-analyses are compromised by poor quality and conflicts of interest that involve both authors and professional advocacy organizations, resulting in many false positives regarding the effectiveness of certain types of psychotherapy 10. The reproducibility of 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals.[44] Overall, 36% of the replications yielded significant findings (p value below 0.05) compared to 97% of the original studies that had significant effects. The mean effect size in the replications was approximately half the magnitude of the effects reported in the original studies. 11. Highlighting the social structure that discourages replication in psychology, Brian D. Earp and Jim A. C. Everett enumerated five points as to why replication attempts are uncommon:[50][51] 12. "Independent, direct replications of others' findings can be time-consuming for the replicating researcher" 13. "[Replications] are likely to take energy and resources directly away from other projects that reflect one's own original thinking" 14. "[Replications] are generally harder to publish (in large part because they are viewed as being unoriginal)" 15. "Even if [replications] are published, they are likely to be seen as 'bricklaying' exercises, rather than as major contributions to the field Continued in comments ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 06, 2020
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Paperback
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| 0226264211
| 9780226264219
| 0226264211
| 3.91
| 13,882
| Jan 01, 1962
| Nov 15, 2002
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did not like it
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One of the most destructive books ever written Officer Barbrady: „Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magica One of the most destructive books ever written Officer Barbrady: „Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of s**t, I am never reading again.“ No, of course, I will keep on reading forever, don´t worry. Most of why it´s so stupid has been/will be described in my reviews of books by Naomi Klein, David Graeber, others, and the rants about Hans Roslings´ Factfulness and Steven Pinkers´ Enlightenment now. It´s one of those evil books one might ask to how many people it brought suffering, poverty, and a terrible life until an unnecessary, early death. Let´s make a thought experiment: Let´s say that the Keynesian model stayed and established stable, fair democracies all over the world, strong Nordic model utopias where everybody is happy. Influenced by that, natural destruction, poverty in the Southern hemisphere, climate change, and all the other problems we are facing right now are not nearly as bad and can be solved. So how many people live better lives in such an alternate universe? I would really like to do the math, but it´s a bit tricky, so let´s say that this idiotic economic, political, and social systems keep running for some more years, close to the 22nd century, when there will possibly be up to an 11-digit number of people on the planet. Even if we just take a small amount of these, just one percent of 10 billion, 100.000.000 people that have horrible existences, it´s a crime against humanity of unimaginable dimensions. But we are right now, at this moment, accepting and ignoring that billions of people are dying, suffering, and despairing without any other purpose than to make the rich richer. All politics is part of the problem at the moment, the only change can come from the civil society and NGOs, only engagement in those is useful, real democracy doesn´t exist anymore. The freaking maddest thing about this bonkers ideology faith bad science nightmare is that nobody talks, debates, analyses, thinks,... openly about Hayek and his fanatic soldier Friedman, that the foundation of the corpocracy we are all living in is nothing to openly quarrel about, because it´s like law, it´s like faith, it´s a total dogma that has infected and weakened close to all Western puppet democracies for decades and is at the moment destroying the whole nature of this only earth at a never before seen speed while boiling it at the same time. Because of much talk and discussion about the replication crisis with friends and in general, I will add these thoughts to all following nonfiction books dealing with humanities in the future, so you might have already seen it. Sorry folks, this is one of my last rants, I am sick and tired of this and want to focus on true science and great fiction instead, not this disturbed fairytales for adults who never had the chance to built a free opinion because most of the media they consume to stay informed and get educated avoids any criticism of the current economic system. Without having read or heard ideas by Chomsky, Monbiot, Klein, Ken Robinson, Monbiot, Peter Singer, William McDonough, Ziegler, Colin Crouch, Jeremy Rifkin, David Graeber, John Perkins, and others, humans will always react to people like me, condemning the manipulation Friedman was practicing with terrifying success, with anger and refusal. These authors don´t hide aspects of the truth and describe the real state of the world that should be read instead of epic facepalms like this. They don´t predict the future and preach the one only, the true way, ignoring anything like black swans, coincidences or the, for each small child logical, fact that nobody knows what will happen, and collect exactly the free available data people such as Friedman wanted to ignore forever. Some words about the publication crisis that even have some positive points at the end so that this whole thing is not that depressing. One could call the replication crisis the viral fake news epidemic of many fields of science that was a hidden, chronic disease over decades and centuries and has become extremely widespread during the last years, since the first critics began vaccinating against it, provoking virulent counterarguments. I don´t know how else this could end than with nothing else than paradigm shifts, discovering many anachronisms, and a better, fact- and number based research with many control instances before something of an impact on the social policy gets accepted. A few points that led to it: I had an intuitive feeling regarding this for years, but the replication crisis proofed that there are too many interconnections of not strictly scientific fields such as economics and politics with many humanities. Look, already some of the titles are biased towards a more positive or negative attitude, but thinking too optimistic is the same mistake as being too pessimistic, it isn´t objective anymore and one can be instrumentalized without even recognizing it. In natural sciences, theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, physicians… that were friends of a certain idea will always say that there is the option of change, that a discovery may lead to a new revolution, and that their old work has to be reexamined. So in science regarding the real world the specialists are much more open to change than in some humanities, isn´t that strange? It would be as if one would say that all humans are representative, similar, that there are no differences. But it´s not, each time a study is made there are different people, opinions, so many coincidences, and unique happenings that it´s impossible to reproduce it. Scandinavia vs the normal world. The society people live in makes happiness, not theoretical, not definitive concepts. One can manipulate so many parameters in those studies that the result can be extremely positive or negative, just depending on what who funds the study and does the study wants as results. One could use the studies she/ he needs to create an optimistic or a pessimistic book and many studies about human nature are redundant, repetitive, or biased towards a certain result, often an optimistic outcome or spectacular, groundbreaking results. Do you know who does that too? Statistics, economics, politics, and faith. I wish I could be a bit more optimistic than realistic, but not hard evidence based stuff is a bit of a no go if it involves practical applications, especially if there is the danger of not working against big problems by doing as if they weren´t there. A few points that lead away from it: 1. Tech 2. Nordic model 3. Open data, open government, 4. Blockchains, cryptocurrencies, quantum computing, to make each financial transaction transparent and traceable. 5. Points mentioned in the Wiki article 6. It must be horrible for the poor scientists who work in those fields and are now suffering because the founding fathers used theories and concepts that have nothing to do with real science. They worked hard to build a career to just find out that the predecessors integrated methods that couldn´t work in other systems, let's say an evolving computer program or a machine or a human body or anywhere except in ones´ imagination. They are truly courageous to risk criticism because of the humanities bashing wave that won´t end soon. As in so many fields, it are a few black sheep who ruin everything for many others and the more progressive a young scientist is, the more he is in danger of getting smashed between a hyper sensible public awareness and the old anachronism shepherds, avoiding anything progressive with the danger of a paradigm shift or even a relativization of the field they dedicated their career to. There has to be strict segregation between theories and ideas and applications in real life, so that anything can be researched, but not used to do crazy things. The worst bad science practice includes, from Wikipedia, taken from the article about the replication crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica... 1. The replication crisis (or replicability crisis or reproducibility crisis) is, as of 2020, an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce. The replication crisis affects the social sciences and medicine most severely.[ 2. The inability to replicate the studies of others has potentially grave consequences for many fields of science in which significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work. The replication crisis has been particularly widely discussed in the field of psychology and in medicine, where a number of efforts have been made to re-investigate classic results 3. A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments).[8] In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did. 4. „Psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power." 5. Firstly, questionable research practices (QRPs) have been identified as common in the field.[18] Such practices, while not intentionally fraudulent, involve capitalizing on the gray area of acceptable scientific practices or exploiting flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting, often in an effort to obtain a desired outcome. Examples of QRPs include selective reporting or partial publication of data (reporting only some of the study conditions or collected dependent measures in a publication), optional stopping (choosing when to stop data collection, often based on statistical significance of tests), p-value rounding (rounding p-values down to 0.05 to suggest statistical significance), file drawer effect (nonpublication of data), post-hoc storytelling (framing exploratory analyses as confirmatory analyses), and manipulation of outliers (either removing outliers or leaving outliers in a dataset to cause a statistical test to be significant).[18][19][20][21] A survey of over 2,000 psychologists indicated that a majority of respondents admitted to using at least one QRP.[18] False positive conclusions, often resulting from the pressure to publish or the author's own confirmation bias, are an inherent hazard in the field, requiring a certain degree of skepticism on the part of readers.[2 6. Secondly, psychology and social psychology in particular, has found itself at the center of several scandals involving outright fraudulent research, 7. Thirdly, several effects in psychological science have been found to be difficult to replicate even before the current replication crisis. Replications appear particularly difficult when research trials are pre-registered and conducted by research groups not highly invested in the theory under questioning. 8. Scrutiny of many effects have shown that several core beliefs are hard to replicate. A recent special edition of the journal Social Psychology focused on replication studies and a number of previously held beliefs were found to be difficult to replicate.[25] A 2012 special edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science also focused on issues ranging from publication bias to null-aversion that contribute to the replication crises in psychology.[26] In 2015, the first open empirical study of reproducibility in psychology was published, called the Reproducibility Project. Researchers from around the world collaborated to replicate 100 empirical studies from three top psychology journals. Fewer than half of the attempted replications were successful at producing statistically significant results in the expected directions, though most of the attempted replications did produce trends in the expected directions. 9. Many research trials and meta-analyses are compromised by poor quality and conflicts of interest that involve both authors and professional advocacy organizations, resulting in many false positives regarding the effectiveness of certain types of psychotherapy 10. The reproducibility of 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals.[44] Overall, 36% of the replications yielded significant findings (p value below 0.05) compared to 97% of the original studies that had significant effects. The mean effect size in the replications was approximately half the magnitude of the effects reported in the original studies. 11. Highlighting the social structure that discourages replication in psychology, Brian D. Earp and Jim A. C. Everett enumerated five points as to why replication attempts are uncommon:[50][51] 12. "Independent, direct replications of others' findings can be time-consuming for the replicating researcher" 13. "[Replications] are likely to take energy and resources directly away from other projects that reflect one's own original thinking" 14. "[Replications] are generally harder to publish (in large part because they are viewed as being unoriginal)" 15. "Even if [replications] are published, they are likely to be seen as 'bricklaying' exercises, rather than as major contributions to the field 16. "[Replications] bring less recognition and reward, and even basic career security, to their authors"[52] 17. For these reasons the authors advocated that psychology is facing a disciplinary social dilemma, where the interests of the discipline are at odds with the interests of the individual researcher 18. Medicine. Out of 49 medical studies from 1990–2003 with more than 1000 citations, 45 claimed that the studied therapy was effective. Out of these studies, 16% were contradicted by subsequent studies, 16% had found stronger effects than did subsequent studies, 44% were replicated, and 24% remained largely unchallenged.[58] The US Food and Drug Administration in 1977–1990 found flaws in 10–20% of medical studies 19. Marketing is another discipline with a "desperate need" for replication.[64] Many famous marketing studies fail to be repeated upon replication, a notable example being the "too-many-choices" effect, in which a high number of choices of product makes a consumer less likely to purchase.[65] In addition to the previously mentioned arguments, replication studies in marketing are needed to examine the applicability of theories and models across countries and cultures, which is especially important because of possible influences of globalization. Continued in comments ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 04, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1473637465
| 9781473637467
| 1473637465
| 4.36
| 185,637
| Apr 03, 2018
| Apr 03, 2018
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did not like it
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To me, this is the prime example of why the replication crisis is the next big thing and how biased some fields of sciences have already become to cul
To me, this is the prime example of why the replication crisis is the next big thing and how biased some fields of sciences have already become to culminate in such extremely suspicious examples of: “Go on, everything's great, here, look at the facts and studies I collected and did to proof what I think is true.“ This thing is really dangerous because it uses instrumentalized science towards a certain consensus, nothing more than hiding an agenda behind manipulated facts out of context, it does nearly anything criticized in the debate about the replication crisis good science shouldn´t do. It´s both my first and possibly last 1 star rating and my farewell from reading anything heavily influenced by politics, economics, statistics, faith,… because it destroys the reputation of and trust in science by misusing methods because of egoistic interests. The conversation about it has become so toxic and useless that I quite kind wanted to draw a final line, after I had to do the same with many political and economic themes to avoid waste of energy in useless debates, and will focus instead on the true, natural sciences, where nobodys´ beliefs to have the ultimate solution and is instead modest, self-reflecting, open to criticism, and grateful to be part of a line of giants that built the modern world. Instead of inventing BS theories to destroy it. Shall people debate, fight, and finally kill over theories that are not proven if they wish, I see much more sense in exploring the wonders of nature and awakening interest in them instead of continuing the debates of narcissistic, egomaniac old man who believed they invented theories of everything. Each one of them for themselves, without even recognizing that there can´t be so many absolute truths. No physicist, mathematician,… would ever do something like that because they know that the rules of nature are not fully understood and that they could do research about a theory that could turn out wrong. See the difference? One of the craziest things about it is that so many facts are ignored and that alternative government and economic models never mentioned, his whole work looks like a status quo advertisement with avoiding any kind of criticism and that he was adored in Davos and similar circles should say the most about what his main fans intended with spreading his words. The frightening thing is that onesided propaganda like this has read such a widespread, penetration rate, and overrepresentation in biased mainstream news media and books, that both alternatives and solutions to the real, massive problems are ignored. Remember nature destruction, social inequality, developing countries, incarceration rates, the sixth mass extinction, radicalization, opioid crises, climate change, weakening of democracy all over the world,… Rosling is driveling about inequality, habitat destruction, climate change,... and how huge these problems are while he is exponentiating them by delaying and preventing change and cementing the bad status quo. The sad thing is that I am sure that he thought about himself as a good person, that he didn´t understand the mechanisms of power that influenced his work, how he was instrumentalized himself. He certainly was no bad human because he did work in healthcare in Africa, quite kind of split personality that didn´t know and understood that his agenda caused the suffering he tried to reduce. The objective worldview he imagined having and spreading is a symptom of that problem. It would interest me how people that haven´t been born in wealthy nations see this. That poor people in Africa now have 50 to 75 cents more per day or that we gave them some drugs and contraceptives after refusing it for decades, that´s the big deal. Not mentioning why they are poor in the first place included or why more and more people are poor in the rich, industrialized countries impoverished from the point on Keynesian economics was weakened with the rise of neoliberalism in the 70s. Looking at the statistics, the time between WW2 and the beginning of the destruction of welfare state, social justice, functioning democracy,.. in the 70s, those were the best time for many humans who could earn a living, weren´t incarcerated or so indoctrinated that there was even an open debate about those things, not like nowadays where nobody mentions any alternative to the system of self destruction. Many were shocked by Friedman and Hayek before they became famous and influential, because their ideas were so sick and inhuman, giving predators license and help against the weaker and poorer ones with the help of the same state they want to be crushed. It´s as if one has kids and finds it completely ok when the strongest and the smartest kids of the whole school form a kind of oligarchy, control the teachers and principal by lobbying, and grade themselves, while bullying more and more basic, before normal, rights out of the oppressed majority, killing some of them in the process or making their lives so miserable that they can´t survive without basic human needs. What is still the difference between a dictatorship and neoliberalism except that the goddess/god emperor is not such a dishonest lier and openly says what she/he thinks and that everyone making problems will be exterminated instead of doing as if she/he is a good person? But as so often, the stupidest and most destructive ideas are the most successful. The character question is especially interesting in this one, because I like to listen to TED talks, etc.during everyday activities and housework and it´s amazing how much arrogance and self-importance, many seem to see as charisma, can float out of one persons voice. This is Ayn Rand always smiling and with friendly fairytale teller style or Officer Barbrady with his trademark „Move along people nothing to see here“ or any government in the history of humanity telling people that they are competent, all is fine, there is nothing to worry, and certainly no problems because all is getting better. I´m sick of this stuff, it made me quit mass media and news a few years ago, quit friendships with humans who are sadly part of the problem and became ignorant to a level that was unacceptable and dangerous, and meanwhile, it infiltrated so many humanities that I can´t even read a few pages without getting confronted with this BS. He was a regular speaker at Davos, the world economic forum, anything neoliberal and anti-welfare state possible, who do people think benefited the most from his appeasing, condescending drivel and lying with statistics? Anyone except for the already rich and mighty? Come on, this dude did nice, but he is like Milton Friedman, such a gentle, calm, always smiling, never angry guy, so friendly to his students. Humankind, what´s wrong with you… I would be so interested to see how future history in a few centuries will talk about this era and if they would extrapolate how many people have been killed by this kind of economic policy we are practicing for over half a century now and that is destroying the planet. Sorry folks, this is one of my last rants, I am sick and tired of this and want to focus on true science and great fiction instead, not this disturbed fairytales for adults who never had the chance to built a free opinion because most of the media they consume to stay informed and get educated avoids any criticism of the current economic system. Because of much talk and discussion about the replication crisis with friends and in general, I will add these thoughts to all following nonfiction books dealing with humanities in the future, so you might have already seen it. Sorry folks, this is one of my last rants, I am sick and tired of this and want to focus on true science and great fiction instead, not this disturbed fairytales for adults who never had the chance to built a free opinion because most of the media they consume to stay informed and get educated avoids any criticism of the current economic system. Without having read or heard ideas by Chomsky, Monbiot, Klein, Ken Robinson, Monbiot, Peter Singer, William McDonough, Ziegler, Colin Crouch, Jeremy Rifkin, David Graeber, John Perkins, and others, humans will always react to people like me, condemning the manipulation Rosling was practicing with terrifying success, with anger and refusal. These authors don´t hide aspects of the truth and describe the real state of the world that should be read instead of epic facepalms like this. They don´t predict the future and preach the one only, the true way, ignoring anything like black swans, coincidences or the, for each small child logical, fact that nobody knows what will happen, and collect exactly the free available data people such as Rosling wanted to ignore forever. Some words about the publication crisis that even have some positive points at the end so that this whole thing is not that depressing. One could call the replication crisis the viral fake news epidemic of many fields of science that was a hidden, chronic disease over decades and centuries and has become extremely widespread during the last years, since the first critics began vaccinating against it, provoking virulent counterarguments. I don´t know how else this could end than with nothing else than paradigm shifts, discovering many anachronisms, and a better, fact- and number based research with many control instances before something of an impact on the social policy gets accepted. A few points that led to it: I had an intuitive feeling regarding this for years, but the replication crisis proofed that there are too many interconnections of not strictly scientific fields such as economics and politics with many humanities. Look, already some of the titles are biased towards a more positive or negative attitude, but thinking too optimistic is the same mistake as being too pessimistic, it isn´t objective anymore and one can be instrumentalized without even recognizing it. In natural sciences, theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, physicians… that were friends of a certain idea will always say that there is the option of change, that a discovery may lead to a new revolution, and that their old work has to be reexamined. So in science regarding the real world the specialists are much more open to change than in some humanities, isn´t that strange? It would be as if one would say that all humans are representative, similar, that there are no differences. But it´s not, each time a study is made there are different people, opinions, so many coincidences, and unique happenings that it´s impossible to reproduce it. Scandinavia vs the normal world. The society people live in makes happiness, not theoretical, not definitive concepts. One can manipulate so many parameters in those studies that the result can be extremely positive or negative, just depending on what who funds the study and does the study wants as results. One could use the studies she/ he needs to create an optimistic or a pessimistic book and many studies about human nature are redundant, repetitive, or biased towards a certain result, often an optimistic outcome or spectacular, groundbreaking results. Do you know who does that too? Statistics, economics, politics, and faith. I wish I could be a bit more optimistic than realistic, but not hard evidence based stuff is a bit of a no go if it involves practical applications, especially if there is the danger of not working against big problems by doing as if they weren´t there. A few points that lead away from it: 1. Tech 2. Nordic model 3. Open data, open government 4. Blockchains, cryptocurrencies, quantum computing, to make each financial transaction transparent and traceable. 5. Points mentioned in the Wiki article 6. It must be horrible for the poor scientists who work in those fields and are now suffering because the founding fathers used theories and concepts that have nothing to do with real science. They worked hard to build a career to just find out that the predecessors integrated methods that couldn´t work in other systems, let's say an evolving computer program or a machine or a human body or anywhere except in ones´ imagination. They are truly courageous to risk criticism because of the humanities bashing wave that won´t end soon. As in so many fields, it are a few black sheep who ruin everything for many others and the more progressive a young scientist is, the more he is in danger of getting smashed between a hyper sensible public awareness and the old anachronism shepherds, avoiding anything progressive with the danger of a paradigm shift or even a relativization of the field they dedicated their career to. There has to be strict segregation between theories and ideas and applications in real life, so that anything can be researched, but not used to do crazy things. I´ll add some replication crisis points in the comments, because there is no space left here. ...more |
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it was ok
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I was looking forward to a substantial, science and evidence based, compelling read, but just found many mixed up ego and self finding trips, business
I was looking forward to a substantial, science and evidence based, compelling read, but just found many mixed up ego and self finding trips, business manager motivation yada, and some good points accidentally mixed in. Read Clear James` Atomic habits instead, it´s much better. What is really strange is that the chapters seem to follow a logical approach, if one orients her/himself as always first by the titles of the index, and it looks like they are dealing with the meta or concrete context, but are in reality just anecdotes, except of some technobabble about Target´s use of pattern recognition, AI, and behavioral science; I mean, why? Was it too difficult to pimp the already written material with the help of some experts to combine both nonfiction and autobiographical elements instead of this? It seems as if many people are getting their swift kick out of procrastination by material available in any newspaper column, youtube guru channel, or whatever, but I just don´t get the hype around it. Worst of it, with this social science mixup and freely interpretation of the stories in a highly subjective style he is entering the realm of, don´t be scared or stop reading and forget liking my review, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica... You see, it´s sweet if some unique people with subjective mindsets and different characters deal with difficult situations in a positive way, but I don´t get the picture of how Duhigg can extrapolate this to universal ideas as if he would have used real scientific evidence of, let´s say, long term studies going over decades with millions of participants, or brain chemistry, neurology, or anything substantial instead of person XY had results YZ. This has absolutely no worth for the reader. There are a handful of useful tips one can take away, most of them available in shorter, better, free, and easier form available in many wikis (see end of the review) if one just searches for motivation, positive psychology, meditation, self reflection, behavior, etc. that don´t just repeat commonplaces. How he is trying to deal with addiction is pop psychology at it´s worst and that the book doesn´t really offer solutions, plans, or at least good sources for more research is the kicker, as it´s what the title and marketing are implying and promising. It´s not totally bad, but very, very overhyped and the sad thing is that people mind find it great to read this motivating stories, but without a concrete plan to self development and improvement, the motivation fades away as quickly as the memory of the redundant, convertible tiny tales. Oh, did I mention that reading the book has the lovely extra element of being belittled by a condescending, narcissistic writing style? A completely failed approach that depreciates the few, good elements in it and insults the reader. Ok, one more, it stigmatizes the victims of gambling, addictions, or shopaholics instead of just moving a centimeter (review written in Europe, sorry) towards asking why such unregulated industries can easily hunt down already weakened human game. Shame on you, gambler! Evil shopaholic! How dare you having an alcohol problem! That´s a wise, mature, and productive way of dealing with serious topics. Without this, I would have given 3 stars, but including own, restricted bias and agenda disguised as facts downed it to 2. Funny, just now that I am thinking about it, how each hard earned everyman bill has to be tracked down and taxed, while letting people lose everything within hours, the reasons for addictions, or brainwashing for consumerism is absolutely no problem and Duhigg is completely ignoring the structures producing the problems because he is so busy with victim blaming and shaming. Other authors stay objective or avoid such topics instead of superficially dealing with it to boost sales. I am pretty sure that some of the concepts and ideas won´t stand the test of time, as real science, medicine, and screening technology improve, and as they appear like very soft humanities stuff. A final subjective list of elements a good nonfiction book should at least have, that are quite missing in this one: A detailed plan how to DIY. Own theories that are defined as subjective opinions in the case of humanities or, and in natural sciences, proofed by many hard facts. New combinations of existing theories and ideas. Entertaining, very well written anecdotes. There is not much new under the sun and most fictional and nonfiction works are remixes and new interpretations of facts and tropes, but that doesn´t mean that it have to be loveless, average, wrong, and presumptuous concoctions. But thanks for extra training to deal with anger through cognitive techniques and quick meditations, at least it´s good for that. A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positiv... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindful... ...more |
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| Feb 13, 2018
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did not like it
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This concoction and Roslings´ similar „Go on, everything is super.“ Factfulness were the reasons for me to leave the soft space of some humanities tha
This concoction and Roslings´ similar „Go on, everything is super.“ Factfulness were the reasons for me to leave the soft space of some humanities that are nothing more than appeasement, belittlement, and deception. A mix of different quotes from the book and thoughts and impressions I had while consuming this fairytale. Some points might be redundant, sorry for that, but this is what happens when taking notes about a book that is nonsense: 1. He´s attacking the ones who aren´t grateful, says everything is fine, takes the premise that because some things became better everything is great, based on unbearable pseudoscience. 2. Hey, what about talking just about the positive things and avoiding anything negative or controversial? 3. Of course, there is only the great Western way of living, capitalism ineluctably always leads to the best society in the world. 4. If some things have become better thanks to technology in the last hundred years, there is of course everything great and no more problems with anything. 5. Wait a moment, what exactly is Pinkers´ legitimation to talk about those topics, he must be an expert, maybe a unique ingenious polymath, in many different fields to make serious prognosis, not just assumptions, no even certainties about the whole society and the future? Oh yes, he is a linguist and cognitive psychologist that wrote some good works in his field and thought after that: „Hm, why not write some happy go lucky books based on nothing except what media, government, and the economy want me to highlight to boost my sales.“ 6. One of the funniest things about such books is that they are close to impossible to suss if one has not read some progressive, alternative literature in contrast to what is permanently repeated in mainstream media and science. 7. Sweatshops aren´t that bad. 8. Capitalism already solved and will solve the few, little problems it created. Sure, a problem repairs the problems it creates instead of creating greater problems. 9. He finds the fact that people call humans under the current economic system a malady to the planet evil, discriminating, hateful, and wrong, although it´s the truth. 10. He is biased, does the ultimate replication crisis demonstration. 11. Philosophical, out of context, bla yada drivel that isn´t even close to the real philosophers, but fine tuned and modified to fit to the agenda and dogma of this book. 12. „Peak car“. Why, show me the extrapolations. 13. He ignores so much hard based science that doesn´t fit to the conclusions he wants that it´s hard to endure. 14. He states that richer states have less environmental pollutions and get cleaner. So let´s go jogging in an industrial center and go swimming in the local lake afterward. Who survives can pick some berries and vegetables grown outdoors and will be gone soon too. 15. He compares the environmental protection movement with extremists, calling it „misanthropic environmentalism“. He does as if the wide consense about habitat destruction and the sixth extinction doesn´t exist and compares it to pessimistic people who spread viral fake news ideas. 16. He loves to use those techniques: 17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga... 18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol... 19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m... 20. He praises science, knowledge, wisdom, creativity, intelligence as wordy as possible while being an ignorant apologist for the perfect, current system, ignoring and attacking any other opinion than his own. 21. His arrogance, joviality, condescension, and belittlement in his writing and in interviews are disgusting. 22. There is no problem with distributive justice, everything is fine because so many people aren´t extremely poor anymore, but now just poor or close to poverty. 23. He talks about ideas, concepts, humanities, avoiding anything substantial, profound, and hard science-based. 24. He and Rosling have the same concept: „Look, stupid people of the world, here is the manipulated data you are too dumb to understand in the way I want you to understand it, so let me explain it you while warmongering and hate trolling against anything that doesn´t confirm my opinion.“ 25. He keeps repeating general knowledge about many things that have improved, stating that it will continue to get better. 26. He picks any person, anecdote, or fact out of context to mostly demonstrate a pro capitalistic world-view. 27. He knows everything about the climate, he is a weather God. Nobody else, thousands of scientists aren´t sure what will happen with climate change, global warming, how earths´ systems and the sun really function, and how bad it will become, but Pinker knows that everything will be fine now, in 100 years, always and forever. The sun always tells him how it will shine. 28. „Combat poverty instead of reducing inequality.“ Of course, give a man a fish a day instead of showing him how to angle or allowing him at least to fish, but the lake and the sea are privatized, sorry. Give tiny parts of wealth to the poor instead of changing a dysfunctional system. 29. Overconsumption and consumerism are absolutely no problems, we should just reduce the environmental damage it does by…magic and positive thinking and not listening to the lies those pesky pessimists are telling. 30. In this so called age of new enlightenment anything progressive, alternative, or different of the dogmas is deemed a conspiracy theory. He got me, I also never quote or show the hard facts, links, I am inventing any review because the secret reptilian overlords are telling me to do it, I am completely bonkers because I am a dirty leftist inventing conspiracy theories about military industrial complexes and post democracy and you don´t want to know what else, it´s terrible for the kids. 31. The compulsion to have a positive mentality of being mindful, calm, meditating, and not negative and pessimistic. Forced happiness without reason and logic. 32. Much talk about the sock puppets of politics he doesn´t like, no meta analysis or mentioning of the puppetmasters or politicians he likes. 33. Extremism is caused by a power vacuum of disinterest in politics and the ideals that made democracy so great and it´s the peoples´ fault who are used to this and don´t appreciate it and has nothing to do with the system. 34. He calls marxism a pseudo fringe science. Oh wait, and of course, because of this socialism is pseudo too and capitalism is based on hard science or what? 35. He doesn´t understand that faith and dictatorships that were criticized by the thinkers of the true enlightenment have been turned in our economic system that does exactly the same, but more perfidious and mendacious. And that he´s actively attacking and denying the thesis of the ones who work for a new enlightenment. 36. Truth can´t be constructed. Wait, why do you do it yourself Mr Pinker, if it´s impossible? 37. He uses data, sources, graphs, statistics out of context or out of unscientific sources, sometimes relating to just one article, book, study, that is highly controversial. 38. He bashes anything left or progressive in science, education, and universities, but doesn´t mention the overwhelming right-conservative majority in politics, governments, and economics with a single word. 39. Black people are not more likely to be shot by police than white people in the US. 40. He is great at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular.... 41. The evil news media are always hyping about crises and problems that don´t really exist. 42. He says that there is far less violence (for privileged people in rich states and rich people in poor countries), but he should ask a prison inmate, the impoverished population of Western countries or the poor majority of the worlds´ population in Afrika, Asia, and Latin Amerika. I am sure that they are enthusiastic about the fact that there are fewer wars driven by political and economic interests of wealthy nations and they now just have to deal with crime, starvation, illness, extreme poverty and violence, and very low life expectancy. Oh, and of course with the regular financial crisis, land grabbing, and trade wars fought on and for their territory. 43. „The rate of extinctions has been reduced by 75 %.“ What, I thought the contrary was the case and that we don´t even know how many species we exterminate on a daily basis because we don´t know how many exist. 44. Osama bin Laden owned a copy of a Chomsky book. So left, socialist, ecosocial is the devil, don´t you understand? 45. Progressivism, activism, scientific results he doesn´t like, are described as useless. 46. He is switching his opinions, saying that something is bad if it´s a point he doesn´t like, changing to great about the same thing, institution, philosophical concept, science, if it´s something he likes, mixing it with psychobabble and worst bad pseudo fringe science lying with statistics stuff. And he doesn´t even seem to recognize that he is contradicting himself because the book is a collection of such inconsistencies, it´s not even logical drivel. 47. He is not even mentioning that some of his crude theories could be wrong, as any good scientist I´ve read does in humility and self- criticism, instead, he deems himself all knowing and is vilifying any opposition, using subtle hate speech. It´s so bizarre because of the combination of points I´ve already mentioned: He is no specialist in any of the fields the talks about and it would need a few of them to draw a realistic and objective picture. Or at least an author who does his research and combines all points to an objective overview. Instead, he believes to reach god mode by combining cherrypicking, mentioned replication crisis, wrong attacks against anyone saying he is wrong, integrating anectotism instead of long-time data, and mixing it up to a numbing phantasmagoria of an idyllic world that is, in reality, breaking in pieces. What shocks me the most and what is the worst thing a scientist can do, is that he integrates this hallucinations in the minds of intelligent, literate, educated people who infect others with this viral garbage, so that they stop activism and avoid progressive, alternative thinking and real, productive contentions about the topic, instead telling each other how great Pinker is and which of his amazing, brilliant ideas they find most astonishing. Possibly they should combine it with Roslings´ pseudo Factfulness for the full dosage of brainwashing and leave reality forever. It´s sad that Pinker started as a real scientist with his first books and switched to writing disinformation nonsense with „The better angels of our nature“, that seems so follow the same pattern of empty yada bla gossip. He quickly got richer, but lost his reputation forever. Alternative economists and political scientists with ideas that could really change the world aren´t read because of stuff like this. Continued in the comments, because there is no space left here. ...more |
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| 3.69
| 392,461
| Oct 10, 1957
| Aug 01, 1999
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did not like it
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The premise: Everyone is stupid except the faith and ideology I want to spread with awkward, bad writing and glorifying sociopathy with a touch of eth
The premise: Everyone is stupid except the faith and ideology I want to spread with awkward, bad writing and glorifying sociopathy with a touch of ethical thoughts to make it not look even more inhuman. Imagine the book with a different plot instead of good capitalist vs evil socialist/communist. Let´s say Intelligent, friendly believers of one faith vs the barbaric, cannibalistic tribe members of a sect. Great, beautiful misogynist vs ugly women. Any kind of wonderful fascism-, eugenic-, master race- driven lunatics vs all other humans. Wise feminists vs bad men. Environmentalists vs evil bureaucracies. Ingenius racists vs the inferior population. The good political party vs the evil political party. Good leftists with pro Nordic model Keynesian strong social state vs evil turbo capitalistic, wait, no, that´s wrong, that doesn´t belong here. Looks quite different, doesn´t it? One understands the sheer stupidity much better in such an ironized context and it shows the immense main problem of misusing fictional literature to implement agenda and bias in a work of fiction to manipulate so many people in real life to think that destructive ideas are great. Just because someone has had bad experiences with one group of people or a regime, as Rand had with marxism and communism, that doesn´t mean, in a simplified and stupid thought, that everything about the opposite is positive and great. Why so many adjectives and extreme contrasts in her writing you may ask? Well, if an author is unable to explain things by showing, not telling, and being an objective and talented storyteller, there have to be many little helpers to make it understandable. It´s impossible to read this without skimming and scanning, there is so much redundancy, info dumping, characters thinking and telling the same stupid premise again and again to themselves and others, and bad writing that it´s truly hard to stay motivated, but it´s a great exercise for learning how not to do it. As there is always said, to enjoy or produce good art, it´s important to consume the worst possible to learn by analyzing the mistakes. But if you aren´t playing around with speed reading techniques for decades, which includes daily training and consciously switching between both speed and intention of reading to understand, learn, or enjoy, it might be a waste of time to read this horrible book. I mean, what about dialogues or interacting with the world instead of endless, boring inner and outer monologues? Looks like some people never get out of pubertal defiant phase. It´s not just one of the most dangerous and destructive books ever written, but a poorly written too. So many people saying that they got influenced by this piece of capitalist propaganda show how the misuse of literature can be instrumentalized to promote an inhuman and disturbing point of view. It gives privileged, mostly white, already rich WEIRD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol... young people the legitimization to feel great about being elitist, bigoted, libertarian egomaniacs that think that being an important part of the mad machinery that destroys the planet is something good, worthwhile, and to be proud of. Not even to talk about people who truly believe that it´s destiny, the product of one´s own work to be proud of, or other demented philosophies in the mix justifying it. I have the extreme luck of being a privileged white person, but I don´t think that I deserve it or use pop psychology, fraud humanities, or even economics to vindicate something that is just the coincidence of birth. In the contrast, I tend to feel ashamed about my first world problems, lack of motivation, procrastination, all these luxury problems, and have a strong attitude towards improving the world by spreading the knowledge about the good, proven, logical, human, alternatives to the stupidity that ruled the earth for millennia. A kind of obligation to be thankful, mindful, positive, and progressive. I don´t get it why educated, intelligent people are still falling victims to ideologies, it must have something to do with a genetic predisposition to believe, no matter how illogical it is. I really said myself that I wanted to objectively understand why people are adoring such a piece of trash like this, if it´s at least an entertaining work of art, but it isn´t even that. It´s the worst of both worlds, a bad fictional pseudo intellectual, fringe science, wanna be philosophical, collection of garbage and something pushing and downplaying turbocapitalism, neoliberalism, neocolonialism, and the destruction of everything needed to build a fair and sustainable economic system and society while giving the perpetrators a pseudophilosophical vindication for doing so. Because they are superior. Extremism is always the same, boring concept, look at all the great historical examples with the same mentality, I live in a country with a history lesson around that you might have heard about. Trash like the Rands´ pseudoscience of objectivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objecti... is why I am meanwhile avoiding many humanities that are mainly fairytales built around elements of the replication crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica... and propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol... One of the best, short reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j56I... Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... ...more |
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| 0140283331
| 9780140283334
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| 3.69
| 2,942,099
| Sep 17, 1954
| Oct 01, 1999
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did not like it
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Without what the author intended to do or probably has done, it would be a 3 star, but so 1 star is the only option. Of course, it´s completely natural Without what the author intended to do or probably has done, it would be a 3 star, but so 1 star is the only option. Of course, it´s completely natural to become primitive again within the shortest amounts of time, and not an unintended dark comedy, self satirizing, biased, sexual predator of an author, who finally deus ex machinas out of this mess. „In a private journal and in a memoir for his wife, Golding said he tried to rape a 15-year-old girl when he was 18 and on his first holiday from Oxford“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William... „He had met her when both were taking music lessons in Marlborough, Wiltshire, when he was about 16 and she was 13, but he tried to rape her two years later when he was home during his first year at Oxford. Golding writes that they went for a walk to the common and he 'felt sure she wanted heavy sex, as this was visibly written on her pert, ripe and desirable mouth'. Soon they were 'wrestling like enemies' as he 'tried unhandily to rape her'. She resisted and Golding, years later, wrote that 'he had made such a bad hand at rape' before shaking her and shouting 'I’m not going to hurt you'.“ „A later girlfriend, Mollie, was also treated badly by Golding. She was another local from Marlborough whom he later let down by breaking off their engagement because he had found her frigid.“ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti... „The attempted rape involved a Marlborough girl, named Dora, who had taken piano lessons with Golding. It happened when he was 18 and on holiday during his first year at Oxford. Carey quotes the memoir as partially excusing the attempted rape on the grounds that Dora was "depraved by nature" and, at 14, was "already sexy as an ape". It reveals that Golding told his wife he had been sure the girl "wanted heavy sex". She fought him off and ran away as he stood there shouting: "I'm not going to hurt you," the memoir said.“ https://www.writerswrite.com/sir-will... „Golding, who won the Nobel Prize in 1983, three years after bagging the Booker for Rites Of Passage, admitted trying to rape a 15-year-old schoolgirl when he was an 18-year-old student at Oxford, according to a forthcoming biography by John Carey. The schoolgirl put up a fierce resistance. But they had sex two years later, according to Golding, who nevertheless called her “depraved by nature” and “sexy as an ape” in his unpublished memoir, Men, Women & Now. He wrote it for Ann, his wife of 50 years, to explain his “monstrous” character.“ https://readiscovery.com/2009/08/18/w... https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo... Fringe philosophy Downgrading and unintended satirizing of kids´ language from an adult´s perspective to seem capable of writing empathic and emotional, tragic-comic dialogues and characters is a cheap trick that fails epically, if not performed right. But it´s the logical consequence of making kids act as if they were stupid animals to integrate a biased, boring, and one sided plot. If you want real philosophy on an island, read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... More bad philosophy on an island, read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... This one has everything, racism, glorifying religious extremism, a true, clear picture of our past. Back to the show, as it´s often the problem with monopolies, the ones in art lead to overrated, hyped, and simply not good wanna be philosophical constructions. I mean, symbolic, metaphysical, allegory metaphor overload for young people who want to be entertained? Honestly? „Don´t try to murder each other kids.“ What a lesson! Of course, kids are so stupid that they immediately establish cultic dictatorships if they are not supervised, what else should logically happen. If this wouldn´t be a typical forced read to torture school kids and a kind of pre pop psychology Nobel Prize higher literature with meaning drivel, I would say it´s barely average, but because of its excessive misuse, it´s just unacceptable. Possibly the ever so clever bureaucrats of the boards of education all over the world ought think a second about removing all the trash of all the lauded, boring, outdated, obsolete,… literature each country tends to accumulate in a strange mixture of patriotism, cultural imperialism (our writers, literature, tradition) and think about including the great, amazing, wonderful worlds of literature kids and young adults want to read. The worst classic I´ve ever read One extra star up to 2 could have been given for incompetently trying to be deep, philosophical, and critical and failing to transport the important message about the evil lurking in naked apes. Nice try, William, but just an epic fail, and total bigotry regarding your alcohol and abuse problems you loved to drivel about in your strange diaries of a molester. I was really searching for deeper meaning, any of all the arguments seen in positive reviews, but it´s just unrealistic, the ending is a bad joke, putting as much symbolism and innuendos in it to camouflage the immense flaws doesn´t really help, and it just fuels my opinion that, just as in real life, much of what is idealized and glorified is just bad and rotten. Look at the ratings of Golding´s other books, rated by people who like to read classics! Another achievement in inability. I know, there are many getting real pleasure out of classic literature, that´s a question of taste and I don´t force them to read my trivial literature. That´s where the tolerance ends, because the problem is that the previously mentioned kids, teens, and young adults don´t deserve to be bored with what elder generations may really enjoy, but has absolutely no worth for them. I did once make the mistake of reading a few dozen classics and most were just average, some really bad, but definitively close to none great. It´s sad, avoidable, and just plain anachronistic to violently keep extremely outdated versions of descriptions of long away pasts in the curriculum and the main reason kids and teens hate to read. Irony time, there would be old, classic, clever books that could really tell something about human nature, not using placative over the top violence, especially in the classic and new sci-fi and social-sci-fi genre that explore many questions regarding human nature, state, politics, sexuality, economics, faith, but, they would be too extreme, progressive, and subtle. Cause bigoted conservatives don´t want their kids to read really dangerous, meta context, social criticism, stuff, they want some characters far away from any real, imminent problems playing hide and seek with a freaking pigs´ head. It truly left me speechless, just asking why, what´s wrong with you, humanities, literary critique, Nobel prize, quality literature, higher art, snobs, modern art, don´t you realize that you are satirizing yourself by praising so many works that many avid, lifelong readers, with k reading scores deem bad, arrogant, boring, and worthless? Reminiscences of a past when bigoted, unenlightened people celebrated any trash that could distract from their incredible cognitive biases. It at least also lets me imagine a purgatory library filled with this stuff and dark angels forcing me to read it until I become insane, repair my brain, and restart the process. Forever. Mwahahaha! Trying to find an explanation, a combination of personal drivel with the biography of a disturbed mind The author had issues, binge drinking and alcoholism were demons haunting him, and he did exactly write this one thing that made him famous and nothing else of importance. What makes one more disgusted is the fact that he, as mentioned, tried to rape a 15 year old girl when he was 18 (how often has he been successful and didn´t write about it, because he was so completely wasted and drunk that he wouldn´t even remember it?), a reason he should at least be retrospectively condemned, as retroactive, time travel castration isn´t really an option. That´s one of the crime areas where I distance myself from restorative justice and go full metal eye for an eye, archaic retributive justice, because I am of the opinion that sex offenders should be incarcerated under terrible conditions, life imprisonment without any chance to ever see the light of the day again (and this rehabilitation thing is complete, psychologic, psychiatric (2 other partly fringe science the humanities unleashed on humanity like a plague) nonsense. Nobody would try to „cure“ someone who is heterosexual, homosexual, or has a different gender identity than physical body, because that´s completely crazy. But hey, someone who is born (seen in babies) or made a pedophile, rapist, necrophile, etc. can of course be healed. And, another very important factor, it´s cheaper for the state to release serial sex killers to save some money and wait if it takes them weeks or months until the next victim is tortured, raped, and eaten. How is it possible that psychiatrists say that they are no danger anymore before and don´t get any problems for their little oopsies?). However, such a tortured, poor soul, someone who raped as bad as he wrote, could become a celebrated highlight of highbrow s*** literature, which makes him worthy of even more fringe Nobel prizes, maybe for voodoo economics. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... ...more |
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| 0140042598
| 9780140042597
| 0140042598
| 3.61
| 415,637
| Sep 05, 1957
| Jan 01, 1976
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did not like it
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And you thought nowadays hipsters were strange Why don´t just drivel about everything that comes to mind Without much caring about second thoughts in a And you thought nowadays hipsters were strange Why don´t just drivel about everything that comes to mind Without much caring about second thoughts in an autobiographical stream of consciousness overkill? Well, because hipster gods like Kerouac and William S Burroughs aren´t just too freaking cool to listen to the music of the day. But also believe that they´re ingenious literary prodigies that don´t need anything taming their rhetoric diarrhea. Heck, if anyone today would just write whatever comes to mind, with an added political and philosophical undertone, the person would be trolled to pieces within hours. But in the good, old days This was the hottest, new batshit crazy progressive hit Don´t get me wrong, sociocultural evolution is important, but it should be somewhat substantial too. It´s hilarious that Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and old Greek and Roman satire real life theater screenwriters created well charactered, fine plotted, and smartly built works that have been copied and refined over the centuries and millennia. And then hipster Beatnik authors come along, think that they´re better than everyone and everything, and instead of using the treasure troves of old classics of social criticism, are too lazy and megalomaniac to just create a modern interpretation of these concepts? It´s not their fault, but Beatnik authors ruined the image of postmodernism by the way too With great, good works they could have done the same as the cynical and dark satires of the late 20th and 21st century, combining giggles with deep insights about what´s wrong with society. So, they rebelled too hard to understand that protests against social norms and governments aren´t the same as the art of writing. By ignoring and rejecting the millennia old storytelling rules, what audiences expect from literature, and being so egoistic as to not even consider the immense work of plotting, editing, and rewriting, they not just ridiculed the concept of satirical writing, but of postmodern art too. By that they Fuel the argumentation of the conservatives Because dark satire and sarcasm have the potential of transforming whole societies by enlightening much more people than just boring them by criticizing and telling the sad truth. Comedians, comedies, and adult animation like South Park and Rick and Morty go full frontal in your face because they are smart and deep. Ignorant backlashers use the bad stuff like the Beatniks to show how unsubstantial and irrelevant the extremely important messages of progressive thinkers are, they Jordan Peterson things like critical race theory, cancel culture, and woke movement. Thanks for all of that, you freaking high hippie hipsters. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... ...more |
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| Apr 25, 1719
| Jun 12, 2001
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did not like it
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A religious, racist, white supremacy, sexist bigot driveling about how great he is while playing Robinson Crusoe One of the most degenerated, misguided A religious, racist, white supremacy, sexist bigot driveling about how great he is while playing Robinson Crusoe One of the most degenerated, misguided POVs I´ve ever read That´s more of a narcissistic, egomaniac, even kind of sociopathic, persons´ diary than a novel, and it´s filled with the unreflected, racist, extremely faith-focused, arrogant thoughts of an author who has the amazing gift to write both unilateral and boring. Compare it with the real stuff from centuries ago and see even more how it sucks Take Jonathan Swift or greek philosophers or hieroglyphics or cave paintings, or, the best example, Robert Louis Stephensons' Treasure island, all examples of less ego-focused works that have a plot, an arc of suspense, other detailed, credible characters that transport no sick pro slavery mentality or anything that differentiates a novel from a trivial travel report. Skim and scan, you won´t miss anything substantial, wise, or deep. Or just don´t read it, the best option. After quite a while I was just scanning anymore, because except for redundancies, lists, and stupid thoughts there was less to find in this novel. The main character is an unlikeable idiot, he doesn´t even have to be smart or fight to survive to get any suspense into the poor telling, because he has all he needs to survive on the island and saved material from the shipwreck, so he has nothing to do than to think of how superior he and his ever so great faith, culture, and sophistication are in contrast to Fridays´ immense primitivity. Would be a banned troll hater account nowadays Imagine someone doing it nowadays, no matter if online or in boring meatspace. In any civilized society, the person would be excluded, prosecuted, and flamed or, by friendlier individuals, pitied as the abject individuals that they are. The civilizations, groups, and societies that are still practicing such ideologies and would promote and invite the troll are a few centuries behind sociocultural evolution. A total not reading suggestion, but I can understand that the society of the 18th century liked this novel because it reflected, celebrated, and confirmed their inhuman and insane mentality. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... ...more |
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