Dmytro

Very wrong on russia

Revisado: 09-15-24

Peter, as any other westerner analyst, was really off on rusiia capabilities and realities - though he does capture quite a lot correctly. But kinda makes you wonder what else he gets wrong.

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terrible narration!!!

Revisado: 10-31-22

listening for the sake of series, but omg this is unbearable. a computer would read this better. excruciating to listen to

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Graphomania

Revisado: 02-10-19

Two start overall, and the second star is just for the author being Hofstadter. Lots of mildly entertaining observations, but with no insight or scientific approach. The entire super-huge book is, in its essence, a definition for two concepts: analogy-making and categorization. Could have been like a two-page essay without losing anything important whatsoever.

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Nonsense!

Revisado: 12-01-18

This book is terrible! Absolutely so!
First of all, the language. There are some historical accounts (on that below), and they are okayish. However, any time the author inserts a note or his thought on it... it's either a cliché or something terribly logically inconsistent (more on that below) or just plainly silly remark, like he's trying to impress you or create some drama. It feels like reading a high school student's or an undergrad's essay.
Next. This books make every known epistemological mistake. From violation of logic, to the beat up making correlation look like causation, to appealing to biases, to presenting a reader with what Dennett calls intuition pumps (that generate wrong conclusions). Brow-rising eye-rolling child mistakes you would expect from I dunno, a politician?
Third. Historical accounts. On every subject I'm familiar is, the author glosses over important historical accounts, lumps different nations in one, plainly misrepresents and, sometimes *makes up* (yes!) historical events. Every other sentence is either wrong or a lie. Ugh.
Fourth. Structure. There is none. He just jumps over things as if it was a bar conversation. He'd tell you of historical events (that never happened) over 3 chapters and then.. That's it. There's nothing he was leading to. He just wanted to fantasize on paper. Framework that author tries to present is... oh wait, there's also none of that.
Fifth. actually. Let's stop wasting time here. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Lively! Useful! Entertaining!

Revisado: 10-28-18

Lots of things from other Dennett's books, *but* this one is a) entertaining b) engaging c) does not contain 30-pages-long passages going into a microscopical analysis of views no one holds. Gotta love it!
A lively and engaged-sounding narrator definitely helps!

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not solid, lacks structure, paternalistic at times

Revisado: 10-25-18

I *am* a libertarian and am looking for a good book to recommend to those curious.

And this one is NOT such a book. It would appeal to already libertarians of the unthinking and easily impressed kind, for all the anecdotal evidence, e.g. questionable just-so stories portraying big government actions.

Serious book on political philosophy it is not.

First of all, it lacks a good structure. The author jumps between subjects and re-iterates on same problems (with same arguments at times) in different parts of the books. There's no, to accept A, here's X, if you accept A you should accept B and so forth. It's just a rant.

Secondly, some arguments are just straw man. *I* can do better. Some arguments are like, bad taste populism. Example: discussing government corruption author talks about some scheme at the state level government, and then some other. And then goes: "these are just some we know of. IMAGINE, what's really going on there!". This is an appeal to biases. One can argue pretty much anything like that. It's a bad argument. Boo.

Finally, the narrator. Paternalistic and mocking tone is pretty much is used throughout. Boo. Make good arguments, don't mock.

Ah yes. Any good argument found the book is from "Free to choose" by Milton Friedman. Read that one instead and skip this one.

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great performance!

Revisado: 06-15-18

Great book, but I'd especially like to compliment the performance, the best I've ever heard in a fiction book. A must listen!

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great book, terrible production, terrible narrator

Revisado: 08-27-17

great book, terrible production, terrible narrator! No pauses where they are due, the volume is all over the voice, too much drama sometimes in intonations

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Good story, not the best production

Revisado: 02-25-17

Where does Coming up for Air rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Great story, and is definitely captures the best of the Orwell style. An entertaining read and amazing pictures that the author draws

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Not the best quality - hard to listen to in a noisy place, such as a car. From time to time, there's some kind of echo in the background and frequencies are not adjusted, so at the beginning, narrators high pitches just slam you on the head.

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Collection of (disappointing) anecdotes

Revisado: 02-16-17

What disappointed you about A Mind for Numbers?

First of all. This books is *not* about math OR numbers OR science.
It has nothing to do with what the title would have you believe it deals with.
I'll try to be really quick.
1. The books is about how not to be lazy, combat procrastination, prepare for tests and remember things and organize study sessions in general.
2. Every subject from the above list is *not* explored from any kind of scientific point of view. Instead, it's just a collection of tips and tricks that work for *some* people, reinforced with anecdotes by people who's study record we are left to guess. That kind of collection that sounds like it's a good advice, but might as well be dangerous if applied. I'll take it further - I'm pretty sure if you set up an experiment with subjects having to follow *ALL* of the practices suggested in the book, they will tend to be behind on every subject they take with little progress if at all. In other words, the book is as unscientific as it gets. Surely, the author decided to put their title on the cover "PhD", no less, and yet, *what kind of PhD* would make arguments like that or present anecdotes as a scientific advice? (the answer to that: is probably the one whom you would question if they really truly understand what Science is and how it is done, especially in STEM subjects).
3. It's ironic, that the author uses "it doesn't work for everybody" as an argument against some Widely Established Practice X (if I remember correctly it's about highlighting text or something), yet fails to apply the same argument to evaluate any of the suggestions given.
4. As to entertain the reader, the author also includes stories from How-To-Science-101 books, such as the most awesome "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman" (and other Feynman's books), and well.. misses the point entirely at times, and when she doesn't, she makes awesome witty stories in a dull ones or even adds stuff to them that well... came from the author's own imagination. Honestly, any person pursuing STEM should be expected to have read Feynman. And as far as including stories from those books, you should just go "okay, go read them if you haven't. they are awesome, and inspiring, and funny and totally worth re-reading them again years later".
5. Finally, as a last blow I'd like to throw this: NOWHERE in this book the title is addressed. That is no advice in this book will help you if you have flanked algebra. If you did flank your precalculus what you do is you go get a precalculus book and study it when you have the solid understanding of basics in algebra, geometry and trigonometry.
SUMMARY:
do not waste your time on this book unless you don't know how to study or have serious problems with organizing your studies. in which case take all the advice with a grain of salt and think if they are something useful for you.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Narrator had a voice I personally found quite unpleasant and times irritating.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Mind for Numbers?

like, all of it. and in particular, stories retelling Feynman's stories.

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