Brian Tristam Williams

Get a Science Advisor

Revisado: 03-30-25

They discover a signal of extragalactic origin from 5 light years away. No, just no. The closest galaxy to our own is two million light years away. Not five.

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Such a Short Book with Too Many Words

Revisado: 12-29-24

It's a short book, and yet it is filled with filler like it's a high school student's speech. Example: People battle to take accurate notes during meetings ʼfor various reasons.ʼ That's enough, move on - "for various reasons" was already too much, such an obvious statement, yet you used it several times during the first hour. But nope, let's go ahead and present a laundry list of reasons why people don't have accurate notes during meetings at work. Tyler should have used AI to check his grammar before publishing. Lots of glaring grammar errors that distracted me. I support a young author trying, but this was very naïve — for example, predicting that militaries will become smaller thanks to AI tools. Oh, you think the other side won't be using them as well? Returned after listening for an hour or so.

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Shallow and Uninspiring

Revisado: 12-09-24

I typed an in-depth review and Audible lost it. So, in summary: Endless references to the bible and how he wants to be a good Christian, go to church and lead his family (including kids Moses and Johah). Narrates his own book but emphasises the wrong words. What little advice there is is obvious. Like get rid of temptations - no one's ever thought of that before, right? By the end, he assumes I'm still listening through some sort of determination, but nope, it was just easier than stopping what I was doing to find something else. There is nothing I can use here.

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Won't get that time back

Revisado: 11-21-24

Bad grammar was distracting, Book really didn't go anywhere - just seems like he was building up to something useful and then he says "I hope you enjoyed listening to this." Bleh

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Disappointing

Revisado: 09-05-24

I don't like the way each chapter starts with a schmoozy story - it's old-fashioned and trite. You can tell us what you want to tell us without making up a story about a kid who wrote an essay about kryptonite instead of cryptocurrency in school. We get it, he missed an important detail.

The narrator just made it worse. If people have AD(H)D, this is too slow, carefully measured, and, again, trite. Some have said the narrator must be AI. Not sure, I didn't pick up on that. Maybe he just read very slowly because the book was very short and they wanted it to look like you were getting your money's worth.

I didn't.

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Sigh

Revisado: 01-21-24

Another pop-science book that's too much pop and not enough science. How many times will he mention that he has, not a phone or a cellphone, mind you, but an iPhone. "The computer in my iPhone can do X calculations in a second..." And of course the iPhone is a relativity machine because Global Positioning System satellites have to take that into account. Wow! Relativity in my pocket, gee golly whiskers! That's the pop. As for the science, I get the feeling that he keeps disagreeing with other scientists about things that cannot be proven one way or another. Then he uses the straw man that science believes that if something cannot be proven, it is not real.

Just wish I could find something more meaty, more science-oriented, and less "me me me."

For the narrator: "Longitude" has only one 'T.'

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No Scientific Rigor

Revisado: 01-07-24

I should have stopped myself from buying this when I noticed that the author has a big fat "MD" after his name. MDs just aren't very scientifically-minded. Filled with phrases such as "While it is not proven, it is intriguing to speculate that...," and "this theory, if ever proven in research, will open up whole new...." At one point he even says that, although he thinks of himself as a skeptic, he is willing to let go of all of his skepticism for...

And, as we head into the main body of the book, he proves his inability to insist on hard evidence and instead rely on wishy-washy handwaving and speculation. For example: People in Japan, although their diet is very healthy there, when they move to America, have higher incidences of illness. Must be the meat! That's it, the meat! We need to eat plant-based! Never mind the insane amounts of sugar in the typical American diet, not to mention tons of boxed quick and processed meals. Nah, it's the fresh meat.

Well, obviously I'm not going to finish this, but the idea was great. I'd love to see an actual scientist cover this material, because the mind-gut connection is a very interesting field of research right now.

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Esoteric Mumbo Jumbo

Revisado: 08-19-23

A bunch of speculation with no empirical evidence. I wanted to return this, but my account is paused.

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Good Book, Slightly Dated

Revisado: 08-19-23

I have great respect for Lawrence Krauss, but I wonder why he pronounces EXtant as exTANT, and why the producer never picked it up and corrected him. The predictions on AI did not age well.

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Sloppy

Revisado: 12-15-22

The editing is incomplete, resulting in the narrator repeating certain passages. The narrator emphasises the wrong words, like he doesn't understand the subject matter, e.g. in "it required PROGRAMMING pixels rather than text," obviously it's the word PIXELS that should be emphasised.

Apart from the sloppy editing and narration, the author is sloppy with facts, for example claiming that the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System was 16-bit, which a simple Google search would tell you is not the case. Claiming that Doom was groundbreaking in its ability to change the world view when the player turned, forgetting other 3D first person shooters such as Id Software's own predecessor, Wolfenstein.

And then, the overall premise seems to be "games simulate lots of things in real life so real life must be a simulation." Er, no, regardless of whether I agree with your conclusion, this premise doesn't support it: Art has always imitated life and that doesn't make real life a simulation any more than it is a painting, a clay statue, or a film.

When you're so sloppy with editing, narration, facts, non sequiturs and basic reasoning based on empirical evidence, I can't take the building seriously when the bricks are made of marzipan. Returning this one.

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