Amazon Customer

Mileage may vary, by value judgements

Revisado: 08-27-23

Familiar with EA and WM’s other work… finally getting around to reading. Overall I recommend the book as a thought experiment or framework for thinking about doing good, though I don’t endorse many of the conclusions presented here. MacAskill even says many of the value assumptions, and thus conclusions, will vary by individual.

More recently, carbon offsets have come under more scrutiny and most seem worthless, if not deceptive. The moral argument that people use bogus offsets to justify their bad behavior and high carbon emission lifestyles is real. Private jets anyone?! Meanwhile climate inaction only looks more consequential and dangerous in all our lifetimes.

EA may also be suffering morally from some of its more well known proponents, who used questionable crypto currencies and wealth generating schemes to become vastly wealthy, yet their schemes proved illegal or deceptive. Stealing to give is not moral (robin hood aside) especially when the perpetrators only give a small percentage and used their vast wealth for lavish lifestyles or building bunkers to survive a potential apocalypse. (Billionaire class)

There’s also a tendency to rank one thing vs another. Poverty vs climate action. The two are interlinked. You should be looking for ways to simultaneously solve both challenges.

Rather than nitpick further, I will end by encouraging people to take the broad message to heart and look for ways to solve problems, whether that’s via donations, volunteering, your career, or continuing to assess positive solutions and striving for better outcomes for humanity.

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Dense with ideas, Narration is perfectly fine

Revisado: 09-28-21

Despite some negative reviews, I found the narration perfectly fine. The audio performer has many credits to his name for good reason.

The book itself is dense with theories and ideas about cultural evolution. It’s a narrative about societies/cultures shaping the future. In our current time of partisan divides it’s worth contemplating how our societies are shaping us and how we can in turn shape them, hopefully for the better.

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Mixed feelings about audio performance

Revisado: 07-21-21

Thought the voice actor was ok, but perhaps not a good fit for this story. I expected a more gravelly, deeper voice to accompany a western, though like Warlock itself, maybe those expectations should be more nuanced. Given that the book was from the 1950’s I’m thankful someone performed it at all.

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Deep dive into autocracy

Revisado: 06-17-21

Connects all the dots between Putin and trump. Never stop striving to discover the truth and seek out solution for real life problems. We must protect democracy if we value it.

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