AH

books organized, chapters not

Revisado: 12-02-21

the reviews confused me. the BOOKS are titled and organized. the CHAPTERS are unlabeled and unorganized. all the books are single, long chapters. if you're like me though, the nrsv is your bible, so you take what you can get, and i've had worse organization in books. just worth noting. i recommend.

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i don't like this book

Revisado: 12-09-20

i love daoism. i love winnie the pooh. i love simon vance… but i don't like this book. it's weird. simon vance's performance is excellent as always, and i love his voices for the characters. this book gets a lot of flack for trivializing and poorly explaining daoism, but i'm open-minded about that and enjoy the explanatory sections. but going back and forth between explanations and long winded stories that don't always have clear connection to those explanations is pretty torturous. this book has terrible economy of my time for a sub-three hour book. clearly simon vance would be great for explaining philosophy or narrating pooh, but when you put it together… 😬. it's not like i made the mistake of reading a children's book and it's just not for me. the words are too big for children. so i'm not sure who this book is for, but it's not for me

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highly philosophical and literary book about cats

Revisado: 12-08-20

i'll say that this is not a book for you if you "just like cats" and want to hear about how great they are in direct ways with touches of philosophy. this is very much a book on philosophy, with literary examples, discussing the topics how with an eye for how cats are. it's a book in praise of cats by a thinking person, although if what we're led to believe about the cat way of living by the author himself, not thinking about cats and just turning around from your book and loving your cat instead has a higher virtue. he says (paraphrasing) that role of philosophy is to undo itself, to revert what we've learned through civilization back to our true nature. so i would say, if you're choosing to get into philosophy through this cat book, you might be better off without the practice in the first place, and cherish a native simplicity and ease as the cat might have. the book touches on various philosophies such as stoicism, epicureanism, buddhism, aristotelianism, daoism, humanism, spinoza, and more. i'll vouch for this mix of ideas by saying i basically independently arrived at most of what this book was saying in my own learning, which took me along a road paved with all these ideas. my one complaint is that there was not a single word on the cynics, who seem like an obvious candidate for a "feline philosopher", despite being called "doglike" themselves. one could have drawn out a similar etymological path as the word cynic and call the catlike philosophy "aeluricism", but i guess that will have to be my coinage

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not a good psych course

Revisado: 11-17-20

i almost returned this course during the overview of the big five factors of personality. i found the discussion very superficial and one-sided, for one thing. he made one side of each dimension sound like it was the good side, with no words about how a person could be too high in one trait or the benefits of being the other way. also, importantly, he tells you directly that these are not types and these traits are normally distributed, **right before going on and on as if each trait were a type** ///////////////////// i decided to pull the trigger on the course 1. when he carried the typology/normal distribution paradoxical explanations into the following lectures on basic motives, and 2. he informally decides that the purported intrapsychic motivations such as internal consistency and self esteem must be for other people's approval since he can't think of any other reason, which should defy any person's experience provided they have any kind of functioning brain to speak of. (a single experience of correcting inconsistency or improving your self esteem without anyone's notice surely would put this hypothesis into serious question) ///////////////////// terrible course gets one star, three stars for presentation because he is a good speaker, to give him credit, for an average of two stars. do not recommend

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pretty good, not as good as "radical acceptance"

Revisado: 10-02-20

i bought this book for two reasons, after finishing tara brach's other book, "radical acceptance": 1. i loved cassandra campbell's performance of tara brach's first book, and wanted to hear more, and 2. i loved all the heroic stories of personal triumphs, and wanted to hear more. both were satisfying again, but not as much as the first one///////////////////// first, cassandra campbell, while amazing most of the time, sort of phoned it in with some of the male characters. she nailed a few, so she can definitely do it, but i felt she interpreted less emotionality and vulnerability in some characters than was clearly in the text. poor jim with his sexual dysfunction drew the shortest straw, played by campbell as sort of awkward, even when he seemed textually to have true moments of opening up. it must also be said that the production this time was horrendous. the first instance of ms. campbell starting a sentence, stopping, and continuing was confusing. the second time was funny. the third time just made it all seem incompetent. i think there were only three times, but considering i've been reading audiobooks for four and a half years and that's the first time i've seen that, let alone three in one, that's a bit much. it should be noted that even with subpar editing, cassandra campbell was mostly great besides what i mentioned, so she is still in my favorites///////////////////// as for the stories, i loved what i heard for the most part again. unfortunately, they seemed by my rough estimate of the book to be fewer than in "radical acceptance". they don't start until chapter six, and end two or three chapters before the book, unless you count dr. brach's personal stories. i find the stories beautiful and inspiring, true stories of triumph, but the rest of the book is hit or miss///////////////////// i may not be the best person to recommend this book for its intended purpose (explaining a broad adaptation of buddhist's refuge taking, and applying the psychological RAIN mindfulness technique). i don't really have the problems that the book (or "radical acceptance") is designed to address. what i will say though is that the type of treatment and guidance dr. brach describes is incredibly subjective. i like to hear stories about them for the same reason that i question their practical utility as therapy: literally all of what the patients achieve is up to them. they bring everything into the treatment that they get out of it. dr. brach seems to just nudge them onto the way, although very artfully, and, if dr. brach's own report of patient responses is to be believed, very helpfully. i wouldn't knock what she does, and i wouldn't say it's entirely restricted to the traditionally religious, but the less spiritual you already are, the more open minded you have to be to even get in the door with this counseling. for my part, i'm a strict naturalist, but with a little spiritual side, and i could appreciate what i read most of the time, although "radical acceptance" was more helpful outside the stories///////////////////// overall, i enjoyed this book, may read it again (unless i simply only ever choose to reread "radical acceptance"), and cautiously recommend it to spiritual or open minded people dealing with hardship

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pretty good, but

Revisado: 09-24-20

this is a pretty good course. the professor tried very hard to be objective in areas of disagreement, and genuinely attempts to put forward a good case for each side of the debates he covers. that said, here are some criticisms

for one thing, in one of the lectures, he compares the image of south asian buddha to the "chinese buddha", saying that the latter is very large and full of life. he seems to be talking about bodai, a chinese folkloric figure who is not actually the buddha, but more like a santa claus type figure in chinese buddhism. it'd be like saying santa claus is american jesus

more importantly, despite his attempts, i found his layouts of the arguments for why fear of death is rational and why immortality would be a curse to be lacking. for one thing, he relies on the epicurean arguments for the case against rational fear of death. sadly, most of epicurus' writings are lost to history, so the arguments will never be complete. but even then, he doesn't represent the full argument. he retains the argument that death is nothing to us because we aren't around to experience it, but when he counters with the idea that we lose all the benefits life has to offer, he leaves out epicurus' comparison to enjoying a fine banquet and not wanting it to end, and how that would be considered gluttony. and when the professor brings up the case of a woman who writes a book and wants it to go big after she dies, but the friend she leaves it to doesn't get it published, he could have raised the stoic argument of the archer who can control his attempt to hit a target, while what happens to the arrow after it leaves his bow is beyond his control (dichotomy of control). and of course, you can even hear the professor slip into a non sequitur as he goes from "death is bad" to "we should fear death" in his arguments. to whatever extent he established the former, he does not establish the latter. arguments against the rationality of emotions, especially against negative emotions about the inevitable, are not raised

as for immortality, i find one of his arguments for the badness of immortality lacking as well. in response to the idea that immortality would not have to be boring because one could mentally contemplate indefinitely with joy, he responds that someone who could enjoy that wouldn't really be him. apart from reflecting the sad state of affairs of the professor's inner world, the fact is that people's habits and behaviors do change over the course of their ordinary lives, let alone over eternity. is this somehow bad? is it so bad to acquire skills over the course of your life that help you adapt to new circumstances? clearly not

it's been a while since i've heard the lecture on euthanasia, but i remember the arguments against it being similarly lacking as well

the professor concludes his lectures by saying death leaves him complex feelings. and after this journey of his, how could they not? death is scary, immortality is boring, rationally choosing to die is wrong, chinese buddha is santa claus—it's all topsy-turvy. but i think the picture is a lot simpler. i believe life is about coming to terms with the inevitable. in life, there will will be great loss, great pain, great sickness, old age, and death—it's unavoidable. i believe we can prepare ourselves for this at any time—the earlier, the better. i believe once we accept the inevitable, we will face it with equanimity, peace, and perhaps even joyful curiosity, in cases of only mild unease. i don't think there is any reason to fear these things

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this is my favorite audible title

Revisado: 09-14-20

this course is what it would be like if i asked the teaching company to make a course just for me. more broadly, it's a course suited for anyone who looked to philosophy for "meaning of life" questions, perhaps in a university, and found very little to go by. well, this is it

it covers world philosophy and religions in particular. it dabbles in the western philosophical and religious tradition, but mainly focuses on the places like india and china. it basically assumed you're familiar with western ideas and offers these as a counterpoint, without overly relying on unstated concepts taken for granted

it has a bias like any course must. the bias is towards ancient and postmodern ideas. western modernism is composed of just a handful of lectures. i think this is a good bias for two reasons: the course, as it was originally intended, was for the great courses program, which means the intended audience is generally familiar with the ideas invoked in that area. the second is more controversial

frankly, the particular values of modernism of untrammeled progress, growth, and unfettered scientific and technological advance have—past tense—destroyed the earth. even if we immediately stopped polluting the earth with carbon dioxide, the fact remains that the earth will continue to warm for decades, it not centuries. it would take global coordination just to mitigate what will already happen. nothing can be done about what catastrophes we've already set in place

when i hear these lectures, i hear the perfect predictions of and beginning of responses to out global fate. the fact is, whoever is alive in one hundred years won't benefit from capitalist apologies. they're going to benefit from inspirations for living simply, perhaps harshly. the 2090's may be more like the warring states period of chinese history under which laozi and confucius were said to have written than the "glory" days of the 1990's. i think that's the world we should be preparing for, and i think these philosophies are the key to living and dying well when the time comes

i believe any human can benefit from this title who isn't already knowledgable with literally all the ideas therein. shy of that, there is great value in learning all these ideas

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excellent performance

Revisado: 09-11-20

i bought this because daisy ridley is my favorite actress, and if you listen to this performance, i think you can see why. from beginning to end, she gives the script the attention and interpretation it needs, with lots of little flourishes that you only see in the higher quality narrations. there are often confusing dialogues between characters on account of the piece's weird pronoun game (i didn't get it), but they were at least intelligible in terms of who was speaking because of the tastefully done vocal stylings for each character that nevertheless didn't detract from the "one person talking for an hour and a half" appeal of this kind of performance. the story wasn't my favorite (i primarily read non fiction), but i think daisy ridley's performance really made it a worthwhile listen//i would love to see more daisy ridley on audible!

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas

what neuroscience tells us about sociality

Revisado: 09-04-20

disclosure: i didn't finish the book, as it didn't capture my attention, due to not clearly offering what it was selling

this book seems fine if you're interested in neuroscience and sociality. it pulls no punches evidentially and hits you with many scientific findings that some would find hard to follow, especially in an audiobook, so be warned. still, if you can handle scientific information in audio form, and you are interested in neuroscience and sociality, i recommend this book

however, i was interested in neuroscience and MORALITY. primarily, i was interested in the metaethics of a noted eliminative materialist. i did not catch any explanation of her metaethics, and the book seems to take cues from what people seem to generally agree is moral, namely prosocial behavior. i'm disappointed because i hardly see how prosocial behavior can be considered morality per se. morality, properly understood, is what we "ought" to do, without qualifiers. sure, some prosocial things are generally considered among those oughts, but compelling arguments can be made for cases of moral behavior which go against cooperation, kinship, survival, and many other biological imperatives. for example, while favoring kin is a natural and emotionally rewarding thing to do, many ethicists believe that we should treat all suffering creatures with equal concern, even if that leads to us helping distant others over familiar people. from an interview i read, kin favoritism is something mrs. churchland believes. that's perfectly good. but i was hoping to read how such matters square off in light of eliminative materialism. this book seems to take ethical naturalism as the starting point, not something to justify. i am disappointed

another necessary note is that the narration is quite bad. it starts off well, because the narrator is succeeds in conveying the gravitas of an educated woman discussing something she specializes in, but she regularly mispronounces words. in some chapters, she doesn't go more than a few minutes without mispronouncing words. some are technical words, but some are just normal english words. a second complaint i have is that while the casting is age appropriate relative to the author, i don't think her speaking is that sharp with such a deluge of technical information. she trips up sometimes, and pronounces initialisms like FMRI (normally fast like "effemarrai") pointedly letter by letter like "ef. em. ar. ai", without the fluidity of one speaking naturally. it's sort of annoying

given all that, if you like the idea of learning about the brain and prosocial behavior, and aren't picky about narrators, i can recommend this book

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my favorite book on death

Revisado: 03-03-20

this is my favorite book on death i've read so far

i learned about this book from the Science-Based Medicine blog a while ago, and bought it then, but did not complete it until now. having completed it, i must say that the author examines the topic objectively with a clear mission (to determine what it "feels like to die"). i find this to get at the root of the issue with death, and the author approaches it from seemingly every angle. if you want to know what it will feel like when your time comes, i recommend this book

the narrator was excellent as well. in addition to her thoughtful journalist tone of voice, she had to cover doctors, nurses, scientists, and dying patients. i thought she gave life to these people very well

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