J. Corwin

Kinda pointless…

Reviewed: 02-17-23

Here’s my summary:

Here’s my summary:

Humans are more capable of doing things than other animals.

Sometimes humans use their capabilities to do things that harm other humans at a large scale.

Other animals don’t do this.

Humans also like to train animals to learn how their brains work.

Life is about maximizing pleasure, and humans aren’t better at it than other animals.

__________

I felt like the whole book was just waiting for a point to be made, but it felt like a series of nitpicks about the way humans handle their abilities.

Best example being when he talked about how pigeons are better at recognizing cancer from a scan than humans. The point was to show the intelligence of a pigeon, but completely glossed over the fact that the human invented the machine and trained the pigeon.

He goes on to talk about how the life of a chicken is more pleasurable than the life of a human if just reducing it to absence of suffering. But the only reason the chickens were able to live their lives that way is because of humans. Otherwise they’d likely be eaten. He points out the ability of humans to destroy themselves, but ignores the addition of amount of pleasure humans provide to other animals. The number of pleasure hours is infinitely complex and unquantifiable, making the thesis of the book feel rather pointless.

It boils down to the kind of argument where someone says a basic statement and then the other person goes, “well actually, technically that’s not the case, because….” And then everyone else rolls their eyes and goes, “you get what I mean.”

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3 people found this helpful

Overall worth the listen, with some cringe

Reviewed: 01-28-23

This book paints a fascinating picture of how globalization happened and how it may collapse. Overall it’s an enjoyable listen (in terms of knowledge, not implications), but the author’s reading style is kind of awkward.

Peter pronounces T’s like a British person but with an American accent, and mispronounced words like “nuclear” and “climatic” frequently, which kind of tears you away from the credibility of his arguments.

Nonetheless, this is an important book and I would recommend it.

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Basically a long YouTube video

Reviewed: 10-21-22

By no means bad, I mean, I finished it, but I kind of expected more. I felt like 85% I’d already gotten from YouTube, and the last 15% was like, “huh, cool.”

I was hoping for a bit more depth

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Really well written and well narrated

Reviewed: 10-14-22

Makes me want to move to a farm. A seriously well thought out essay that makes me sad considering nothing has changed in 27 years.

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Incredibly well written

Reviewed: 08-16-22

I, like I’m sure everyone else did, grew up with icarly. Really puts a different perspective on the show. Thanks Jennette for being so vulnerable and sharing your story. It’ll stick with me for a long time.

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Read well, excellent information

Reviewed: 07-02-22

I almost feel worried about giving a good review because it’ll make the book more visible to other people and risk them becoming better negotiators! Hahaha.

Learned a lot, captivating stories, well narrated, great experience.

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Great story, good narration, but the reader should have researched pronunciation

Reviewed: 06-16-22

I live in China, so these stories felt very familiar. The storytelling is wonderful to listen to, but it is slightly annoying to hear the awful, inconsistent pronunciations of Chinese names, phrases, and places. I can’t imagine it would have been that hard to just look up the pronunciation before recording. And it would be one thing if it was wrong but consistent, but the reader changes how he says the same name throughout the story, and it gets confusing who he’s referring to or what the name of the place really is.

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