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The Age of Em
- Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
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Publisher's summary
Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like?
Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations, or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human.
Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times; an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks.
Some say we can't know the future, especially following such a disruptive new technology, but Professor Robin Hanson sets out to prove them wrong. Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, he uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems.
While human lives don't change greatly in the em era, em lives are as different from ours as our lives are from those of our farmer and forager ancestors. Ems make us question common assumptions of moral progress, because they reject many of the values we hold dear.
Read about em mind speeds, body sizes, job training and career paths, energy use and cooling infrastructure, virtual reality, aging and retirement, death and immortality, security, wealth inequality, religion, teleportation, identity, cities, politics, law, war, status, friendship, and love.
This book shows you just how strange your descendants may be, though ems are no stranger than we would appear to our ancestors. To most ems, it seems good to be an em.
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- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From launchpad explosions to a pernicious cricket infestation to the demanding management style of Musk himself, the rise of SpaceX was beset with challenges and far from inevitable. Find out how the startup beat the odds and flew high enough to outpace their rivals... and where they're going next.
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Appreciated the engineering details
- By Will on 10-19-24
By: Eric Berger
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Cosmic Queries
- StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going
- By: James Trefil, Lindsey N. Walker - editor, Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrated by: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating audiobook, Tyson and coauthor James Trefil, a renowned physicist and science popularizer, take on the big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia - How did life begin? What is our place in the universe? Are we alone? - and provide answers based on the most current data, observations, and theories.
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Not worth it
- By Daniel Earl on 03-15-21
By: James Trefil, and others
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Inspired
- How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, Second Edition
- By: Marty Cagan
- Narrated by: Marty Cagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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How do today's most successful tech companies - Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla - design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently from the vast majority of tech companies. In Inspired, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides listeners with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love.
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Great book, terrible audio wanted to ask a refund
- By Srikanth Ramanujam on 11-15-18
By: Marty Cagan
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Origins, Revised and Updated
- Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
- By: Donald Goldsmith, Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Our true origins are not only human, or even terrestrial, but in fact cosmic. Drawing on recent scientific breakthroughs and cross-pollination among geology, biology, astrophysics, and cosmology, Origins illuminates the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the cosmos. This newly revised and updated edition features such startling discoveries as the more than 5,000 newly detected exoplanets that shed light on the origins of and possibilities for life in the cosmos.
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There is nothing here
- By Hermanubis on 12-30-22
By: Donald Goldsmith, and others
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The Quantum Universe
- (And Why Anything That Can Happen, Does)
- By: Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw approach the world of quantum mechanics in the same way they did in Why Does E=mc2? and make fundamental scientific principles accessible - and fascinating - to everyone.The subatomic realm has a reputation for weirdness, spawning any number of profound misunderstandings, journeys into Eastern mysticism, and woolly pronouncements on the interconnectedness of all things. Cox and Forshaw's contention? There is no need for quantum mechanics to be viewed this way.
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Not suitable as an audio book
- By SPN on 03-29-22
By: Brian Cox, and others
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Chalmers' search for Consciousness
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Confuses Consciousness with Ego
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Compelled to listen at 2x speed
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What listeners say about The Age of Em
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-12-18
Beginning is engaging and worth the time.
Interesting thought experiment and I appreciated the author's careful consideration to justify the scenario he presented. I found the content slightly repetitive, or too "in-the-weeds," at times which lead to a longer duration that caused me to lose interest during the latter two-thirds of the book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- RobertS
- 07-12-21
A must-read for anyone interested in mind uploading
The book is an unusually detailed treatise on societal implications of mind uploading, as if written by an impartial sociologist.
It’s written as a research work, not as a work of science fiction. So, if you expect to be entertained, you’ll be disappointed.
But if you’re interested in futurology or mind uploading as scholarly disciplines, the book is a must-read.
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- Peter Golub
- 06-13-22
brilliant boring
Just 'cause it's boring doesn't make it's not brilliant. I'm asked to include more words in a review. Here they are.
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- Dee
- 09-09-24
Interesting read
The level of detail of this world and the ramifications on our species are a new way of looking at the world in 2024.
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- Sumguynobuddynoes
- 05-20-17
interesting but way too thorough
Great number if assumptions draws upon authors perception of Emulation robot society and behaviours.
Interesting concept, but too intricate in detail to be credible. Got boring in the details of Em societal workings.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Brandon Brooks
- 12-11-20
Like nothing I've ever read before
Age of Em is an analysis of a potential dystopian/utopian future backed up by a truly staggering amount of evidence and research. Here's what others have said:
"One of the great risks of futurology is to fail to realize how different societies and institutions can be – the same way uncreative costume designers make their aliens look like humans with green skin. A lot of our thoughts about the future involve assumptions we’ve never really examined critically. In Age of Em, Robin Hanson dynamites those assumptions.
"Age of Em is whirlwind tour through almost every science and a pretty good way to learn about the present. If you didn’t already know that wars are distributed evenly across all possible war sizes, well, read Age of Em and you will know that and many similar things.
"Age of Em shows you every part of what our weird incomprehensible posthuman descendents will be doing in loving detail. Even what kind of swear words they’ll use."
-Scott Alexander, Psychiatrist and author of "Unsong"
"When the typical economist tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is ‘Eh, maybe.’ Then I forget about it. When Robin Hanson tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is ‘No way! Impossible!’ Then I think about it for years."
-Tyler Cowen Economist and author of "Create Your Own Economy"
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- David
- 11-26-16
30% of time me spent describing itself
The author spends almost as much time describing the structure of the book and structure of his research as he does talking about the ACTUAL content. I prefer books that tell me directly what they have to say, versus telling me ad nauseam HOW they are going to tell me about it. LOTS of wasted time.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Emmaly
- 07-02-17
Couldn't finish it
I couldn't finish it. It felt like it was never going to get to the point. That means a lot coming from me as I'll sit through just about anything.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Ageel Alassif
- 03-30-17
An analytical book suited as a reference book
Struggled to finish it , reads more like a reference book than a straight read.
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5 people found this helpful
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- KA
- 01-11-17
Just plain awful, some thing that could be said within 1 hour, unnecessarily and painfully prolonged.
within 1 hour, unnecessarily and painfully prolonged. The author assumes throwing big words around makes him sound interacting. The worst book on AI I had listened to so far.
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4 people found this helpful