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| B08VF32DXK
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320
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Nov 14, 2022
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| 9780316113502
| 0316113506
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294
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May 03, 2021
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255
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Dec 09, 2020
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Paperback
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| | | | | 1932073205
| 9781932073201
| 1932073205
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217
pp
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| 1980
| Apr 13, 2006
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1
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Dec 09, 2020
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Paperback
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| | | | | 1508235406
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11
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Dec 09, 2020
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Audiobook
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| | | | | 0735213615
| 9780735213616
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280
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| May 26, 2020
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Dec 09, 2020
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Hardcover
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| | | | | 1250622948
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192
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Dec 09, 2020
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Hardcover
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| | | | | 0804139296
| 9780804139298
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195
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Dec 09, 2020
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Hardcover
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Kindle Edition
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| | | | | 038524939X
| 9780385249393
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196
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258
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Oct 25, 2020
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224
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Sep 22, 2020
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256
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Sep 22, 2020
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696
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Sep 22, 2020
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372
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Sep 08, 2020
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512
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Sep 08, 2020
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450
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| 2015
| Feb 21, 2017
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Notes and quotes:
"it appears that our hapiness bangs against some mysterious glass ceiling that does not allow it to grow despite all our unprecedent
Notes and quotes:
"it appears that our hapiness bangs against some mysterious glass ceiling that does not allow it to grow despite all our unprecedent accomplishments. Even if we provide free food for everybody, cure all diseases and ensure world peace, it won´t necessarily shatter that glass ceiling. Achieving real hapiness is not going to be much easier than overcoming old ageand death. The glass ceiling of hapiness is held in place by two stout pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the psycological level, hapiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We don´t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations baloon. Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment. If we don't do something about ths, our future achievements too, might leave us as dissatisfied as ever."
"At present, humankind has far greater interest in the biochemical solution. No matter what monks in their Himalayan caves or philosofers in their ivory towers say, for the capitalist juggernaut, hapiness is pleasure. Period. With each passing year our tolerance for unpleasant sensations decreases, and our craving for pleasant sensations increases. Both scientific research and economic activity are geared to that end, each year producing better painkillers, new ice-cream flavours, more confortable matresses, and more adicitive games for our smartphones, so that we will not suffer a single boring moment while waiting for the bus. All this is hardly enough, of course. Since Home sapiens was not adapted by evolution to experience constant pleasure, if that is what humankind is nevertheless wants, ice cream and smartphone games will not do. It will be necessary to change our biochemistry and re-engineer our bodies and minds. So we are working on that. You may debate wheter it is good or bad, but it seems that the second great project of the twenty-first century - to ensure global hapiness - will involve re-engineering Homo sapiens so that it can enjoy everlasting pleasure."
"people often misunderstand the meaning of divinity. Divinity isn't a vague metaphysical quality. And it isn't the same as omnipotence. When speaking of upgrading humans into gods, think more in terms of Greek gods or Hindu devas rather than the omnipotent biblical sky father. Our descendants will still have their foibles, kinks and limitations, just as Zeus and Indra had theirs. But they could love, hate, create and destroy on a much greater scale than us. Troughout history most gods were believed to enjoy not omnipotence but rather specific super-abilities such as the hability to design and create living beings; to transform their own bodies; to control the environment and the weather; to read minds and to communicate at a distance; to travel at very high speeds; and of course to escape death and live indefinetly. Humans are in the business of acquiring all these habilities, and then some. Certain traditional habilities that were considered divine for many millennia have today become so commonplace that we hardly think about them. The average person now moves and communicates across distances much more easily that the Greek, Hindu of African gods of old."
" some scientists concede that consciousness is real and may actually have great moral and political value, but that it fulfills no bilogical functions whatsoever. Consciousness is the biologically useless by-product of certain brain processes. Jet engines roar loudly, but the noise doesn't propel the aeroplane forward. Humans don't need carbon dioxide, but each and breath fills the air with more of the stuff. SImilarly, consciousness may be a kind of mental pollution produced by the firing of complex neural networks. It doesn't do anything. It is just there. If this is tru, it implies that all the pain and pleasure experiences by billions of creatures for millions of years is just mental pollution. This is certainly a thought woth thinking, even if it isn't true. But it is quite amazing to realise that as of 2016, this is the best theory of consciousness that contemporary science has to offer us.
Maybe the life sciences view the problem from the wrong angle. They believe that life is all about data processing and that organisms are machines for making calculations and taking decisions. However, this analogy between organisms and algorithms might mislead us. In the nineteenth century, scientists described brains and minds as if they were steam engines. Why steam engines? Because that was the leading technology of the day, which powered trains, ships and factories, so when humans tried to explain life, they assumed it must work according to analogous principles. Mind and body are made of pipes, cylinders, valves and pistons that build and release pressure, thereby prodducing movements and actions. Such thinking had a deep influence even on Freudian psychology, which is why much of our psychological jargon is still replete with concepts borrowed from mechanical engineering."
" According to current scientific dogma, everything I experience is the result of electrical activity in my brain, and it should therefore be theoretically feasible to simulate an entire virtual world that I could not possibly distinguish from the "real" world. Some brain scientist believe that in the not too distant future, we shall actually do such things. Well, maybe it has already been done - to you? For all you know, the year might be 2216 and you are a bored teenager immersed inside a "virtual world" game that simulates the primitive and exciting world of the early twenty-first century. Once you acknowledge the mere feasibility of this scenario, mathematics leads you to a very scary conclusion: since there is only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the sole real worls is almost zero."
"Over those 20.000 years humankind moved from hunting mammoth with stone-tipped spears to exploring the solar system with spaceships not thanks to the evolution of more dexterous hands or bigger brains (our brains today seem actually to be smaller). Instead, the crucial factor in our conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another. Humans nowadays comletely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and more nimblefingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers. If cooperation is the key, how come the ants and bees did not beat us to nuclear bomb even though they learned to cooperate en masse millions of years before us? Because their cooperation lacks flexibility. Social mammals such as elephants and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than bees, but they do so with small numbers of friends and family mambers. Their cooperation is based on personal acquaintance." "Rome conquered Greece not because the Romans had larger brains or better toolmaking techniques, but because they were able to cooperate more effectively"
"Brands are not a modern invention, just like Elvis Presley, pharao too was a brand rather than a living organism. For millions of followers his image counted far more than his fleshy reality, and they kept worshiping him long after he was dead."
"It may sound strange to credit imaginary entities with building or controlling things. But nowadays we habitually say that the United States built the first nuclear bomb, that China built the three Gorges Dam or that Google is building an autonomous car. Why not say, then, that pharaoh built a reservoir and Sobek dug a canal?"
"Equating religion with faith in supernatural powers implies that you can understand all natural phenomena withour religion, which is just an optional supplement. Having understood perfectly well the whole of nature, you can now choose wheter or not to add some "super-natural" religious dogma. Most religions, however, argue that you simply cannot understand the world without them. You will comprehend the true reason for disease, drought or earthquakes if you not take their dogma into account. Defining religion as "belief in gods" is also problematic. We tend to say that a devout Christian is religious because she believes in God, whereas a fervent communist isn't religious because communism has no gods. However, religion is created by humans rather than by gods, and it is defined by its social function rather than by the existence of deities. Religion is any all-encompassing story that confers superhuman legitimacy on human laws, norms and values. It ligitimises social structures by arguing that thay reflect superhuman laws. Religion asserts that we humans are subject to a system of moral laws that we did not invent and that we cannot change."
"It is costumary to portray the history of modernity as a struggle between science and religion. In theory, both science and religion are interested above all in the truth, and because each upholds a different truth, they are doomed to clash. In fact, neither science nor religion cares that much about the truth, hence they can easily compromise, coexist and cooperate. Religion is interested above all in order. It aims to create and maintain the social structure. Science is interested above all in power. Trough scientific research it aims to acquire the power to cure diseases, ficht wars and produce food. As individuals, scientists and priests may give immense importance to the truth; but as collective institutions, science and religion prefer order and power over truth. They therefore make good bedfellows. The uncompromising quest for truth is a spiritual journey, which can seldom remain within the confines of either religious or scientific establishments. It would accordingly be far more accurate to view modern history as the process of formulating a deal between science and one particular religion - namely, humanism. Modern society believes in humanist dogmas, and uses science not in order to question these dogmas, but rather in order to implement them."
"The modern deal offers us power, on condition that we renounce our belief in a great cosmic plan that gives meaning to life. Yet when you examine the deal closely, you find a cunning escape clause. If humans somehow manage to find meaning without predicating it upon some great cosmic plan, this is not considered a breach in contract. This escape clause has been the salvation of modern society, for it is impossible to sustain order without meaning. The great political, artistic and religious project of modernity has been to find meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan. We are not actors in a divine drama, and nobody cares about us and our deeds, so nobody sets limits to our power - but we are still convinced our lives have meaning."
"The antidote to a meaningless and lawless existence was provided by humanism, a revolutionary new creed that conquered e world during the last few centuries. The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part of Gos played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature payed in Buddhism and Daoism. Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world."
"Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightment by means of experience. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a wide variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt - one of the chief architects of the modern education system - said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest posible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life - to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'. This could well be the humanist motto."
"In the early twenty-first century the train of progress is again pulling out of the station - and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called Homo sapiens. Those who miss this train will never get a second chance. In order to get a seat on it you need to understand twenty-first century technology, and in particular the powers of biotechnology and computer algorithms. These powers are far more potent than steam and telegraph, and they will not be used merely for the production of foods, textiles, vehicles and weapons. The main products of the twenty-first century will be bodies, brains and minds, and the gap between those who know how to engineer bodies and brains and those who do not will be far bigger than the gap between Dicken's Britain and the Mahdi's Sudan. Indeed, it will be bigger than the gap between Sapiens and Neanderthals. In the twenty-first century, those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind will face extinction."
(CONTINUES ON COMMENTS)
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| | | | | 1591791650
| 9781591791652
| 1591791650
|
192
pp
| 4.43
| 4,024
| 1998
| Apr 01, 2004
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Audio CD
| |
| | | | | 0743277457
| 9780743277457
| 0743277457
|
265
pp
| 4.05
| 19,527
| 2007
| May 08, 2007
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Jan 20, 2020
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Hardcover
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| | | | | 0415922224
| 9780415922227
| 0415922224
|
564
pp
| 4.05
| 5,826
| Mar 01, 1999
| Mar 24, 1999
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