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Changing How We Choose
- The New Science of Morality
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
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Changing How We Choose
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Publisher's summary
In Changing How We Choose, David Redish makes a bold claim: science has "cracked" the problem of morality. Redish argues that moral questions have a scientific basis, and that morality is best viewed as a technology—a set of social and institutional forces that create communities and drive cooperation. This means that some moral structures are better than others and that the moral technologies we use have real consequences on whether we make our societies better or worse places for the people living within them. Drawing on this new scientific definition of morality and real-world applications, Changing How We Choose is an engaging listen with major implications for how we see each other, how we build our communities, and how we live our lives.
Many people think of human interactions in terms of conflicts between individual freedom and group cooperation, where it is better for the group if everyone cooperates but better for the individual to cheat. Redish shows that moral codes are technologies that change the game so that cooperating is good for the community and for the individual. Drawing on new insights from behavioral economics, sociology, and neuroscience, he shows that there is a "new science of morality", and that this new science has implications—not only for how we understand ourselves but also for how we should construct new moral technologies.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 68
In The Science of Good and Evil, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates into moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Read by author
- By Gregory A. Townsend on 04-16-23
By: Michael Shermer
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Big Gods
- How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict
- By: Ara Norenzayan
- Narrated by: Paul Nixon
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great read
- By paro on 02-27-24
By: Ara Norenzayan
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The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,948
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,280
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,244
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By ejf211 on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
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The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6,313
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,469
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5,422
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I'd kill for another book this good
- By Eric on 11-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
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The Great Mental Models
- General Thinking Concepts
- By: Shane Parrish
- Narrated by: Shane Parrish
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,601
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,329
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,310
The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand. This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A dissapointing debut
- By Peter on 04-14-19
By: Shane Parrish
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Why Honor Matters
- By: Tamler Sommers
- Narrated by: Tamler Sommers
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 106
To the modern mind, the idea of honor is outdated, sexist, and barbaric. It evokes Hamilton and Burr and pistols at dawn, not visions of a well-organized society. But for philosopher Tamler Sommers, a sense of honor is essential to living moral lives. In Why Honor Matters, Sommers argues that our collective rejection of honor has come at great cost. Reliant only on Enlightenment liberalism, the United States has become the home of the cowardly, the shameless, the selfish, and the alienated. Properly channeled, honor encourages virtues like courage, integrity, and solidarity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A critical, yet seemingly impossible, topic!
- By Anonymous User on 03-10-20
By: Tamler Sommers
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 111
Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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Primates and Philosophers
- How Morality Evolved
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Having Just Read...
- By Douglas on 12-14-13
By: Frans de Waal
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Moral Politics
- How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 3rd Edition
- By: George Lakoff
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
When Moral Politics was first published two decades ago, it redefined how Americans think and talk about politics through the lens of cognitive political psychology. Today, George Lakoff's classic text has become all the more relevant, as liberals and conservatives have come to hold even more vigorously opposed views of the world, with the underlying assumptions of their respective worldviews at the level of basic morality.
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4 out of 5 stars
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extremely insightful. awful to get through.
- By Dave on 05-09-18
By: George Lakoff
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Cool
- How the Brain's Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World
- By: Steven Quartz, Anette Asp
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Some Useful Ideas
- By Carson on 07-20-17
By: Steven Quartz, and others
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The New Breed
- What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots
- By: Kate Darling
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, and that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better.
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3 out of 5 stars
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The book is interesting, and makes good points, but Kate darling forgot about slavery in history
- By jeremy on 10-24-21
By: Kate Darling
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Breaking the Spell
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 749
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 655
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 642
For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
- By Don Caliente on 07-14-14
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The Bond
- Connecting Through the Space Between Us
- By: Lynne McTaggart
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
From the best-selling author of The Intention Experiment and The Field comes a groundbreaking new work---a book that uses the interconnectedness of mind and matter to demonstrate that the key to life is in the relationship between things. We are always connected with others, hardwired at our most elemental level---from the quantum level to the cellular, from personal relationships to business and societal structures.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Horrible narrator
- By Cotran on 09-19-11
By: Lynne McTaggart
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Blind Spots
- Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do about It
- By: Max H. Bazerman, Ann E. Tenbrunsel
- Narrated by: Kate McQueen
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4 out of 5 stars 80
When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great book
- By Ryan in SF on 11-15-18
By: Max H. Bazerman, and others
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The WEIRDest People in the World
- How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
- By: Joseph Henrich
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 447
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 353
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 348
In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lots of mispronounced words
- By Phillip Falk on 10-24-20
By: Joseph Henrich
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Bozo Sapiens
- Why to Err Is Human
- By: Michael Kaplan, Ellen Kaplan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Our species, it appears, is hardwired to get things wrong in myriad different ways. Why did recipients of a loan offer accept a higher rate of interest when a pretty woman's face was printed on the flyer? Why did one poll on immigration find the most despised aliens were ones from a group that did not exist? What made four of the Air Force's best pilots fly their planes, in formation, straight into the ground?
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5 out of 5 stars
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A tour de force
- By Ivan on 07-05-11
By: Michael Kaplan, and others