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Cynicism
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
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Publisher's summary
Everyone's a cynic, yet few will admit it. Today's cynics excuse themselves half-heartedly - "I hate to be a cynic, but...." - before making their pronouncements. Narrowly opportunistic, always on the take, contemporary cynicism has nothing positive to contribute. The Cynicism of the ancient Greeks, however, was very different. Bold and shameless, it was committed to transforming the values on which civilization depends. In this volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Ansgar Allen charts the long history of cynicism, from the "fearless speech" of Greek Cynics in the fourth century BCE to the contemporary cynic's lack of social and political convictions.
Allen describes ancient Cynicism as an improvised philosophy and a way of life disposed to scandalize contemporaries, subjecting their cultural commitments to derision. He chronicles the subsequent "purification" of Cynicism by the Stoics; Renaissance and Enlightenment appropriations of Cynicism; and the transition from Cynicism (the philosophy) to cynicism (the modern attitude), exploring contemporary cynicism from the perspectives of its leftist, liberal, and conservative critics. Finally, he considers the possibility of a radical cynicism that admits and affirms the danger it poses to contemporary society.
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- John Goldsworthy
- 09-01-23
So good until it gets to the 20th and 21st ce
The writer conveniently glosses over the 20th and 21st ce global and social/cultural events that have exponentially increased apathy. Context is important in understanding contemporary mutations of ‘cynicism.’
Has the author seen the logical end point of the enlightenment? Rousseau was right
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- Johnson
- 06-01-23
Entertaining
An interesting discussion of ancient Cynicism and modern small c cynicism and what the ancient concept of Cynicism might look like if practiced today
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- Anonymous User
- 06-18-22
revival of classical cycism
this book could turn into a movement if the classical Greek cynics exercises and principles are taken to heart. I know they won me over
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- John Rothermel
- 11-27-21
Enjoyable
A very enjoyable and illuminating study.
However...
Once the author gets to the 21st century, he has a hard time parsing classical Cynicism with the spectatorial "common sense" cynical reflexive posing used by bourgeoisie and their middle class transmission-belts in electoral politics, editorial pages, and education factories.
Contemporary cynical poses are never held for long by those employing the mode: the dictatorship of capital has space and patience for most methods of blowing-off steam, until a method finds a mass echo in the working class; then the funtimes must be carefully walked-back.
An example: "The Daily Show" for years heaped ridicule on Bush-Cheney. But when they needed to shift gears to celebrate the "genius of the system" that we should all truly be grateful for, they could always roll out Senator McCain.
JR
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Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples.
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Not worth a second read, I took it 3 things
- By HonestBuyer on 08-29-23
By: Nils J. Nilsson
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The Mind-Body Problem
- The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Jonathan Westphal
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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In this book the philosopher Jonathan Westphal examines the mind-body problem in detail, laying out the reasoning behind the solutions that have been offered in the past and presenting his own proposal. The sharp focus on the mind-body problem, a problem that is not about the self or consciousness or the soul or anything other than the mind and the body, helps clarify both problem and solutions. Westphal outlines the history of the mind-body problem, beginning with Descartes.
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Multiple chapters without a point
- By J. A. Schroeder on 07-01-17
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Macroeconomics
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Felipe B. Larrain
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Macroeconomics takes a broad perspective on the economy of a country or region; it studies economic changes in the aggregate, collecting data on production, unemployment, inflation, consumption, investment, trade, and other aspects of national and international economic life. Policymakers depend on macroeconomists' knowledge when making decisions about such issues as taxes and the public budget, monetary and exchange rate policies, and trade policies-all of which, in turn, affect decisions made by individuals and businesses.
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if you are curious about macroeconomics
- By Santa Claus on 12-11-22
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Spatial Computing
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Shashi Shekhar, Pamela Vold
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Billions of people around the globe use various applications of spatial computing daily - by using a ride-sharing app, GPS, social media check-ins, even Pokemon Go. Scientists and researchers use spatial computing to track diseases, map the bottom of the oceans, chart the behavior of endangered species, and create election maps in real time. Drones and driverless cars use a variety of spatial computing technologies. Spatial computing works by understanding the physical world, knowing and communicating our relation to places in that world, and navigating through those places.
By: Shashi Shekhar, and others
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Paradox
- By: Margaret Cuonzo
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Thinkers have been fascinated by paradox since long before Aristotle grappled with Zeno's. In this volume in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Margaret Cuonzo explores paradoxes and the strategies used to solve them. She finds that paradoxes are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. A paradox can be defined as a set of mutually inconsistent claims, each of which seems true. Paradoxes emerge not just in salons and ivory towers but in everyday life.
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To The Point
- By Hendrick Mcdonald on 11-10-15
By: Margaret Cuonzo
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The Conscious Mind
- By: Zoltan Torey
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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How did the human mind emerge from the collection of neurons that makes up the brain? How did the brain acquire self-awareness, functional autonomy, language, and the ability to think, to understand itself and the world? In this volume in the Essential Knowledge series, Zoltan Torey offers an accessible and concise description of the evolutionary breakthrough that created the human mind.
By: Zoltan Torey
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Extraterrestrials
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Wade Roush
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Everything we know about how planets form and how life arises suggests that human civilization on Earth should not be unique. We ought to see abundant evidence of extraterrestrial activity - but we don't. Where is everybody? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, science and technology writer Wade Roush examines one of the great unsolved problems in science: Is there life, intelligent or otherwise, on other planets?
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A much needed nonfiction discourse on ET
- By hammi on 07-21-23
By: Wade Roush
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Critical Thinking
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Jonathan Haber
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Critical thinking is regularly cited as an essential 21st century skill, the key to success in school and work. Given our propensity to believe fake news, draw incorrect conclusions, and make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, it might even be said that critical thinking is vital to the survival of a democratic society. But what, exactly, is critical thinking? Haber describes the term's origins in such disciplines as philosophy, psychology, and science.
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I decided not to finsh it.
- By Sterling on 08-04-20
By: Jonathan Haber
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Smart Cities
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Germaine Halegoua
- Narrated by: Wendy Tremont King
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?
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Rich Information
- By Serial Amazon Shopper on 05-26-23
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Robots
- The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series
- By: John M. Jordan
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Robots are entering the mainstream. Technologies have advanced to the point of mass commercialization - Roomba, for example - and adoption by governments - most notably, their use of drones. Meanwhile, these devices are being received by a public whose main sources of information about robots are the fantasies of popular culture. We know a lot about C-3PO and Robocop, but not much about Atlas, Motoman, Kiva, or Beam - real-life robots that are reinventing warfare, the industrial workplace, and collaboration.
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A broad description of the state of the art
- By Gonzalo Alberto Gomez A on 01-05-18
By: John M. Jordan
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Computational Thinking
- By: Peter J. Denning, Matti Tedre
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A few decades into the digital era, scientists discovered that thinking in terms of computation made possible an entirely new way of organizing scientific investigation; eventually, every field had a computational branch: computational physics, computational biology, computational sociology. More recently, "computational thinking" has become part of the K-12 curriculum. But what is computational thinking? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible overview.
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Too slow, repetitive for professional programmers
- By Kindle Customer on 04-06-21
By: Peter J. Denning, and others
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Free Will
- By: Mark Balaguer
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In our daily lives, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will.
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Severely lacking: stay away
- By David James on 07-12-23
By: Mark Balaguer
Related to this topic
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Culture and the Death of God
- By: Terry Eagleton
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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