
Free Agents
How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
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Narrado por:
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Kevin J. Mitchell
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This audiobook narrated by neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents an evolutionary case for the existence of free will.
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose.
Traversing billions of years of evolution, Mitchell tells the remarkable story of how living beings capable of choice emerged from lifeless matter. He explains how the emergence of nervous systems provided a means to learn about the world, granting sentient animals the capacity to model, predict, and simulate. Mitchell reveals how these faculties reached their peak in humans with our abilities to imagine and to be introspective, to reason in the moment, and to shape our possible futures through the exercise of our individual agency. Mitchell’s argument has important implications—for how we understand decision making, for how our individual agency can be enhanced or infringed, for how we think about collective agency in the face of global crises, and for how we consider the limitations and future of artificial intelligence.
An astonishing journey of discovery, Free Agents offers a new framework for understanding how, across a billion years of Earth history, life evolved the power to choose and why this matters.
©2023 Kevin J. Mitchell (P)2023 Princeton University PressLos oyentes también disfrutaron...
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Reseñas de la Crítica
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- De: Marty Cagan
- Narrado por: Marty Cagan
- Duración: 7 h y 45 m
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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
- De Srikanth Ramanujam en 11-15-18
De: Marty Cagan
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My Big TOE: Discovery
- Book Two of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics
- De: Thomas Campbell
- Narrado por: Thomas Campbell
- Duración: 15 h y 25 m
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Section 3 develops the interface and interaction between we the people and our digital consciousness reality. It derives and explains the characteristics, origins, dynamics, and function of ego, love, and free will. It derives our larger purpose. Finally, Section 3 develops the psi uncertainty principle as it explains and interrelates psi phenomena, free will, love, consciousness evolution, reality, human purpose, entropy and physics.
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A guidebook to a bigger reality & realization
- De Diana en 11-27-13
De: Thomas Campbell
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Letters from an Astrophysicist
- De: Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrado por: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Vikas Adam, Piper Goodeve, y otros
- Duración: 5 h y 35 m
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Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world’s largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by unveiling his candid correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 100 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto.
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Dear Neil...
- De Tina G. en 10-14-19
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Welcome to the Universe
- An Astrophysical Tour
- De: Michael A. Strauss, J. Richard Gott, Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrado por: Michael Butler Murray
- Duración: 17 h y 53 m
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Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.
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All About What We Know About the Universe - ALL
- De J.B. en 02-17-17
De: Michael A. Strauss, y otros
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- De: Thomas S. Kuhn
- Narrado por: Dennis Holland
- Duración: 10 h y 14 m
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A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were - and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book.
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The problem is not with the book
- De Marcus en 08-09-09
De: Thomas S. Kuhn
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The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality
- De: Don Lincoln, The Great Courses
- Narrado por: Don Lincoln
- Duración: 12 h y 21 m
- Grabación Original
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At the end of his career, Albert Einstein was pursuing a dream far more ambitious than the theory of relativity. He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality - a theory of everything. Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln takes you on this exciting journey in The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality. Suitable for the intellectually curious at all levels and assuming no background beyond basic high-school math, these 24 half-hour lectures cover recent developments at the forefront of particle physics and cosmology.
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Audible’s Best Science Offering, A Gem
- De MikeB en 12-08-18
De: Don Lincoln, y otros
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The Self-Assembling Brain
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How does a neural network become a brain? While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in AI strive to achieve this through technology. The Self-Assembling Brain tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: What information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network? As Peter Robin Hiesinger argues, "the information problem" underlies both fields.
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The Experience Machine
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For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?
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About halfway through, it became propaganda
- De Jesse Helton en 08-13-23
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The Deep History of Ourselves
- The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
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Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms.
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Oversold
- De Michael en 03-04-20
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The Primacy of Doubt
- From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World
- De: Tim Palmer
- Narrado por: Tim Palmer
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Why does your weather app say “there’s a 10 percent chance of rain” instead of “it will be sunny”? In large part, this is due to the insight of award-winning physicist Tim Palmer, who pioneered the introduction of uncertainty into weather and climate prediction. Now, he wants to apply it to how we study everything else.
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Applied chaos theory; beware of quantum quackery
- De James S. en 03-10-23
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Innate
- How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are
- De: Kevin J. Mitchell
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What makes you the way you are - and what makes each of us different from everyone else? In Innate, leading neuroscientist and popular science blogger Kevin Mitchell traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains.
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Excellent overview.
- De John M. Hilliard en 01-25-19
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Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- De: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrado por: Kaleo Griffith
- Duración: 13 h y 42 m
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Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
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Abridged - no Appendix!
- De Amazon Customer en 11-02-23
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The Self-Assembling Brain
- How Neural Networks Grow Smarter
- De: Peter Robin Hiesinger
- Narrado por: Joel Richards
- Duración: 12 h y 22 m
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How does a neural network become a brain? While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in AI strive to achieve this through technology. The Self-Assembling Brain tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: What information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network? As Peter Robin Hiesinger argues, "the information problem" underlies both fields.
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Not sure what to think
- De Andrew T. Doren en 01-05-25
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The Experience Machine
- How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
- De: Andy Clark
- Narrado por: Andy Clark
- Duración: 8 h y 36 m
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For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?
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About halfway through, it became propaganda
- De Jesse Helton en 08-13-23
De: Andy Clark
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The Deep History of Ourselves
- The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
- De: Joseph LeDoux
- Narrado por: Fred Sanders
- Duración: 11 h y 9 m
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Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms.
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Oversold
- De Michael en 03-04-20
De: Joseph LeDoux
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The Primacy of Doubt
- From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World
- De: Tim Palmer
- Narrado por: Tim Palmer
- Duración: 9 h y 41 m
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Why does your weather app say “there’s a 10 percent chance of rain” instead of “it will be sunny”? In large part, this is due to the insight of award-winning physicist Tim Palmer, who pioneered the introduction of uncertainty into weather and climate prediction. Now, he wants to apply it to how we study everything else.
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Applied chaos theory; beware of quantum quackery
- De James S. en 03-10-23
De: Tim Palmer
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Innate
- How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are
- De: Kevin J. Mitchell
- Narrado por: Michael Page
- Duración: 10 h y 7 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
What makes you the way you are - and what makes each of us different from everyone else? In Innate, leading neuroscientist and popular science blogger Kevin Mitchell traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains.
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Excellent overview.
- De John M. Hilliard en 01-25-19
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Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- De: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrado por: Kaleo Griffith
- Duración: 13 h y 42 m
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Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
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Abridged - no Appendix!
- De Amazon Customer en 11-02-23
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The Four Realms of Existence
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- De: Joseph LeDoux
- Narrado por: Graham Rowat
- Duración: 10 h y 10 m
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Humans have long thought of their bodies and minds as separate spheres of existence. The body is physical. But the mind is mental; it perceives, remembers, believes, feels, and imagines. Although modern science has largely eliminated this mind-body dualism, people still tend to imagine their minds as separate from their physical being. Even in research, the notion of the "self" as somehow distinct from the rest of the organism persists. Joseph LeDoux argues that we have hit an epistemological wall—that ideas like the self are increasingly barriers to discovery and understanding.
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A Reasonable Theory of The Self bogged down in Source Material
- De Tom en 12-22-24
De: Joseph LeDoux
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The Consciousness Instinct
- Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind
- De: Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Narrado por: David Colacci
- Duración: 9 h y 34 m
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How do neurons turn into minds? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.
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Not recommended
- De PMonaco en 01-19-19
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Consciousness, 2nd Edition
- A Very Short Introduction
- De: Susan Blackmore
- Narrado por: Zehra Jane Naqvi
- Duración: 4 h y 35 m
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Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, while also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings.
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Biased in its conclusions, judgemental of conflicting opinions while still having a lot of science in there
- De Robert B Hayes en 10-30-24
De: Susan Blackmore
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The Case Against Reality
- Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
- De: Donald Hoffman
- Narrado por: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Duración: 8 h y 43 m
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Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.
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Don't buy - visual examples missing, no pdf
- De Richard Pickett en 08-26-19
De: Donald Hoffman
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The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved
- How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry
- De: Mario Livio
- Narrado por: Tom Parks
- Duración: 11 h y 45 m
- Versión completa
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For thousands of years mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations, until they encountered the quintic equation, which resisted solution for three centuries. Working independently, two prodigies ultimately proved that the quintic cannot be solved by a simple formula. The first popular account of the mathematics of symmetry and order, The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved is told not through abstract formulas but in a beautifully written and dramatic account of the lives and work of some of the greatest and most intriguing mathematicians in history.
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Historical Perspective Appreciated
- De Michael Hanrahan en 01-22-20
De: Mario Livio
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Sentience
- The Invention of Consciousness
- De: Nicholas Humphrey
- Narrado por: Michael Langan
- Duración: 7 h y 3 m
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We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in Sentience his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind.
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Audible, please re-record this!
- De H en 03-13-24
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A Brief History of Intelligence
- Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains
- De: Max S. Bennett
- Narrado por: George Newbern
- Duración: 12 h y 17 m
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Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.
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Flawed fundamental assumptions, good function rvw
- De Duane Leet en 06-01-24
De: Max S. Bennett
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Free Will
- De: Sam Harris
- Narrado por: Sam Harris
- Duración: 1 h y 14 m
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A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.
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Wrong Question
- De Jennifer en 11-15-14
De: Sam Harris
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Why? The Purpose of the Universe
- De: Philip Goff
- Narrado por: Philip Goff
- Duración: 8 h y 32 m
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Why are we here? What's the point of existence? On the "big questions" of meaning and purpose, Western thought has been dominated by the dichotomy of traditional religion and secular atheism. In this pioneering work, Philip Goff argues that it is time to move on from both God and atheism. Through an exploration of contemporary cosmology and cutting-edge philosophical research on consciousness, Goff argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life.
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Great beginning and middle. Disappointing conclusion.
- De rocky500 en 10-01-24
De: Philip Goff
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Life as No One Knows It
- The Physics of Life's Emergence
- De: Sara Imari Walker
- Narrado por: Sara Imari Walker
- Duración: 7 h y 20 m
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What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is.
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very interesting
- De Sequoia Spencer en 08-09-24
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The Invention of Prehistory
- Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins
- De: Stefanos Geroulanos
- Narrado por: Elizabeth Wiley
- Duración: 14 h y 46 m
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Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.
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Too much judgement
- De Historic Philosopher en 04-23-24
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The Weirdness of the World
- De: Eric Schwitzgebel
- Narrado por: Will Collyer
- Duración: 10 h y 24 m
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Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it’s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth—whatever it is—is weird.
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I'm laughing a bit at the negative reviews
- De Douglas en 08-06-24
Lo que los oyentes dicen sobre Free Agents
Con calificación alta para:
Reseñas - Selecciona las pestañas a continuación para cambiar el origen de las reseñas.
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- Dean Lyon
- 03-26-24
Makes sense
I really enjoyed this book and very glad it was written. I recently read Determined, a book arguing that we have no free will. This book provides an eloquent and substantive counterpoint, and rings much more true, in my opinion. I really like how grounded in evolution it is, as nothing in biology makes sense without it. I am interested in reading everything this author has written as his thinking and writing is clear and his thoughts deep.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-07-24
I chose to listen to this breath of fresh air
Very thoughtful defense of free will. As a software engineer, I look forward to using the book as a bluepint for Skynet.
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- Donna
- 08-19-24
Excellent non religious explication
A thorough exploration from chemistry, to cells to organisms. The accounting for indeterminacy, causation, memory, and choice is very helpful.
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- Jacob S.
- 04-10-24
The best treatment of Free Will available today.
This book is an evolution of the long-held discussion of Free Will and Determinism. Firstly, as someone who enjoys science, this was a joy to read. "The story of Free Will is the story of Life" states the author, and beautifully moves through the related history of both.
If you've read Sapolsky or Dennet or Harris on free will, this will be an excellent rebuttal. If you've had a sense that they were missing something key about the nature of free will, this is a fleshed-out answer to their ignorance.
Dr. Mitchell puts muscle and bone to a framework that successfully synapses a hopeful response to a seemingly mechanistic universe. He does so with scientific rigor that is also free of unnecessary superstition or mysticism. This book is a triumph of thought and scholarship.
I'm grateful to have found this read, and for the author's courage and talent in bringing it to being. You will be too.
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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas
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- Istvan
- 05-11-24
Best argument against the free will.
I listened to this book to find the best arguments for having free will. I started out convinced that we do not have it and that because of that fact you should show compassion to everyone because their actions can not be helped. After the book I am even more convinced of this. Although the author will strongly disagree with me. I find his structured layout of evolution, is a very good reason to not fault anyone for their "choices" because it all depends on previous experience.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-13-24
Unconvincing, but worthwhile
The first few chapters of this book are quite weak. The author analyzes early life forms, which is not really necessary to his main thesis, and then jumps into quantum mechanics to claim the universe is not fully determined. Even if true, quantum events are limited to the microscale, so they have little to do with macroscopic creatures like us deciding anything.
From there, the author goes to noise in the brain (which, again, has no apparent connection to quantum mechanics and is therefore fully determined) to describe how the brain makes decisions. That is the very strong part of the book. It is also clearly the author's specialty and I wish he would have stuck closer to it.
The main idea comes down to William James' notion of "two stage" free will. That can be summarized as, "thoughts come to us freely, decisions flow from us willfully." In other words, the "freedom" in free will lies in the choices that appear to us (which is based on our life histories as well as noisy events in the brain), while decisions stem from a "competition" between neurons that depends on our goals and expected values. I found this thesis very convincing, even if it does not refute determinism in any way.
Overall, I recommend the book for the central idea, which is genuinely insightful, even if surrounded by unconvincing material.
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- Brad Caldwell
- 10-10-23
Adding Clarity to Agency
Agency is one of those topics that has proved nebulous and therefore prone to unrealistic simplifications like Cartesian Dualism (the self is a ghost steering neural activity separate from the brain) or reduction (you have no agency).
After listening to his audiobook, my takeaway is this: life is the structuring of an organism to take actions that preserve it. And for more complex life, we are structured to have a whole hierarchy of modifiable goals to drive behavior.
Decisions often take time, as we contemplate scenarios, payoff, and risks.
Planets have no agency - they succumb to the laws of physics. Life has agency because it has built into itself the use of the laws of physics to obey goals that it sets in place, and which can be refined by the experience within a lifetime.
I like his double reference to agency being like a helix or slinky through time - the agent's actions updating the environment which updates the agent's next move, etc. I like this because my own idea is that the perceptual spacetime in which stimuli are depicted to the 'self' network is drawn or referenced by a 'helix' tracing (for traveling/staggered unified brain activity; or 'frames' for standing waves of unified brain activity).
There are a ton of excellent ideas in this book, including the idea that primary cortices may serve two functions simultaneously (one, process the incoming stimuli; two, hold onto current context of consciousness and link it to incoming stimuli as needed/desired).
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- quinet
- 01-08-24
Best book out there on many topics
Terrific detailed and well-supported explanation of how living creatures evolve agency - and much more
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- Seth K
- 04-10-24
wants his cake
so his basic argument is dualism is absurd - free will must emerg from the physical systems we comprise. but a complex physical system can be more than the sum of its parts so we can be confident "we" exert free will from some kind of top down structural influence which he calls "meaning". what? no support or explanation for what that mechanism is.
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- Tom
- 07-19-24
A strong case is made.
I particularly liked his refutations of the arguments against Free Will in the choices Humans make. The cases of those who would reduce us to Robots enslaved to a life of biologically or genetically pre-determined actions are effectively dismantled in the later chapters.
While he does occasionally drag us into the weeds of Evolution, for the most part Mitchell has created arguments that can be easily followed by the Layman. Four Stars. ****
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