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Novacene
- The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins
- Categories: Computers & Technology, Computer Science
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In this classic work that continues to inspire its many fans, James Lovelock deftly explains his idea that life on Earth functions as a single organism. Written for the non-scientist, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence with which to support a new and radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that living matter is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the Earth's living matter - air, ocean, and land surfaces - forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life.
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Creating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world's pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last. In this groundbreaking book on the biggest question facing humanity, Stuart Russell explains why he has come to consider his own discipline an existential threat to his own species, and lays out how we can change course before it's too late. There is no one better placed to assess the promise and perils of the dominant technology of the future than Russell, who has spent decades at the forefront of AI research.
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not what was expected
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Outstandingly practical usful way of thinking.
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Creating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world's pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last. In this groundbreaking book on the biggest question facing humanity, Stuart Russell explains why he has come to consider his own discipline an existential threat to his own species, and lays out how we can change course before it's too late. There is no one better placed to assess the promise and perils of the dominant technology of the future than Russell, who has spent decades at the forefront of AI research.
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not what was expected
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It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.
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Excellent content, essential read, poor narration.
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One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
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From earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energise them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking.
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pdf are very poor
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Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space and it thrives amidst nuclear radiation. In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems.
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If you just read one book this year make it this.
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Great book.
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- Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities)
- By: Timothy Morton
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- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls "hyperobjects" - entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place. In this book, Morton explains what hyperobjects are and their impact on how we think, how we coexist with one another and with nonhumans, and how we experience our politics, ethics, and art.
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Read by a computer
- By Anonymous User on 22-06-19
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Life 3.0
- By: Max Tegmark
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Penguin Audio presents Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark, read by Rob Shapiro. We stand at the beginning of a new era. What was once science fiction is fast becoming reality, as AI transforms war, crime, justice, jobs and society - and even our very sense of what it means to be human. More than any other technology, AI has the potential to revolutionise our collective future - and there's nobody better situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and cofounder of the Future of Life Institute, whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
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Entertaining and thought provoking.
- By Heisenberg on 09-04-18
Summary
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Novacene, by James Lovelock, read by Roy McMillan.
James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun.
New beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do, and they will regard us as we now regard plants - as desperately slow acting and thinking creatures. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by sci-fi writers and film-makers. These hyper-intelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project.
It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Maybe, he speculates, the novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age of 100, James Lovelock has produced the most important and compelling work of his life.
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What listeners say about Novacene
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- roger radford
- 18-08-19
Optimistic but still frightening
The great James Lovelock is optimistic that when AI takes over the world they'll work with us and not crush us underfoot as we crush ants. Still, it looks like a risk. More disturbing is his belief that we are alone among the 64 quadtrillion stars of the known universe (or something like that). The odds are pretty high that either we bugger everything up or get pulverised by some massive meteor. James is of such great age that some people might call him a dinosaur. But not me. Novacene is a short but highly thought-provoking vision of the future.
3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 31-07-19
Wish I can write such a book at the age of 99!
Some of his ideas are brilliant, the others crazy. But there is never a dull moment. Highly recommended.
2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 29-10-20
A wondrous whirlwind tour through Lovelock's mind
James Lovelock writes beautifully and in a way that is accessible to everyone. He tells a story as if it were science fiction, but then backs it up with scientific truths. I wish I'd had the chance to work with him.
1 person found this helpful
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- peteropcon
- 02-08-19
Mind Provoking
What an incredible proposition from an amazing human being. James Lovelock continues to contribute to civilisation as he has done throughout his life
A giant among men. What will he write next?
1 person found this helpful
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- David
- 13-07-19
fantastic, thought provoking listen!
a must listen for anyone concerned with our planets ecology -and mire importantly, those who aren't!
1 person found this helpful
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- GingerGeneral
- 08-01-21
profound
Best book on the future Ive read. I hold the same view, that Hyper Intelligence is just part of evolution.
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- anujafeem
- 12-04-20
Weak arguments and no depth in the book
This is a short book to begin with and it repeats itself a thousand times. The arguments made are on the surface with very weak backing. This should have been more off an op-ed article. Life 3.0 is much better at going into depths of future life.
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- Stew Dean
- 27-01-20
Interesting life, not so interesting opinions.
The often vague view of Lovelock overshadow what was, undoubtably, a magnificent life of work. He embodied the mind set of an engineer where the drive to practical solutions often cast important concepts to one side. His predictions are not new and, in someways, already historical. This book could treat the central theme with more respect and instead bypasses it in many cases for what are interesting but irrelevant anecdotes.
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- aas
- 21-07-19
Beautifully Flawed
Flawed
It is always hard to predict the future and more so when any author tries to speculate on how the human race would fair if a hyper-intelligent AI came into being.
Perhaps writing at 95, Lovelock wanted to sign off with a note of optimism but like most futurologists he bypasses the catastrophic and rapid outcomes of uncontrolled population growth coupled with increasing global consumption and the probable political fallout of job losses to present AI controlled by tiny elites. It is hard to see how any “independent” AI will have time to evolve against this backdrop let alone dwell in his utopian vision of their symbiosis with man to help solve eco problems. His idea that machines will also need a healthy biosphere seems wholly implausible.
That said, it a fun listen and the clarity makes us all wish we have his cognition if we get to 95 !
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- Mr Ben Bland
- 18-07-19
An important but brief message for our times
We may be entering a new phase in our planet's and our species' existence, and Lovelock convincingly emphasises how and why this is so. However, I didn't realise it was such a short read and I would have liked much more detail to the arguments and projections. Seems hard to criticise of someone who has achieved so much, and wrote this latest book aged 99. A credit to him, as we all should be thinking about how to raise our new superintelligent electronic offspring and protect what remains of our natural home, and this book frames that need well.