Philosophy

Apr172020 by Free eBookNo Comments

Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky

Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky eBook Download Why do we do the things we do? More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy. And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's...

Apr152020 by Free eBookNo Comments

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder eBook Download

History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Writing

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder eBook Download #1 Washington Post Bestseller A New York Times Bestseller The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience

Apr152020 by Free eBookNo Comments

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Writing

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder eBook Download A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism. On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power. Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours ...

Apr12020 by Free eBookNo Comments

The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far by Lawrence M. Krauss

Audiobook, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science, Space

The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far by Lawrence M. Krauss eBook Download Internationally renowned, award-winning theoretical physicist, New York Times bestselling author of A Universe from Nothing, and passionate advocate for reason, Lawrence Krauss tells the dramatic story of the discovery of the hidden world of reality—a grand poetic vision of nature—and how we find our place within it. In the beginning there was light. But more than this, there was gravity. After that, all hell broke loose… In A Universe from Nothing, Krauss revealed how our entire universe could arise from nothing. Now, he reveals what that something—reality—is. And, reality is not what we think or sense—it’s weird, wild, and counterintuitive; it’s hidden beneath everyday experience; and its inner workin...

Mar272020 by Free eBookNo Comments

Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright

Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Science, Spirituality

Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright eBook Download From one of America’s greatest minds, a journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. Robert Wright famously explained in The Moral Animal how evolution shaped the human brain. The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain. But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are only discovering now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly—and proposes that seeing th...

Mar252020 by Free eBookNo Comments

The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols

Education, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Science, Sociology

The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols eBook Download The rise of the internet and other technology has made information more easily-accessible than ever before. While this has had the positive effect of equalizing access to knowledge, it also has lowered the bar on what depth of knowledge is required to consider oneself an "expert." A cult of anti-expertise sentiment has coincided with anti-intellectualism, resulting in massively viral yet poorly informed debates ranging from the anti-vaccination movement to attacks on GMOs. This surge in intellectual egalitarianism has altered the landscape of debates-all voices are equal, and "fact" is a subjective term. Browsing WebMD puts one on equal footing with doctors, and Wikipedia allows all to be foreign policy experts, scientists, and more...

Mar252020 by Free eBookNo Comments

Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman

Economics, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology

Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman eBook Download Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way-and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. His April 2017 talk continues to make the provocative case, detailing the idea's 500-year history and even its brief success in a forgotten trial in Manitoba in the 1970s. Nearly a million views later, guaranteed basic income is being seriously considered by leading econom...

Mar202020 by adminNo Comments

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

Business, Economics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber eBook Download From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are millions of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt ...

Mar132020 by adminNo Comments

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

Health, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Science

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan eBook Download Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? One of America's most admired writers takes us on a mind-altering journey to the frontiers of human consciousness When LSD was first discovered in the 1940s, it seemed to researchers, scientists and doctors as if the world might be on the cusp of psychological revolution. It promised to shed light on the deep mysteries of consciousness, as well as offer relief to addicts and the mentally ill. But in the 1960s, with the vicious backlash against the counter-culture, all further research was banned. In recent years, however, work has quietly begun again on the amazing potential of LSD, psilocybin and DMT. Could these drugs in fact improve the lives of many people? Diving deep into th...

Mar82020 by Free eBookNo Comments

Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark

Artificial Intelligence, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science, Technology

Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark eBook Download How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology--and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial. How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today's kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, ...