Reviews and Comments

First chapter was alright, the second two were meh, the 4th even felt a little trite. Smith is not an incompetent writer, but there were times where I was frustrated with the scattered subject matter interspersed with extremely technical descriptions of statistical models. In theory I don't hate this format when it comes to the juxtaposition of history and mathematics/computer science, I just felt like the whole needed a bit more polishing especially for keeping a strong throughline.

Where the book truly picked up my interest again is when Smith dove back into history in chapter 5 to demonstrate how statistics and eugenics are intertwined, and how they are both present in the earliest iterations of big data modelling, with principles that are still in play today. While I am still not loving this book, I am glad I read this chapter.

Not even past the preface and the first paragraph describes Elon Musk (alongside Stephen Hawking and Henry Kissinger?!?!?!) as one of the "greatest minds of our times" and I may not be able to take this book seriously.

Don't mind me I'm currently running through the Philosophy Tube Transhumanism episode bibliography and adding pretty much everything I haven't read to my TBR.

Don't mind me I'm currently running through the Philosophy Tube Transhumanism episode bibliography and adding pretty much everything I haven't read to my TBR.

Don't mind me I'm currently running through the Philosophy Tube Transhumanism episode bibliography and adding pretty much everything I haven't read to my TBR.

Don't mind me I'm currently running through the Philosophy Tube Transhumanism episode bibliography and adding pretty much everything I haven't read to my TBR.

Don't mind me I'm currently running through the Philosophy Tube Transhumanism episode bibliography and adding pretty much everything I haven't read to my TBR.

This is actually a book I've been meaning to read for a while, since I took a feminist epistemology course in undergrad (checks time piece err, a few centuries ago now). It popped up in a recent Philosophy Tube video and the name of the author, Carole Pateman, reminded me of reading excerpts of her a million years ago. She's a second-wave feminist, so there is a lot to criticise too (I mean, let's not kid ourselves, Pateman hates sex workers, trans people, and a lot of queers), but I also think the book is an important puzzle piece in the philosophical discussion around what we owe each other as humans and deconstructing big time the ideas behind the Enlightenment-era social contract theory that, among other things, our legal system is arguably built on.

I've been thinking so much about the ethics of true crime (not necessarily as a positive force for society, is the chief thought there) as a genre lately that it occurred to me that I still haven't read any of Truman Capote's work. This is an attempt to fix that.

I am now on page 75 of this book, and as I leaf through the pages and see my progress since April I am noticing so many scribbles in the margin. I'm very far from being a legal scholar myself but this book is very interesting and well-written. I need to get back to it!

I am now on page 75 of this book, and as I leaf through the pages and see my progress since April I am noticing so many scribbles in the margin. I'm very far from being a legal scholar myself but this book is very interesting and well-written. I need to get back to it!