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A review by lkedzie
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
2.0
At one point in the book, the author discusses the error bars of scientific journal articles, then goes on to muse why we do not have these things for news or political speech, something that could provide contemporaneous fact-checking.
Uh hun.
It can and will be said that the author is present. It would be hard for him not to be with some of the dead cat swings at parades of horribles he takes. Of course we skip the part on overpopulation and focus on the part on domestic manufacturing, even though it does not relate to his argument at large. (Arguably, the manufacturing sector in the U.S. is a success story under the author's terms, but producing more with a smaller, more educated workforce has consequences). He also makes some bad calls. The jabs against post-modernist takes on science feel otherworldly, and the way he treats sexual abuse is suggestive of him coming down on the wrong side for metoo. The book gets particularly wobbly at the end when the author starts including selections from letters that he has received on articles he has written in popular magazines. Outside of being an analog website comment section, many of these are so divorced from context or editorializing that I do not comprehend the author's point in reiterating them.
Some reviews talk about the dated nature of the material in its focus on UFOs and aliens, to which I give another 'uh hun,' at popular discussion in '24-25 about same.
This book is not what we did not do. It is what we did do, and was summarily rejected. We now live with the consequence of the error.
Uh hun.
It can and will be said that the author is present. It would be hard for him not to be with some of the dead cat swings at parades of horribles he takes. Of course we skip the part on overpopulation and focus on the part on domestic manufacturing, even though it does not relate to his argument at large. (Arguably, the manufacturing sector in the U.S. is a success story under the author's terms, but producing more with a smaller, more educated workforce has consequences). He also makes some bad calls. The jabs against post-modernist takes on science feel otherworldly, and the way he treats sexual abuse is suggestive of him coming down on the wrong side for metoo. The book gets particularly wobbly at the end when the author starts including selections from letters that he has received on articles he has written in popular magazines. Outside of being an analog website comment section, many of these are so divorced from context or editorializing that I do not comprehend the author's point in reiterating them.
Some reviews talk about the dated nature of the material in its focus on UFOs and aliens, to which I give another 'uh hun,' at popular discussion in '24-25 about same.
This book is not what we did not do. It is what we did do, and was summarily rejected. We now live with the consequence of the error.