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#newbooksnetwork — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #newbooksnetwork, aggregated by home.social.

  1. @ColinTheMathmo Re: (in)numeracy and leaders:

    Language Vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists

    N. J. Enfield, Mar 23, 2022, MIT PRESS 2022

    Nick Enfield’s book, Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists (MIT Press, 2022), argues that language is primarily for social coordination, not precisely transferring thoughts from one person to another. Drawing on empirical research, Enfield shows that human lexicons the world over are far more coarse-grained than our perceptual faculties. Yet, at the same time, languages vary in the structure and sophistication of their representations. This means that, for instance, how different languages carve up the world influences not only how their speakers talk about the world, but also how they think about it. The book explores a range of linguistic phenomena, from lexical diversity to linguistic framing to the effects of narrative. As a result of understanding how language shapes our understanding of reality, Enfield argues that we can make more informed—and more ethical—decisions about our own language use, as individuals and communities.*

    On the New Books Network: newbooksnetwork.com/language-v

    Audio: traffic.megaphone.fm/NBN279856 (MP3)

    Enfield's key point is that language is useful for social coordination. Numbers ... for quantification.

    Also: A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

    (In numerous variations, more likely Beilby Porteus circa 1759 than Joseph Stalin. See: quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/.)

    Referring to your sadly languishing HN submission here: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4

    #Numeracy #Innumeracy #HackerNews #NewBooksNetwork #NickJEnfield #Language

  2. Woohoo it's #SocialistSaturday! Why not start your weekend with six hours of conversation (so far) covering 1800 pages (so far) of research about the emergence of #Trotskyism in the #USA? Tons of fun for committed revolutionaries everywhere! Except Stalinists. I mean, y'might wanna hide those icepicks, eh? ;-) #NewBooksNetwork #History #AmericanHistory #Histodon #Socialism #Communism #Politics #USPol

    newbooksnetwork.com/james-p-ca

  3. Crossing the Pod Streams is always entertaining.

    This time I'm listening to #YanisVaroufakis heaping high prais on @pluralistic for his books, blogs, and podcasts, on the #NewBooksNetwork:

    newbooksnetwork.com/technofeud

    (Doctorow of course has been turning up all over the place as he book tours, as well as on his own #Craphound podcast, of which I too am a fan.)

  4. Peter Baldwin, Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for Al (2023)

    [A]n up-to-date look at the ideals and history behind OA, and unpacks the controversies that arise when the dream of limitless information slams into entrenched interests in favor of the status quo. In addition to providing a clear analysis of the debates, Baldwin focuses on thorny issues such as copyright and ways to pay for “free” knowledge. He also provides a roadmap that would make OA economically viable and, as a result, advance one of humanity’s age-old ambitions. Baldwin addresses the arguments in terms of disseminating scientific research, the history of intellectual property and copyright, and the development of the university and research establishment.

    newbooksnetwork.com/athena-unb

    Audio: traffic.megaphone.fm/NSR203354 (MP3)

    NBN delivers yet again. The interview gets into the scam and misaligned incentives in academic publishing. Big shouts out to #SciHub, #ZLibrary, and #LibraryGenesis.

    Edit: Markdown

    #NewBooksNetwork #Podcasts #PeterBaldwin #OpenAccess #AcademicPublishing #Academia #copyright #Interviews

  5. It's not often that I get to point out Internet Monopolies being sharecroppers.

    The real dish here is that Reddit was one of the few domains in which the ad-fed #enshittification and #SidamTouch (ad-centric media turns everything to shit, reverse of Midas) wasn't ... overly dominant.

    And now courtesy of mismanagement by #spez, #Reddit, #AdvanceMedia, and the Reddit board, #GeneralWebSearch which as been in a death spiral for years is suddenly getting far, far worse.

    I've commented multiple times that I rely far more on traditional media (mostly books and magazine articles) these days than the Web. Sites/services such as #SciHub, #LibraryGenesis, and #ZLibrary have been absolutely vital for this, and despite much of the online world getting markedly worse, these are bright spots.

    (Internet Archive, Wikipedia / Wikimedia, Project Gutenberg, and a handful of other sites/services are among the other bright spots which happen to operate inside the law, though the fact that useful sites have to violate law says a hell of a lot about how corrupt and societally-failing the law is these days.)

    My #ResearchMethods for #ContentDiscovery now are based strongly on library research techniques I'd learned in the 1980s: research topics of interest, find major works and the authors of those works, read those, and if the same names or works keep turning up then find and read those. I'll also make heavy use of podcasts, especially those reviewing books and/or interviewing authors (particularly on academic topics), most notably the #NewBooksNetwork.

    This may not lead you to truth, but it will virtually always point you to the foundations of present understanding and orthodoxy.

    Truly principled authors will note conflicting / contradictory viewpoints --- #PatrickOphuls is excellent in this regard. Even unprincipled authors will often point out key voices in opposition to them, though usually by trash-talking and belittling them. (I'd found a wonderful example of this in a Reason review on Conway & Oreskes latest book The Big Myth.)

  6. Much mass incarceration happens with appeals to the values that everyone shares. Injustice can happen under the mask of values.

    -- Jason Stanley, on the New Books Network, discussing How Propaganda Works

    #JasonStanley #NewBooksNetwork #Values #Injustice #PenalReform #MassIncarceration #PrisonState #RacialJustice