A friend recently extolled the virtues of this collection of essays, saying that while he did not agree with each individual one, they were thought provoking, and seemed to align with his opinion that facts should not be subject to politics. But just reading the blurbs and such, I’m getting the feeling that this book is very conservative, or intended with a conservative agenda in mind, which surprised me about this specific person.
Before I end up reading it, does anyone know much about it?
Have not read it, but the Amazon page says this:
“Named Best Book of the Year in the UK by The Future Cities Project”
So, I looked up The Future Cities Project. It looks to be primarily the work of one guy, an architect who is a climate-change skeptic and DEI critic, who decries “sustainability” being forced into building design, at the expense of imagination.
So, yeah, very likely a conservative agenda behind it.
Krauss is a credibly accused sex abuser, who’s jumped into the right wing pipeline. He’s an Epstein associate. Try the book The Republican War on Science. It may be old enough to vote, but it’s connected to our reality.
In reading through Krauss’s Wikipedia article (which has lots of details on his lengthy friendship with Epstein, and the sexual assault allegations), it notes that the book in the OP (which Krauss edited, as well as writing the introduction and epilogue) is published by a conservative Christian book imprint; given that Krauss styles himself as an “anti-theist,” it does seem like a bit of strange bedfellows.
Also, I recognize him from the picture on the Wikipedia page; he was one of the scientists who regularly appeared on How the Universe Works, one of my favorite series on The Science Channel.
I saw him give a really fun talk in 2017 on his tour to promote his book "The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far: Why Are We Here? "about science and relativity - the audience was enrapt. Then, the next year, he turned out to be a disappointing creep.
I tried looking him up, but he doesn’t even have a Wiki page. I’m going to start a new thread and see if others have some information on this.
The Future Cities guy? He seems to be maybe a small-time crank architect with a web site, maybe.
Ad Hominem fallacy. Do any of those bad things have anything to do with his skills as a science writer?
and there is this-
I read his book The Physics of Star Trek, and found it interesting and well thought out. He’s a legitimate scientist as opposed to an internet personality. Although the sexual misconduct allegations are deflating to hear, I’d be willing to give this book a shot.
That’s my question, which I don’t want to hijack this thread with. See The Future Cities Project - mantownhuman for the full version.
If his association with Epstien doesn’t stop you from reading anything by him, how about this description of his book, quoted from Wikipedia:
“In 2024, Krauss edited the book The War on Science, a collection of essays from 39 academics addressing perceived threats to academic freedom and scientific progress, such as DEI programs, wokeness, and cancel culture. Contributors include Nicholas Christakis, Richard Dawkins, Peter Boghossian, Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, Alan Sokal and Elizabeth Weiss. Krauss wrote an introductory overview and an epilogue. This is his third book published through the conservative Christian imprint Post Hill Press.”
I, for one, am fed up with people who have giant public platforms complaining about cancel culture. My liver can’t take that much irony. Krauss had been very public about his atheism. Dawkins wrote The God Delusion. Suddenly they have no problem being published by a conservative Christian publisher - not a sign of consistency on the part of Krauss and Dawkins.
If you want to spend your time on that book, at least borrow one from your library, rahter than spend your money on it also.
See, that is a legit criticism.
And is, of course, the book that the OP asked about in the first post. 
More than “public”, he’s a crusading atheist like Dawkins. He’s a legitimate scientist but his anti-religion crusades have long pissed me off even though I’m basically on the same side. I’m at best an agnostic, though many would call me atheist, but I don’t go around telling religious people how stupid they are and trying to convince them to recant their beliefs.
As a physicist, Krauss has tried to make a big deal of the fact that matter and energy can arise from nothing (essentially that’s what Hawking radiation is) and therefore so did the entire universe. Besides being inherently a fallacious argument, that still tells us nothing about the existence or non-existence of a Prime Mover.
The fact that Krauss turns out to also be a right-wing nutjob pisses me off even more. Makes perfect sense that a bigot like Jordan Peterson would be among the contributors to the book. I’m only mildly surprised to see Steven Pinker among them, too, as Pinker has been politically controversial and above all, enjoys taunting the lesser beings of this world with his intellectual contrarianism.
So? I was replying to this Ad Hominem attack-
So, there are good and bad reasons to reject a book. Either- Content, or Ad Hominem. I prefer content.
So…it’s only just the actual topic of the thread.
I wrote my disgust at this book last year (in a thread where I was highlighting Pinker’s continued hob-nobing with alt-right Racialist pod-casters) as it focused squarely at grifting money by portraying obsessed anti-wokism as in-line with scholarly academics. What a crock of shit as it is SOLELY the current facist right who are attacking academia through inflammatory, conspiracy laden, dismissive rhetoric; direct monetary funding cuts; and political based punitive legislative action.
This book only serves to cover this all out attack of academia, by obfuscating the American fascist right through anti-woke culture war articles by right-wing grifters.
@dasmoocher then shared an EXCELLENT video about the authors of this book that is worthy of sharing here on whole. It was a joy to watch from start to finish.
Just another example of “Oh, people found out I’m a terrible fuckwad; time to embrace the alt-right, they’ll take ANYBODY!”
Much easier than just not being a fuckwad, I guess.
I’m sure it’s very informative for those needing the info, but I wouldn’t call it a “joy”. It was so depressing that I couldn’t watch more than a few minutes of it.
BTW, in the still-image preview, is that Sabine Hossenfelder over on the right? Understandable. She’s had a chip on her shoulder ever since being frequently spurned by the academic community and seems to now be more and more engaged in contrarian podcasting instead of science.
I was already VASTLY disgusted and morally offended by the grifting claims of the authors. Using people’s ignorance to advance the fascist right’s all out assault on academia, while also engaging in the most debased rote anti-woke culture warring.
I would suggest you to not to allow any feeling of disgust to prevent yourself from watching and absorbing the information of the video. It is very important not to limit one’s own personal exposure to the earnest deconstruction of naked right-wing anti-woke propaganda.