Henrik Carlsson's Blog

All things me.

posted this read on and tagged it with A.I. Attention Life 3.0 Reading
Read Life 3.0

I did finish reading Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 earlier this week and as I wrote the other day I don’t know if it was a great book or a quite tedious one. Probably both. The questions Tegmark discusses are really important ones for the future, and he does it in a well informed way. The problem is that it just goes on. I think you could get the same points across just as well in half the amount of words.

It is possible that it’s a problem with my attention span. A few weeks back I rewatched CGP Greys video ”Thinking about attention” and just as the first time I watched it, it did made me think about my attention a bit more. I think it’s quite possible that rewatching this was what got me to listen to an audiobook (The Drawing of the Three) when mowing the lawn last week instead of listening to a podcast, and this was certainly what made me keep listening to books. So maybe I’m out of practice. The argument agains this is that I very much enjoyed Norse Mythology even though that one has felt like a slog when I was out of practice. So if that one didn’t make me lose interest, maybe the problem is Life 3.0 and not me.

Though ”losing interest” isn’t the right way to put it. I was interested in Life 3.0 all the way through.

I think this is a long way of saying that this is a book that most people probably should read or listen to, because it’s a really important one, but it’s likely not to be the greatest book you’ve ever read.

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Also I’m currently reading Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 and I can’t for the life of me decide if I really like it or if it’s really tedious. Perhaps both. The first few chapters where great but as it goes on it really goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Moreover1 it discusses a lot of similar topics, and based on similar sources, as Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s interesting to nod along to things I already knew from Kurzgesagt, while it’s also tedious to be told things I already know from Kurzgesagt.

As you can tell, I’m really mixed on this book so far. Currently I have a little over two hours left on it.


  1. Life 3.0 should be subtitled ”Moreover, the Book”, alternatively it should be accompanied by a drinking game in which you take a shot for every ”moreover” in the book. You’ll be braindead within a chapter. 

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