Dare
Fenomenalno branje za vsakogar, ki ga vsaj malo zanima znanost. Kot pravi naslov: pregled praktično vsega, kar vemo o naravi, skozi zgodovino in skozi sila zanimive like, ki so k vedenju prispevali.
At first I was going to hate it, because it seemed like another article expanded into a book. It was almost soon evident that the book isn't going to address any hard (political) problems with implementing universal basic income. And if you've read about UBI a bit like I have, you've heard about many of the stories in this book.
But soon I adopted a “why not?” attitude. The book is a quick and simple read and more of a call to revolution (in political thinking) than a real implementation plan. And, why not be satisfied with just that?
After all, it's not like the current system of increasing inequality was produced by a carefully thought out plan. UBI could be a good idea (author provides plenty of evidence) and that's good enough for us to start demanding it.
The book is an interesting read and provides a lot research on sleep (and dreaming), but I could not get rid of the feeling that the author is overstating his case - the a good night's sleep is a cure for basically everything.
I found the citation of literature a bit lacking - sometimes he provides a source for something as mundane as a website with car crash statistics, but he fails to provide it for some hard-to-believe research that shows that having a few drinks 2 full days after learning completely messes up recall 7 days (!) after learning.
His attempt to explain effects of alcoholism and delirium tremens through lack of dreams also seems very speculative.
What most bothered me is his insistence on the magical number of 8 hours of sleep. I totally get the point of needing to sleep enough, but why a round 8 (also exactly a third of the day)? Why not 7h 45 min, why not 8h 30min? How come it's not dependent on your body (sex, constitution), your psychological character, the type of work you do (intellectual vs physical), larks vs night-owls... The only difference that the author seems to acknowledge is age - teens need more sleep and their schedule is shifted compared to adults.
Anyway, I read this a few months ago, so I seem to only remember the annoying parts. Nevertheless, there's plenty of informative and inspiring stuff in this book, so do read it ;)
Zelo fajn poljudna zgodovina in sinteza informacijskih znanosti, ki v primeren kontekst postavlja trenutni information overload, ki nas vse tako skrbi. Edino “filozofski” zadnji del je malo anemičen.
I guess the book is meant for a lay audience so I didn't learn all that much. There was some cultural insight into China (helping me lose a few preconceptions), but not much new about AI. There's a lot of starry-eyed predictions of how AI and data will improve everything, but no details or original examples, just repeating the well-known ones. (Also, he's name-dropping companies a lot, which I can only assume are his investments).
Thankfully, the author is aware of the real issues (societal problems due to automation, not AGI and robot overlords). I kinda liked the summary of various predictions of jobs to be automated soon. His critique of universal basic income as just a patch that the Silicon Valley elite wants to use to keep the masses docile was the most original idea in the book for me. But again, when the author tries to give some ideas on solutions, they're vague (and naive?) ideas: a class of ethical investors should develop who are content with linear returns and government should somehow reward socially-beneficial activities.
The idea of big history is great (and the topics endlessly fascinating) but the execution is a bit less so. Reading is kind of dry and would be much better with at least some charts/images (and it is indeed based on the very visual https://www.bighistoryproject.com, meant for younger audiences I think). Topics are not covered in much depth, but that is not surprising for a book that tries to cover the history of the universe. What I hoped for was some kind of narrative that connects history at all scales - the author tries introducing some concepts like entropy tax but it doesn't really do it for me. The book ends with a environmentalist call for decisiveness in dealing with the world's limited resources. It's a good cause but the rest of the book doesn't really bring the reader to the inevitability of that conclusion.
Among somewhat similar books, I liked Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and Harari's Sapiens way better. You're probably better off reading these or seeing bighistoryproject.com.
I was left wondering if this book is genius or just overly generic stuff that all of us starry-eyed entrepreneurial types can agree on :) It's rather short, takes maybe 3-4 hours to read. It's quite radical for a VC guy and maybe a bit simplistic but I agree with the theses almost completely so I liked it a lot.
Caveat lector, it's an unfinished book and I tend to avoid those, but I've liked this guy's blog for quite a while (he's a partner at Union Square Ventures) so I gave it a shot. It's missing references and some chapters are obviously going to be expanded but it's completely readable.
Večina stvari je common sense, ampak nekateri primeri so še vedno dovolj zanimivi, da sem prebral do konca. Preveč razvlečeno. Shady statistika in še bolj čudni sklepi v poglavju Social proof. Raje kot knjigo priporočam branje kakega daljšega povzetka.
Managed through 5 out of 12 rules before I abandoned it. Mostly psychological mumbo jumbo, not even as evil as many detractors present him.
Definitely hasn't turned me conservative - what I was secretly afraid of, the author being described as this amazing debater who “destroys” everyone in public debates.
Some stuff is even uncontroversial and common sense, like chapter 5 about parenting (as much as a non-parent can judge).
But there is definitely some stuff written to be quotable by incels and the alt-right, probably not accidentally.
Not too excited so far. Too grand a scale, too little detail. I hope the decline of technology gets explained in the future books...
3.5 stars
From a book this long I expect a better explanation of how genes / genome actually works, rather than just the history and speculation on the future. There were a bunch of stretched comparisons where a picture would tell way more, at least for me.
relativno zanimiva raziskava, po nepotrebnem raztegnjena v 350-stransko knjigo
nauk: ne beri avtorjev, ki so izdali ze “preko 50 knjig” (strokovnih, za leposlovje zihr ne velja)
The book was different from what I expected from the blurb and I found it not too convincing about how this part of the world is rising again.
But those are just the first and last chapters. Otherwise it's a great and very readable long history from the perspective of the “middle of the world”.
I liked the parts with history unknown to me (scale of exploitation in the early centuries after discovery of America by Europeans, Paraguay vs Brazil/Argentina/Peru war...).
Most of everything else seems economically ignorant ranting and whining about imperialists artificially setting prices and destroying Latin America both with low and high prices of the commodities it exports. The book meanders aimlessly between countries and historical periods and is full of relatively unconnected facts (often too contemporary to be interesting today).
Even the heroes (socialist leaders) don't get enough mention, there's more about how they got taken down than what they did.
The weird part is i'm still relatively convinced that other countries have a lot to do with much of Latin America's ills, it's just that this book is a pretty bad analysis of it.
Interesting for the science part, but too long. Too many stories about how the author visited each scientist, which might work well in a newspaper article but get tedious in a 500-page book.
2 stars because it's a topic dear to my heart, but there's nothing here that wouldn't fit in an regular magazine article, not even a “long read”. Basically it's stating the problem in a few ways with no real resolution.
Zanimiva tema ampak slaba knjiga. Preveč družinskih dreves, detajlov koliko je imel kdo plačo in kje je bil nameščen. Premalo razlage o sami tehniki/tehnologiji. Stil pisanja je dokaj obupen, konstantno skakanje v času naprej in nazaj, da so na koncu vsi liki zmešani.
I'd give it 4 stars because the topic is fascinating, but the book is quite verbose and some chapters hard to get through. Also, don't expect any definite answers to the questions posed. But I guess that's the nature of imagining the future, especially on a thing as potentially important as AI.