Mitch Olson

DG is the embodiment of the potential we all have to use our will to go through discomfort to levels we never knew were possible. I wouldn't want to be this man but he has inspired me to question my own perceived limits. Recommend this book

I found this book boring

Nothing new here. Mainly just a bunch of the usual cliches. “Just do it”!

I gave up at 42% of the way through after becoming impatient for the book to start paying its way.

It's a 3.5 stars.
A bit lightweight like a pop song but with a meaningful message that provides enough nourishment to leave you feeling that you didn't waste your time reading it.

This book puts forward an interesting hypothesis that is summarised by “generalists are better than specialists when it comes to innovation”. Steven Johnson sums this up in his book “Where good ideas come from”; “innovation occurs when ideas and people collide”. Well written and interesting stories but could have been summed up in 10% of the space.

Pretty heavy going at times but so many original and profound perspectives on the nature of perception and language and the structure of knowledge.

Whilst this book is written for aspiring musicians the first part of it speaks to practice in general and that's why I read this book. I found it a helpful guide that offers practical advice on how to turn up to practice.

Didn't finish. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Too much detail and not enough context to be able to discern meaningful patterns in the story.

Great production shame about the story. Slow & boring

Hard to find the words to describe this book. I guess the sum-up is that I took nothing useful away from it. This is the second d-school staff authored book I have recently read and not a great reflection on that institute or Stanford. Look elsewhere if you are looking for self help is the bottom line.

Meh

I gave up on the book when I realised the author's moral framework was based on an old skool view of reason vs emotion. The other thing that psychologists get wrong about the languaged distinction they call “morality” IMO is an implicit assumption in a single universal objective world where the authority to define what is “true” and important is always external to the individual. Presumably this authority exists in their own conceptual frameworks.

Probably the last in this series that I'll bother reading. Entertaining enough but nothing really special in it to recommend it.

I gave up 49% of the way through cos it was fucking boring

It's taken me so long to finish this book that I can't remember all of the value I have got from it. Bennett is my favourite student of Gurdjieff and I suspect this is one of the better introductions to Gurdjieff's ideas.

This is a promotional introduction to The Forum. Erhard's insights and distinctions around the reflexivity of experience and Being are very powerful. It takes a little bit of patience to stick with him as his languaging, without the benefit of a more overt description of the architecture of perception and cognition, is somewhat obscure. But the profundity is hugely consequential. I think Werner Erhard has done more to expose the nature and consequences of the self referential nature of beliefs and how our “unconscious believing” creates boundaries on our possibility for a better life.

This is my third time through this book in as many decades. Every time I read it I find something new that nourishes me in some way. I think this book is one of those for which everyone who reads it receives something different.

A really beautiful autobiography that left me feeling so grateful for both the book and my life

One of Bennett's more practical books.

The best thing about this “book” is that it has introduced me to a man whose ideas I want to explore further in his writings. The worst part is that it's just an interview of the man that left me interested but not wowed in any way. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone

I find Steiner quite hard to read and this book no exception. I was attracted by his conception of intuition as something beyond what is currently understood by that label. But ultimately I was left unsatisfied by his conception of thinking itself which seemed not well developed.

Hazard is the intersection of significance with uncertainty; in other words the possibility that what you want might not happen. Bennett says it's a core feature of life and it's implications are much broader and deeper than you might imagine.

Every time I read a book by Bennett I wonder why he is not much much better known. He is to my mind one of the greatest philosophers ever but unlike almost every other philosopher his thinking and ideas are practical and relevant to our daily lives.

A good story teller but difficult to extract much practical value from this book relative to some of his others.

One of the most important but unappreciated philosophers of all time. This book is about the limits of science and scientific-rational thinking. On the need for our openness to “speculative reason” to always be able to overcome the dogma of the day. In the same way that the “speculative reason” of science overcame some the dogma of institutionalised religion, we must open ourselves for new “speculative reason” to overcome the dogma of scientific materialism.

The reductionalism and materialism of science and how this has infected and limited the invisible and unquestioned beliefs of our day (eg. liberalism without responsibility or Darwinian evolution) places real and significant impediments to the future of humanity.

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Add notes from my third reading:
The more I read this book the more I appreciate what an awesome thinker Whitehead was. Such a big thinker but also logical but open-minded. Poetic but based in logic and reason. Love this guy.