Marcus
Predicting the future has historically been a somewhat sketchy, if not occasionally lucrative, occupation. How are Strauss and Howe doing, casting their lots with Ray Kurzweil, Arthur C. Clarke, John the Revelator and Nostradamus? Commendably I'd say. The book was written in 1997 and here, 13 years later, it feels like they were fairly accurate with their cyclical approach to history and its implications for now and the near future.
The third turning, the one we're in now, and which is about to end, is “a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants.”
A fourth turning is “a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.” If they've demarcated the cycles of history correctly, we're supposed to be entering a fourth turning now. It could entail war, major social, economic and political changes or worse. Whatever it is, it will happen quickly and affect almost every aspect of life.
According to Strauss and Howe, there's nothing we can do to stop it. It's a historical cycle, written in stone and it's coming regardless of our attempts to stop it. The best we can do is prepare. They suggest strengthening reputations, families and preparing yourself financially. If we're ready for it, a fourth turning can lead to positive change once it's over. If not, it can lead to a complete collapse.
We'll see how it plays out. If they're right, all that will be starting any day now.
Read it in one day to my four year old. He was fascinated and wide eyed the entire time. Then, at dinner he called his juice “strong cider” and talked about how it made his mouth and belly burn :).
I can't tell if these books are growing on me as I progress through the series or if they're actually getting better. In any case, I enjoyed The Silver Chair quite a bit. It basically follows the formula of the other Narnia books–a few kids and their adult/animal/mystical creature companions go on an adventure in Narnia with occasional help from Aslan. Yet despite the somewhat predictable nature, there is enough new and magical to keep you guessing and to keep the story fun.
This was the first thing I've read that goes into any detail on the situation of the nuclear situation in the US and the world. Wow. I wasn't convinced I wanted to know so much about missiles and warheads and what it takes to keep them secret and secure, but after I started realizing the scope of what could have gone wrong during the heights of the Cold War the information quickly went from being academic to something much more real.
The number of accidents involving nuclear warheads is surprisingly high. The internal politics revolving around how these weapons should be used are maddening. The scope of the destruction that would have ensued had the Cold War master plan ever been carried out is literally insane. The fact that so many nations to this day have the power to cause that type of destruction makes the relatively stable state of the world seem tenuous to say the least.
Command and Conquer starts off slow, but quickly becomes an engrossing freakshow of the insanity of the Cold War and the truly awful power of the superpowers.
I can't do it. I read half of it and I just can't bring myself to finish it. Drive started off strong with descriptions of what gets people motivated to work in a meaningful way. I took notes, got some good ideas and was impressed that Pink, who is a Business Book Author was seemingly digging up some novel ideas.
Then came the case studies. 3M, Google, Atlassian, FedEx, Herman Miller and Toyota are all there. These companies are, if you've read any business books you'll know this, among THE quintessential business book examples. There are how many companies in the world? Millions? Apparently though, of all the millions of other companies, These Companies and maybe 10 or 20 others are the only ones that are innovative enough to be profiled in books. It's either that or the authors of business books are too lazy to find any other examples and instead will mindlessly and incessantly reuse them as fodder for whatever shred of an idea they might be trying to expand into a book.
Avoid it, read Thinking Fast and Slow instead. Drive is yet another business book that will go down in the regurgitated, superficial ash-heaps of history.
I read this book because I kept hearing liberals criticize the “Horatio Alger stories” that conservatives like to tell about America. According to these reputable sources, such rags to riches tales are no longer realistic for most of the nation's poor.
Ragged Dick is a charismatic bootblack who, through hard work and frequent displays of moral fiber, manages to pull himself up in the world. The story isn't particularly compelling, but it's far from being Pollyanna or outlandish. It doesn't imply that every poor person can become rich, only that with effort it's possible to succeed despite long odds. Apparently this is a controversial point of view.
The writing is geared towards children and as such is somewhat simple and repetitive. The story itself is interesting, but not outstanding. I'm glad I read it (and especially glad I read it before knowing anything of Alger's biography) but I doubt I'll read more from his rather large collection of similar stories.
If you're disillusioned with self-help in general, but would like to feel happier (and who wouldn't?), I highly recommend looking into positive psychology. This book is a decent place to start. Happier is a good overview of practical positive psychology. It's written a style similar to many self-help books, it has practical suggestions and exercises, but it generally sticks closer to the more scientific approach of positive psychology that the author teaches in his extremely popular Harvard course.
If you're interested in some of the more philosophic or academic ideas in positive psychology, try Jonathan Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis or anything by Martin Seligman. Ben Shahar's style is much more practical for actually helping you lead a happier life than either of theirs, but at the same time, it's less intellectual. Either way though, if you're unfamiliar with positive psychology, it's worth your time to check it out.
No review, just quotes. Each of the following paragraphs are direct quotes, in the order they are found in the text. The book is freely available online.
We have taken a flowing vortex of thought, feeling and sensation and we have solidified that into a mental construct. Then we have stuck a label onto it, ‘me'. And forever after, we treat it as if it were a static and enduring entity. We view it as a thing separate from all other things. We pinch ourselves off from the rest of that process of eternal change which is the universe. And then we grieve over how lonely we feel. We ignore our inherent connectedness to all other beings and we decide that ‘I' have to get more for ‘me'; then we marvel at how greedy and insensitive human beings are. And on it goes. Every evil deed, every example of heartlessness in the world stems directly from this false sense of ‘me' as distinct from all else that is out there.
You do not sit around developing subtle and aesthetic thoughts about living. You live. Vipassana meditation more than anything else is learning to live.
The other person is our mirror for us to see our faults with wisdom. We should consider the person who shows our shortcomings as one who excavates a hidden treasure in us that we were unaware of. It is by knowing the existence of our deficiencies that we can improve ourselves
Somewhere in this process, you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation; they have not. So they still feel relatively comfortable. That does not mean that they are better off. Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation. So don't let this realization unsettle you. It is a milestone actually, a sigh of real progress. The very fact that you have looked at the problem straight in the eye means that you are on your way up and out of it.
One popular human strategy for dealing with difficulty is autosuggestion: when something nasty pops up, you convince yourself it is not there, or you convince yourself it is pleasant rather than unpleasant. The Buddha's tactic is quite the reverse. Rather than hide it or disguise it, the Buddha's teaching urges you to examine it to death. Buddhism advises you not to implant feelings that you don't really have or avoid feelings that you do have. If you are miserable you are miserable; that is the reality, that is what is happening, so confront that. Look it square in the eye without flinching. When you are having a bad time, examine that experience, observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn its mechanics. The way out of a trap is to study the trap itself, learn how it is built. You do this by taking the thing apart piece by piece. The trap can't trap you if it has been taken to pieces. The result is freedom.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is not. Pain and suffering are two different animals. If any of these tragedies strike you in your present state of mind, you will suffer. The habit patterns that presently control your mind will lock you into that suffering and there will be no escape. A bit of time spent in learning alternatives to those habit patterns is time will-invested. Most human beings spend all their energies devising ways to increase their pleasure and decrease their pain. Buddhism does not advise that you cease this activity altogether. Money and security are fine. Pain should be avoided where possible. Nobody is telling you to give away all your possessions or seek out needless pain, but Buddhism does advise you to invest some of your time and energy in learning to deal with unpleasantness, because some pain is unavoidable.
You can experience the desire to perfect yourself. You can feel craving for greater virtue. You can even develop an attachment to the bliss of the meditation experience itself. It is a bit hard to detach yourself from such altruistic feelings. In the end, though, it is just more greed. It is a desire for gratification and a clever way of ignoring the present-time reality.
If you leave ‘I' out of the operation, pain is not painful. It is just a pure surging energy flow. It can even be beautiful. If you find ‘I' insinuating itself in your experience of pain or indeed any other sensation, then just observe that mindfully. Pay bare attention to the phenomenon of personal identification with the pain.
Meditation in the midst of fast-paced noisy activity is harder still. And meditation in the midst of intensely egoistic activities like romance or arguments is the ultimate challenge.
The concept of wasted time does not exist for a serious meditator. Little dead spaces during your day can be turned to profit. Every spare moment can be used for meditation. Sitting anxiously in the dentist's office, meditate on your anxiety. Feeling irritated while standing in a line at the bank, meditate on irritation. Bored, twiddling you thumbs at the bus stop, meditate on boredom. Try to stay alert and aware throughout the day. Be mindful of exactly what is taking place right now, even if it is tedious drudgery. Take advantage of moments when you are alone. Take advantage of activities that are largely mechanical. Use every spare second to be mindful. Use all the moments you can.
You see the way suffering inevitably follows in the wake of clinging, as soon as you grasp anything, pain inevitably follows.
Your whole view of self changes at this point. You begin to look upon yourself as if you were a newspaper photograph. When viewed with the naked eyes, the photograph you see is a definite image. When viewed through a magnifying glass, it all breaks down into an intricate configuration of dots. Similarly, under the penetrating gaze of mindfulness, the feeling of self, an ‘I' or ‘being' anything, loses its solidity and dissolves. There comes a point in insight meditation where the three characteristics of existence – impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and selflessness – come rushing home with concept-searing force. You vividly experience the impermanence of life, the suffering nature of human existence, and the truth of no self. You experience these things so graphically that you suddenly awake to the utter futility of craving, grasping and resistance. In the clarity and purity of this profound moment, our consciousness is transformed. The entity of self evaporates. All that is left is an infinity of interrelated non-personal phenomena which are conditioned and ever changing. Craving is extinguished and a great burden is lifted. There remains only an effortless flow, without a trace of resistance or tension. There remains only peace, and blessed Nibbana, the uncreated, is realized.
This book is extremely well done. Everything from the art to the binding to the glossary really gives the feeling that it's a labor of love, nothing is rushed, every detail is considered. The subject is Bertrand Russell and his idealistic (quixotic?) quest to find a way to use logic to irrefutably prove the foundations of mathematics, and by extension, all of reality. The book does a great job of linking him to his influencers, contemporaries and those who took and built on his work while keeping the story moving and entertaining.
I'm not a big fan of Russell, his personality was thorny, he made some colossal intellectual and personal mistakes and ultimately his work on logic, while an important stepping stone, seems to have been almost entirely superseded by Gödel. That said, I'm no expert on the subject and I was heavily biased when Solzhenitsyn, who is one of my heroes and usually very generous in terms of character judgement, criticized Russell pretty brutally in The Gulag Archipelago. Despite all that, this book gave me more respect for Russell's unwavering commitment to finding truth and rationality.
Read it. It'll take you 3 hours.
If you have any money, at all, you should read this book. The sooner the better. If you don't have any money you should also read this book.
There are a few reasons reading Crash Proof might not appeal to you:
-Peter Schiff is a somewhat controversial name in the investing world.
-Peter Schiff is a libertarian
-You never read non-fiction
-You never read investing books
-You never read business or economics books
-You don't have any money right now
-You're an optimist
-Etc.
All of those reasons are valid and understandable, but still, it will be well worth your time to read this book.
I probably read this when I was a kid, now, reading it to my kids after having read lots and lots of terrible kids books (Magic Treehouse, I'm looking at you) I appreciate it even more. The writing flows amazingly well when reading it out loud. The chapters are the perfect length and the story... well the story has been spoken for in many, many other reviews. It's awesome.
PS Mom, thanks for sending the Magic Treehouse books. I don't like them but the kids LOVE them. :)
I like that Coyle actually went out and visited “talent hotbeds” and tried to synthesize ways they practice, motivate and coach rather than just citing other studies and books. I'd never heard of myelin so that was interesting, though his miracle drug description of it is ridiculous.
The thirty second takeaway: practice in chunks, breaking up music to measures, bringing sports to a smaller scale–practice in a way that lets you fail and correct often. Stay motivated by taking a genuine interest in the subject, group motivation is also helpful. Coach dynamically by giving short queues. Limit praise and criticism and focus on practical suggestions. Coach efficiently taking every second of practice time into account and coach everything from how socks are put on to how they leave the field.
Very much inspired by Asimov, this book is a great exploration of robots, consciousness and ethics without being tedious in the least.
I thought about writing a review in the style of this book. Then my sentences would be short. My sentences would be short and I'd seem completely apathetic about writing the review. I'd also probably choose the most mundane parts of the book to write about. I would not try to be interesting.
I read this book mostly on my iPhone. I read it in an app called Oyster. I was sitting up in bed when I read it. After I read it, I had some organic milk with organic cereal. I watched a TED talk and thought about Breaking Bad. I wasn't thinking about the book anymore because it just wasn't worth thinking about.
The premise of the book is that science doesn't progress by the cumulative addition of knowledge, but instead advances by major shifts in paradigms that replace, rather than increment, large parts of previous paradigms.
To begin with, scientific research in a specific subject is carried out within the bounds of a generally accepted framework that defines what scientists already know about the field, as well as the questions that remain unanswered. This is what Kuhn calls a paradigm. A paradigm is useful because it defines puzzles that need to be solved and gives a set rules for them to be solved in. Over time, the paradigm is more fully explored and is broken down into smaller and more specific problems. To solve them, scientists develop specialized equipment and detailed experiments are carried out. Scientists experiment not to generate an unknown result, but with a hypothesis that has an expected result. The paradigm they're working under has helped them predict results and expect an answer.
Eventually however, problems are discovered that can't be effectively solved within the rules of the paradigm. At first, these types of problems can be worked around by making adjustments in rules of the paradigm. Ultimately, as it is explored more deeply and the rules become more complex, a problem or problems arise that simply cannot be answered elegantly with the paradigm. As these difficult problems gain notice, they become recognized as the problems in most urgent need of a solution. When there is a big problem like this it can either be ignored until better equipment is available, made to fit by adjusting the current paradigm or, most interestingly, it can lead to the development of a new theory, or group of theories that attempt to solve the problem. As alternate competing theories are proposed to address the crises, eventually one gains enough traction among scientists to become the new paradigm.
One of the examples used in the book is how Einstein's relativity became the paradigm that replaced Newtonian physics. What happened was not that Newtonian physics was found to be outdated and immediately replaced with the theory of relativity, in fact that theory is still useful within a large number of applications today. Instead, it was recognized that there is a very limited set of parameters in which Newtonian physics is accurate–specifically for calculating interactions between objects moving at relatively low velocities, but that outside those parameters, Newtonian physics will lead to incorrect assumptions. The theory of relativity solves the same problems that Newtonian physics does, but it also works with objects moving at high velocities. Rather than just building upon Newtonian physics incrementally, relativity supplanted large parts of it, even as scientists recognized that parts of Newtonian physics remain useful in certain contexts.
To me, a non-scientist, rather than being controversial, this is a really useful way to think about science, and beyond science to how change and progress occur in almost any field. To a scientist, I can see how Kuhn's ideas are controversial. They mean that what scientists see and look for in observational and experimental data is not analyzed and recorded completely objectively but that scientists are heavily biased by what they believe and expect they're going to find. It ‘accuses' scientists of viewing data and the experiments they choose to perform relatively, rather than objectively or positively (there is a long and hairy philosophical argument on relative knowledge that I will avoid getting into). Kuhn, rather than criticizing scientists for their subjective view on data, believes that viewing science this way is unavoidable, and in fact beneficial because it trains scientists to recognize patterns in data and to become adept with the data that they deal with. When a scientist is proficient at viewing data within the bounds of a paradigm, they are, in turn, well-prepared to view anomalies in the way their paradigm interprets data. This leads to the tough problems that are escalated to criseses in the paradigm and eventually, to the development of new paradigms.
If you've been involved with or followed even to a small degree the whole “web 2.0” movement, the amount of new you'll get from Free will probably add up to about enough to fill an essay... or maybe an article in Wired.
There are a few interesting (if not circumstantial) case studies, some light rehashing of the basics of behavioral economics and more than a few suggestions on how to make money giving stuff away. You can find this book on Audible or for Kindle for... you guessed it, free.
This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. The only way to do it justice is by quoting it:
After Penrod (the 11 year old hero of the story) blurts out something he might have kept to himself:
Nothing is more treacherous than the human mind; nothing else so loves to play the Iscariot. Even when patiently bullied into a semblance of order and training, it may prove but a base and shifty servant. And Penrod's mind was not his servant; it was a master, with the April wind's whims; and it had just played him a diabolical trick. The very jolt with which he came back to the schoolroom in the midst of his fancied flight jarred his day-dream utterly out of him; and he sat, open-mouthed in horror at what he had said.
Perhaps middle-aged people might discern Nature's real intentions in the matter of pain if they would examine a boy's punishments and sorrows, for he prolongs neither beyond their actual duration. With a boy, trouble must be of Homeric dimensions to last overnight. To him, every next day is really a new day. Thus, Penrod woke, next morning, with neither the unspared rod, nor Mr. Kinosling in his mind. Tar, itself, so far as his consideration of it went, might have been an undiscovered substance
Their elders should beware such days. Peril hovers near when the fierceness of weather forces inaction and boys in groups are quiet. The more closely volcanoes, Western rivers, nitroglycerin, and boys are pent, the deadlier is their action at the point of outbreak. Thus, parents and guardians should look for outrages of the most singular violence and of the most peculiar nature during the confining weather of February and August.
Penrod
I went into this not really knowing much about Melville (other than having read Moby Dick a few years ago) and really enjoyed it. Melville obviously spent quite a bit of time on the ocean and with the Typee's and his descriptions of them are fascinating. My favorite parts though were his descriptions of simple things where he plays with language - you can really tell he just loves words, for example this passage describing the flies he encountered:
“He will perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to roost there, if you do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were hovering around me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted into the open apartment, and began walking about its ceiling; the sensation was dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the poor creatures, being enveloped in inner darkness, must in their consternation have stumbled over my palate, and been precipitated into the gulf beneath. At any rate, though I afterwards charitably held my mouth open for at least five minutes, with a view of affording egress to the stragglers, of them ever availed themselves of the opportunity.”
You can't beat that. There's a great, free, professional audio recording of Typee on Librivox, which is where I got it.
I didn't read the whole book. I think the idea that we're reaching the end of history and the last man (a world of liberal democracies) is intriguing, but ultimately incorrect. Reading books like The Clash of Civilizations, authors like Thomas Carlyle and James Burnham as well as watching world events (notably 9/11, and the wars Iraq and Afghanistan) have convinced me that as nice as Fukuyama's vision of the future sounds, it probably isn't realistic.
This book was good in that it motivated me to take another long, hard look at how I interact with the Internet. Like the author, I've found my ability to focus for long periods of time has gotten worse and that anytime I'm not doing something, I instinctively reach for my phone. Stolen Focus puts a huge spotlight on that and has some good suggestions for ways to try to regain some of that attention.
Stolen Focus also dedicates quite a few pages to talking about the systemic problems with trying to maintain our ability to think deeply, engage with nature, and slow down in an environment where so many big forces are working against us. Tech companies are incentivized to do one thing—build a profile on you so they can show you things that will keep you engaged with their content as much as possible so they can then try to convince you to buy from their advertisers. The resources they command to constantly improve their ability to do just that are daunting.
Hari proposes some potential solutions to this problem—many of them along the lines of heavy regulation or state takeover of social media platforms. I see where he's coming from but none of his solutioning was very compelling to me. It was either too heavy-handed or too implausible given the reality on the ground, as it were.
I had other minor issues with the book, but on the whole, I enjoyed the it and it's made me much more mindful around my phone use and my screen time stats seem to, for the time being, reflect that as well.
One of the recurring themes in the histories of men and nations is the idea that we can do what no one else has done because of our better [morals, understanding of history, philosophy, intelligence etc.:] (chose one). It's an almost mathematically precise pattern that we seem doomed to repeat. The verbal approximation it is: idealism leads to hubris leads to vice leads to downfall. Rinse an repeat. Niebuhr incisively confronts this historical pattern as it existed in America and the world in the 1950's, and, since it's a pattern, his analysis remains just as relevant today as it was then.
I heard the author on a podcast where he described his career as a journalist, often undercover, in countries like North Korea, Russia, Cambodia, and China. I decided to read his book when he said that after his last trip to China in, I believe it was 2019, would be his last because the surveillance state that had arisen there had become too much even for him. This is a guy who doesn't blink an eye at going to North Korea.
The winter Olympics are going on in Beijing right now and just a couple days ago China used a Uyghur athlete as one of the people chosen to light the Olympic torch. In the context of this book, there's no other way to interpret that than as the Chinese government's condescending arrogance showing the world they can do whatever they want with no repercussions. They're giving apologists for their regime a story to point at to say “see, the condition of the Uyghur's in China is fine!” when the reality is that in 2017 about 20% of the eleven million Uyghur's in China were in concentration camps where they were being re-educated. This re-education, at least some of the time, includes physical torture, forced labor, and sterilization as described in detail in The Perfect Police State. There is no evidence that since 2017 that the conditions of the Uyghur's has changed—quite the contrary in fact. The Uyghur torchbearer from the 2008 Olympics is publicly denouncing China today.
The descriptions of the conditions that the Uyghurs live in in China are frequently compared to George Orwell's 1984. That may seem cliché since 1984 is usually used the same way people use Hitler—hyperbolically. Except that in China today, the comparisons are much more directly analogous.
Cameras with advanced facial and other biometric recognition feed back to systems of social scoring, crime prediction, and surveillance of all types. This, combined with central tracking of all online activities including every purchase, conversation, search engine search, etc. combine to give the state a growing ability to form a complete profile on every person in the country. The Uyghur's are, it seems, where the technologies are first implemented and refined, but there is no indication that China will stop there.
If your social score drops too low the Chinese state can, and often does, restrict travel, deny access to basic services, and eventually it will land you in a concentration camp where, as mentioned before, you'll be subjected to, at minimum, brainwashing. This is happening in China today in 2022 where the world sits idly watching downhill skiing on fake snow in Beijing and pretending like everything is just fine.
The technology China is developing is powerful and, of course, not only capable of being used in China. The Coda to The Perfect Police State discusses its spread outside of China to the US and elsewhere. It's not clear where its growth leads, but it's not implausible that if we don't do anything and allow it to expand and grow, that the concept of freedom as we know it today could very well disappear.