Think Like a Rocket Scientist

DNF, got 30% of the way through the audio book.

Like much of the self help literature, heavily reliant on anecdotes (not even interesting ones - the common ones like Jobs, Musk, etc) without accounting for survivorship bias.

I did see some interesting ideas about redundancy and reliability that overlap with my own field (software), but I think I'd better off just reading about those topics directly, instead of a watered-down popular treatment.

The best idea I'll take away from this book is the concept of adversarial thought experiments. Ask how you can make your system fail, or imagine being your boss and try to build a case for why he should not promote you. This kind of perspective taking is reminiscent of Superforecasters by Tetlock.

Thank you!