Inadequate Equilibria

By Eliezer Yudkowsky

This book has two main parts.

1. Teaching you how systems, organizations, societies, etc, full of intelligent and moral people can produce unintelligent, immoral outcomes. Some common factors that produce these outcomes:

   • Decision makers who are not beneficiaries - Cases where the decision lies in the hands of people who would gain little personally, or lose out personally, if they did what was necessary to help someone else.

   • Asymmetric information - Cases where decision makers can’t reliably learn the information they need to make decisions, even though someone else has that information.

   • Nash equilibria that aren’t even the best Nash equilibrium - Systems that are borke in multiple places so that no one actor can make them better, even though, in principle, some magically coordinated action could move to a new stable state.

2. How to spot and act on areas where you as an individual can personally out perform these broken systems. two tidbits of advice:

   • Its way easier to determine which sprinter will win than run the race yourself and win. Don’t fall into the trap that in order to out perform expert X you need to be able to personally be superior to expert X when you can just follow expert Y.

   • There are lots of societal and peer pressures which will make you want to be modest. Remember the more broken the institution the lower the bar you need to clear to out perform.

Excession

By Ian M. Banks

For those unaware, Ian M. Banks Culture series is an author tract where he creates as a Utopian post-scarcity society and then runs simulations trying to poke holes in his theories.

In this book the plot device is the introduction of entity so much stronger are powerful than the Culture that they can’t even comprehend it or its motives. It’s like an isolated island tribe still in the stone age witnessing the passing of a modern Carrier Battle Group passing near their shores.

This book is special because a large part of the plot is the interaction of all the Culture minds. And what seems in the earlier books like a unified structure is actually a bit more haphazard with their own internal cliques. The Culture minds are definitely the best part of this book.

9/10, will read again.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

By Alfred Lansing

One of the best takeaways from this book is just how durable and strong humans can be. Not only having to survive countless physical challenges but also having to mentally endure months stuck on a floating ice pack with little to do to improve your situation.

Shackleton has all the best qualities of a leader. When there is something difficult that needs to be done, like scraping ice off the bow of the boat while getting drenched by waves of near freezing water, he’s always the first one to step up and do it. After a long journey he always takes the first night watch so the others can sleep.

Really an inspiring book.

10/10 would read again.

The Joys of Living

By Orison Swett Marden

We think our overactive busyness, constant distractions, restlessness, and widespread unease is unique to the time we are in. Unfortunately it's not.

This book was published in 1913 and was designed to help people deal with the ever day problems they faced. In 1910 only 20% of adults couldn’t read or write and only 14% of homes had a bathtub. Now you’d think that their problems were hunger, lack of heat/AC, or something else specific to that time. But rather the book is about problems that feel very real to many of us today, despite our modern comforts.

Chapter titles like “The strain to keep up appearances kills happiness” containing sentences like “Its not so much our lack of comforts or luxury, as our envy, selfishness and false standards that makes us unhappy." is something that wouldn't have stood out published in a book today. This book is very Lindy. And following from that it means that its content is very likely to be applicable in 2113, as crazy as that sounds.

"The habit of looking for the best in our work, and of seeing the best in everybody and everything is of untold value."

"The unhappiness of life lies in the fret of it; not in its work, but in its worry."

There is an entire chapter devoted to work and responsibility and how essential it is to happiness and well being. Remind you of any one who became very famous for spouting something similar? Do any particular Canadian psychology professors come to mind?

One thing from this chapter that seems a little obvious but really stuck with me is the following. We appreciate and enjoy doing our own work. I think most people would agree that humans can be like pack animals in the sense we are happiest and most in our element when we have some load to bear. Now when we view art, read books, or drive a cool car, we are not so much enjoying the art, book, or car, but rather we are enjoying the work and the load people have carried to produce such things. This perhaps seems a little obvious in hindsight but I feel we don’t naturally think this way. When I feel amazed by a nice car, I feel amazed by the car itself, not the collection of people who managed to turn raw iron into a beautiful machine. This seems wrong. And a deliberate correction is probably a good idea.

The cure for a person who is aimless, has low self worth, and is filled with self loathing, is to take on responsibility. To find a load you can bear. Perhaps there is also cure for thinking that our society is fundamentally corrupt, that everyone around you is racist or sexist, that the vast majority of people are trash and need to be whipped and forced into the right direction because they are too stupid to do the right thing on their own. Maybe this cure is to start appreciating the large group people who carried the load to help bring you all the modern luxuries that make your life so wonderful. Maybe realizing that if they helped create all these wonderful things you enjoy, that maybe they aren’t so bad.

If I said “appreciate nature” you’d know exactly what I mean. You could easily conjure up an image of enjoying a sunset or a mountain range. You’ve certainly done this quite often and maybe feel some notion of guilt that you don’t do it more often. However if I said “appreciate man”, do you as easily conjure an image of yourself enjoying the sight of a skyscraper, a passenger plane soaring overhead, or even marveling at the fact that you can pull a fresh tomato out of your refrigerator, despite the fact that it has been below freezing temperatures for consecutive months? If there was specific entity that created our favorite mountain range or adjusted the colors on an amazing sunset, we would feel nothing but awe for this being and express nothing but gratitude. In fact some people gather every Sunday to do just this. Yet where is the awe and gratitude for the people around you who on a daily basis work to make things just as marvelous.

Maybe we are better at this then I give us credit. Plenty of people today are certainly in awe of Picasso, Hemingway, and Ford. However, A ) our modern versions don’t seem to fair so well. Steve jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk definitely have a large number of fans, but the intensity of the vitriol spewed by their critics seems totally unprecedented. And B) does anyone even pay any mind to anyone but the big names?

Anyways.

The last chapter is about how when you are old, it's hard to find new joys and hobby's. So if you retire without any hobby's you will long for work as that's the only thing you know. You need to learn to enjoy and cultivate a hobby earlier in life so when you retire you have something you can maintain and still enjoy. Once your time comes, you are too set in your ways to enjoy something new.

Skin in the Game

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The final part (for now?) of the Incerto series. While only half the length of The Black Swan and Antifragile it packs maybe 1/10th the wallop. It’s still a highly enjoyable and elucidating read, but it felt like the final straightaway of a race.

NNT talks about his books shouldn’t be able to summarized. If you can summarize a book down to a few sentences, what is the point in the rest of the book? Instead he likes to think his book contains a central generator, from which ideas are are spawned which makes up the entirety of the book.

Incerto Generators:

Fooled By Randomness - Humans are bad at detecting what is and isn’t random.

The Black Swan - Highly improbable (though not as improbable as bell curve statistics would have you think, hence fat tails) and high impact events dominate history. These events can invalidate or wipe out everything that came before. You can look at 1 million white swans and think “all swans are white”, but it only takes seeing 1 black swan to obliterate that idea permanently.

Antifragile - To survive black swans you must not just be able to survive volatility, but to benefit from it by having a convex (capped downside, uncapped upside) relationship to it.

Skin in the Game - Don’t tell me what you think, tell me whats in your portfolio. For incentives to work you can’t just give upside but must also risk downside. If there is a limited window when the incentives are in play, the structure can be gamed by hiding long term risk with short term profit.

The quote below reminded me of one of the main reasons I wanted to move to Silicon Valley in the first place, which was my hatred for business casual dress codes. I always felt that business casual prominently displayed the lack of seriousness the company had for performing work that others would actually find useful. My personal thought experiment was if the Einstein of your field wanted to work at your company but would only do so wearing PJ’s, you would find out real quick which companies actually matter and which are just pretenders.

“Presence of skin in the game does away with the cosmetic. It’s absence causes multiplicative nonsense.”

“Kids with rich parents talk about “class privilege” at privileged colleges such as Amherst - but in one instance, one of them could not answer Dinesh D’Souza’s simple and logical suggestion: Why don’t you go to the registrar’s office and give your privileged spot to the minority student next in line?

Clearly the defense given by people under such a situation is that they want others to do so as well - they require a systemic solution to every local perceived problem of injustice. I find that immoral. I know of no ethical system that allows you to let someone drown without helping him because other people are not helping, no system that says, “I will save people from drowning only if others too save other people from drowning.”

Which brings us to the principle:

If your private life conflicts with your intellectual opinion, it cancels your intellectual ideas, not your private life.

And a solution to the vapid universalism we discussed in the Prologue:

If your private actions do not generalize, then you cannot have general ideas.

This is not strictly about ethics, but information. If a car salesman tries to sell you a Detroit car while driving a Honda, he is signaling that the wares he is touting may have a problem.”

Loserthink

by Scott Adams

“people who have good arguments use them. People who don't have good arguments try to win by labeling.” Socialist, racist etc.

“Being absolutely right and being spectacularly wrong feel exactly the same.”

“The business model of the press guarantees you will see more negativity than the facts support.”

“If your only complain about another persons behavior is that it might normalize something, you might not have any reasons to back your opinion. When people have good arguments, they will more of then than not gleefully show their work to anyone who will listen. But when people have no compelling arguments for their points of view, they sometimes prefer to jump ahead to teh “Don’t normalize that behavior” stage and act like the argument makes itself.”

“The most effective approach to addressing critics who misinterpret you and then criticize their own misinterpretation as if it came from, is this challenge: State ONE thing you believe on this topic that you think I do NOT believe.”

“You can’t get the right answer until you frame the question correctly. And partisans rarely do.”

“If you have ever tried to win a debate by providing better facts and reasoning, you know it almost never works. That’s because people are confident in their own abilities to understand the world. That confidence should be your target, not the totality of the argument.”

Consider Phlebas

by Ian M. Banks

The first book in The Culture series and a really solid SF read. 9/10 would read again.

One common SF trope is that all the aliens encountered are human-ish perhaps just with green skin, an extra arm, or some weird rituals. While this books follows this trope for the most part, there are a few species introduced that are are so different we can't even understand their motivations. And this plays some role in the story which is interesting.

The main story is about a war between The Culture and another species it encounters. Even though the next book in the series isn't a sequel to this one (they just exist in the same universe at different times), I would recommend reading them in the correct order (not what I did) since the main character in this book is fighting against The Culture. This will give the reader an interesting perspective on The Culture when you read the second book.

The Player of Games

by Ian M Banks

Two SpaceX drone ships, Of Course I Still Love You and Just Read The Instructions are named after star ships in this book.

I can't remember where I got the recommendation to read it from, but I was itching for some sci fi fiction and after hearing it briefly mentioned once just dived right in.

This book is the second in a series but from my understanding, the books just take place in the same universe, not in one continuous story line.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book especially the ending. The Culture, the reigning Utopia civilization seems super interesting and I'm going to start on the first book ASAP.

This book dreams big in it's science fiction. Some sci books have people struggling with the same problems we have now, just in a different back drop or on a larger scale. This book not only dreams bigger, but dreams differently.

The Ride of a Lifetime

by Robert Iger

Really enjoyed this book. All the scenes with Steve Jobs are either hilarious or extremely profound.

Favorite Steve Jobs quote: “Don't let a whole number of Cons stop you from pursuing a few very big Pros.”

Other favorite quotes from the book

“Value ability over experience.”

“Dont start negatively and don't start small. People will often focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear coherent big thoughts.”

“Be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.”

“Don't let ambition get ahead of opportuniy.”

This book is productivity pron at its finest.

How To Stop Worrying and Start Living

By Dale Carnegie

“Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived for today.” - Horace

“Face the facts, accept the worst, then do something about it.”

“Those who don't learn to stop worrying, die young.”

“Once a decision is reached, act without anxiety about the outcome.”

On criticism - “No one kicks a dead dog.”

Relax at your work, only handle the immediate problem at hand, and do things in order of importance.

Exhalation: Stories

By Ted Chiang

Theres a few amazing short stories in this collection. I really enjoyed Ted’s previous collection, Story of Your Life and Others.

While his previous collection for me had one clear shining star (Story of Your Life), this collection had 2 stories that I liked so much it’s hard to pick a favourite. I enjoyed all the stories, but these two were something special:

• The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling

• Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom

Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

By Neal Stephenson

This books starts really strong. The first chapter is one of my favourites in it. However it tends to draw out in the middle and near the end, despite the strong finish.

The last 2/3rds of the book is a Lord of the Rings type fantasy novel that takes place in a virtual world. At the beginning I was intrigued by this fantasy, but then I got bored, and eventually just wanted to see it concluded.

Definitely not my favourite Stephenson book but interesting nonetheless.

Probably won’t ever re-read, other than the first chapter which I already have re-read.

Antifragile

By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Everything gains or loses from volatility, fragility is what loses from volatility and uncertainty.

A central argument is never a summary, it is more like a generator.

The Black Swan

By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Hedonic Happiness - number of times you get good news counts more than the quality of the good news.”

“Prediction not narration is our true test of our understanding of the world.”

“In Extremistan, inequalities are such that one single observation can disproportionately impact the aggregate, or the total.”

“The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.”

The Cave and the Light

By Arthur L. Herman

The books subtitle is “Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization." This book starts with the death of Socrates and ends in present day. The book presents the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and then follows the wars these two schools of thought have waged on each other ever since.

I really liked the first third of the book which is an overview of ancient greek philosophy. After that as the author began moving the timeline he was talking about further away from ancient Greece I got less interested in the Plato vs Aristotle connection. However I kept trucking through the book as I really liked the general historical overview the author was supplying.

If you are looking for a good historical primer from 500 BC to now, which covers lots of the major events which lead to western civilization, the last 2/3rds of this book is perfect. The author is clearly excited about offering this history lesson, so much so that he routinely gets off track (for example he took time to try and explain Bohrs discover of energy levels for an electron). I just found the links to Aristotle and Plato quite weak.

Now that I understand the Plato vs Aristotle divide much better, Anathem by Neal Stephenson makes much more sense. I’ll probably have to give that a re-read soon.

Earth Abides

By George R. Stewart

So too I may grow old, and older, and be merely a link to the past, and be an unregarded old duffer, and then die and be soon forgotten--yet that is as it should be!

The Fountainhead

By Ayn Rand

In this book Ayn Rand creates the ideal man in Howard Roark. He is an individualist who refuses to compromise as the forces of collectivism seek to destroy him.

This book has a number of famous quotes which I won’t repeat here. Even though I heard a number of these quotes numerous times before reading the book, it didn’t weaken the impact when getting to them myself.

The following series of quotes by Roark, seems to summarize the core argument Rand was making with the book.

Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways—by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.

The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.

The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.

…

Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.

…

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.

Dune Messiah

By Frank Herbert

I wasn’t a massive fan of the original Dune. I sort of flew through it and it felt a bit dated and despite some cool moments, the rushed ending left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I figured at the time that I’d never touch a book of the Dune series again.

However I was inspired by the title of a Youtube video (I didn’t actually watch the video until after finishing this book) to give it another shot. Since I had a cross country solo road trip ahead of me I decided to get lost in some fiction and try the sequel. I ended up really enjoying the book and felt that I have gained a greater appreciation for things I missed in the original book as well.

With the first book in the series I felt Herbert was enjoying telling the story so much that he didn’t want to stop. As he approached 500 pages however he seemed to realize he needed to stop and just dropped in a ending. This book however feels very focused as its only the half the length of the first book but with a very satisfying ending.

One thing interesting about both these books is Herbert takes the “don’t tell, show” (as in don’t tell us the main character is a nice guy, show he is) to the extreme. When a new weapon or device is shown you are never given a monologue about how it works or why it was invented. You are just shown the device and the story moves on.

The Dune series as a whole is about human potential. The series takes place 20,000 years into the future and imagines that instead of humans having created advanced technology, like computers, AI, starships, as in other science fiction, instead humans have created advanced humans. Instead of computers we have the Mentats, humans with advanced memory and calculation ability. Instead of advanced starships we have ships controlled by Guild Navigators who have mutated so specifically to their task of piloting ships across the galaxy using faster than light techniques that they can’t even walk and must be suspended in something resembling a fish tank.

At the center of all this human potential we have Paul Atreides. He is prophesied to be the chosen one of a number of religions and despite his immense power, he is never able to escape the prophesies and choose his own path in life. He can see the future but in a very Dr. Manhattan manner is merely just a puppet who can see the strings.

I look forward to continuing on with the rest of the books in the series.

Hackers and Painters

By Paul Graham

The book is a collection of essays separated into chapters. The chapters can be read in isolation and in any order. My favorites are the chapter on the similarities between hackers and painters, the chapter on good design, and the chapter on thinking heretical thoughts. I’ll summarize the chapters below.

Hackers (as opposed to computer scientists) are more like architects than engineers. Architects broadly decide what to do and engineers figure out how to do it. However you must have some rough idea of the “how” if you want to create a realistic “what”. Engineers like to be given a spec to meet, architects like developing a good spec and one of the best ways to develop a good spec is to implement it. Architects are makers, while engineers are problem solvers. Engineers solve a problem by figuring out the program on paper before going anywhere near a computer. Hackers take a painters approach of sketching out a rough solution and figuring out solutions as you are programming.

At big companies they want engineers, not hackers, writing software. Programmers at big companies merely take a managers vision and implement it in software. This is done so that the variability in outcome is reduced. This approach will produce fewer strikeouts, but on the flip side it will produce fewer home runs.

Hackers should take more lessons from maker disciplines, like painting. A few notable lessons from painters are: painters learn best by creating original work, paintings are created through gradual refinement not planning the entire thing out, work comes in cycles which means you can’t be creative and inspired all the time.

Good design isn’t purely subjective and thus it possible to become a better designer. Paul says that many different fields have plenty of common ideas about beauty and they are:

• Good design is simple.

• Good design is timeless - the best way to make something appeal to people in 2100 is to make something that would also appeal to people in 1900.

• Good design solves the right problem - In software an intractable problem can sometimes be replaced by a similar problem that is easy to solve, so ensure you are working on the correct problem.

• Good design is suggestive - a good building allows people to use it as they wish as opposed to using it only as a the architect intends.

• Good design is often slightly funny - To have a sense of humor is to be strong as it is a strength to not take oneself too seriously.

• Good design is hard - It’s a hard life creating good design however most animals are beautiful because they have hard lives.

• Good design looks easy - This is always an illusion as the easy conversational tone of writing doesn’t click until the eight rewrite.

• Good design is redesign.

• Good design can copy.

• Good design is often strange - SR-71 and Lisp.

• Good design happens in chunks.

• Good design is daring.

Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of your peers? If no, either everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe or you just aren’t thinking for yourself.

The nature of fashion is to be invisible. Fashion doesn’t seem like fashion when you are in the middle of it. The majority of people wear fashionable clothes so they will fit in, the same is true for fashionable ideas. One of the best ways to think for yourself is put as much distance between yourself and the mob so you can better see what its doing. Always pay special attention to labels and ideas that are being suppressed. If an idea is false, that is the worst thing you can say about it and it doesn’t need to be labeled as x-ic or y-ist. False ideas don’t need to be suppressed as the falseness will take care of it. And if an idea isn’t false, it shouldn’t be suppressed.

The Elephant in the Brain

By Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson

A man always has two reasons for doing anything, a good reason and the real reason.

- J.P. Morgan

The books thesis is:

• Natural selection mostly rewards selfish and competitive behavior..

• Social norms constrain selfish impulses but can be hard to enforce.

• Our brains react as you would expect to these incentives by continuing to act selfishly and violate norms where we can get can get away with it. To help with norm evasion we need to deceive everyone else of our true motives.

• One of the best ways to deceive others is to deceive ourselves. “We deceive ourselves, so we are better at deceiving others.”

• For the most part we are not the agent in charge of the decisions, we are more like the press secretary who gives convenient half truths and post-hoc rationalizations for our actions. In short, we really do things for far less noble reasons than we tell others and tell ourselves.

In part II of this book, “Hidden motives in everyday life” the authors go into detail about how this framework fits in with how we deal with body language, laughter, and even the design of our institutions. For institutions Robin says “Our institutions pretend to give us what we pretend to want, but actually give us more of what we actually want.”

http://elephantinthebrain.com/outline.html