Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

By Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, et al.

I think this is a good book on the error (different than bias) inherent in human judgment. 

Pi: A Biography of the World's Most Mysterious Number

 A fun read. Includes much Pi trivia and history. I'm a little disappointed that the book didn't go deeper-- something college math level

Sorry I'm Late. I Didn't Want to Come

By Jessica Pan.

Jessica is an introvert much more deeply than I am. She spends a year extroverting and writing about it. She networks, uses apps to make friends, takes an improve comedy course, does standup, *and* horror of horrors, hosts a dinner party. 

I am an introvert in a somewhat different position than Jessica. I don't mind being alone. I don't worry that I have too few friends. Perhaps its because I have a husband who makes up for all that.

None the less, this is a fun read. 

MIne! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

By Michael Heller & James Salzman.

Ownership is a complex thing. This book provides a great discussion about how we decide ownership, and the consequences thereof. For every ownership scheme, there are winners and loser. Upsides and downsides.

Ownership schemes...

• First come first served.
• Possession is nine-tenths of the law
• You reap what you sow.
• My home is my castle.
• Our bodies, our selves.
• The meek shall inherit the earth

Many of these schemes have the benefit of being "bright line." Clear. Unambiguous. Easy to Administrate. Easy for people to work out disputes themselves. For example.. first come, first served... possession is nine-tenths of the law... you reap what you sow... my home is my castle. With these rules average people can sort out who owns what without needing someone to arbitrate. These rules work well when resources are plentiful. However, when resources  are scare, they create a race to the bottom-- the tragedy of the commons. Consider water rights in doubt ridden California. Or fishing rights in Alaska. To thrive in the long run, participants must move past these schemes when resource exhaustion is inevitable.

Resource gridlock-- sometimes so many people own needed resources that commerce can't happen. Think of a patent that's not being used. Or a farm or vacation property owned by so many heirs that no one can agree what to do with it. Care must be taken to ensure that owned resources can stay useful, that ownership is passed on cleanly after the original owner dies.

The book urges us to think through problems with a few tools...

ex ante/ex post. Ex ante: looking forward-- what decision will have the best consequences going forward. Ex post: looking back after the fact-- Who acted badly? Who well? What consequences are fairest for those in the past. Judges, by design, my decide "ex post." Legislators should decide "ex ante." 

Pay attention to and think though ownership design. Every ownership scheme has it's winners, it's losers, and those who stand by. Think about the "Reclining space" behand a chair on an a jet. Who owns it? Does the person who wants to recline? Does the person whose leg space is taken away? Airlines usually don't have policies on this. They prefer the two passengers to work it out themselves. They could set a clear policy. But why should they? By staying uninvolved in this ownership dispute, they deflect anger to other passengers, while they quietly reduce the space between seats. "It's not the airline's fault that my knees are hitting the seat in front of me. It's that jerk passenger." No, it really was the airlines choice to make that happen. 

We are often afraid of solving a problem because it creates a slippery slope. Instead, can we think of a "sticky step."-- a set of concrete things that we can do to address a problem.

Ownership in the future-- we have started renting things through microtransactions and subscriptions fees. Spotify v.s. CDs. AirBnb. This is concentrating wealth.

The Dark Forest

Part two of  Cixin Liu's increasingly dark "Three Body Problem" series.

Liu has a theory as to why our galaxy appears so empty of life. Species are hiding from each other. When a species does announce its self to the galaxy, a nearby more-advance and more-paranoid species will destroy it. Slowly our galaxy fills up with paranoid civilizations hiding from each other.

The book then is about earth's first encounter with an alien civilization, and how wrong that goes.

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

 by Albert Camus

I was drawn to this book because I heard that, in it, Camus argues against suicide in a meaningless world. As I started reading, I realized that Camus was writing for people who were approaching suicide as a reasoned intellectual process. This is distinctly different from my experience where the suicidal are just trying to end their pain.

Maybe I'll try reading again in the future. But for now, I can find my own happiness in a very tough world, so I'm not there right now.

Theories of International Politics and Zombies

By Daniel W. Drezner.

Another book that I didn't make it though. It seems to be a serious treatment of what international politics would be like during a zombie outbreak. 

I think I was hoping for a humorous attempt to teach international politics.  

Breath. The New Science of a Lost Art

By James Nestor.

Breath through your noise. Chew.

I aborted reading this book. To many conclusions are drawn from too thin of an experience.

"There is nothing as inspiring as someone doing good, in public, when things feel hideous and doomed. Let’s do some good, and let’s resist the temptation to browbeat those around us into doing good better. It’s not truly empathy if it’s procured at knifepoint, from the depleted." 

-Dahlia Lithwick

I appreciate that quote. I've seen it happen a few times recently in the form of well-meaning people peppering someone who is exhausted with advice, then watching these well-meaning people become frustrated when their advice is not warmly and quickly received.

I have been reading a lot recently, though.

I've aborted reading one book-- the Road Less Traveled. I used to read it once a year. Then I read the tale of the authors life, and his multiple infidelities. It turned me off of the book. It occurred to me that perhaps the challenge of life is much more than knowing the ways of the wise. It's equally important to be disciplined enough to actually improve yourself. The Road Less Traveled is very weak and how to achieve that discipline.

The Three Body Problem

 by Liu Cixin.

A very readable book. The premise at the core of this book is that humanities first message from an alien civilization is basically "Stop transmitting. Don't reply or they will find you and invade you."

Of course someone replies back. The book is the story of why they would do so, and the consequences of those actions.

At Home. A Short History of Private Life

By Bill Bryson.

Bryson sometimes uses a schtick, a formula, for his books. Basically, he starts with a theme, however loose, and then retells a lot of historic anecdotes on that them.

In this case the theme is his house in England, and the history of private life.

… there is a history to tell here. Before we lived in houses we lived communally. How did we get from there, to private homes for everyone?

Sometimes his formula works really well. This time, I'm not sure I really learnt more about the history of private life. This book is a bit over stuffed.

I really have to admire it though. A large amount of research went into this book.

The Phantom Tollbooth

By Norton Juster.

I think I read this after Atwood discussed it in "In Other Worlds" as a great example of another book where it's category (Fantasy?) doesn't do it justice. This is a book of fun wordplay that urges the reader to think clearly for themselves.

Amoralman

 By Derek Delgaudio

I saw Delgaudio's special on Hulu... "In & Of It's Self". Delgaudio is a very talented slight of hand magician who weaves interesting and poignant stories in along with his tricks. He can pull off card tricks so cleanly that I don't think I will ever trust card dealers again. 

The book, an autobiography of his youth, chronicles how he got that way. 

Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

by Tom Mueller

Much olive oil is doctored with cheaper olive oil. What's the story behind that? 

• Most people can't really tell the difference between high and low quality oil. Great olive oil can have a bitter & peppery test that turns many people off.
• Of all the oil produced by great olives, half is low quality (useful for soaps and lubrications) a third is good for frying after its been deodorized.  Only the rest is good enough to be high quality extra virgin olive oil.
• Unlike cheap wine, most cheap oils are perfectly usable and just taste neutral.
• Great olive oil is best fresh. To sell high quality oil year around, manufacturers have to chase the olive harvest in different parts of the world, then blend as necessary to achieve a consistent test for there customers.

All by way of saying, if a little cheaper, neutral testing oil was snuck into the olive oil blend at some point, the consumer would never notice, and would probably appreciate the cheaper price.

In Other Worlds

By Margaret Atwood.

I should read more Atwood. Sometimes you hear that she is very feminist. She might respond that writing female characters that have their own inner voice doesn't make you a feminist.

In Other Worlds is Atwood's survey of science fiction-- or speculative fiction-- or both. Her point is that lumping Frankenstein or "The Handmaids Tale" in the same category as Star Wars doesn't really help us navigate the diversity of writing in this category. 

She covers the history of what we'd call Sci-Fi. From tall tales and monster stories, evolving over the decades into a diverse genre of literature.

The Accidental Superpower

 Mr. Peter Zeihan.

I'm enjoying more books on geopolitics. Zeihan looks at the Geography and Demography of countries and regions around the world. He then makes long term predictions.

Canada for example-- Ontario and Quebec are getting older. As they do so, they will stop paying as much tax as the used to. Alberta is young and has a bumper crop of resources. Much tax burden will shift to it. Alberta will be angry for decades to come. With their resources, they they feel like they should be rich. But they have limited power to sell those resources globally-- they are land locked. The U.S. has no reason to let Alta freely sell. Nor does B.C.

Zeihan is also not optimistic about the future of Russia and China. They both have demographic cliffs in the coming decades. For sometime in these countries. the births and immigration has not matched the rate that people are growing old or dyeing. Old people, without jobs, are a drain on the resources of a country. There aren't enough young people to shore up the dwindling resources. Times will get tough.

Zeihan is very optimistic about the U.S. There is no demographic cliff. There is enough shale oil to feed the countries energy demands for decades. And the underlaying geography of the country still supports a strong economy.

Natural ports-- the U.S. has more natural deep water ports than the rest of the world combined. Even If other countries (Canada? Brazil?) wanted to have an trade as large as the U.S- they wouldn't be able  because there are too many bottle necks to get goods into, or out of, those countries. 

In "Prisons of Geography" Marshall tells the story of a Chinese official who pushes back on U.S. values saying... "Why do you think your values will work in a culture that you don't understand?" I understand that statement a bit more. The land along the Yellow river is very fertile, yet there are constant floods and droughts that would regularly destroy a Western style farm. It's only through large scale collective planning that this area can grow the food that it does. Of course there is large scale, planned government here. The area would be desolate otherwise. 

Whitopia

By Rich Benjamin

Race relations are a complicated thing-- you can have racism in a land without racists.

Hogfather

 By Terry Prachett

A fun fantasy set in Prachett's disc world. Also a satire of, I guess, British society. 

It was a fun read. Very creative with all the odd ball gods, and the twists that somehow fit together.

Earthbag Building

By Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer.

Every now and then I run into a book that I dream will teach me a new survival skill should everything go to shit, and I need to start over. This time it's earthbag building... If I lost my job and home, I could always build a new home with bags of earth.

Reading this book gave me anxiety. It would take so much work to build a new home from earthbags. I don't have that patience.

Reality is not what it seems

by Carlo Rovelli

I love Rovelli's writing. He is very good at describing, at taking you step by step though the thought process needed to understand Quantum Gravity. Or maybe he seduces you into believing that you understand. 

Back in November, I decided to get up to date with what's current in theoretical physics. At this point I've taught myself a few things, but mostly I've decided that understanding theoretical physics would be a difficult full time job. I'm going to pause this effort for a while.

Roger Penrose...

The Road to Reality-- A Complete Guide To The  Laws Of The Universe, and...

Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of The Universe.

Every now and then I like to attempt to can catchup on the state of physics. With Penrose winning a Nobel in Physics, I thought I'd go through some of his books.

These books are very dense. Not light reading.

The Road To Reality is a great reference. If I wanted to know the math behind something, say String Theory or Quantum Gravity, I could look it up in in this book. Then, when I didn't understand part of that explanation, the book would offer me pointers to the math and science that I needed. And so on, all the way back to the roots of science and mathematics.

Fashion, Faith and Fantasy is different in that it tells more of the narrative of various problems in physics, who is investigating them, why they are important, and the directions the solutions are headed in.