The rise of the Wobos

I sometimes read transcripts of, or listen to Yascha Mounk's interviews.  His latest interview is with New York TImes columnist David Brooks.  Mr. Brooks is hawking his latest book. Among the interesting topics discussed by Dr. Mounk and Mr. Brooks is the rise of the "Woke Bourgeois," (WoBos).  Some find our current geopolitical situation analogous to the conditions that led to the 12 million Ukrainians murdered by Stalin (see Live Not by Lies and the Netflix Film "Mr. Jones."

Learning from Hamas Apologists

Dan Gardner's post about how we are all susceptible to losing our own capability to reason is fantastic.  How can these very smart people defend their support of such atrocities?  Gardner explains the thought process and phenomenon well.  One unique element of the Hamas Apologist example that Gardner is missing from this analysis is the Quranic concept that deception is essential to the righteous struggle for all good people to overcome the abomination of the world outside of strict Sharia law.  The intelligent, articulate Hamas Apologists have a slightly richer set of beliefs and motivations than the people from the past secular examples Gardner cites.  I highly recommend Gardner's post.  It explains a lot.

Vivid Tomorrows by David Brin (2021)

I finally bought and read this book.  David does cover the Zeitgeist of the public and world leaders -- how cinema and TV are correlated  with policies and priorities. But most of the book is David's repeated rants about how important civilization, civics, and society are.  We do not spend enough time celebrating the progress in all measures of better lives and outcomes.  The Enlightenment and Humanism that led to better forms of governance, social justice, and society are only rarely put on TV and cinema.  The fantasy and most sci-fi on our screens is about feudal societies, patriarchies, monarchies, and evil institutions.  David thinks we should celebrate how well we all work together.  The essays are worthwhile, of course.  David's ideas are always worth reading. 4/5 Stars.

Israel in 2048: The Rejuvenated State by Michael Oren (2023)

Oren is a pragmatic politician with deep understanding of the difficult politics in the middle east. He has what most westerners might consider an odd take on informal international agreements. His concept aligns with Ibn Khaldum's The Muqaddimah (Introduction)  as well as modern middle eastern statecraft.in general. This book outlines a handful of serious issues and Oren's vision for addressing them.  I always enjoy Oren's analysis.  This book is somewhat less well researched as his history or fiction books but is good, none-the-less. 4/5 Stars.

irreparable damage from generative AI large language models

This post by Cory is worth reading. Here is the appropriate hook to get you to click:

Let's be clear here: these kinds of lawyer letters aren't good writing; they're a highly specific form of bad writing. The point of this letter isn't to parse the text, it's to send a signal. If the letter was well-written, it wouldn't send the right signal. For the letter to work, it has to read like it was written by someone whose prose-sense was irreparably damaged by a legal education.

. . .

The fact that an LLM can manufacture this once-expensive signal for free means that the signal's meaning will shortly change, forever. Once companies realize that this kind of letter can be generated on demand, it will cease to mean, "You are dealing with a furious, vindictive rich person." It will come to mean, "You are dealing with someone who knows how to type 'generate legal threat' into a search box."

Legal threat letters are in a class of language formally called "bullshit"

Please go read Cory's whole thing..

Three Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni (2008)

Our family is no longer frantic; this book would have been fantastic during the decades our family was frantic. Interestingly, the business concepts behind their application to families shines through, making the book worthwhile, so I am glad I did (eventually) read it.  I still have a bunch more Lencioni books to read. 4/5 Stars.

Ideas, Opinions, Liberty, and John Stuart Mill

I was educated as an engineer in the 20th century.  I learned "steam tables thermodynamics," differential equations, electric fields (antenna equation), and engineering (electrical, mechanical, biomedical). I did not learn about literature, sociology, arts, languages, philosophy, or civics (political science).  However, I read quite a bit in a broad range of topics.  And the history of ideas, including polemics and civics is interesting to most folks.

This interesting essay by Richard Reeves has prompted me (finally!) to read On Liberty. In particular, Reeves summarizes concepts in the second chapter:

Mill believed that the pursuit of truth required the collation and combination of ideas and propositions, even those that seem to be in opposition to each other. He urged us to allow others to speak—and then to listen to them—for three main reasons, most crisply articulated in Chapter 2 of On Liberty.

First, the other person's idea, however controversial it seems today, might turn out to be right. ("The opinion … may possibly be true.") Second, even if our opinion is largely correct, we hold it more rationally and securely as a result of being challenged. ("He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.") Third, and in Mill's view most likely, opposing views may each contain a portion of the truth, which need to be combined. ("Conflicting doctrines … share the truth between them.")

These ideas are foundational to good science and engineering.  They are also at the heart of The Enlightenment that enabled human progress. I am frequently disappointed that our society and public discourse do not naturally embrace these concepts.  I am optimistic that we can indoctrinate future generations to honor and embrace these values.

The Blue Age by Gregg Easterbrook (2021)

Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuesday_Morning_Quarterbackwas my favorite weekly column from 2000 until it ended in 2017.  Along with millions of other fans, I was sorely disappointed when Easterbrook stopped writing the column.  Longing for his wit, insights, and aphorisms,  I read two of Easterbrook's books, Sonic Boom and The Here and Now. I disliked both books.  Blue Age is much better!  I recommend this one.  4/5 Stars.

Noise: A flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein (2021)

Noise for the purpose of this book is defined as "undesirable variability in judgments of the same problem."  Kahneman and team focus on the statistics of the phenomenon and are careful to separate this concept of "noise" from cognitive bias. The book covers many motivating institutions in human resources, government, and businesses such as insurance underwriting. Kahneman's  Thinking Fast & Slow is one of my top five life-changing books so I had high expectations when I started reading.  The book covers similar themes to Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, but with much more rigor, precision, and depth. I really loved how the authors brought in all of the opposing points of view and criticisms, explained why some of them have merit and must be considered, and why others should yield to their approach of rigorous statistics and measured outcomes. The book is a little bit long but extremely worthwhile, 5/5 Stars.  Highly recommended.

Angriff auf die Freiheit von Juli Zeh und Ilija Trojanow (2009)

Ich lese alle älteren Bücher von Juli Zeh, während ich in der Bibliothek auf der Warteliste auf die neueren Bücher warte, bis ich an der Reihe bin. Diese Schimpftirade gegen die Zerstörung der Privatsphäre und anderer Menschenrechte aus dem Jahr 2009 ist heute relevanter als zu der Zeit, als sie geschrieben wurde. Die Argumente sind gut formuliert und gut präsentiert. Fast jeder von uns kann mehr tun, um seine Privatsphäre und die Menschenrechte zu schützen. 4/5 Sterne, empfehlenswert.

The Pursuit of Power by William H McNeill (1982))

I normally don't enjoy these dense, phonebook-long history textbooks with too many names, dates.  But this book is fantastic; there is never a dull moment.  It is deeply insightful and posits the author's theories of larger, sociological nation-state behaviors not only of the leaders but the populations.  5/5 Stars.  I am grateful someone at work recommended the book.

Corpus Delecti, Ein Prozess von Juli Zeh

Mein neuer Lieblingsautor präsentiert eine zum Nachdenken anregende Geschichte, die in einer dystopischen Zukunft spielt, in der der Staat die vollständige Kontrolle über die Gesundheit seiner Bürger hat. In dieser Welt gibt es kein Verbrechen, keine Armut und keinen Krieg. Aber es gibt auch keine Freiheit. Jeder Aspekt des Lebens wird vom Staat reguliert, von der Ernährung bis zur Fortpflanzung. Hier sind einige der zum Nachdenken anregenden Aphorismen:

Das Leben ist ein Angebot, das man auch ablehnen kann.

Was bleibt, wenn das Körperliche aufhört? Die Erinnerung an ein Gefühl, das wir mit einem Körper verknüpfen, aber nicht an den Körper selbst.

Die Freiheit, zu leben, wie man will, bedeutet auch die Freiheit, zu sterben, wie man will.

Wem gehört unser Körper? Wer hat das Recht, ihn zu verändern? Und wer hat das Recht, darüber zu entscheiden, wann er zu Ende ist?

Wer sich nicht anpasst, wird ausgegrenzt. Wer sich anpasst, wird unsichtbar.

Die Angst, zu sterben, ist in uns allen. Aber die meisten haben gelernt, sie zu verdrängen.

Es gibt keine objektive Wahrheit. Alles hängt davon ab, aus welchem Blickwinkel man die Dinge betrachtet.

Wer sich der Technologie hingibt, verliert die Kontrolle über sein Leben.

Je mehr wir versuchen, uns vor Schmerz und Tod zu schützen, desto mehr verlieren wir das Gefühl für das Leben selbst.

5/5 Sterne.

The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell

Another wonderfully entertaining book by a great story-teller.  I had seen the Fog of War documentary 20 years ago, and I remember Robert McNamara's comments about Curtis LeMay.  But I did not know about the effectiveness of the  Norden bombsight, or details of all the other characters in the story. Readers must remember that Gladwell is highly opinionated and uses loaded language with great story-telling to slant the facts.  So keep wikipedia handy. 4/5 Stars. The book is very entertaining.

I hate the Ivy League by Malcolm Gladwell (Audiobook)

I listened to this podcast collection over the weekend; it is very entertaining, despite the vitriolic hate and melodramatic righteous indignation.  If you like Gladwell's style, you will love listening to this one, 4/5 Stars.

Disinformation, Misinformation, Propaganda, Distraction

In 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I started watching Perun's weekly in-depth analysis videos (on Sundays) because the information he presents is frequently intrinsically interesting and broadly applicable to understanding geopolitics from a macroeconomics perspective.  In Perun's 16-Apr-2023 video, Perun cites this paper and a few others that indicate at least 30 million American citizens (about 20% of the population of the USA who vote in elections) reposted the false information created and circulated by the Russian Internet Research Agency troll farm.  The problem with social media appears more complex than my (admittedly naive) understanding. The issue is not only with the troll farms and bots.  The issues are with the delivery, timing, and (Aristotelian) rhetorical quality of the information delivered, as well as the capability of social media consumers to think about the information itself.  We are not adequately educated or trained  in persuasion techniques, skepticism, critical thinking, the history of ideas, or enlightened approaches to understanding our world.  

I have therefore further tempered my (strong opinion) that we should always empower and trust people to make self-interested decisions based on access to all information and should never control access (freedom of the press).  Now I am convinced we need more responsibility for fact checking and journalistic integrity assigned to media and social media entities until we can repair some fundamental issues in our public education and society.  However, I don't think governments or regulation should be involved because all governments and the majority of regulations always make situations worse.  I don't know how to return journalism to its roots of chasing truth, sifting evidence, lack of evidence, and following evidence wherever it leads. And I have no idea how citizens can re-discover our civic duties in a republic.  Mandatory civics lessons in schools probably won't work.

Another problem I perceive is selective secrecy used to dis-inform and misinform. Whistleblowers like Snowden, and other revelations of secret information have changed the objective truth of  a few recent historical events.  There is also an alarming decrease in the release of data (e.g. Pfizer). 

Detecting Deception

In Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers, Gladwell has some fun anecdotes explaining how experts and trained professionals were deceived by liars.  Gladwell champions some relatively weak theories explaining how and why we are so terrible at detecting deception.  Recently, researchers at (you can't make this up!) the "Lie Lab" have published a fantastic comic, a youtube video, and research paper explaining that going deep into details is the most reliable method of probing for deception.

Comics are underrated as the most approachable and effective communications medium.

What makes you feel bad must be eradicated

Someone pointed me at this fascinating Boston Globe opinion piece that is worth sharing.  It has some interesting insights but is an inadequate summary of the 25-year study on which the author's concepts are based. The Atlantic article she cites is another great companion piece.  As the author says, "Living in a society means encountering people who test us, or annoy us, or infuriate us—or to whom we ourselves are tiresome, annoying, and infuriating."  Trying to remove all friction is fruitless and counter-productive.

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

It's been a (long) while since Gladwell's David and Goliath (2013).  I do not read Gladwell's New Yorker column or listen to his podcast, so I have not kept up with his ideas and opinions.  I stumbled across this 2019 book in my library and was happy to read it on Libby.  As usual, the book is very entertaining; readers love it and critics dislike it. The logic and science are relatively weak but the rhetorical methods and story-telling are fantastic.  As always, I enjoyed the stories. 4/5 Stars.

Which Cognitive Bias is this one?

https://smbc-comic.com/  

https://smbc.comic-com

The list of 150 Cognitive biases has several that cover this common tendency.  I am curious which of the bias best describes this issue and what approaches academics are taking to mitigate the issues.

Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

Thinking in Systems:

My friend Senthil asks for and shares book recommendations with me.  His 2022 list included this title so I added it to the (large) queue of "holds" at my local library. (Aside: Here is proof my library is better than yours.)  I had low expectations because the book was revised by others after Donella's untimely death and is now over 20 years old.  My fear of the sharp political slant was somewhat unfounded. The book really does make the reader sit back and think. The methods described can expand our horizons to overcome some instinctive cognitive biases.  We can use the simple approaches of the book to see many phenomena from a broader point of view. I enjoyed the book and recommend it. 4/5 Stars.