I had a great time listening to this. It was in a very different direction than Your Deceptive Mind. This was about using the biases and heuristics, along with controlling the conversation. This had a lot more to do with situations where there isn’t Truth but only truth. What I mean by that is this deals with situations where there is uncertainty. It is a really interesting listen.
This was amazing. I got to hear a full explanation of something that I’ve been hearing about for years on Skeptic’s Guide from the host himself. Steven Novella is the man. I really like the way he explained the biases, heuristics, and logical fallacies. He does a good job of explaining how you can avoid the fallacies for yourself.
If there is one issue with the series it is that there is no good explanation on how to get other people to avoid these biases. I guess the point is to just introduce them to this series and have them learn for themselves.
Wow. This book was one of the most confusing, entertaining, frustrating, and comical books I’ve ever read. I’m going to look for a film version of it. The humor is exactly along the same lines as the movie Airplane, and 10 times more than that. I had such a great time listening to it, although I’m sad at how much death there is. I think that is part of the intention of the book is to have the twisted, but logical lookout on life. It is hard to do that without some death. All of the crazy situations in the book follow perfect logical sense, but the premises on which they are based are just slightly off. I’m not sure exactly what the point of the book was, since there was a ton of twisted logic and weird scenarios to think about, but I can now say that I’m 100% sure what a catch-22 situation is.
This book was quite good, but very different than many adaptations of it I’ve seen. Most of the adaptations have Mr. Hyde as a larger character that is primarily driven by lust. The character in other adaptations is also not easily seen as pure evil. The audience is shown that, but the characters in the movie/play don’t immediately see that. The duality of good and evil a theme that I find very interesting, as Dorian Grey is also a book I really enjoyed.
This book was quite good, although a little short and not terribly in depth on any given part. That is probably because I’m comparing to the other recent fiction books I’ve read, Song of Ice and Fire and Wheel of Time. Compared to those two series, most anything would be short and not very explanative. I liked the story, and how the games turned out to be real. It was an excellent book, and I look forward to the movie.
This book was a great representation of what I experienced at Startup Weekend when I won the gaming vertical in Mega Startup Weekend. There is only one thing they don’t really talk about, and that is how the people you meet and get along with in 54 hours may not be people you get along with in longer term settings. In my case it was a little bit of that combined with the person I started the weekend with not putting me as a founder, but as the first employee. It was a little disheartening; especially since he didn’t officially tell me that until nearly a month and a half later. I did learn a ton in the experience, both worldly knowledge and technical skills. I might even go to another startup weekend event.
I really like the story of this book, but was expecting more of a how to than a long narrative. There was a ton of advice that came from lots of sources in the book, but none of it was distilled to be useful directly in my situation. I think I’d like to give applying to Y-Combinator another go for the upcoming session, but I’m not sure if any of the people I would want to work with are up for that kind of adventure and life investment.
This book had a lot of good points around self improvement being the driving factor of life. It also made the point that money should not be an end goal. Money is purely a means to other items. That mantra is in line with one of my personal mantras; it is the use and experience of something that gives it value, ownership or control are simply easy ways to get use. I’m already doing most of what the book recommends, but I should be networking a good deal more. I certainly have enough friends in interesting groups and companies that could introduce me to more interesting people. I have been ok at keeping in touch with my friends and acquaintances, but haven’t used them for introductions as much as I could.
This book had some really amazing points about the processes behind phsychological treatments and practices. The best of which is how they don’t tend to follow the scientific practice, and how anyone can spout nonsense and get others to pick it up. This was especially well demonstrated by the best seller “The Secret.” In The Secret the reader is told that things are attracted to you when you think about them, which is absurd and doesn’t go into edge cases well. The best way in my understanding to know if some process is real or fake is if the edge cases are appreciably addressed. There is also the double blind controlled study, but that is hard to come by when dealing with people.
One of the things I’m taking away from this is that determining the story one thinks about oneself can drastically change the way one behaves. This mantra can be applied to myself, or I can work on others by trying to change their story. I do all the time with Steph to help her see how amazing she really is; that cute, ninja, scuba, sailor, geeky, robot-making, adventurous, kind woman.
It's an Exciting World 