I love this book. It is a book that I would gladly listen to several more times, even though I understood mostly everything it was talking about. This is using applied game theory to talk about inequalities and market forces. It shows how many things that don’t make sense on a macro scale can make sense on a aggregated micro scale. It talks about how special interest groups can get really far ahead without anyone caring that they are being abused by them. It also supports the manufacturing of incentive programs in specific ways to drive the results you are looking for. I will recommend this book to many people as a way to understand game theory in practice.
This is the history of scientology, not it’s beliefs. The history is incredibly interesting, especially in the way they go into the psychology of the group and how they used different systems in unintended ways. They used the legal system to harass, they used lie detectors to tell lies, and they used words to mean different things. They did have some really impressive methods that can be used in less sinister ways. I’d be somewhat interested to read a bit more about the beliefs of Scientology to see how strange they really are, but I’m not that desperate to find out.
This draws a lot from the Bible in all of the stories and parables. I noticed a very consistent theme to the book, Jews and Christians are OK just misguided, God is merciful for not destroying you for the smallest transgressions, and if you don’t believe in the Abrahamic form of God you should be destroyed. One interesting point that is made in the book is that “if God wanted it to be so, then it would be so.” The interesting part is that doesn’t seem to apply to non-believers. There was surprisingly little about God, and most about the stories and how a person should live a good life. I’ll have to read more on religious analysis of the Koran before I can understand everything that it is saying and what that means.
This was ok, didn’t enjoy it too terribly. It did have some good points about how to continually think about what you are doing. I do try to be deliberate, but am very bad at it. I also try to be mindful, and again, I’ve very bad at it. I’m not sure I want to listen to the next to in the series for a while, so I’ll put it off for a while. There was a lot of pseudo-sciency things in this book, but I’m not terribly surprised by it.
This book is a really interesting case for Atheism. I’m not wholly convinced that there is no God, but I’m decently convinced that the god of the Judeo-Christian faiths is not there. I’d like to think that God is a personal God, but that is less likely than a Deist God. I plan to read the holy books of several different religions so that I can more understand them. The biggest thing right now in this arena is to amass more knowledge so that I can more fully understand the arguments for and against each religion. To start that I must understand what each religion says about itself, starting with the holy books. This will probably take a few weeks to work through, and finding audiobooks of all of them may not be that simple.
The history in this book before the modern era was very interesting. It supposes that writing came about for understanding debt. Debt is more what someone is owed for their contributions than what someone owes for their usage. The later idea of debt is more modern. The creation of money in the modern world is a very interesting topic covered in this book. I think that the way they show how bubbles are created and burst from ways groups can defraud certain groups. It also points out something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. There is a divide between those who understand and use the system that has come about, and those who choose to be used by the system.
While this book was very interesting, it was more about general interpersonal relationships than about specifically the intimate relationships. That kind of thing is certainly encapsulated in the book’s message, it isn’t really the only thing it is about. The book says there are 3 types of behaviors (really says people, but i think any person can show a type of behavior at any point). The three behaviors are Anxious, Stable, and Distant. I know I have exhibited all 3 at points. The book talks about how to handle these types of behaviors, whether they are coming from yourself or from others. It also says how to be happy with someone if they exhibit specific types of these behaviors more than others. It bases most of the arguments it makes on the idea that the monogamous relationship is the foundation of social interactions. From what I’ve read and come to believe, I’m not sure that is true. That said, the book talks about interpersonal relationships, so the true message isn’t lost even if monogamy is not the basis of society.
This book talks a lot about evolution of both societies and species. The evolution points towards nonzero gains of traits and patterns. The main premise is that nonzero gains are also inherently zero-sum, since the benefits must be split. The evolution occurs where there are nonzero gains to be made, and the path of evolution are determined by how those nonzero gains are split in the zero-sum fashion. He also says that this movement forward is self perpetuating, since the improved next generation will be able to take bigger advantages of the nonzero sum outcome, and there will be more intense competition since the pervious set of winners will make up the current set of opponents that must split the gains. This is close to one of the premises I would like to test, relating to business and women. I hypothesize that women will naturally tend towards the nonzero gains of a project and focus on that, while men will tend to more focus on the zero-sum splitting of credit for the outcome. I also hypothesize that men will gravitate to the projects that provide more zero sum gains, but higher returns for themselves; while women will tend towards the more nonzero gains, but less for themselves. The result of this hypothesis being true would be that women running the show would make everyone prosper more, but men running the show will lead towards a few businesses doing incredibly well at the downfall of others. This is just a hypothesis, and I can think of a few ways to start testing it, but that would be quite difficult.
This book got back some of the action that had been lacking in the previous ones, although it didn’t even come close to book 1 and 2. I’m so ready to keep going, but I must be patient and wait until the next one is published. The end of John Snow’s story in this book was really disappointing, although it was incredibly vague on what the results were. I’m almost certain that the vagueness was purposeful. There is the red priestess there, and we know what can happen through the powers of the red god. The end with the dragons being ridable was promising, and I’ve been sooo ready for them to start destroying armies. I look forward to starting the next book when it comes out. I actually might read it instead of getting the audible version. They are long enough that I probably won’t.
It's an Exciting World 