Book Reviews – 2024

Can skepticism turn a cynical world into a beacon of hope? This question is at the heart of one of the most beautiful and impactful introductions I’ve ever read, setting the tone for Jamil Zaki‘s book “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness”. Distinguishing between skepticism and cynicism is critically important; while cynicism often upholds the status quo, skepticism encourages questioning, conveys a reluctance to believe claims without evidence, encourages critical thinking, and – critically – is compatible with hope.

We often overestimate cynicism’s “positive” features, like its supposed realism or protective nature. Cynics may call out injustice wherever they see it but they are not change-makers. Their worldview is seductive — dark and simple — but cynicism is not just harmful; it’s often naive. We consistently underestimate how generous, trustworthy, and open-minded people are. Cynicism accepts negative beliefs as facts, whereas skeptics probe and test them, often ending up positively surprised.

Zaki writes in a unique, mixed, style; the book is thoroughly researched and with points backed by evidence, but there is also a poignant thread throughout the book – the story of Emile, a now-deceased individual who profoundly influenced the author. Atypically for such narratives, I found this worked quite well. By the end, I felt touched by Emile as well, which was a rare experience.

In many places, Zaki references research I’ve seen elsewhere; e.g. that interacting with others is more pleasant and meaningful than most people realise. You also can go deep even with ‘strangers,’ and those deeper conversations leave both parties more fulfilled.

The book addresses the current state of the world, emphasizing not only genuine polarization but also the phenomenon of false polarization — we perceive society as more divided than it truly is, imagining the “other side” holds more extreme views than they do. This misperception drives people further apart unless they question their beliefs, a process hindered by media driven by its own biases and maladaptive metrics. Additionally, the “fire hose of falsehoods” in today’s media landscape is designed to wear down our sense of reality. As the book poignantly notes, “The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

I might’ve at one point described myself as a cynic, but I’m not anymore. I am, however, a skeptic – and this book nudged me towards being a hopeful skeptic. How? Because hope is not a naive way of approaching the world; it is an accurate response to the best data available. This book will show you that data, and why that is. Read it.

* Rating: 5 out of 5 (I am so going to be in trouble selecting the best 5 books of 2024)
* Dog-ear index: 12.5
* Who is it for: the cynics, for they should shift to being skeptics; the skeptics, to fully appreciate what that means; and everyone who thinks they are the same thing.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Hope-Cynics-Surprising-Science-Goodness/dp/1472148193/

Over the years, I’ve read many books that I believe should be taught in high school. This one, however, might be even better suited for early adulthood, when our brains are still maturing into our twenties. It also made me realize we lack a collective education system for adults — we lose a shared educational foundation after age 18. It would be great if we had an “early adulthood curriculum” for everyone in their early to mid-twenties.

Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People by Lindsay C. Gibson belongs in that unfortunately fictional curriculum. It’s a deeply insightful guide for anyone dealing with emotionally immature individuals — whether family, friends, or colleagues. While it focuses on navigating relationships with emotionally immature parents, its lessons are universally applicable, no matter the role these people play in your life.

The book is divided into 50 short chapters, each a few pages long, that start with a statement that might feel familiar to especially adult children of emotionally immature parents (ACEIP). You do not have to be one to find tremendous value from this book, however. Examples of the chapter titles and subtitles include:
– “Why can’t they give me a little positive feedback? [Why EIPs don’t recognise your efforts.]”
– “No matter what I do, they still seem hurt and betrayed. [Why your efforts to make EIPs feel better don’t work.]”
– “I just want them to love me and understand my feelings. [Pick achievable goals instead.]”

The writing style is a clear and direct and accessible; a wonderful combination of candid advice, compassionate facts, humor, and firm support. One of the strengths is how it provides both clarity and practical advice. Gibson identifies the traits of emotionally immature people but also offers strategies for disentangling from these relationships; each chapter ends with a section on strategies, and another one with tips.

Her advice helps you recognize emotionally immature people, protect yourself, and build emotional resilience. It’s not about diagnosing or pathologizing every difficult relationship; it’s about understanding others and yourself so you can decide when and how to engage or step away, managing expectations, protecting your energy, and not taking their behavior personally.

Whether you’re dealing with a particularly difficult relationship or just want to understand emotional maturity better, this book is an excellent resource. It’s straightforward, and packed with (and I can’t believe I’m using this word) actionable insights that help you manage your emotional health while navigating these challenging relationships.

* Rating: 5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 9.5
* Who is it for: everyone? Yeah that about covers it. Some countries have more endemic issues with emotional immaturity (*cough*), so especially them.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Disentangling-Emotionally-Immature-People-Relationships/dp/1648481515/

Immigration has been a highly polarising topic in recent years, and as a first-generation immigrant in Australia, it’s personal. I’ve seen rising anti-immigration sentiments in the US, Finland (my other home), and to a lesser extent, Australia.

With that in mind, I was keen to see how Exequiel (Zeke) Hernandez handles immigration in his book “The Truth About Immigration”. While the book is understandably, if somewhat disappointingly, quite U.S.-centric, the themes resonate globally.

Though the U.S. is seen as a ‘melting pot,’ Australia leads in Western nations —15% of the U.S. population are first-generation migrants, 10% in Finland, and 30% in Australia. In Melbourne, where I live, it’s 36%. Given these numbers, it’s disappointing that Hernandez largely overlooks Australia.

Hernandez methodically debunks myths about immigration — negative economic impact, higher crime rates, stealing jobs, and more — using hard data. The economic argument is easily shattered, as immigration, by all reasonable metrics, has a highly net-positive impact, and Hernandez thoroughly covers this.

But the book isn’t limited to economic impacts; societal and cultural impacts are considered too. One aspect of the book that hit close to home for me is how enriching multiculturalism can be. Hernandez points out it’s not in our best interests for immigrants to abandon their prior cultural experiences and ideas; we don’t want assimilation, we want integration in the sense that they adopt the society’s core values, but we also want immigrants to share cultural differences that will enrich our lives.

My own diverse group of friends, who have come here from all around the globe, is one of the best things in my life (if you’re one of them, thank you for being in my life!). Immigration is not just about numbers and policies — it’s about people and the rich, diverse, vibrant communities and relationships they create and weave. Hernandez does a good job highlighting these human, social & cultural elements of migration.

While I fully recognize Australia’s troubled history of racism, the still-too-high levels of it today, the housing crisis high immigration adds to, and other issues the country faces, I’m proud of Australia’s multiculturalism; and I’m not alone either — 90% of Australians still sees cultural diversity as “entirely or mostly positive for the country”.

Hernandez’s takedown of immigration myths is satisfying, though the U.S. focus feels limiting at times. Nonetheless, the book’s insights are critical for anyone wanting to understand the nuances of immigration, especially in countries that are facing a backlash against it.

* Rating: 4 out of 5 (4.5 out of 5 if you’re in the US)
* Dog-ear index: 6.5
* Who is it for: Readers curious about immigration myths, especially those looking for a data-driven debunking. While the data is U.S.-focused, readers from other countries will find it a useful comparison to their policies.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Truth-about-Immigration-Successful-Societies/dp/125028824X/

“High Conflict: Why we get trapped and how we get out” by Amanda Ripley tackles a vital subject: how we can step away from the simplistic notion of “us vs. them” and move toward a more nuanced and constructive understanding of differing perspectives. If the notion of ‘high conflict’ isn’t familiar to you, it refers to situations, relationships, or environments where there is persistent, intense, and often irrational conflict that seems resistant to resolution.

In a society (dare I say especially American society) that increasingly seems defined by division, the question Ripley seeks to answer — how we can step out of high conflict — is an important one.

The book’s foundation is solid, grounded in research on conflict resolution, psychology, and sociology, and is thoroughly referenced. However, it relies heavily on anecdotal storytelling to make its points. While these narratives humanize the theory and provide vivid, relatable examples, I found that they sometimes overshadowed a broader exploration of the issue. Readers who enjoy personal stories and real-life examples will likely find this style engaging, but for those (looking into the mirror here) looking for a more comprehensive or data-driven analysis, the narrative may feel somewhat narrow.

This reliance on anecdotes made the book feel overly focused on a few examples, at the expense of deeper, more diverse, and dare I say more concise insights. Having read quite a bit on this topic, I didn’t learn as much as I had hoped, and found this storytelling approach somewhat frustrating — but that’s just my experience; YMMV.

That said, one point that resonated was the idea that complexity is contagious. Ripley argues that people can be primed to see the world in a less binary, more complex way, which is a deeply satisfying concept. In a time when nuance often seems lost, knowing that we can influence others to embrace complexity — even if just a little — feels both hopeful and powerful.

Another reminder was that “listening doesn’t mean agreeing.” This simple yet profound truth — that we can hear & understand others without legitimizing or amplifying their points of view — is one I wish more people would take to heart. It’s a lesson that has far-reaching implications for all kinds of discourse, whether in personal relationships, politics, or social media.

Overall, while High Conflict is a well-researched and relevant work, with a writing style that didn’t quite click with me. As such the review data points below reflect my personal experiences on the lack of novelty and that writing style; so this is a good place to remind people that I write these reviews from _my_ perspective, and they may not be generalizable.

* Rating: 3 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 1.5
* Who is it for: People interested in recognizing and escaping high conflict, and those who enjoy learning via real-life examples and stories.

https://www.amazon.com.au/High-Conflict-Why-Get-Trapped/dp/1982128569/

This week we dive into something we all probably understand less than we’d like, or at least less than we should: relationships.

“Relationships” by The School of Life is, quite frankly, one of those missing instruction manuals for life that everyone could benefit from reading, ideally twice: once during your teenage years, when you’re first absorbing a Hollywood-fueled version of love, and again in your mid-twenties when reality sets in, often after a few relationship mishaps. If you didn’t get the memo back then, no worries — there’s no upper age limit on figuring this stuff out. I certainly am late to this.

The School of Life takes a unique, distinct perspective, and a certain tone and approach that carries through much of their work. It’s present here, too – advocating for a more Classical or balanced view on relationships, it challenges the rose-tinted ideals of romanticism that most people in Western countries have grown up with.

I tend to agree with this critical stance, though it’s also worth considering Eli Finkel’s ideas in “The All-Or-Nothing Marriage”, and a couple of other books I’ve recently reviewed. “Relationships” broadly focuses on the relationship with a significant other, so it’s limited in that way – combining a few works on relationships will give you an even more nuanced understanding of the complexities involved.

Where “Relationships” stands out is in its ability to succinctly challenge our assumptions, serving up food for thought that’s meant to disrupt the traditional narratives we’ve come to accept. While not an activity book, it does push you to engage in a couple of exercises that can help reshape your relationship.

What’s refreshing about this book is that it avoids offering simplistic solutions; in fact, it explicitly recognizes there _are_ no “solutions”, no simple formula that we could follow that ensures everything will be fine.

Instead, it illuminates the tensions between various views: the “Loyalist vs. Libertine” and “Romantic vs. Classical” ends of the spectrum. Rather than picking sides, it encourages a nuanced approach, reminding us that relationships rarely conform to neat categories, that both viewpoints have some excellent points, but that both are also fundamentally wrong. It’s an invitation to think, reflect, and — perhaps most importantly — evolve our understanding to be able to hold a more nuanced view.

Relationships is by no means an in-depth treatise into everything about relationships; it’s a quick read, but one that is almost guaranteed to make you go “hmm; that’s a good point” more than once. As such, it’s a great guide to re-calibrate your relationship with your relationships.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: n/a
* Who is it for: Anyone interested in understanding relationships beyond the surface level, particularly those who want to challenge romantic clichés and explore a more balanced, thoughtful approach.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Relationships-School-Life/dp/0993538746/

Up this week: emotional intelligence, or as I like to call it, “stuff that should’ve been in our school curriculum but wasn’t.” Marc Brackett’s “Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success” takes us on a journey into this critically important topic. If, like me, you didn’t receive anything resembling emotional education in school, at home, or even later in life, it’s never too late to start — so, do yourself a favor and read this book.

In a world where emotional well-being is often sidelined, Brackett emphasizes the vital need to teach emotional skills in schools — a point that can’t be overstated, yet has been overlooked for decades. As a result, many of us are emotionally under-skilled (and yes, I’ll admit I used to be in that camp). Brackett’s approach argues that emotional literacy should be fundamental to every school curriculum, because understanding our emotions is key to navigating the human experience.

At the core of Permission to Feel is the RULER framework: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions. Of these, the importance of labeling struck me the most. Without a rich emotional vocabulary, it’s hard to fully grasp or express what we’re feeling. There’s a world of difference between being pleased, happy, elated, or ecstatic — and if you can’t identify these differences, chances are your emotional understanding could use some sharpening.

The book also introduces the “Mood Meter,” a practical tool that maps emotions based on energy and pleasantness. With 100 emotions on the spectrum, it’s an excellent way to start broadening your emotional vocabulary and understanding where you (and others) sit on the emotional landscape. (I’ll post a picture of it in the comments.)

Brackett goes beyond vocabulary, exploring how emotions are shaped by biology, experiences, and culture. We don’t all fear the same things, nor do we express joy in the same way, and acknowledging this is key to building empathy and deeper connections.

Another takeaway I found powerful: expressing emotion is a co-skill. It’s not something you can do in isolation — it requires active engagement from both parties. If the listener isn’t tuned in, the emotional exchange falls flat.

Permission to Feel is more than a guide to emotional intelligence (which, let’s face it, most of us need). It’s a call to action to make emotional literacy a priority in education. Brackett provides practical tools and insights, setting the stage for all of us to move toward greater well-being and success.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 7.2
* Who is it for: Educators, parents, and anyone interested in enhancing their emotional intelligence.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Permission-Feel-Emotional-Intelligence-Well-Being/dp/1250212839/

For a sub-300 page book, Dan Davis’s “The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How the World Lost Its Mind” accomplishes a lot; it’s an actually useful introduction to cybernetics and Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model; an effective take-down of economics and economists; and a tale of the profound failings of modern governance.

The premise is simple: we’ve built, and rely on, large and incredibly complex systems that are fundamentally prone to enacting bad decisions. One key factor here are so-called accountability sinks (a system where responsibility is assigned or absorbed, but without any meaningful action, transparency, or consequences). Davis highlights how the complexity of modern systems means that we must often treat them as black boxes. Rather than pretending we understand every part, we should observe outcomes and adapt. This is both pragmatic and terrifying. The key lesson here is that, in many domains, complexity has become so immense that it’s practically impenetrable.

The book also contains a lot of seeming simple but also profound observations. One example: “If you consistently demand the impossible, you will inevitably get the unethical.” (I’ll add another, slightly longer one, to the comments).

Davis also pays homage to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, pointing out his warnings of societal overwhelm and our present reality. He argues that not only are people in general struggling to cope with Future Shock, but managers are also structurally overwhelmed, unable to keep up with the pace and complexity of the systems they’re meant to steer. This is made even more impossible by cutting management layers: as businesses and governments rush to “streamline,” it becomes clear this kind of reductionist thinking only exacerbates problems by removing critical layers of oversight and understanding.

The critique of economics as a kind of variety engineering is both sharp and funny, with Davis remarking (to my surprise) that many economists can’t even read a balance sheet (one reason being accountants are considered by economists as an inferior class).

The Unaccountability Machine is an excellent examination of how we have built the structures that then got us into the mess we’re in. It forces the reader to confront the uncomfortable reality that complexity has outpaced our ability to manage it. While it does, towards the end, offer some tentative steps to making things potentially much better, by and large we need to understand the predicament we have gotten ourselves into first.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 10.5 + several bottom-corner dog-ears too (the really _really_ important parts)
* Who is it for: Anyone seeking a crash course in cybernetics, or wondering why, despite good intentions, we seem to be making consistently bad decisions. Also, for those who believe flattening organizations and cutting management is always a good idea.

This week: psychedelics! Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” has been on my to-read shelf for years so reading it was overdue. It’s a deep dive into the history, science, and potential therapeutic applications of substances like LSD and psilocybin.

The topic is both timely and important. For decades, psychedelics have been marginalized, shrouded in controversy and misunderstanding, their potential benefits overlooked due to societal taboos and legal restrictions. This book serves as an argument for reevaluating our stance on these substances, challenging our potentially prejudiced or outdated ideas about them, backed by old and new scientific research and thoughtful analysis.

How to Change Your Mind provides a very comprehensive in its historical account of psychedelics. Personally, I found this also a weakness; Pollan meticulously traces the journey of these substances from their discovery and initial enthusiasm in the scientific community to their vilification and prohibition. While this historical context is valuable, I found it somewhat verbose; almost half of the book is dedicated to various historical aspects of psychedelics, which, while interesting, felt excessive and occasionally detracted from the more pressing contemporary issues.

Some of the more captivating sections of the book deal with the neuroscience of psychedelics, and the exploration of how these substances deactivate the brain’s default mode network was particularly enlightening. This shutdown of our brain’s autopilot, so to speak, may be the key to accessing extraordinary states of consciousness and could explain the profound experiences many users report.

Pollan doesn’t shy away from the philosophical implications of this research either. He poses thought-provoking questions, such as whether the objective truth of these experiences matters if they provide significant relief to those suffering. It’s a nuanced exploration of the intersection between neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.

Despite my feeling that the book could have been 150 pages shorter, I came away having learned a great deal, particularly about the research being conducted in this field. With the book, Pollan makes a convincing case – without really trying to make a case – for the potential benefits of psychedelics, especially in therapeutic contexts.

It’s an important contribution to the ongoing conversation about psychedelics and their place in our society. It challenges us to reconsider our assumptions and opens up exciting possibilities for the future of mental health treatment and our understanding of consciousness itself.

* Rating: 3.75 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 7.6
* Who is it for: People who think psychedelics are just any other illicit drug; people interested in neuroscience, psychology, or alternative approaches to mental health. It’s particularly relevant for those in the medical field, policymakers, and individuals curious about the frontiers of consciousness research.

This week: more systems. Georgina Voss’s “Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World” is an ambitious but brief exploration of how we interact with, understand, and often misunderstand the complex systems that define our modern world. Coming in on the heels of the previous book I read – Sidney Dekker’s Drift into Failure, a more in-depth look into nigh-inevitable breakdowns of complex systems – I found Systems Ultra to be a little frustrating of an experience in comparison.

My main issue, which may well be quite unfair and the result of the previous read(s), is that the book at times felt a bit [naive/simplistic/inappropriately generalizing] when it comes to systems and complexity theory. Where Dekker challenges the reader with density and a rigorous examination of why systems fail, Voss’s approach feels softer — more of a poetic treatise or a gentle introduction to systems thinking. While this perspective is valuable in its own right, it didn’t quite satisfy my appetite for something more.

The book also spent what felt like too many of its relatively few pages on aspects of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which, while fascinating in small doses, felt overdone in this context. I appreciate that CES serves as a microcosm for the intersection of technology, culture, and society, but it began to feel like a distraction from the broader exploration of systems that I expected.

That said, Voss does go deeper into some specific systems, such as ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast), providing a more detailed exploration of how certain technologies operate within our world. For someone less familiar with these systems, these sections are likely to be engaging and informative. However, I was already quite familiar with the covered systems, so I found these parts to be a bit boring. This is, of course, a highly subjective critique; a casual reader might well find these sections to be the most enlightening parts of the book.

Overall, Systems Ultra is more of a quirky introductory guide to systems thinking, infused with a poetic sensibility that emphasizes how these systems shape our emotions, perceptions, and behaviour. I don’t intend to use the word ‘poetic’ in a manner that would imply the facts in the book wouldn’t be reliable or rigorously researched (they are), but more point to a softer approach which may well be awesome for some people. Systems Ultra is certainly not without merit, particularly for those new to thinking broader, but for anyone who has already immersed themselves in the study of complex systems from a number of angles, it might not be quite that memorable of an experience.

* Rating: 3 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 2.5
* Who is it for: Those new to systems thinking or interested in a softer, holistic approach into how technology shapes our world. More seasoned readers of systems theory might find it a bit underwhelming.

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a fan of Sidney Dekker’s work. “Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems” was written over a decade ago now, but feels as timely as ever. Unfortunately, it also still feels a little provocative of an exploration of why modern systems fail.

This book takes a deep dive – it’s just 200 pages but cognitively dense – into the intricate workings of complex systems, and how, despite our best efforts, they often seem to drift towards failure. Dekker challenges the reader to rethink the very nature of failure and provides a fresh perspective that is both enlightening and essential for anyone dealing with modern systems.

Those systems are growing increasingly complex, and our understanding of them has not evolved at the same pace. We are still using outdated, Newtonian cause-and-effect models to analyze failures, doing a disservice to everyone involved. This kind of thinking not only oversimplifies the problem but also impedes our progress in understanding how and why failures occur, as well as dealing with incidents & accidents in a fair manner. In complex systems, the idea of a “root cause” is almost always a mirage; we can only sketch out the contributing factors.

Dekker reminds us of a crucial distinction between complicated and complex systems — terms that are often mistakenly used interchangeably. Complicated systems, no matter how intricate, are ultimately predictable. Complex systems, however, are governed by interactions and feedback loops that can lead to unpredictable outcomes. Understanding this distinction is vital, especially as we continue to introduce automation into our systems, thinking it will act as a layer of redundancy. In reality, automation often adds more points of potential failure and, worse, relegates humans to roles they are inherently poor at — the active monitoring of reliable machinery.

Introduction of software into seemingly everything is one of the mail culprits in growing complexity. On one hand, it has allowed us to create systems of unprecedented capability; on the other, it has introduced layers of complexity that are often far beyond human comprehension. The result is a system that can fail in ways that are impossible to predict.

Drift into Failure challenges conventional wisdom and pushes us to think differently about failure, not as a broken component but as an emergent property of the system itself. Dekker’s work has often been critiqued of lacking immediate real-world applicability; some readers will think that is the case here, too, but I still found the concepts extremely valuable and important. It also does sketch some pathways forward, such as introduction of diversity of all kinds as an antidote to drift into failure.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 14
* Who is it for: At least engineers, safety professionals, managers, and people involved in systems thinking or complexity theory.

This week brings us James Bridle’s “Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence“; a book that will nudge your way of thinking as it challenges our human-centric view of the world. In an era of isolation from nature and obsession with human-made technology, Bridle reminds us that we are an inextricable part of a larger, interconnected system, not separate from it. Our very survival depends on the “the other”.

One central thesis here is that we need to see the world as “more than human”. Perhaps surprisingly, this includes not just animals and plants, but also the technologies that we often consider distinct from the natural world. Bridle argues, quite convincingly, that we need to discover an “ecology of technology” – a way of understanding our inventions as part of the broader planetary system.

On intelligence, Bridle points out how absurdly we struggle to prove or disprove whether other beings are “intelligent.” This human-centric view of intelligence blinds us to the rich, varied forms of cognition that surround us. We’re reminded that we inhabit just one of many “umwelts” (perceptual worlds) on our planet, a humbling realization that should make us pause before dismissing the capabilities of other beings. The book also does a quick tour around the utterly fascinating research of how plants are far more sophisticated forms of life than we give them credit for.

Ways of Being takes some interesting detours into politics, arguing that any technological question at a sufficient scale becomes political. Turns out there are also some important lessons to be learned from ancient Athens, such as from practices like sortition (random selection of representatives) and the ability to vote against proposals. These ideas, along with modern experiments like Citizen’s Assemblies, offer intriguing possibilities for re-imagining our arguably broken democratic systems.

Bridle concludes supporting the bold proposal called the Half-Earth project, the central idea of which is that by setting aside half of the Earth’s surface — both land and sea — for nature, we could protect the majority of the planet’s biodiversity. It’s a radical idea, but one that feels increasingly necessary as we grapple with the consequences of our dominance over the planet.

“Ways of Being” is a rewarding read. It pushes us to expand our understanding of intelligence, technology, and our place in the world. In an age of increasing ecological crisis and technological acceleration, Bridle’s perspective feels timely and essential.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ You are not likely to agree with everything he has to say, but if you approach it with an open mind, I doubt you will emerge completely unchanged.

* Rating: 4.25 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 6.7
* Who is it for: People interested in reimagining our relationship with technology, nature, and the concept of intelligence itself. It’s particularly relevant for those working in tech & environmental sciences.

This week’s read continues from the theme last week, but takes it rhetorically to another level – except I’m not sure I like that level at all. Kohei Saito’s “Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth” is a radical critique of contemporary capitalism and its unsustainable environmental practices. In its radicalness, however, it loses nuance and pragmatism and ends up resorting to portraying things in very black-and-white manner, which I’m somewhat allergic to.

Despite agreeing with a bunch of underlying threads, this book really rubbed me the wrong way. It’s also a little hard to review another degrowth book when none of the data presented is new to me anymore, so the scene-setting was just boring.

Some of the things I found irritating here were:
* The book talks of the +2C warming limit as if it’s some kind of a hard limit. I think it’s high time we acknowledged that we’re going to push through that “limit”, and come to terms with the reality that lies beyond it.
* Saito makes fun of people like Rifkin and Friedman who remain silent when countered with uncomfortable truths, but then does the same thing and refuses to acknowledge that adaptation IS where we’re going to need to be. See above.
* The book gets too ‘meta’, and focuses far too much on theoretical frameworks of ideological systems; the obsession with communism and Marxism, which he views as misunderstood, isn’t helpful in getting the message across.
* He resorts to hyperbole and false dichotomies more than once, such as “We must say it plainly – communism or barbarism! This is the only choice left!”. Umm, no, no it is not, and to claim that it is, is intellectual dishonesty no matter what way you slice it.
* Saito somehow manages to draw the wrong lessons from the pandemic response as well, highlighting how we “cannot rely on governments”, while ignoring the evidence that countries where people trusted government more, fared better.

That’s not to say it’s all terrible. There are some very valid arguments and points within the book as well; for example, I wholeheartedly support co-ops as a better way of organizing a many operations.

The false dichotomies irk me the most in this book. Here’s another one: “‘Adapting’ to climate change is nothing more than a way to say that climate change cannot be stopped. Isn’t it a bit early to give up while the possibility that we can combat it remains? Shouldn’t we first do everything we can, while we still can?”

Adaptation and mitigation are not mutually exclusive. And given the world basically _is_ at +1.5C warming, it indeed is high time to both acknowledge we failed at preventing it, and it’s now time to *both* adapt and mitigate? Neglecting either is immoral, and presenting them as an either/or choice is moronic.

Anyway, you might be able to tell I didn’t really enjoy this read.

* Rating: 2.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 5.7
* Who is it for: I don’t even know; Marxists would probably like it?

We all intuitively know that “Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist” (Sir David Attenborough) is true. We might go as far as to explicitly acknowledge that, but stop short of doing anything because we trust Someone Else surely is on it. The UN has SDGs and all. We are made to believe things like “Green Growth” is not only possible, but the solution.

Jason Hickel’s “Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World” is here to tell us it isn’t. It is, for those who still need one, a sobering wake-up call that challenges the foundations of our growth-obsessed economic system.

Hickel digs deep into history, tracing the roots of our current ecological crisis. While this historical deep dive is crucial for understanding how we got here, the historical context-setting felt a little bit of a slog at times. One of the book’s most important historical context-settings is how we’ve been conditioned to view nature as “other” – something separate from us, to be conquered and exploited. It’s a mindset shift that’s been centuries in the making, and is at the heart of our current predicament. This perspective forces us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world in profound ways.

Less Is More takes aim at the sacred cow of “green growth”, exposing the myth of absolute decoupling – the idea that we can continue growing our economies while reducing our environmental impact. Spoiler alert: we can’t; there is no evidence absolute decoupling is doable at any meaningful scale. This is a critical point we need to understand because it fundamentally changes how we should approach sustainability.

One can almost hear the collective bristling at the mere mention of “degrowth.” We’ve been so thoroughly marinated in the capitalist growth mindset that the idea of intentionally slowing down feels heretical. But not only is it long-term necessary, it also doesn’t have to be the dystopian nightmare we might imagine. Our well-being and happiness are not inextricably linked to the worst excesses of our current system.

Speaking of the system, one of the interesting points that frankly I hadn’t thought of properly is that capitalism is not the system built on efficiency we often view it as; it is the opposite. Practices like planned obsolescence are a form of intentional inefficiency.

Less Is More is an important book. It’s written more from an analytical and data-driven than an emotional approach, possibly making it less easy to really imagine ourselves in a world that looks very different from the one we have – whether better or worse. Still, it can be the nudge for the mindset shift that is a prerequisite for changing an untenable system.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 7.1
* Who is it for: Anyone who doesn’t think a single species acting recklessly for a couple of hundred years should ruin it for everyone and everything else coming after.

You may have noticed our online media milieu is broken. But do you know just how broken? Prepare to find out, because the combination of the SNAFU’ed state of affairs and our ignorance and denial of said state are existential threats to our democratic societies. This cheerful, light topic (*cough*) is what Renee DiResta masterfully tackles in “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality”.

DiResta has had a front-row seat to the fundamentally changed media landscape, and takes us through what online communication and media look like today. It is in equal measures informative, insightful, exhausting, and scary, though not an entirely hopeless, picture. You will learn how algorithms shape our online conversations; discover how online things aren’t limited to online; learn what the incentives are and how that changes things – “there is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ ranking or recommendation system”.

Invisible Rulers dissects a number of online phenomena, from some batshit crazy conspiracy theories to the influencer landscape. In 2020, I was also deep in conspiracy theory and counter-action research, so parts of this felt personal.

With thorough research and fluent writing, DiResta shines the light on the parts of the media landscape we would rather ignore – but cannot afford to. The chilling effect resulting from the vitriol is already too large. There are more important lessons in this book than one can point to in a review, so all I can do is urge you to read it. It’s enlightening, sometimes in highly uncomfortable but critically important ways.

Importantly, the book wraps up with a lengthy chapter on where we go next, with a large number of excellent, practical recommendations. Some will require legislative changes; others platform changes; others individual changes; some new services; and so on. The point is there are things we can, and should, and must, do to course-correct, because the way things are today cannot stand.

There’s also a more personal action point here for all of us: “We all need to speak up, debate, and engage – and visibly support those who are targeted by harassment mobs for doing so. Otherwise, the more extreme voices – those most willing to resort to threats, cancellations, and mob dynamics – control the conversation.”

You don’t need to like the current state of affairs; indeed, reasonable people would not. But we do need to acknowledge the media landscape is what it is, train people to deal with the current communication era, and then act accordingly to improve it at all levels. That includes not shutting up and hoping the storms won’t hit us, or will pass over us. And we need to work together; networked counterspeech is important. Be a part of it.

* Rating: 5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 11.2
* Who is it for: people who think stuff online is just online stuff; anyone interested in the media environment and how it has fundamentally shifted; and users of any social networks should have a read, too.

We all spend a very significant chunk of our lives asleep. Yet many of us think of sleep with some disdain; we are jealous of those who seem to get by with less sleep than us, and too often try to get by with less than we should ourselves.

I first came upon Matthew Walker, PhD’s sleep expertise on his marathon 15hr+ of interviews on Huberman Lab, and found it so insightful and fascinating that I had to get his book “Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams” too; it is one brilliantly written book – insightful, funny, well-paced, and just a pleasure to read and learn from.

We often look up to individuals whose routine includes waking up at some ungodly hour, or work ridiculous hours in the name of productivity. Our modern conveniences of artificial lighting, various screens, and digital services we’re addicted to are not helping sleep either.

As a result, roughly a third of us do not sleep enough. And lack of sleep, quite literally, kills. The lucky ones it kills slowly, over many years, and generally makes them function suboptimally – something people who don’t get enough sleep are not aware of. If you’re unlucky, lack of sleep will kill you much quicker, in the form of a car crash or another accident, while far too often taking other lives with you as you snooze off for the wrong seconds.

Death is just a part of the consequences of lack of sleep; inadequate sleep plays havoc with our emotions; with our learning; with our healthy weight; with our immune system; with our blood sugar control; and so much more.

One would be tempted to say that adequate sleep improves everything and lack of sleep makes everything worse, and that wouldn’t be far from the truth. Walker takes us through the current science of sleep in amazing, impeccably-researched detail, and chronicles what feels like all possible aspects of sleep and its impacts on us, which we now know is profoundly important.

Why We Sleep left strong enough of an impression that I have changed some of my sleep habits. Not by much, because they didn’t need _that_ much tweaking, but I am going to take better care of my life-improving nightlife. I have sometimes used the old maxim “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”; Walker reminds us that adopting this mindset means we will be dead sooner and the quality of that shorter life will be worse, so I’m officially abandoning any remnants of that mindset.

On a macro-level, the now better-understood critical importance and profound realities around sleep also beg the question whether the 24/7 society many places are striving for is really worth the human cost. At a minimum, we should design the world to be more accommodating to our varying chronotypes.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 10.0
* Who is it for: people who sleep would be a good target audience, but to narrow it down, let’s say people who think they can get by with 6hrs/night just fine should read this, because most of them are just in denial.

We live in a world awash with stuff; the world is full of things that are neither useful nor beautiful, but we can’t seem to stop buying them. Even worse, we don’t pay for the externalities of pretty much anything, whether it’s the environmental or social costs of a car, fast fashion, or cheap electronics. This disconnection from the true cost of production further fuels unsustainable consumption, made worse by the fact that it is human nature to not easily see systems.

The Future of Stuff by Vinay Gupta is not really a book, but a small 70-page booklet. It reminds us about the necessity of raw materials extraction, of the fact that all factories are horrible, and the labor- and material-intensive processes that go into making our stuff; all that stuff does not just magically come into existence.

Yet, as horrible as manufacturing remains, we have come a long way from the past:

“””
You can look in almost any direction in the past, or things left over from the past, and see something so horrible the modern mind recoils just from looking at it. [..] So many of our cultural institutions come from a barbaric age. [..] The ages before us were lawless, ignorant, dangerous, and violent, often all at the same time. During those times, just to get through the day meant doing things very few of us would be physically ready, psychologically able or morally willing to do today. [..] The past was basically terrible.
“””

Gupta offers some profound insights into our current predicament, and suggests transparency as one way to improve the way we do things; we need to know whether what we are buying is bad for us, or for society, or for biology, or for the future, or for the world. We must also learn to desire in a way that is compatible with the story of our species continuing far into the future.

Our modern civilization is enormously complex, however, so what good is transparency if we cannot wrap our head around any of it?

This is where Gupta’s most radical suggestion comes in: that we should automate morality. It’s a controversial suggestion for sure, but one that in this context makes sense – making machines that work for the best in us rather than for the worst in us sounds a pretty naturally good idea, and the fact that everything is so complex that to guide us to the best decisions en masse probably does require a machine intelligence.

“There should be a machine the aggregates all the information about environmental and social impact of our purchases to steer us towards the right choices.”

It sounds like a worthy attempt. You may or may not agree with that, but the short book is worth spending an evening on. Reading it won’t take long, but some of the thoughts in it will linger – as they should.

Who is it for: Everyone. We all need to have a bit of a re-think about how, when, where, and why we make stuff.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Dog-ear index: n/a

The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen tackles an important topic most people rarely think about in appropriate depth: friends as significant others. While we all know friendships are important to human flourishing, for some people, they can be much more than what ‘important’ captures. Cohen tackles the way friendships can, and should, be as valued as romantic 1:1 relationships – which, after all, are a pretty recent invention as a cornerstone of society in the Western civilization.

The Other Significant Others offers a compelling argument about the overlooked importance of deeply attached but platonic relationships, challenging the notion that romantic partnerships are the pinnacle of human connection; and certainly aren’t that for everyone. This premise is undeniably powerful and timely, especially in an era marked by a loneliness epidemic. It also doesn’t look like that what Eli Finkel calls the “self-expressive marriage” is working for everyone.

Cohen takes the approach of anchoring the book around multiple real stories of friendships that are viewed as atypical in light of prevailing societal norms. While I appreciate a good story and am a firm believer in the importance of anecdata, it leaned a bit too heavily onto the stories for my taste. While the stories of people who have forged deep friendship bonds are fascinating and often touching, I would have preferred a more balanced mix of personal narratives and broader analysis / research.

An aspect that is often overlooked in friendships is that irrespective of their depth, there are scant – emerging, but scant – legal frameworks available to recognize them appropriately. The US legal system is certainly outdated in this respect, often failing to recognize or protect these relationships, while some European countries are slightly more evolved. In any case, this was a valuable reminder that our societal structures lag behind our evolving understanding of relationships.

Critically, the book also highlights a significant issue: we lack the language to fully describe, appreciate, and celebrate these types of friendships. Our vocabulary for non-romantic, deeply committed relationships is incredibly limited and limiting, which underscores how much work remains to be done in this area. Humans unsurprisingly suck at tackling an issue they don’t have language for, so this is an urgent task.

Despite its shortcomings – which really relate more to my personal preferences and the US-heavy focus – “The Other Significant Others” is a wonderful read. It pushes us to rethink what we want from our relationships and how we define a fulfilling life. It’s not just a book about friendship; it’s a call to broaden our understanding of love and commitment in all their forms.

* Rating: 4 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 7.4
* Who is it for: Anyone interested in reimagining the boundaries and importance of human relationships.

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We’ve all had moments of frustration when we forget things, leading us to wonder why we forget stuff. However, we rarely consider the flip side — why do we remember in the first place? Charan Ranganath‘s book “Why We Remember: The Science of Memory and How It Shapes Us” starts from this intriguing question, providing a refreshingly different starting point to learn the science of memory from.

In exploring why we remember, Charan has written a fascinating, educational, and practical guide. The book offers not just an up-to-date understanding of memory, but also practical strategies for how people learn best and protocols for improving recall. One of these practices is pre-testing, followed by post-testing, when trying to learn something. Pre-testing might seem like a daft idea at first, but it has proven benefits. Giving our brains a chance to actively struggle helps them retain and learn information, and stress-testing your memory exposes the weaknesses and helps strengthen the useful connections.

One challenge with testing is that mistakes aren’t beneficial if you don’t know what you did wrong, making expert feedback crucial. This is where I started thinking that while we don’t always have experts at hand, certain AI systems can start filling this gap, providing valuable assistance in our learning processes. (Sidetone: Globe.engineer is one great AI tool that approaches learning with a pre-testing strategy)

The unreliability of memory is not news to most people. What is interesting, however, is understanding how memory recall works and how the act of remembering can alter stored memories. Each time we recall an experience, the memory is colored with the residue of the last time we remembered it. As we incorporate present information into these memories, they can subtly or profoundly change over time. The further back we go, the more our memories can drift from the original event.

Well-written and thoroughly researched, “Why We Remember” is a compelling read at just 200 pages. It’s perfect for those curious about memory. Speaking of curiosity, I learned that the ‘rewards’ from curiosity come more from _wanting_ information than _getting_ it. A study revealed that dopamine circuits are triggered by the questions that spark curiosity, rather than by learning the answers. Moreover, we learn better when driven by curiosity rather than external rewards.

“Why We Remember” updated my knowledge on the topic in a most useful way. We’ve learned so much about memory over the past couple of decades, and many people could benefit from an update to what they learned in school.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 9
* Who is it for: anyone curious about the science of memory, from casual readers interested in psychology to educators and students looking for practical strategies to improve learning and recall.

If I had to pick two traits to define me, it would be curiosity and questioning. When you add to those the fact that I am a foresight professional, the mere name of this book – “Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs To Imagine Flourishing Futures” by Seth Goldenberg was quite naturally calling to me.

To not bury the lede, it was a bit of a roller-coaster. It starts off absolutely brilliantly – I could not agree more with the framing chapter about how “Curiosity Is an Endangered Species”, and about how we are living in a cultural interregnum, in-between times, when ideas from the past are on the decline as we question legacy narratives and the norms, beliefs, and mindsets that we have inherited.

I also wholeheartedly agree with the “Five pillars of radical curiosity”, which Goldenberg defines as:
1. Learning by questioning
2. Challenging commonly held beliefs
3. Rigorous imagining
4. Flourishing living systems
5. Optimistic futures

Then after the stellar start, the book, somewhat disappointingly, doesn’t go from strength to strength – it goes from strength to pretty good to then mediocre, then back to strength, and so it goes.

The 28 chapters the book consists of are somewhat uneven, and a little disjointed in that the connection to the whole is not always strong. Part of that has to do with the fact that it was clearly written from a very US-centric perspective, and for a US audience. Potentially partially resulting from that, some chapters also had quite a narrow perspective

Radical Curiosity took a pretty unique approach to references – rather than weaving the core ideas from them into the work seamlessly, it quotes frequently and in verbatim from a large number of books and sources, often at unusual lengths. There is a still a comprehensive reference list in the back, which is appreciated; this style of expanded in-line referencing works well sometimes – and other times less well.

I feel kind of bad calling out these drawbacks of the work, because I violently agree with the core message and ethos of the book. I would still recommend it as a book because of that; there are some profoundly important points that deserve to be understood by as many people as possible. Overall, just expect a level of unevenness, and some US-centricity which can at times distract from the critically important core statements.

* Rating: a mixed bag; 5 out of 5 in some parts, 3 out of 5 in other parts
* Dog-ear index: 7.7
* Who is it for: people who are curious, and feel like we need more of that.

When I first saw Dan Levitt’s “What’s Gotten Into You”, I was compelled to just pick it up without much research on what, exactly, it’s about. I had no expectations of the book beyond its title; I felt like I could probably update my knowledge on where the matter in us comes from, and learn things. I got all of that, but I got much more – Levitt takes us on an a journey of what we are made of, starting from the creation of matter, the different elements, molecules, planets etc, through a story of evolution in exquisite, impeccably researched detail and weaving it into the historical narrative of who discovered what and how, all wrapped up in first-rate science writing.

It is that historical narrative that adds an important layer to the book; it also highlights how scientific progress happens. Many of the discoveries were made by individuals or teams working for many years on ideas that, exaggerating only slightly, everyone else in the scientific community thought were nuts. This makes me wonder how feasible such long-term, high-risk research is in the ‘publish or perish’ academic environment of today.

As the high dog-ear index would indicate, there were many parts in the book I thought were so incredibly fascinating. These include ‘simple’ things like factoids, but also more complex matters. They may not always be wholesale new information – but they are reminders and knowledge updates. Chances are if you went to school 20 or more years ago, a fair bit of what you know is outdated.

Just to mention a few of these:

• The persistence of Peter Mitchell in his discovery of the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis, which is an utterly mind-blowing process happening at astounding scales; a typical cell in our body produces between 10 to 100 million ATPs every second.

• The scale of small things: we are a colony of thirty trillion cells, each made of over a hundred trillion atoms. We contain a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in earth’s deserts.

• Our bodies produce antimatter: 0.001 percent of the potassium in our bodies decays every day, emitting almost four thousand positrons.

• How the vast majority (99.9999999999996%) of atoms are full of nothing, but the reason we feel so solid is that when we touch something like a table, the atoms don’t actually meet. Instead, the electrons in your fingers and in the table repel each other, so the atoms in your fingers don’t actually _touch_ the table; they hover over it, triggering your nerves to create the sensation of touch.

Do such facts have practical day-to-day implications? Yes and no. They won’t help you complete your work projects, but they will help you rekindle a sense of awe about the universe and how amazing it is. That lifting of spirits and altering of perspective is arguably more important than the project anyway.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 10.8
* Who is it for: Those curious about the origins of matter and life; those wanting a spark of awe.

The School of Life is one of my favorite publishers; they have an uncanny ability to distill complex emotional and philosophical concepts into relatable and hard-hitting words. Another thing I appreciate about them is the fact that they never list authors of their books – because let’s face it, sometimes we draw conclusions based on who wrote something, instead of focusing on what’s being said. We usually shouldn’t, and this tendency wreaks havoc in us using AI effectively at work, too, but that’s another story.

The premise of “A More Loving World” is straightforward: our world desperately needs more love, compassion, joy, and kindness. It is a book to remind us of our better natures. At 150 very small pages, it is simultaneously an impactful and quick read. Like many books by The School of Life, some of the things in it are a mix of stating the obvious in a way that’s only obvious, or at least salient, to you immediately after you read it, so the feeling of having gained deep insights can at times feel almost embarrassing.

As an example of an exceedingly simple point that nevertheless we often neglect to realize, consider this passage about the necessity of censorship or curation of the environments we place ourselves in:

“”“
Part of remaining kind means paying greater attention to the voices and influences we leave ourselves open to. We are over-optimistic on this score. We trust that we might be capable of flipping through the daily paper, scrolling through our feeds, taking in a slew of online comments, dropping into a succession of podcasts, and come away unaffected, with our hearts intact and our moral principles unaffected.

If we allow that our hearts can be raised and enhanced by a brief encounter with a beautiful poem or song, we have to be equally ready to admit the damage that might be caused by repeated contact with the callous and venomous tones of journalists and advertisers, pundits and trolls. We are more sensitive and endangered than we give ourselves credit for. If we allowed much of what we read and hear to resonate properly within us, we would need to take to bed for the day – or fairly lose our minds.
“””

I share the quote because it’s difficult to otherwise characterize what kind of book it is. It’s not the kind of non-fiction book that would list hundreds of references at the end; but most of the messages it communicates feel so right you don’t get the sense that it’s lacking anything by not doing that. Not everything in human existence needs or can be scientifically researched and exhaustively referenced.

“A More Loving World” nudges us to rethink love, compassion, and kindness in a way that feels both profound and accessible. I can almost guarantee that it will make you think about love, compassion, and kindness in a slightly different (and better?) way, and that its impact will linger long after the last page is turned.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: N/A
* Who is it for: Everyone? Yeah, everyone.

Every now and then there’s a book that you wish everyone would read and then apply, for it would make the world a slightly better place. This is one of those books. It speaks directly into the current state of many of our societies – especially American, but increasingly other WEIRD cultures too; the polarization, loneliness, and the waning ability of thoughtful discourse.

Brooks’ thesis, and the situation he wants to improve, is simple: that we suck at connecting with other people on a meaningful, fulfilling level. I would be willing to bet that if you disagree with that, you are living in a highly unusual, privileged bubble – and I want in on it 😉

Unlike many other books about connection or the state of discourse this is a book less about the importance of connections per se, or the art of debating constructively; it’s more about _really_ connecting with individuals. So many points resonate in Brooks’ exploration of this critically important topic, starting from the description of what is a good conversation: “A good conversation is an act of joint exploration. A good conversation sparks you to have thoughts you never had before.” I can only wholeheartedly agree.

One of the larger concepts that resonated was a “community of truth”, which is “created when people are genuinely interested in seeing and exploring together. They do not try to manipulate each other. They do not immediately judge, saying, ‘That’s stupid” or ‘That’s right’”. This concept is very compatible with some explored in the brilliant book Freethinking I wrote about earlier. We need to foster environments that encourage open-minded, judgment-free discussions and explorations of ideas.

Brooks has done a good job on the research side of things, drawing from a broad base of knowledge. The sheer scope of the book however ensures that the research isn’t _delved_ (ha) into great detail on any particular thread – as a result, I at times had a feeling there was some oversimplification happening.

There was some oversimplification at the top level, too; Brooks divides people into “Illuminators” and “Diminishers” – it’s of course not that simple, but I get why the categorization has been done for narrative purposes, and to avoid complexity much of the readership would not appreciate.

Overall, How to Know a Person is great. It’s got good practical advice on a broad range of things; not very in-depth, but a well-researched introduction to the topic. I may not have learned all *that* much, and neither might people who have read a lot around this topic, but it’s a quick read and an excellent recap for that crowd too – and a wonderful in-depth introduction to others.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 11.2 – also the first book since Freethinking from 6mo ago that has necessitated a secondary, bottom corner dog-ear-set.
* Who is it for: Ideally, everyone. Well, people who _want_ to build better connections.

I’ve migrated a few times, identify partly as a TCK (Third Culture Kid), and always felt somewhat “other” in my home country – but at the same time I fully acknowledge my context has made all that as easy as it can possibly be.

Nevertheless, I’ve always been interested in multicultural identities, which drew my attention to “Arab, Australian, Other: Stories of Race and Identity” when at a local bookstore. Written by a number of amazing people and edited by Randa A. and Sara Saleh, it is a a powerful anthology that weaves together voices of Arab-Australians, presenting a rich variety of identity, belonging, otherness, resilience – and what it means to navigate the complexities of being Arab in Australia.

Us white people often like to belittle the amount of racism in Australia – but what would we know? So one of the most striking aspects of the book is its unflinching portrayal of racism. The contributors share deeply personal and often painful experiences. Many of the stories are heartbreaking, and not just because of racism – they are also heartbreaking in how older generations have had to come to grips with a different society and issues that are difficult to navigate, such as their child being openly gay.

Indeed, one recurring theme in the anthology is the generational tension experienced by many Arab-Australians. The older generations often struggle to hold on to their traditional values and ways of life, while the younger generations grapple with forging their own identities in a rapidly changing world. This tension between preserving the past and embracing the future is poignantly captured in the stories, reflecting a universal struggle that many immigrant communities face.

One quote that resonated with me was about “learning to moderate your authenticity”, something that can clearly be applied to many contexts.

Other parts left me scratching my head a little – I’ve always thought the question “How do you spell that?” is innocuous, and something I have been asked countless times. I struggle to see it as a microaggresion or anything negative, but that is clearly how some see it.

“Arab, Australian, Other” provides amazing anecdata for anyone interested in better understanding the multifaceted experiences of Arab-Australians. It’s thin slices, but slices that sometimes cut deep; a rich blend of heartbreaking, funny, and thought-provoking stories. It is also a celebration of resilience, and a reminder of the universal themes of love, family, and identity.

I can’t in any way shape or form claim to understand the rich Arab-Australian community and culture based on this – but I can claim to understand it better.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: n/a – not the kind of book this is really applicable to
* Who is it for: anyone interested in migration, the multicultural experience, social justice, or the Arab-Australian community. Writing this from Australia, that should be most of us here.

This week: more about cults. Steven Hassan, PhD is the world authority on cults and high-control groups, and his book Combating Mind Control, now in its 4th edition, has been around for over 35 years. Hassan, a former cult member turned cult expert, draws from extensive research and personal experiences to provide a comprehensive guide to understanding & combating cult influence.
Hassan’s best-known contribution to the field is the BITE model, which is widely recognized and utilized in the analysis and understanding of cult behavior. It stands for Behavior, Information, Thought, & Emotional control, and this practical framework is very useful for analyzing the ‘cultishness’ of any group or organization. It breaks down the methods cults use to control their members into clear components, making it easier to identify these tactics in real life.

For example, elements of Information Control can include denying the person information they require to make sound judgements; labeling certain information, such as ‘apostate literature’ or negative information, as forbidden or strongly discouraged; people are usually also told to avoid contact with ex-members and critics, thus denying them access to important information. Another tactic is keeping the members so busy so they don’t have free time to think and seek outside answers to their questions.

Through detailed examples and case studies, he illustrates how cults can subtly influence individuals without their conscious awareness. The psychological damage inflicted is profound and multifaceted, ranging from loss of personal autonomy to severe emotional distress. Members usually don’t realize the extent of their manipulation until they manage to break free, if they ever do. This is why it also doesn’t help to call people “brainwashed”; that terminology is problematic (‘mind control’ is better), but members are also usually programmed to take any such comments as expected persecution, in the process becoming more committed to the group.

One of the most insidious tactics Hassan discusses is the use of thought-stopping programming, also called “thought-terminating clichés” as discussed in the earlier review of Cultish. Cults deploy specific techniques to halt critical thinking and questioning, replacing it with rote responses and slogans. This prevents members from questioning the cult’s doctrine and fosters a closed, self-reinforcing belief system. These methods can be as blatant as repetitive chanting or as subtle as engineered peer pressure, but their effect is equally pernicious.

It’s easy to see why “Combating Cult Mind Control” has become the classic it is. Hassan’s writing is clear, engaging, and deeply informative, making complex concepts accessible without oversimplifying them. Highly recommended.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 8.5
* Who is it for: Anyone interested in psychology, high-control groups, cult dynamics, or the mechanisms of control and manipulation.

There were two personal things I had to get over myself with before really being able to take the book in. First, with a title like “Sovereign: Reclaim Your Life, Energy, and Freedom in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos“ it might initially come across a typical self-help book; you know, the kind based on dubious or non-existent research.

It’s not.

The second thing I had to get over with was my discomfort with the word ‘sovereign’; I tended to associate the word with the misguided, fringe ‘sovereign citizen’-movement. However, Seppälä reclaims the term, using it to represent a healthy, empowered sense of self that is rooted in authenticity and personal responsibility.

With those two personal hangups dealt with, I was able to enjoy Sovereign as the brilliant exploration of the power of personal freedom and authentic living that it is. Seppälä, a psychologist and researcher at Stanford University, backs up her arguments with ample scientific evidence, giving the book a solid level of ‘hard’ credibility. It is a compelling blend of scientific research, profound insights, and empowering stories (anecdata) that guide readers towards a life of greater autonomy, resilience, and fulfillment.

Throughout the book, Seppälä explores various aspects of sovereignty, from self-awareness to relationships. Something I appreciated were the very practical strategies for cultivating sovereign qualities, drawing on a range of disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, mindfulness, and more.

Another strength of “Sovereign” is its accessibility. Seppälä writes in a clear, engaging style. At times, this accessibility might be mistaken for a lack of depth or “fluffiness”. However, a closer look at the extensive references and research citations at the end of the book dispels this notion.

Overall, “Sovereign” is a powerful read. It challenges readers to take ownership of their lives, to shed limiting (‘bounded’) beliefs and behaviors, and to embrace their authentic selves. While some might initially be put off by the title or the book’s occasional self-help tone, those who engage with the ideas and practices are likely to find it very rewarding.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 7
* Who is it for: Those seeking to live a more authentic, empowered, and fulfilling life, and who appreciates a research-based approach to personal growth.

I was gifted this book – The Courage to be Disliked: The Japanese phenomenon that shows you how to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness, by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga – with the hopefully slightly cheeky accompanying comment “although you’re already pretty good at this”. I do like the topic though, and it’s always good to learn more about Adler, so I went into this with an open mind.

It was a little challenging to go through the book maintaining that approach. The first issue I took with it was the dialog format; the entire book is structured as a dialog between a “youth” and a “philosopher”, both of whom feel like somewhat of caricatures of their respective characters. The youth in particular comes across as a very naïve, rude, one-dimensional character and the dialog often stretches credibility. The issue with the dialog format, however, is just a personal preference – or lack thereof – of mine, so I can’t objectively fault the book much for that.

What’s worse is that the caricaturic nature extends to the topic at hand as well. In “The Courage To Be Disliked”, Adlerian philosophy is presented in a rather simplified manner, and without taking into account the historical and cultural context of Adler’s life and when and where his theories were developed. This leads not only to a unnecessarily single-tone treatise of Adler’s philosophy, but also to a mismatch between the ideas presented and contemporary psychological understanding and cultural sensitivities.

That’s not to say it was all bad; there are some profound and important points in the book. Among other things, I appreciated the points about life being a series of moments, some of the treatise of praise and recognition, and the poignant point about relationships: “Adler does not accept restricting one’s partner. If the person seems to be happy, one can frankly celebrate that condition. That is love. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart.”

Overall, I can’t say I would recommend The Courage To Be Disliked to a broader audience. Interestingly, there was relatively little discussion of the title of the book; the courage to be disliked. Instead, the focus was on individual responsibility, social interest and community, separation of tasks, authentic living, overcoming inferiority complex, and interpersonal relationships. It’s possible, or even likely, that book will resonate more with some Asian audiences than us WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) people given the original intended audience.

* Rating: 2½ out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 3.7
* Who is it for: If you’ve never heard of Adler and like a dialog format, this could be for you.

“Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism” by Amanda Montell tackles, with intelligence and humor, the heavy and fascinating topic of the world of cult language – much of the power of cults derives from the language they use in specific ways, and unpacking those strategies is a great way of seeing through the façade.

Montell examines the linguistic techniques used by cult leaders to control their followers. One of the most powerful concepts introduced in the book is that of the “thought-terminating cliché” – a phrase or slogan that is designed to stop critical thinking in its tracks. These clichés, such as “It’s all in God’s hands”, “Everything happens for a reason”, and “Trust the plan” are effective at alleviating cognitive dissonance and preventing followers from questioning the cult’s beliefs.

Other techniques come into play, too; us-versus-them labels and loaded language being the other critical tools of cultish organisations. How, exactly, these linguistic strategies work however is interesting – it’s not so much that the language is used to ‘brainwash’ people than reshaping a person’s reality only when they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome. Once that process gets going, other steps come into play, such as easing the members into the cult’s ideologies, and introducing the inevitable special vernacular bit by bit.

The “-ish” part of the title becomes apparent when the book talks about corporate cults or fitness communities, and when some of the conditioning we all live with in our society is discussed – such as the conditioning to automatically trust the voices of middle-aged white men. One of the many key takeaways from the book is the importance of logic and judicious questioning, especially when it comes to groups that demand unquestioning obedience. As cult expert Steve Hassan notes, “The most important thing to remember is that if something is legitimate, it will stand up to scrutiny”. In the words of Nietzsche “Truth doesn’t mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged.”

“Cultish” is a must-read for anyone interested in the power of language and the dangers of unchecked fanaticism. The book is a sobering reminder of the need for critical thinking and healthy skepticism in an age of increasing polarization, misinformation, and conspiracy-driven cults like QAnon. A cult – or a cultish organization – is probably closer to you than you think. You could be under the influence of a cultish organization without knowing it, and learning more about them and how they work is one key way of uncovering them.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 3.7
* Who is it for: Anyone interested in the power of language, the psychology of cults, or the dangers of unchecked fanaticism.

If there’s one pragmatic, sensible, prolific, and insightful guide into working with our new interns that are Generative AI, it’s Ethan Mollick. He has long been, and continues to be, a powerhouse of insights when it comes to Generative AI, so his book “Co-Intelligence” was at the top of my list of things to read when it came out earlier this month.

Co-Intelligence is an excellent, thoughtful introduction to what these systems are and more importantly, how we might approach them from a very pragmatic perspective.

It’s also an interesting hybrid – it is an in-depth introduction, but is also a quick read at ~200 spaciously laid out pages; it is not a prompt engineering guide, but it will teach you some useful principles; it does not offer a comprehensive vision of the future, but it lays out four high-level paths forward; it is not a typical How-To per se, but comes with lots of useful anecdotes and suggested approaches; it is also not simply a collection of Ethan’s posts from his great One Useful Thing blog, but certainly a lot of the stuff will be familiar to people who read that.

I’m not entirely sure I can do an objective review of Co-Intelligence because so much of my thinking on GenAI has been shaped and influenced by Ethan’s approach. Not that I agree on everything with him; for example, I disagree with the notion that it would be “costless to skim [ideas] to see if they inspire better ideas” – it is low-cost, but it’s not costless. In fact, the sheer volume of ideas AI can generate in seconds can become a problem as long as humans need to triage them. What’s more, for a pessi….I mean realist like me, some of the challenges Ethan does acknowledge are nevertheless subsequently glossed over very lightly. There is a clear bias for optimism; this may not be a bad thing, but just so you know it’s there.

This may be another sign of my bias, but I feel like this is a topic everyone needs to learn about. I have seen a lot of technology trends in my life, and everyone who knows me knows that I am not easily roped into becoming their supporter – but I think GenAI is genuinely different. At present, there is no better book that _everyone_ can understand than Co-Intelligence; for that alone, I would highly recommend it. Acknowledging the challenges of writing an up-to-date book about a tremendously fast-moving field such as GenAI, it should be pointed out this book is not out of date – not yet anyway. More than that, it offers durable lessons and food for thought which will not expire with the next frontier model.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 8.8
* Who is it for: those looking for a concise understanding on how we can coexist and collaborate with GenAI systems.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Co-Intelligence-Living-Working-Ethan-Mollick/dp/0753560771/

Many people go through life without thinking much about how everything is structured; less why it’s structured the way it is; and even less how some fundamental things could be different. Interestingly, most ordinary citizens admit that most aspects, even some fundamentals, of our current societal system have serious flaws, but they still instinctively dismiss alternatives as “not feasible in the real world”.

It is this attitude that Kristen Ghodsee’s “Everyday Utopia: In praise of radical alternatives to the traditional family home” takes on. In similar ways to Joseph Henrich’s “The weirdest people in the world”, Kristen shows us that there are many different ways to organize our societies, some potentially much better than our current western myopic focus on nuclear families – which, Ghodsee explains, extends all the way to architecture and the physical structures of our cities & communities.

Everyday Utopia covers how a whole range of experiments throughout history have sought to re-imagine domesticity, gender roles, and child-rearing practices. Many of them challenge the nuclear family and invite us to consider more cooperative approaches to parenting and domestic life.

Ghodsee writes with clarity and conviction, weaving together examples and research to challenge readers’ preconceptions about family, child-rearing, and domestic life. Her analysis is both rigorous and humane, as she invites us to imagine alternative ways of organizing our most intimate relationships and spaces.

I found it endearing that she draws from and refers to Star Trek frequently – I share the view that Star Trek is the most compelling future world vision we have built, and one that offers the most practical hope for humanity among the future worlds.

Ghodsee is careful not to romanticize utopian experiments, acknowledging their limitations and challenges, while still finding value in their aspirations and insights. Some readers will find the ideas radical or even unsettling – while I disagree with her point that works like 1984 would have a message of suppressing change, inability or unwillingness to think things could be both different and better does run deep in our societies.

There are no clear one-size-fits-all answers in the book (because there aren’t any), but there are questions we should be thinking about and experiments we should allow and encourage, and an important reminder that “the stability of the world around us is a fiction we all accept so we can go about our daily lives.”

As it’s clear the coming decades are going to be ones of above-average change, we owe it to ourselves and the society to expand our personal & collective Overton windows – as Ghodsee puts it, “the most important elsewhere is the temporal one”.

* Rating: 4 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 10
* Who is it for: 1) dreamers who dare to re-imagine society; 2) the realists willing to question foundational norms; 3) those who are adamant the current way is the best one.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Everyday-Utopia-Radical-Alternatives-Traditional/dp/1847927173/

Anyone who knows me moderately well knows I have this tiny little interest in aviation. One of the related topics of keen interest of mine are the lessons that other industries can learn from aviation’s decades-long experience with automation-driven skill degradation.

It’s a core thesis of mine that the aviation industry’s past, present, and future in handling this challenge holds valuable insights for the world at large, especially as we face the looming prospect of widespread skill degradation due to increasing automation. Add to that my involvement in various AI and automation-related initiatives of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and it’s obvious I’m constantly seeking out articles and books that delve into this fascinating subject.

Jack Hersch’s book “The Dangers of Automation in Airliners: Accidents Waiting to Happen” fits this theme perfectly. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the topic, covering the history and key aspects of automation in aviation, such as situational awareness, basics of flight, control surfaces, and avionics, in fascinating detail. The book is highly accessible to readers without an aviation background, bringing them up to speed on critical concepts – a rare feat for a book of this nature.

The book looks at a number of accidents and incidents in gripping but accurate detail. Many of these cases will be familiar to industry aficionados, but there are likely to be some new details for most people.

Most people who read this book will rightfully grow to be skeptical of the various industry initiatives pushing for more automation. Where historically automation has played a key role in improving safety, it is interesting to note that the new trench of eMCO (Extended Minimum-Crew Operations), SPO (Single-Pilot Operations) or entirely autonomous flight are not even attempted to be sold on them improving safety. It’s all an efficiency play, which should raise some alarm bells.

In aviation, as in many other industries, we are currently living in a precarious moment where over-reliance on automation can lead to the degradation of human skills that once surpassed the capabilities of automation. The end result is a system that is less safe, even though the initial introduction of automation improved safety. The Dangers of Automation in Airliners provides a great understanding of these issues in the aviation industry. It is my hope that broader awareness of these challenges can help steer us away from maladaptive adoption of automation in other sectors, preventing potential catastrophic consequences.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 5.8
* Who is it for: Realistically, you’re going to need to be at least a little bit interested in human factors, aviation, aircraft, or automation to find this book engaging. If you are, however, you will find it’s a great read.

Jeff Hawkins’ “A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence” is a book of three distinctly different parts, and I’d almost want to write three reviews of it.

Part 1 is about brain structures and cognitive processes; a fascinating tour of the current leading theories of how the brain works. The ‘thousand brains’ theory seems sound and helps explain quite a few things better than previous theories. It also plays nicely with what I recently learned from the book “The Experience Machine”. This exploration into neural mechanisms and cognitive functions is the book’s strongest suit, offering valuable insights into the human brain. So far so good.

Then the book turns to artificial intelligence; written in 2022, it already feels like this part aged very quickly. That’s not the only issue though; it also seems to rely on a very restrictive and narrow definition of “intelligence”, assuming – and I’m simplifying a little here – that the only way of achieving artificial intelligence is to copy how humans work. This perspective seems very off.

One of the more perplexing aspects of Hawkins’ thesis is his treatment of emotions in the context of intelligence. While he acknowledges the important role of “older” brain functions in intelligence, there appears to be an almost wholesale dismissal, or at least an undervaluing, of emotions as a component of intelligent behaviour. This stance is contradictory, given the increasing recognition in neuroscience and psychology that emotions are integral to human cognition and decision-making processes.

Hawkins also tends to oversimplify complex societal features. His approach to discussing broad social and cultural phenomena occasionally lacks depth and nuance, which can leave the reader wanting a more thorough exploration of these crucial aspects of human intelligence and behavior.

Then the last part goes on to talk about things like persistence of human knowledge, and settling space that start going on rather thin ice. His views on all things space feel overly enthusiastic and not fully considering the vast array of challenges and realistic timelines associated with such ambitious endeavors. “A City on Mars”, another recent read, adds a useful reality-check here.

“A Thousand Brains” shines in its discussion about brain structures and functions; it falls short in things like its treatment of AI, emotions, societal complexities, and space things. I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with one of the concluding desires of Hawkins when he says “I hope that one day every person on Earth will learn how their brain works”. I share that hope.

* Rating: 4 out of 5 overall, but quite unevenly so
* Dog-ear index: 10.9
* Who is it for: those interested in neuroscience will like Part 1; people thinking of ways to achieve AI might find views in Part 2 interesting; Part 3 may appeal to those thinking of long-term survival of not just humans but knowledge in general.

This review is of a book I read many years ago, but it covers covers work from a perspective we are all going to need to pay more attention to. Since first coining the term a decade ago in an article, David Graeber’s concept of “bullshit jobs” has become something of a classic. Under the provocative title lie fundamentally important matters when it comes to the world of work. For those who somehow have escaped the core premise, it’s simple, intriguing and unsettling: that many jobs in today’s industrialised societies are essentially pointless.

I think intuitively many of us know that; deep down many of us understand our jobs to be bullshit jobs, and we can certainly point to some that we think are. A key pain point Graeber identifies is the moral and psychological toll these jobs take. Contrary to the idea that “easy work” is a dream, employees in these roles often report significant dissatisfaction, feeling their time and talents are wasted on meaningless tasks. This, Graeber argues, stems from a fundamental desire to feel that one’s work has a meaningful impact on the world.

When you add to this premise the transformative wave that is AI in automating a bunch of these tasks, interesting perspectives arise. On one hand, we know generative AI is a fluent bullshitter. So given there are many bullshit jobs, maybe there _are_ some genuine, well-deserved redundancies to be had — if we only had a system where unemployment wouldn’t result in such huge problems. UBI is becoming urgent.

Yet, the economic models we seem to (over-)rely on usually assume “that if humans are offered the option to be parasites, of course they’ll take it”. However, as pointed out in the book, “almost every bit of available evidence indicates that this is not the case”. Here we have another case of organisations, including governments, NOT being data-driven, but instead stuck in their original ill-conceived preconceptions.

Another perspective the book brings out is the critical social nature of human beings; this is something we should keep in mind as we seek to automate away the little points of human interaction disparagingly framed as friction; “Human beings are not just social animals; they are so intrinsically social that if they are cut off from relations with other humans, they begin to decay physically.”

The world may look a little different than it did six years ago when this book was written, but what’s happened since has, if anything, only made the points in it more important. Incidentally, this book will make a great companion read to Sidney Dekker’s “Compliance Capitalism” (may have to write a review of that later), which is chock-full of examples of bullshit jobs.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 3.8
* Who is it for: Anyone who’s ever doubted the meaningfulness of their job, people interested in labor and economic theory, and readers looking for a critical perspective on modern work culture.

We all know there are some prominent people who insist on building a human outpost on Mars like yesterday. Let me get this out of the way first: I agree humanity should become a multi-planetary species, but – and this is a rather critical but – not before we’ve gotten our act together on Earth.

To throw some serious cold water onto anyone’s Mars dreams comes the book “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?” by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. The book takes an insightful, often humorous look at the feasibility and implications of establishing a human presence on the Moon, Mars or beyond.

Spoiler alert: it does not look good. I was somewhat skeptical, but also naïvely curious, about the potential for establishing any Mars colony in this century prior to reading this book. Reading “A City on Mars” took those incipient dreams and shot them in the head, execution-style, multiple times over. We’re not going to settle Mars. Nor are our grandchildren. We should stop trying so hard and focus back on THIS planet for a while longer.

The Weinersmiths, well-known for blending humor with scientific rigor, embark on a very thorough investigation of the current state of space technology and business, asking questions about the viability of having children in space, the governance of space settlements, space psychology, the potential for conflict both in space and back on Earth, and quite a bit more. As I should have known, Ben Goldacre’s line of “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that” applies perfectly here.

The exploration in the book delves into both the technical challenges, like health impacts of prolonged exposure to low gravity and cosmic rays, but also, surprisingly interestingly, into the sociopolitical aspects, including space law and the potential shift towards authoritarianism in small space settlements. It’s easy to say that this is a very comprehensive feasibility overview.

Settling space to achieve the – in itself arguably good – goal of improving humanity’s long-term survival chances requires enormous advancements in technology and a better understanding of the political and ethical implications of space settlement. Not to mention something should probably be done to the way humans tend to act and generally go about being humans. That could be tricky, but we should 100% try to fix that here on our home the Earth first before pining for other planets to ruin.

* Rating: 4 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 3.4
* Who is it for: Space enthusiasts, both advocates and skeptics of Mars colonization, and readers who enjoy a blend of science, humor, and critical analysis.

Now, the topic at hand for the book review is climate change – probably the single biggest challenge humanity has had to deal with, and will continue to be so for decades to come. What keeps dominating the discourse are the doomer views, and occasionally still the techno-optimistic views along the lines of renewables will save the day.

In “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science,” Paul Behrens doesn’t shy away from the stark realities of our environmental predicament. The title itself sets the stage for a narrative that oscillates between hope and pessimism, painting, in alternating chapters, two visions our possible futures on a variety of climate-related topics.

The book serves some useful purposes; one is providing pragmatic future visions. While it does provide two “opposite” scenarios, both are plausible and realistic – neither is about an imminent utopia, nor an extinction event. The other purposes is giving an honest, data-driven and research-backed appraisal of the state of the planet.

It’s not without its weaknesses. One of the problems with the data-driven approach is that it can leave you feeling detached; it’s one thing to talk about the probability of multiple breadbasket failures, but it’s another thing to _see_ yourself in that kind of a future, or to envision what it might mean. While Behrens takes steps to that direction, we know people aren’t convinced by data or facts.

Another issue are a few false dichotomies; for one, Behrens notes that “if you do spend money on adaptation, you’re not spending on mitigation and even if these defensive expenditures are effective, the most they can do is buy time.” It’s not that simple – we do have to spend money BOTH on mitigation and adaptation; they are not mutually exclusive. And while saying “they only buy you time” may be accurate, buying time – in some cases hundreds of years of time from certain risks – is absolutely a warranted and valid approach.

The best thing that can result from the book being read far and wide is that it expands the Overton window of possible actions; it’s candid about the need for huge structural changes in our societies and the urgency of them, are we to avoid a catastrophic collapse. It is becoming quite clear the old approach of muddling through isn’t going to cut it. The Best of Times, the Worst of Times helps convey that message, and for that alone, it’s an important book.

* Rating: 4 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 6.7
* Who is it for: people wanting to learn realistic climate futures

https://www.amazon.com.au/Best-Times-Worst-Futures-Frontiers/dp/1911648098/

We return to normal book review programming this week; the book at hand – Andy Clark’s “The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality” has the potential of completely transforming what you think our brains are doing, depending on where your understanding is now.

Clark’s core premise is that our brains, far from being passive receivers of information, are powerful ‘prediction machines.’ Furthermore, our experiences are not the result of sensory input but rather a dynamic synthesis of the inputs with our internal expectations and predictions about the world. When constructing our reality, varying weights are given to the predictions and actual inputs – to the extent that sometimes our predictions far overshadow the “real-world” input. This simple-sounding revelation has profound implications for how we understand ourselves and our place in the world.

It wasn’t an entirely novel idea for me; Lisa Feldman Barrett has talked about how emotions are constructs in her brilliant book “How Emotions Are Made” some years ago; Clark extends that to all processing. As such, this book was more of a broadening, deepening and tuning of my understanding of how the brain works, not a wholesale revolution in it – but for those still in the “input processing engine” mindset about the brain, this book and its dive into cognitive science can fundamentally challenge your understanding of how we perceive the world around us.

I found the chapter on the extended mind particularly illuminating. Clark posits that our minds extend beyond our bodies, incorporating tools, technologies, and even other people to augment our cognitive skills; we are, and have always been cyborgs (which incidentally ties well into a project I’m working on with Jerry Michalski; more on that later). The way we interact with our environment becomes an integral part of our thinking processes. This forces us to reconsider the boundaries of our selves – are we just the contents of our skull, or perhaps we should more honestly think of the ‘self’ as something more distributed and interconnected?

Clark writes with a style that blends academic rigor with engaging explanations, in a manner that is accessible to a broader audience. There’s references galore to dig into later if you so feel like, but they are skillfully weaved into the narrative in a way that doesn’t distract at all.

The implications of these concepts to others like consciousness and even intelligence are sure to linger in your mind long after finishing this mindset-shifting book.

* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 9.2
* Who is it for: Anyone fascinated by how we experience the world, and concerned with the implications of living in an age where both the physical and digital worlds we end up being shaped by are constructed in ways we are not always aware of and may not agree with.

It’s only February, but I can already say that “Freethinking: Protecting Freedom of Thought Amidst the New Battle for the Mind” by Simon McCarthy-Jones is going to end up in the Top 5 books of this year. It is one of the most thought-provoking books I have read ever.

I picked it up while grazing in Readings, so had no expectations. For a relatively short book, it covers such impressive ground that I’m struggling with this review; I’ll be digesting this beautiful, eloquent, book with just the right amount of dry humor for quite some time.

The book explores the importance of free thinking from all conceivable angles, and I can guarantee there are more angles than you think there are (like how the Enlightenment, in its individualism, did a disservice to the thought it tried to promote). To not be able, or capable, of thinking freely would mean losing a key part of what makes us human – yet so many forces are imposing on our ability to think freely that one could argue we are, at present, not able to do that.

“Freethinking” synthesizes insights from philosophy, law, technology, and psychology, and explores both external constraints and internal mental thought processes that might restrict free thinking.

Throughout the book there is an understanding that we are controlled in more ways than one, and the author concedes that “thoughts bubble up into our consciousness from a brain we neither control nor understand”, but McCarthy-Jones does not go to Sapolsky’s extent of denying free will.

With abundant threats to free thinking, what are we to do about it? Here, McCarthy-Jones proposes nothing less than restructuring our society to free thinking, starting with architecture. This includes ramping up education, designing public spaces and digital platforms to support reflection, enacting regulations and transparency requirements around persuasion techniques, and cultivating values promoting thought.

If that seems a little utopian, there are easier lessons, too: McCarthy-Jones urges us to guard our attention, reason deliberatively, reflect deeply and find courage in our convictions. He offers some practical steps to achieve “mental self-defense”, while cautioning that true freedom of thought requires vigilance, effort and humility.

“Freethinking” also proposes reinstating communities of thinking, in which people can think together, while shifting away from competitive inquiry or persuasion, with the only aim being the mutual gain of understanding.

I do not hesitate saying this is a “must-read”, and that is a rare thing for me to say. In a world cluttered with distractions, ‘Freethinking’ is call to action for the preservation or re-discovery of our most human ability – the freedom to think.

* Rating: 5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 16.8 (record high by some margin)
* Who is it for: anyone worried about freedom of thought; anyone not worried about freedom of thought ought to read it too, because they need to be.

Continuing the theme of ‘heavy book, heavy topic’; “Breaking Together” by Jem Bendell was extremely interesting, but also a supremely difficult book to review.

Its central thesis is that the collapse of modern societies has already begun due to converging environmental, economic, and social crises. It makes its case using interdisciplinary evidence, making up the first half of the book, with the second half exploring visions for societal transformation in the face of such a collapse. It also aims to be a profound meditation on resilience and community in the face of climate crises.

Critically important stuff.

Much of it is written with scholarly rigor, and many of the arguments are compelling. However, the journey through “Breaking Together” is a rocky one, marked by moments of insight but also distracted by several drawbacks. At times it’s just lacking editing; sometimes a distinct lack of realpolitik; at other times it’s missing out key technologies (like thorium); other times the systems analysis is surprisingly shallow and consequently unconvincing; and then, while deriding some conspiracy theories, it wholeheartedly embraces other conspiracy theories.

Another thing that distracts from the book’s primary message is how Bendell uses language. While the latter part of the book delves more into topics where scientific rigor does not apply so easily – critical wisdom, freedom, even free will (of which Bendell could learn a lot from Sapolsky about; see previous review) – that is no excuse to start spouting pseudo-profound bullshit, of which I offer this phrase as an example: “The recognition of natural freedom can complement a polycentric unity consciousness perspective to inform a view of both the individual human and human communities as tending towards connection, expression and emergence.”

It’s moments like this where the book veers off course, loses its focus and diminishes its impact. Reading it then becomes a cognitively taxing exercise as you try to maintain a neutral and charitable attitude to what you’re reading, despite having just read something batshit crazy (nb. idiom used for illustrative purposes only).

The book, while an ambitious and commendable as a piece of work, is marred by its sometimes rambling nature and Bendell’s tendency to dig his own grave with unsupported claims. This makes for a frustrating read, as the potential for a meaningful contribution to the discourse on climate change and societal transformation is evident, but not fully realized.

* Rating: 3.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 4.2
* Who is it for: For readers worried about the fate of our civilization, but also willing to navigate through a mix of insightful and controversial content; for those who can critically engage with a text and sift through its inconsistencies to find the valuable nuggets.

From last week’s “light book, heavy topic” we move to a “heavy book, heavy topic”: Robert Sapolsky’s “Determined: Life Without Free Will”.

With his characteristic dry wit and wisdom – and copious footnotes the length of a small book – Sapolsky takes us through the latest scientific research on decision-making, weaving together insights from biology, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. His central argument is simple and radical: free will as commonly understood does not exist. Our actions stem not from some free-standing conscious choice but from the interplay of activity in our neural networks, genes, brains, and environments we both grew up in and find ourselves in – all factors we do not control.

The question is tackled from multiple angles; he looks at the neurological basis of decision-making, showing how unconscious processes in our brains commit us to act before we’re even aware of deciding. He examines the powerful influence of our life experiences, physiology, and social contexts on our behaviour.

For many, this assault on free will may trigger existential unease. Sapolsky proposes a more compassionate response; if causes beyond the individual determine actions, blaming people for their conduct makes little sense. Instead, we should recognize the limits of self-control and treat wrongdoers with empathy rather than condemnation. Notably, this does not mean we should let criminals roam free – instead, we should move to a more quarantine & rehabilitation-based approach, away from the dominant punishment-model.

And we, as society, can change. We no longer believe people with epilepsy are in cahoots with Satan; we no longer believe schizophrenia is caused by bad parenting. We’ve debunked the myth that left-handedness is a sign of malevolence. We’ve (mostly) moved on from viewing the LGBTQ+ community as something “unnatural”, though that’s still a bit of a work in progress. We have learned important lessons in the past hundreds of years. We can, and should, continue to learn and adjust.

Fully accepting there is no free will brings us to a view that “we need to accept the absurdity of hating any person for anything they have done”. Sapolsky also notes that “we already know enough to understand that the endless people whose lives are less fortunate than ours don’t implicitly ‘deserve’ to be invisible”, but concedes that “Ninety-nine percent of the time I can’t remotely achieve this mindset, but there is nothing to do but try, because it will be freeing.”

At the very start, Sapolsky states that one of his goals with the book is “to convince you that there is no free will, or at least that there is much less free will than generally assumed when it really matters”. It succeeded with me, at least on the ‘much less’-scale.

Will it with you?

* Rating: 5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 10 (very high)
* Who is it for: people willing to question their assumptions about free will and moral responsibility

This week the book is light; the topic is not: “This Civilisation is Finished: Conversations on the end of Empire – and what lies beyond” by Rupert Read & Samuel Alexander. At under 100 pages is more of a pamphlet than a full-fledged book.

The contents is less book-like, too; it is a conversation between Rupert and Samuel on some of the toughest realities that we need to face. It’s a combination of stark realism in the face of what, exactly, the future of the planet and humanity look like in the face of the climate (and other) crisis, but also a set of constructive visions.

The gist of the book is that our civilization, as we know it, will not survive. Given as far as we know, all civilizations eventually collapse, that’s not much of an insight, but the thesis is that driven chiefly by climate change, we are going to need to radically transform our civilization – and what will take place is either a permanent terminal collapse, a collapse that manages to seed a successor civilization or a radical transformation to something different without an overt collapse.

In the book, the authors take a stand that many think veers on doomerism, and view the transformation scenario as the least likely outcome. They have good reasons to believe so, but is that right call and do they have great reasons to believe so? The reader will need to be the judge of that.

Many of the arguments made in the book are backed up by solid data, but I was somewhat bothered by the arguments that were not – I understand that from a conversational rhetoric perspective the exaggerations and simplifications can be warranted, but even though this is a discussion, it’s also a book, so I’m a little uncomfortable with some. For example, using terminology like “climate Armageddon”, stating that it’s “unacceptable to gamble on nuclear power”, or making the frankly ridiculous assertion that “most of humanity has lived a pretty easy and good life” [in pre-agricultural age] are all arguments that are _not_ backed up by data, and detract from the important core message of the book.

I wholeheartedly agree that our civilization _will_ undergo a transformation. In many ways, that transformation is likely to be traumatic. I agree humanity is far, far too focused on the economy. I agree continuing the status quo is reckless. I agree with a whole lot of what is said in the book, but then they go off on these tangents that are not backed up by data, that are more opinions-stated-as-facts, and that I am allergic to.

Nevertheless, it’s a worthy read – a conversation offering insights into the views of both great thinkers; a conversation you will most likely not agree with everything on; a conversation you would want to occasionally jump in and say “Now hold on a minute!”, frustrated that you can’t.

* Rating: 3.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 4.2
* Who is it for: environmentalists, activists, policymakers; people interested in ecological philosophy.

This week’s book review is more grounded one; an easy, quick read that nevertheless comes with an important lesson. Chip Heath and Dan Heath‘s “The Power of Moments” is about identifying life’s big, memorable events, but also a guide to understanding why certain experiences have such a profound impact on us – and more interestingly, how we can intentionally create more of these moments in our lives and in the lives of others.

The Heath brothers, known for their accessible writing of important concepts and actionable insights, explore how certain brief experiences can jolt us, elevate us, and change us, and how these moments are crafted from elements of elevation, insight, pride, and connection. As usual, their writing is filled with a mix of humor, anecdotes, and solid research.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is its applicability across various aspects of life, from professional environments to personal life. The authors use a range of examples, from a hotel that turns a mundane stay into a memorable experience to a teacher who transforms a standard lesson into a pivotal moment in a student’s life.

The book is classified under “Business & Economics”, so it’s natural there is an emphasis on business. Even so, I’m scoring it at less than 5/5 because I feel like the concept of moments is profound enough to warrant a better treatise of the broader implications, and not present it so often with an economic benefit-lens. I get why businesses want to do that; I just feel like there’s more actual value to be had elsewhere.

Where the book is great at is in its ability to not only provide a framework for understanding what makes a moment powerful but also in offering practical guidance on how to create such moments – whether you’re running an organization or just your own life. Irrespective of your role, this book offers some valuable insights & tools.

In a world where we often find ourselves in a routine – and businesses that insist on that route – the book is a refreshing reminder of the power we have to transform ordinary experiences into extraordinary ones – yes, including in business, where that reminder comes with the lesson of giving your people autonomy and power to create those extraordinary experiences.

I’ll end with a quote:

“””
If you knew you could make a positive difference in someone’s life — that you could create a memory for them that would last for years —and it would take only a trivial amount of time on your part, would you do it?

Well, now you know it.

Will you do it?
“”””

* Rating: 4 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 5.6
* Who is it for: in a business context, for leaders who want to make their brand experience an actually memorable (and a more profitable) one – ‘sticky’, even, linking it to some earlier work by the Heaths. In personal context, it’s a reminder for all of us on the importance of moments + a simple guide to increasing the likelihood of having more meaningful ones.

The first review of the year – of the last book I read in 2023 – takes us on a unique exploration of faith and the human mind.

The perspective of tanya luhrmann‘s “How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others” is as simple as it is unexplored; rather than presuming that people worship because they believe, it asks whether people believe because they worship, and what it takes for people to make God ‘real’.

Luhrmann argues the key to understanding religious experiences lies not in whether gods or spirits are real in a material sense, but in how practices and rituals enable individuals to experience them as real, and develop personal relationships with them.

What sets the book apart is the unique approach to the topic; Luhrmann isn’t here to debunk or affirm religious beliefs. Instead, she offers a window into understanding how belief works from a psychological and anthropological viewpoint, making the book accessible and intriguing regardless of your personal beliefs.

Indeed, whether you’re a believer, an atheist, or somewhere in between, “How God Becomes Real” invites you to consider the profound ways in which the invisible others – gods, spirits, or whatever name they take – become tangible and transformative in human experience. Whether or not the beings are ‘real’ in an analytical sense of the word, their impact is undeniable, broad, and quite well-researched. We can analyze and research all that goes into constructing a belief and people’s relationship with their gods without taking a stand on the ‘objective underlying reality’ of things; something mostly Western people obsess about.

In the book, you’ll learn the hard work it takes to kindle a presence of an invisible god; what parasocial relationships are and how we build them with our deities; how specific language and religious practices works to reinforce that; what it means to look at the world through a “faith frame”; how that changes people; how prayer works; and much more.

Personally, I was fascinated by the exploration of prayer as a metacognitive practice. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the book also made me think of faith in general in a somewhat kinder, more compassionate light. At the same time, I am keenly aware of the outliers and extremes that are not healthy, and as pointed out, “while a relationship with a benevolent god is often quite good for the individual, it does not at all follow that this god is good for the social whole. It also does not follow that all human-god relationships are good ones.”

* Rating: 5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 13.3 (record high for the published reviews so far)
* Who is it for: for those curious on how gods are made real to people, including for those who they are real to. This isn’t a book that seeks to convert or challenge your faith; it’s a guide to understanding how faith functions in human lives, and what are the elements required for that to happen.

https://www.amazon.com.au/How-God-Becomes-Real-Invisible/dp/0691234442/