Anonymous

Simple clear and practical

Revisado: 05-15-22

As someone who is new to sales, this was very helpful. I used the suggestions in this book, it makes sales seem a lot less mysterious.

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Easy to listen to and usefully informative

Revisado: 07-25-21

Here is another book I can recommend: Unrivaled, Why the United States will Remain the Sole Superpower.

The book was engaging enough that I wanted to binge read from start to finish, but informative enough that I forced myself to put it down between chapters to avoid having all the information going in one hear and out the other.

If I could summarize the book in one sentence, it would be: exposing flaws in geopolitical indicators that garner sensationalist headlines.

The book’s thesis is that throughout the rest of our lifetimes, and probably the rest of the century, the United States will continue to be the only superpower. No other nation will be able to singlehandedly cripple another nation with sanctions due to its consummate control of global finance and geopolitical clout, as well as project one-sided military power anywhere in the globe. And when measured in net wealth, the United States is getting richer, faster.

Consider GDP, which by some measures, the United States has been surpassed by China. GDP is a gross measure, not a net measure. GDP can increased by polluting a river and then spending money to clean it up, because goods and services are produced, but the cost and utility of them are not included in the measure.

Similarly, China had a larger army, but no experience winning major wars, a big navy but not enough fuel range to meaningfully defend it’s claim against rivals in the South China Sea, a proliferation of STEM universities but a deadweight of rampant cheating and 30% of time wasted studying Maoist thought.

The United States enjoys many subtle advantages that don’t grab headlines yet compound over time. It is the only major power that weak and friendly neighbors, it has more navigable waterways than the rest of the world combined which leads to an order of magnitude less shipping cost, it has two oceans that provide both protection from invaders and access to trade anywhere, it is agriculturally and energy independent (China is a net importer of both), and its relatively permissive immigration policy puts a continual brain drain on rivals.

The book’s effect on the reader is akin to discovering for the first time that not everyone who owns a BMW is actually well off financially. There is a massive underlying difference between an overstretched lease and comfortably affording. The book illuminates the geopolitical analogy of this.

The author clearly has a very detailed knowledge of what he is talking about (quick, which past naval conflicts were determined by the use of sea mines?), but one never gets the sense he is showing off. The book is packed with information, but the author doesn’t bombard the reader.

Readers may or may not agree with his policy suggestions in the final chapter, but they are not essential to his work whose primarily aim is to inform, or at least disentangle incomplete information, rather than persuade.

There is an aphorism in finance that “one should invest in companies that are so wonderful and idiot can run them because sooner or later one will.” After some wry reflection, one can see how applicable that is to forecasting the future of superpowers as well.

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Very useful, but sometimes uncomfortable with its own conclusions

Revisado: 05-31-21

If your view of a billion dollar founder is one who dropped out of a top tier school to code the company himself, this book will turn your world upside down. If you are already aware this image is driven by availability bias in the media, this book will illuminate how truly unusual that is among billion dollar companies.

I liked that the author conducted his study very carefully, generally identifying when statistical significance was present in a comparison, as well as identifying potential confounding factors and employing multiple comparison corrections.

That said, sometimes you have to read between the lines for where there is obvious statistical significance, but the author shies away from saying so because the inference might seem elitist. For example, billion dollar founders, unsurprisingly, disproportionately had brand names (read privilege) associated with them in some way, like school, companies worked for, who they raised money from, connections, etc. Annoyingly, the author would then spend the end of the chapter with an interview with someone who was an exception to statistic rather than an illustration of it.

Despite the frequent self-obfuscation, the author still succeeds in his original mission: dispel common myths with data, quantify sound beliefs, and steer us away from useless prejudices like how many founders a company has. This books stands head and shoulders above other business books that subjectively recommend cargo-cult imitation of superfounders. Despite the interviews sometimes obscuring rather than illuminating, hearing directly from very successful founders and VCs outside of a typical media piece was quite refreshing.

Some of the author’s discoveries are indeed surprising. If you are really curious, you can jump to the last chapter. But the book was entertaining enough that I didn’t feel any inclination to do so.

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Short and sweet

Revisado: 09-09-20

I just finished “The Language Hoax” by John McWhorter. It’s short and sweet (5.5 hour listen on Audible). His thesis is that spoken language does not impact thinking or cultural values in a meaningful way, and despite the wide variety of grammars and vocabularies across cultures, the thought that gets encoded is the same. Popular conceptions like some cultures are more likely to prepare for the future based off of the presence or a sense of future tenses, or that some cultures are more likely to be skeptical because of the presence or absence of epistemological grammar are his targets.

To make his case, he draws from a wide variety of languages which often have entertaining and unexpected quirks. The wide survey across a very broad spectrum of languages alone makes it worth the price of admission.

The author is a professional linguist and as such, the quality of the prose is reflected in the book. The author is very gracious towards his opponents. Nonetheless, self-styled sophisticates who see too many patterns in noise, who congratulate themselves because of a surface level knowledge of other cultures or languages, and who fail to see their own hypocrisy in ivory-tower xenocentrism get taken down a notch.

The book is concise, cogent, easy to digest, and sociologically relevant.

As other reviews have noticed, this book is better listened to than read so you can savor the author’s enunciation of obscure languages a casual reader would have no chance of pronouncing correctly.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Really good read.

Revisado: 07-12-20

I listened to this book on a very long drive between states. It was entertaining enough that I could listen to the first 80% of the book without pausing or getting tired. I’m a coastal person that Yang refers to as “bubble people” and have done work in the cities that have crumbled and voted for Trump. Yangs social commentary on the experiences of the two different groups is insightful and empathetic. The social commentary alone makes this book powerful for the average coastal person to understand why so much of America thinks differently. There is a point in the book where Yang wryly points out that it is statistically unlikely that 4 out of your 5 closest friends are college educated, but that if you are listening to the book, that is probably the case. That made me laugh and learn. He understands his audience.

The core of the book is to demonstrate why UBI will solve America’s social ills, and he makes his case compellingly.

The last 20% of the book are more his campaign promises and didn’t follow the rest of the book’s arc. At times I felt Yang was too idealistic with his proposed policies (Yang correctly identifies that Universities and Medical care need reform, but they are also very powerful politically). I work in machine learning and AI also, and I tend to think Yang is too much ahead of his time in anticipating mass scale automation.

All that said, there is a lot of unnecessary suffering in this current time period to make UBI compelling without pointing to a bleak future, and the book does a good job advocating for it.

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Engaging, Insightful, Relevant, and Powerful

Revisado: 07-04-20

This is the best book I’ve read in a while. By giving a survey of from pre-Christian Rome to the modern day, Holland demonstrates that “universal equality”, “secularism”, and “glory of the downtrodden” are distinctly Christian innovations whose seditious and disruptive effects so profoundly shaped Western thought as we know it. So deeply have we internalized these values that they have become “self evident” even though throughout history, and even in some cultures today, they were and are far from self evident. As he builds up his framework throughout the narratives of history, the book crescendos into applying that framework to the recent social changes of the late 2010s and gives a truly innovative and spine-tingling paradigm through which to understand them.

Holland handles the history of Christianity very evenhandedly. He does not pull punches when documenting brutality done in Christ’s name, but neither does he shy away of almost fawning praise for those deserving of it.

The prose is engaging and the reading is well done, both by the author and the narrator.

I sincerely hope this book is widely read by many.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Coherent, succinct, perceptive, and useful

Revisado: 11-13-19

The book can be summed up as “if you do not share in the downside of your actions, your actions will tend towards negatively affecting other people.” The entirety of the book shows how this principle played out (and continues to play out) in various aspects of life and society.

It almost seems painfully obvious that if crime is not punished, then criminals abound, but Taleb, with prophetic-like urgency, points out how our Universities, Banks, Journalists, and Regulators while not always committing crimes in the purely legal sense, commit ethical crimes (intentionally or not) when their actions are optimized around a metric that does not expose agent to any downside.

After reading this book, I understood why Taleb is frequently seen as angry or arrogant. For Taleb (and me to a certain degree after listening), Skin in the Game is not some academic or philosophical idea to be discussed in intellectual circles, or even just a principle for maximizing utility in one’s own life or business. It is a system of ethics where deviation from it leads to doing unto others what you would not have them do unto you. People without skin in the game are prone to directly or indirectly exploiting other people, and that warrants vindictive excoriation.

If Taleb had solely directed his pronouncements at “safe” targets, like banks, perhaps he would not be considered vindictive. But because he takes to the task a wide array of groups, he will no doubt incur wrath from people who want to find fault in a man who pointed out their own ethical shortcomings.

No doubt, Taleb’s aggressive style is highly consistent with the ethical paradigm he proposes: stubborn minorities win in the long run, and if your virtue doesn’t cost you anything, it isn’t virtue.

I sincerely hope this book is widely read. As “changing the world” is a vogue ideal espoused by the current generation, those with such lofty ideals need to be deeply aware of the ethical and systemic dangers of trying to do so without skin in the game.

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