Ali
I would recommend it to any young individual whom is starting to whine about unfairness and lack of opportunity in the world.
Oh how I cringed throughout some parts of this book, excreting will power not to abandon it half-way.
There are some kernels of truth in it, like asset vs liability, financial literacy, importance of investment and passive income. But despite many backstories and allegories presented, these points are so shallow that quickly loose applicability when you move out of the book and into the real life. These were the good parts.
The book is full of biases, survivorship, hindsight, etc. And in many parts it looses touch with the intended audience of lower to middle income class, in couple of stories you hear “all it took to start on the path of financial independence was $70k and willingness to risk it all for a big win”. Well, that amount is the annual net income of many middle class families around the world, and even if they could set such amount aside, couldn't be as risk-taking with it as the author suggests. A lot of examples of inventing money in this book either rely on existing financial affluence and network of rich friends, or are borderline immoral (like preying of laid off people to buy their houses half the price of market).
So to summarize:
* Is this a good read? depends, if this is your intro into thinking about money, probably, if you have basic knowledge of finance and money, no!
* Is reading this beneficial for financial education? only if the reader read throughout the book with adequate skepticism, take the new point of views presented and make strong moral and financial judgements before using them in life.
I didn't expect it to be as good!
Great wrap up on various case of crowds implicitly or explicitly deciding and effective factors on their optimal performance.
If you think checklists can't be effective tools in improving performance of teams and individuals in repetitive tasks, think again, because they sure can!
A novel view at debt, credit, origin of money and at the end a brief on how macro-economics work. A good read.
Mostly reiteration of other books and studies, yet in a fresh and convincing point of view.
A historical view of hackers and their adventures through evolution of modern computing!
A thorough explanation of dream functions with proper references and mentions of alternative explanations along the way.
I specially liked the mature non-arrogant scientific position of being (and remaining) open to possibilities beyond current established facts regarding sleep. As the book mentions many discoveries seemed unreasonable at their time and later on proved to be correct and scientific. Remain open minded, but skeptic enough that your brain won't fall out!
Key take away: subtracting is usually not visible and probably won't help us prving out work/worth in a group/team. That's why we tend to add by default.
Pretty light hearted book, I liked the part that main character (a bot) explains human behaviour in simple terms, they were often refreshing and funny.
It was a nice read with some good laughs along.
Since I am an Iranian, I couldn't resist relating with characters and feeling so close to situations.
Imagine House M.D becoming a sort of spy or secret agent, carrying along his cynicism and wittiness in various situations.
It was really and entertaining read, I might even plan a second read in the future.
It was a good read, as it puts different ideas (along with reference to science behind them) in a narrative.
To use Genghis Khan as an example of inclusion and tolerance is a sad joke even depressed standup comedians can't pull off. Most of the narrative and anecdotes in this book have a strong white privileged pov vibe that I couldn't shake off.
Turns out being in VC business really affects the brain, in a bad narrow minded way.
Even though it got into some sort of mild mysticism at the end, I still enjoyed it.
Clarke's portrayal of the universe always fascinates me, as he thinks beyond limitations and possibilities of human nature, and taps into vast realm of unknown.
Good narrative on history of cancer as a pathology and our reaction as species to it from ancient times to this date. Without having any background in medicine, it sounded balanced and well researched.
As some have pointed out, the literary devises sometimes felt a bit much, but I appreciated the overall effort on making it more readable for a wide audience.
A very nice book on different characteristics of past few generation of coders, how they differ, evolved and fit into market. This is very useful to both coders, to form a better self image of themselves and colleagues, and to non-coders, to get a glimpse of it's nuances and complexities.
I wanted to have an insight about the Game Theory and this lecture did much more than that.
The way Dr. Stevens concluded the whole series in the last lecture was heart warming.