Mitch Olson
Not sure who the audience for this book is as it goes into more detail about genes than I'm guessing most people care to know. Anyway it turns out than "cleaning" your genes is just the basics of good sleep, exercise & nutrition.
I think grit is an important distinction but it would have significantly more utility if the concept were applied to smaller time scales rather than the multi-year time scale implicit in the authors framing of grit. Then it could be practised.
I found much more interesting than the fare from your average "science writer". The self referential nature of cognition is something that is still not directly acknowledged by materialistic science but in the meantime we have the cognitive biases that behavioural economists speak to & this book about about expectation shapes our perception of reality. Worth a read
”Cutting people down” is what a samurai does apparently. That & a social code that is mired in social etiquette. I had hoped for some inspiration on living an honourable and disciplined life but there’s not much of that in here. Somewhat interesting as an account of the values of a particular people at a particular time.
Meh. He’s got a great storytelling voice but the stories themselves are generally not particularly special.
OMG! As dry as a bone. Having read & enjoyed the Expectation effect I was hoping for something useful but this book takes away the will to live, let alone connect.
A very bare 4, only rescued from 3-dom by a good last quarter. Just a series of random thoughts on love based on interviews. Probably going to appeal more to the poet inside of you than the engineer. Didn't feed my brain in any way or leave me any wiser about the nature of love but slightly warmed my heart occasionally when one of the interviewees said something beyond the old cliches of love.
I started off this book thinking it was a meh 3 but around Chapter 5 it woke me up and went strong from there on in to the end. A great book if you are interested in human behaviour and how to influence it for people's betterment.
This is literally half a book so 4 stars on that basis is pretty good. But John Scalzi & your publisher; fuck you for releasing half a book. Breaking a 672 page book in the exact middle & selling them as 2 separate books should be some sort of publishing crime.
I didn't detect any significant new information on Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality in this book. A bit disappointing. Some great bones in MOQ but also relatively unrealised imo.
The more I read of Whitehead the more I find our thinking resonates. I especially appreciated the first chapter of this book on the theme of “importance”; what could be more important than importance?!
A book for maths & computer science algorithm geeks. No practical value beyond that I misunderstood what it had to offer
The degree of unconscious or unacknowledged speculation in “How Thinking Emerged from Chaos” is too high to make this a satisfying read.
A guy builds an audience. Someone suggests he writes a book to extract the most money possible from that asset. He looks for an angle to write that book from. This is it. More exploration than authentic or educational. Give it a wide berth. Feels exploitative.
Boring and directionless. Nothing to do with scarcity, just the habit loop dressed up to look different.
Whilst I don't identify with being a Christian I was really interested to read this book to see what the author had to say about making Christianity more relevant to the challenges of life in the 21st Century. Some really interesting ideas in this book, & whilst it speaks to some useful ideas that the author has I don't see these being readily translated into Christianity as a whole.
The byline of this book “There is a presentist bias in policy making in the democratic world” caught my eye and made me want to pick this book up. For me this was one of the core issues of NZ's last election with both major parties making a disappointing stand on systemic slow-burn and future-discounting issues like superannuation and capital gains tax. I appreciated Boston's thoughtful analysis of these and other long term issues like climate change and the essential role that future-stewarted policy makes in caring for our children and grand-children. I'm left feeling that humanity's inability to relate to the inherent intangibility of the future is perhaps the core issue that will limit the horizon on humanity's future.
On the positive: very accessible. A toolbox of thoughts & practical techniques. Easy to read. Especially suited to developing a physical skill.
On the negative: not so useful to developing mental or emotional skills. Not a single cohesive approach.