Liars and Outliers

It feels slightly disturbing to read this book so soon after Fukuyama's [b:Trust 57980 Trust The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity Francis Fukuyama http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298428611s/57980.jpg 56475] and even more so the same week that This American Life aired episode 459, What Kind of Country, in which they chronicle disturbing societal breakdowns. Schneier covers trust, tradeoffs, more (and more interesting!) Prisoner's Dilemma discussion than any three books on Game Theory, evolutionary theory, economics, politics, current affairs.What I found most interesting was his frank discussion of scaling problems: Trust and security models that work at a tribal level do not work at a multinational level. I also appreciate his reinforcement that defection can be good and is necessary for a society to work: the people who helped slaves escape the American South in the nineteenth century were defectors.Solutions? No clean ones. Just lots of material to think about. Unfortunately, policymakers are probably not the kind of people who read Schneier; or, for that matter, who think. So the final few chapters were doubly depressing: because they call for difficult analysis and thinking, and because we know that this thinking will not take place in the current U.S. political climate.A note about the format: this book does not work on Kindle. Too many tables and diagrams that just don't render well.

Good wrap-up on aspects of defection, pressures and various forms of security. Most of the examples are from areas we don't usually consider security or take seriously.
A key takeaway: the cost is defection is often born by all members of the relevant society, but on the other hand eliminating defection is not feasible, a healthy amount of defection in societies is more realistic from cost/freedom perspective and also provides fuel for change.