This book written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb was recommended by a reader who has given many worthwhile suggestions. That track record kept me reading a book I found to be frustratingly difficult. I do not recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a fun and easy read. The book was written by a very smart person who has contempt for people who don’t understand his wisdom. The kindest description is that he has supreme self-confidence, although “arrogant” works also. I was frustrated with the frequent passages that said something was to be explained in more detail in a future chapter. I was also frustrated by his lengthy references to ancient philosophers and poets. Taleb wants the reader to be impressed by his scholarly intellect. I write this understanding that the author describes those who write reviews that are not fawningly positive as “idiots.” Continue reading
Category Archives: Reviews
Paradox of Iran
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
By Hooman Majd
On this blog, we have been making an effort to understand the Islamic world. Majd says “my hope is that this book, through a combination of stories, history, and personal reflection, will provide the reader a glimpse of Iran and Iranians” and reveal paradoxes of the Iranian character that baffle Americans. He succeeds.
Majd is the son of an Iranian diplomat raised in the West, and seems well situated to bridge the gap between the two peoples.
Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, and are 90% Shia, not Sunni, Muslim. Shia believe in the twelfth Imam, who is not dead but hidden, and who will return as the Messiah in a way that reminds me of Christians’ faith in the return of Jesus Christ. I’m not sure if this similarity will make the two peoples more or less sympathetic to each other, since discussing religion is dangerous outside of trusting relationships.
“Persia” had been “Iran” to Iranians since 226 CE; “Persia” came from the French. In 1935 a Shah who embraced the Third Reich and fascism decreed that the nation should be called “Iran” which means “land of the Aryans”. I found it alarming that today Farsi translations of Hitler’s Mein Kampf are prominent in book stores, though some Americans may appreciate that Marx and Communist are loathed by the theocracy.
Many Iranians (especially expats) view the word “Persian” as connoting their glorious past and they are annoyed that Westerners are ignorant of Iran’s history. Iran was the equal of ancient Egypt, Rome, or Athens. Westerners admire Alexander the Great, while Iranians view him as a barbarian for burning magnificent Iranian libraries.
“The Shia sense of the world [is] a dark and oppressive place” of “estrangement and woe”, “under a perpetual dark cloud” where “death and martyrdom are pillars of Shia Islam.” The nation’s recent history reinforces this gloomy outlook: Muslims have suffered “five hundred years of Western hegemony,” and “for two or three hundred years Iran had been [under] Western powers – specifically Britain and then the United States when it took over the mantle of empire after World War II.” Continue reading
Tyranny of the Status Quo
I was looking for a different book by Milton Friedman, but this was the only one available at the library. This book lists both Milton & Rose Friedman as the authors, and I initially thought it would probably be too out of date to be of much interest since it was written in the latter part of Ronald Reagan’s first term as President. I plunged ahead and was rewarded. The book is perhaps even more appropriate to discussing government-caused problems than when first published. The message I want to emphasize is that the Friedman’s warn that politicians often campaign against raising taxes but then engage in deficit spending. They explain that a deficit is a “…hidden tax whether it is financed by pieces of paper or bookkeeping entries called money or…notes or bills or bonds.” We are liable for the deficit, although it might be our children or grandchildren who will eventually have to actually pay the bill. That is a thought that should be frightening to anyone watching what has happened to the federal deficit in the last decade.
I had never read a Friedman book, although I’ve always admired his many Libertarian-based quotes. My favorite, and I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, is “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in six years we would have a shortage of sand.” I was disappointed that I found only one such pithy quote in the book, but more about that later in the review. Continue reading
Thinking Fast and Slow
Parts of this book by Daniel Kahneman were interesting reading and other parts were too much about psychological research to hold my attention. You will enjoy the book if you are a fan of heuristics, which is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as …”involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial and error methods.” The book mentions that “applying the rule of thumb” is another way of defining heuristic thinking. The book makes a strong point that we are comfortable in relying on our intuition to address a problem or situation to reach a quick decision and that decision is often wrong. The dust cover of the book “…explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slow, more deliberative, and more logical.” There are numerous examples of how our analysis using System 1 often misleads us. The Conclusion includes the observation that when you have an overconfident intuition you are thinking correctly you should “…recognize signs that you are in a cognitive minefield, slow down, and ask for reinforcement from System 2.” Continue reading
David and Goliath
Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
By Malcolm Gladwell
This book uses David and Goliath as a metaphor, but it’s not the metaphor you might expect. Gladwell spends some time explaining the story and its setting in the ancient world, with notes on the surprising amount of scholarly research devoted to it. We modern Americans misunderstand the story’s intent and have the original message wrong.
Public Domain in the US: copyright expired
We think of David as a hopeless underdog facing an unbeatable foe, saved only by divine intervention. “No one in ancient times would have doubted David’s tactical advantage once it was known he was an expert in slinging.” Gladwell writes that soldiers trained to use sling shots were as formidable as archers. Goliath was a heavily armored infantry warrior and there was no way he could chase down and engage David; he was a sitting duck. (He may have also had acromegaly: speculation on the diseases of historical figures is always intriguing, even if they are seldom provable.) I found this part of the book surprisingly interesting and fun; much better than the “favorite Bible stories for children” sort of idea I had before. Continue reading
Liar’s Poker
I read this book by Michael Lewis several years ago at the recommendation of our son who had worked as an intern at Merrill Lynch. He knew I was working hard to understand the stock market, or at least to understand it well enough to not make too many bad investment decisions. Lewis writes that the stock market is well enough regulated that it is almost fair to investors. The same was not true of the bond market. Lewis somehow bluffed his way into a Salomon Brothers training program despite his degree in art appreciation and became a bond trader making incredible amounts of money. They paid him very well indeed to pretend he knew what he was doing. “Never before had so many unskilled twenty-four-year-olds made so much money in so little time…” He says he set “…out to write this book only because I thought it would be better to tell the story than to go on living the story.” I particularly liked the statement at the end of the Preface that his parents “…are, of course, directly responsible for any errors, sins, or omissions herein.” Continue reading