Category Archives: Reviews

Dealing With Our Own Irrational Selves

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upside of irrationalityQuite the hook
As a teenager, an accident left author Dan Ariely with third degrees burns over 70% of his body. He used the still-painful aftermath to propel his studies of topics such as who people choose to date (inspired by his own scarred face and body), and how people differ in their response to pain (that he continues to suffer.) Ariely may publish in scholarly journals, but in this book he follows his own advice to engage readers on an emotional level. Using a conversational tone, this drew me in and I read every word.

This is a strong recommendation from me, because I often skim sections of books.

We are irrational and that’s human nature
Human beings are irrational and make poor decisions, like texting while driving. “Given the mismatch between… technological development and human evolution, the same instincts and abilities that once helped us now often stand in our way.”

Stock markets, insurance, education designed without regard to human nature lead individuals astray and “sometimes fail magnificently.” His field of behavioral economics figures out the “hidden forces that shape our decisions.”

He hopes readers will consider what they might do differently once they understand their own nature better, but this isn’t easy. Ariely uses the example of his own badly damaged hand as an example. Doctors advised him to have it amputated, but he refused. Twenty years later it is less useful than a prosthetic and still causes him considerable pain.

He says, keeping the hand was probably a mistake, and analyzes the biases behind his decision – loss aversion, status quo, irreversibility, and others. He also discusses what psychological factors stop him from amputating the hand today – fear of hospitals, hedonic adaptation, and rationalizing the choice. “Despite the fact that I understand… some of my decision biases, I still experience them.”

Humans are difficult to study in the wild, or even in a lab
Ariely presents his research is a very accessible form, not heavy with jargon, and there is a bibliography if you want to learn more. He acknowledges that many of his experiments are flawed and he discusses how to overcome the problems – subjects are not selected randomly but volunteer, and many are college students who don’t represent the whole population. Experimental designs are sometimes changed to accommodate the subjects.

Some studies are familiar, for example, when a person who feels their partner – assigned to split a $10 incentive between them – keeps too much, refuses the insultingly low offer, and neither gets to keep any of the $10. (Human nature will punish a cheater, and other studies show that when we seek revenge, we don’t care who we punish.) But others are new to me.

I chuckled at one test run in India (where it’s cheaper to offer financially impressive rewards) that evaluated the effects of stress on performing mental tasks. Stress was created by handing the volunteer money equivalent to many days salary and asking for its return if they failed the tasks. But subjects sometimes ran away with the money, so the protocol was changed.

How American businessmen reacted when he applied the lessons from India (offering large financial incentives actually decreases performance after a certain point) to their own salary plans is also amusing. “If we keep following our gut and common wisdom… we will continue to make mistakes.” Continue reading →

The Oak Ridge Story

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Oak Ridge Story book coverThis book was referenced in an article provided by a friend, and it contains some extraordinarily interesting aspects for a book published in 1950. For example, the Introduction describes how the Japanese, when they were in control of Southern Luzon in the Philippines, conducted a roundup of “…persons suspected of unfriendly attitudes.” An elderly American who had lived in the Philippines for many years was questioned about his nationality. “The man replied he was from Tennessee. A perplexed look crossed the (Japanese) officer’s face. Then he decreed. ‘You may depart. You are of a non-belligerent nation. Japan has no war with Tennessee’.” The irony is that activities in Tennessee would lead to the first atomic bomb used in warfare that was detonated over Hiroshima in 1945.

The book describes how John Hendrix was a devoutly religious person who lived in Eastern Tennessee at the turn of the Twentieth Century and described visions that caused people to laugh. He described a railroad that had yet to be built but was eventually built. However, that isn’t the most remarkable vision described by the “Prophet.” He described visions he had during a forty day self-imposed isolation in the woods. He emerged from his isolation to tell neighbors the valley, “…some day will be filled with great buildings and factories and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be…Big engines will dig big ditches and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things and there will be great noise and confusion and the earth will shake…I’ve seen it. It’s coming.”

Many of the neighbors of Hendrix undoubtedly considered him to be hopelessly delusional, or perhaps they just passed him off as an interesting eccentric. There is no doubt his visions, perhaps by sheer luck or by actual prophesy, accurately predicted the building of massive Manhattan Project installations in Eastern Tennessee. I find the prediction that, “…the earth will shake” to be the most compelling. The detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 indeed caused the earth to shake along with other effects that killed or injured tens of thousands of people in that Japanese city. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did indeed, as prophesized by Mr. Hendrix, “…help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be…” Continue reading →

Hiroshima

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Hiroshima book coverI’ve been told this book by John Hershey is the most famous of the many books describing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. My first reaction was to be astonished that it was so small. I won’t be so foolish to dismiss the importance of a book that has over 400 Amazon reviews with an average of more than 4 out of five “stars,” but I expected more. Perhaps I’ve read too many books that describe the horrific effects of a nuclear weapon detonation over a city. My purpose for finally reading it was to look for new information for the book I’m writing that has the working title of “Nuclear Deterrence: An Early History of The Rocky Flats Plant.” That history obviously includes the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Any history of the impact of nuclear weapons on deterrence would obviously be deficient without a discussion of the first use of nuclear weapons in war.

The book describes the situations of six residents of Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb was detonated over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The six are described as a clerk who was chatting with a coworker, a physician who had sat down to read a newspaper, a tailor’s widow who was watching a neighbor, a German priest who was reading a magazine, a surgeon who was carrying a blood sample to a laboratory, and a Methodist pastor who was unloading a cart of clothes. The first observation is that they all had, for one reason or another, turned their heads away from the location of the detonation or were a few feet beyond a window that faced the detonation. Those small accidents of history saved all of them from having their eyes destroyed. There is a description of how a contingent of Japanese soldiers was outside and all had looked up to see the single B-29 when the detonation occurred. All of them had their “eyes melted.” Continue reading →

Addiction and Desire

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biology of desireAuthor Marc Lewis is a neuroscientist. He was with the University of Toronto from 1989 to 2010 and is presently at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He is also a former drug addict.

He stopped using at the age of thirty. “I needed to find out what had happened to me all those years ago. How had my brain become so addled for such a long time? How did I finally quit?” The Biology of Desire presents the stories of five addicts as well as research results.

I thought Lewis was repetitive and must admit I did not read the entire book. You’ll get the gist of Lewis’ argument from the Introduction and first and last chapters. The rest of the book is intended to prove his case and provide individual stories as “scaffolding” for the book to show “what it’s like when addiction takes hold.”

Disease Model is Wrong
Lewis’ goal is to argue that the dominant model of addiction as a disease is wrong. Addiction is an extreme example of normal brain functioning, a neurochemical feedback loop of desire (desire is not the same thing as pleasure) that is “an inevitable feature of the basic human design.” He presents lots of explanation of how dopamine acts in the brain to establish both normal and destructive habits – it’s the same mechanism for love and addiction.

The book isn’t as depressing as viewing addiction as the far end of normal might make it sound. “[Of the] heroin-addicted veterans of the Vietnam War, about 75 percent… kicked the habit once they returned home.”

The famous experiment in which rats, given a choice of water or morphine solution to drink, became addicted has a second phase I never read about in the popular media. Those addicted rats had been isolated in bare metal cages, but when they returned to comfortable cages with a rich environment and other rats to socialize with, they spontaneously preferred water “even when they were currently addicted. In other words, they ‘quit’ voluntarily.”

Lewis says the disease model does a good job of explaining why some people are more vulnerable to addiction than others – genetics, emotional problems, PTSD are factors – but doesn’t seem to lead to a “cure.” Rather addiction is treated as a chronic disease. But “the disease model probably does more harm than good for most addicts. Yet its benefits for other players are clear.” Rehab is a multi-billion dollar industry in the Western world “with much to gain and much to lose.” Continue reading →

When More is Less

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paradox of choiceThe Paradox of Choice was a strange book to read. I thoroughly enjoyed the first third of each chapter, but Schwartz belabors his points. Chapter One contains an example:

  • “I found 85 different varieties and brands of crackers” with descriptions of the variations – sounds silly, doesn’t it.
  • “285 varieties of cookies.” Yeah – it’s funny to think about.
  • “Across the aisle were juices – 13 sports drinks,’ 65 ‘box drinks’ for kids, 85… 75…” I see how choices can become overwhelming.
  • “95 options” of snacks, “15 flavors” of water, “61 varieties of sunscreen… 80 different pain relievers… 40 car stereo systems…” Enough already. I get it.

Choice provides control and happiness until it doesn’t
Schwartz points out that choice is vital to a sense of control and therefore to happiness, but there’s a point where the benefits level off and begin to drop. If you’re dedicated to getting the “best deal” all the time, you’ll be stressed out and make yourself miserable by second guessing your decisions.

“A majority of people want more control over their lives, but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives. There you have it – the paradox of our times.”

Achieving happiness
Researchers have been learning how to measure happiness for decades. Poverty is misery, but there’s a point at which more money doesn’t yield more happiness, either for an individual or a society. How these studies are conducted is interesting. I thought about articles I’ve read that Millennials are less willing to pursue an “American Dream” based on acquiring stuff, and more interested in urban living for it’s social resources than my old generation – but these points were not in Paradox (unless they were buried in the sections I skipped.)

“What seems to be the most important factor in providing happiness is close social relations.” But these impose burdens, requirements for fidelity and support that reduce choice. Here less choice leads to lesser short term control but more long term happiness. I’ve read that just talking to anther person raises your blood pressure, so we’re motivated to avoid close relationships – I thought about the book Bowling Alone – but these points were not in Paradox (unless they were buried in the sections I skipped.) Continue reading →

Packing for Space – Oh, and Mars, too

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packing for marsMary Roach’s book Packing for Mars is not mostly about Mars. This annoys me. It opens hopefully with isolation studies aimed at all space travel, but in particular a mission to Mars; and the last chapter is aimed at Mars. But the subtitle is more accurate: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. The Void is zero-gravity.

Not everyone is annoyed like me. The book gets 4.5 stars on Amazon.

Roach presents the history of the US and Russia in space, from captured Nazi rockets to the International Space Station. She uses her signature method of digging into the gnarly nitty-gritty. “One of the things I love about manned space exploration is that it forces people to unlace certain notions of what is and isn’t acceptable. And possible.” This suits her style.

Zero-g and the human body
Zero-g presents a lot of problems for the human body. Roach is characteristically persistent in her exploration of how bodily effluvia are handled. Some of it is fascinating. Water, and therefore urine, acts very differently in zero-g where surface tension controls its movements. Urine builds up on the sides of the bladder, which fails to warn an astronaut it’s time to pee. The bladder can get so full it squeezes off the urethra and a catheterization is needed to avoid death. Imagine the obituary.

Poop is even ickier.

Space hygiene is an interesting contrast to all the gleaming white rockets and high tech equipment NASA likes to display.

Sex – shush
Sex in space is also explored and, since NASA won’t discuss the subject, Roach turns to marine biologists to learn about underwater mammals. She also includes stories of acknowledged hoaxes and pornography about sex in zero-g. That’s’ funny – for a while.

Sex is one thing and reproduction is another. Space-station research on rats suggests embryos may not be able to implant in zero-g.

What about Mars?
But I wanted to learn about a Mars mission. My ebook edition makes it easy to find all the mentions of Mars – seventy two times, in three clusters of references, within two hundred twenty pages of text. I’d become frustrated and started skimming in chapter four – Really? V-2 rockets and the first (unfortunate) monkeys in space? So counting made me feel better about the book.  Continue reading →