Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution, by Carol Rovelli

RATING

3 stars

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):

Surprisingly, this book morphed from a being a digestable primer on quantum mechanics and into a canonized text on existential philosophy. I’ve been an on again/off again student of the Vedanta tradition and aspects of the Buddhist tradition of Madhyamāpratipada (or “The Middle Way”). This book unified my nascent spiritual interests with my long standing affinity towards science.

The power of this book comes from the permission it gives to quantum mechanics. The concepts explored here confer an ambiguity about reality, and in that ambiguity, there’s permission to logically explore the spiritual and the supernatural, and possibly the Divine. In the face of theories of superposition, Psi waves, “many worlds” interpretations, entanglement, etc., we learn that conscious observability can have an effect on the material world. But we also learn that observability is only half the story. It’s merely a flashlight into a possible deeper reality. In other words, I’m starting to wonder whether the study of quantum mechanics gives cover for scientists, rationalists, skeptics, and the dissatisfied to search for God. When a book gives you that, it’s worth reading.

I am now curious about the power of observation. How does observation cause superposition to “resolve” and entanglement to make some sense. What’s the relationship of this to mindfulness? If we, as a conscious observer, influence the material existence of subatomic particles, or at least nudge them to particular states, what does that say about our power of observation itself. And how do we avoid steering this thought towards witchcraft and away from science? It’s an open question, as to to how deterministic nature truly is. Does God play dice?

LONGER SUMMARY/SCRIBBLES

This book was incredibly succinct for a topic this deep, but there was also a lot of content that I’d like to get down to read about in the future.

Quantum leaps = electrons jumping orbits

The power of the what before the why? Heinsenberg tried to answer the question of why electroncs areq quantized. He approached this by first measuring observable light that electrons emit as they leap from one of Bohr’s orbits to another. Then he tried to understand it. A quote from Heisenberg:

“When the first terms seemed to come right [giving Bohr’s rules], I became excited, making one mathematical error after another. As a consequence, it was around three o’clock in the morning when the result of my calculations lay before me. It was correct in all terms. Suddenly I no longer had any doubts about the consistency of the new “quantum” mechanics that my calculation described. At first, I was deeply alarmed. I had the feeling that I had gone beyond the surface of things and was beginning to see a strangely beautiful interior, and felt dizzy at the thought that now I had to investigate this wealth of mathematical structures that Nature had so generously spread out before me.”

The author of this book adds his own quote: “Nothing is like the emotion of seeing a mathematical law behind the disorder of appearances.”

I often say to people, that I feel a spiritual resonance with the universe when I have studied some mathematical concepts. To me, it almost proves the existence of God, the beauty and simplicity of certain equations. The famous E = mc^2, but also, Euler’s Identity and Maxwell’s Equations. The ability to describe complicated properties of the physical world, the the association between physical phenomenon (like electricity and magnetism) so beautfiully.

The dilemma between particle and wave theory. Schrodinger used a probabilistic technique called the “Psi” wave to explain the movement of electrons. Much like a ripple of waves in the water when you drop a pebble, the Psi wave equation describes the probability that electrons will be in certain positions. Wave theory is confirmed by matrix algebra. So it seems like, it’s correct, that electrons don’t exist in a particular point, but they are described by probabilities of where they might exist. But that’s an illusion due to observation. When observed, the electrons arrive at a single point. When not observed, they are described by the wave equation. This raises the central question: how does observation affect the material outcome. And how does this relate to mindfulness.

The author says that quantum mechanics is described by three concepts:

(1) granularity: energy is granular. It’s distributed in packets. For example, heat distributes in quantized packets and not continuously. Max Planck discovered this, that heat is transmitted to electromagnetic waves of discrete frequencies, only integer multiples of elementary energies. In other words, energy is quantized. Einstein extended this to say that electromagnetic waves and light are made of quantized particles, what we call photons today.

(2) Probability – described by the “psi” waves

(3) Observation – the tendency of electrons to act like a particle upon observation.

Quantum theory adds an equation to classical physics. It states that multiplying the position by the velocity is different from multiplying the velocity by the position. The author says that “it’s beautifully compact, but also incomprehensible.” The equation is: XP – PX = ih, where X = position of a particle, P = momentum (speed times mass0, i = square root of -1, and h is Planck’s constant.

The idea of quantum superpostion: when two contradictory properties are present together. The bizarre thing is that we never actually see a quantum superposition, we only see the consequences of superposition (called “quantum interference”). The very strange thing is that the act of observation changes the superposition state! In other words reality changes based on a conscious observation!

This made me think of something: how humans observe the Universe. If we assume that technological, industrial, and political progress enables human societies to make deeper observations, can we also assume the reverse, that ancient societies were more limited in their ability to observe. And if they had limited abilities to observe, where there more instance of superposition around them? Were multiple things allowed to coexist because there was no capacity to observe them?

The “Many Worlds” theory. The crux behind this theory is to treat the Psi wave as a real entity and not a probability wave. So in the famous Schrodinger cat thought experiment, the cat is both alive and dead, the act of observation “forks” a new universe in which the cat is either in either an alive or dead state after observation, but in another world, the cat is in in the opposite state that’s observed in the first. But they both exist. That is incredibly trippy. In other words, the Psi wave separates into two parts: one representing a version where you see the cat alive and one representing a version where you see the cat dead. It sounds crazy but many prolific physicists and philosophers believe this.

It made me ask the question. Can the Psi wave be God?

The “Hidden Variables” theory: The idea here is almost like the Psi wave is real, but it only guides objects. The particles themselves are not in quantum superposition, they are always in a single position, it’s just that the Psi wave has a component of an “empty” state and a “real” state.

But this theory is incomplete. Either all the variables are present, which would lead to Many Worlds interpretations, or all there are not Many Worlds, but the variables in the single world are hidden. It begs the question, which is more comforting, the thought of many worlds of existence but no predetermination, or a single known world, but unknown variables behind it. And how does that relate to different traditions, particularly dualism versus non-dualism. As the author states “is it worth assuming the existence of an unobservable world, with no effect not already foreseen by quantum theory, only to assuage our fear of indeterminacy”

Relations in quantum mechanics and the interconnectedness of things. The author postulates a theory. The observation that scientists and their measuring instruments are all a part of nature. And so quantum mechanics is the way in which one part of nature manifests itself to any other single part of nature. “A tree absorbs sun’s rays, produces the oxygen that villagers breath while watching the stars, and the stars run through the galaxies pulled by the gravity of other stars…the World that we observe is continuously interacting. It’s a dense web of interactions.

This part was highly important to me as it relates to the Vedic concept of Karma and Dharma. If an object had zero interactions, it would not exist. What we call “reality” is a web of interactions, and you as a conscious actor have the ability to influence your interactions. Thus, you have the ability to influence reality.

Another thought is the analogy of reality as a web of interactions to Metcafe’s law–the value of your existence is equal to the square of the number of interactions as you can have in this web. Just food for thought.

Another Vedic concept that this reminded me is the idea of Turiya. In Vedantic traditions, there are three states of consciousness — the waking world (Jagrat), the dreaming world (Svapna), the deep sleep (Susupti). Turiya is this idea that consciousness pervades these three states. “Deep sleep” consciousness might be squared with Heisenberg’s intuition was that asking the orbit of an electron when it is not interacting with anything is an empty question. If the electron is not interacting, there are no physical properties. But it still exists. It’s ability to exist is analogous to me to the concept of Turiya, and the no physical properties existence is analogous to the deep sleep consciousness Susupti. The Turiya is still there, it’s just in the Susupti state due to the lack of interaction. Does Turiya explain the idea of superposition as well?

A quote from Schrodinger in the book that further adds to the Vedantic flavor of quantum mechanics:

It is better to consider a particle not as a permanent entity but rather as an instantaneous event. Sometimes these events form chains that give the illusion of being permanent, but only in particular circumstances and only for an extremely brief period of time in each individual case.

The concept of quantum entanglement: “a phenomenon by which two distant objects maintain a kind of weird connection even across far distances.” Chinese scientists have succeeded in producing two entangled photons on a satellite and sending them, still entangled, to two stations at a distance of thousands of kilometers from each other on eart.

Entanglement essentially means correlated features. If one is read, the other will be blue. An example to shed light, if you take a pair of gloves of the same color and send one to Beijing and one to Vienna, the one arriving to Vienna will the same color as the one arriving to Beijing. So far so good. But the weirdness is quantum particles are in quantum superposition. So in the example, the gloves could be in a superposition where they are both red and both blue. Remember that observation can resolve quantum superposition, so the act of observing one glove in Beijing as being red will mean that the one arriving in Vienna will also be red, even though they both are in superposition. The theory is that each of the photons (or gloves) is not definitively red or definitively blue until it interacts. But how can the color randomly determined in Vienna be the same as the color randomly determined in Beijing?

The author postulates two possible explanations: The first is that the signal of the color of one photon travels extremely rapidly to the other far off photon, and it communicates instantly to the entangled photon. The second (more reasonable according to the author) is that the color was already determined at the moment of separation, even if we were not aware of it. The first theory would violate the speed of light speed limit for instantaneous communication across space-time. The second theory had been disproven in an article written by a physicist John Bell in 1964 . Basically Bell showed that if all the correlated properties of the two photos had been determined from the moment of separation, precise consequences would follow (called “Bell inequalities”) that are contradicted by what we actually observe. So we know for sure that they aren’t determined at the outset. So neither theory works.

The author postulates a third interpretation. That quantum entanglement only matters in relation to a third entity that is measuring it. The combination of the colors does not exist in relation to anything. But here’s the problem with the relational explanation. the two objects then don’t even exist until a relationship to a third is determined. So it comes at the cost of feeling like reality is all relative. The question still remains, what connects them? And this is where my head starts to hurt.

Another good example of quantum entanglement: if a cake is in superposition with a bunch of different temperatures, then with respect to the thermometer, the cake has manifested its properties, but with respect to a third system of any kind that doesn’t participate in the interaction, no property has manifested. The cake and the thermometer are entangled.

There’s a lot more in this book, but honestly, the content is almost too heavy to read and digest because it causes unresolved questions about the nature of reality. But certainly this book expanded my mind in so many ways.

A Promised Land, Volume 1, By Barack Obama

RATING

3 stars

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

I think that it’s safe to say that I’m a double Obama-phile. I gave 3 stars to Becoming by Michelle Obama. So naturally this one would get a high rating as well.

Politically, I’m almost entirely aligned with the centrist approach to governing on display during Obama’s presidency. But my three stars has less to do about political substance and more to do about authenticity. The way President Obama writes about his life moved me to tears a few times. I read this book while my mom was in the last stages, and ultimately passed away, from her cancer battle. Obama writes about his mother’s passing in such a raw and honest way, with an emotion that you can only understand when you go through it yourself. He talks about a breast cancer patient that he met on his campaign in 2008, and thinking about her, his mom, and others he met in the run up and passage of the Affordable Care Act. This, too, was personal for me as my wife has been battling breast cancer.

I wish I had more to say about this book–I didn’t take any notes, and about eight months have passed since I finished it. I kind of phoned it in and didn’t do a larger summary, which I regret, but I had a lot going on in my life. I give it three stars because it gives a first hand and authentic account to the life and rise of one of the most influential leaders of the 21st century. It’s an incredible and authentic read.

The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

RATING

1 star

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

This was an entertaining book, though I don’t have much that I have taken from it. Taking a step back, the larger takeaway for me is that every leader needs a “truth to power” person by his or her side. Someone who will tell you what you don’t want to hear and who will understand your strengths and weaknesses, playing up to the former and making up for the latter. But this isn’t anything that we didn’t already know. So I walked away with interesting tid-bits, which I will share.

I don’t know much about Jimmy Carter, but I have learned through this book that despite being one of the smartest men to hold the Presidency, the author theorizes that he was ultimately undone by the lack of organization that a chief of staff would bring (he didn’t have one for the first few years of his Presidency). However, I learn and watch about his Crisis of Confidence speech, and I wish more politicians talked like this.

The hub and spoke approach does not work for Chiefs of Staff — you need one head of the staff that can coordinate and quarterback issues for the President.

Bush (43) basically operated without an empowered chief, relying on Cheney to guide a lot of decisions. Obama had an effective chief with Emmanuel but later chiefs of staff were weak.

Overall, it was a good read, not mind blowing, but also not boring either.

Year in Review – 2020

Previous Years

2019 books

2018 books

2017 books

2016 books

COMPLETED (short summaries below)

“Narrative Economics” by Robert Shiller

rating: 2 stars

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

rating: 2 stars

“AI Superpowers” by Kai-Fu Lee

rating: N/A

“Moving Up Without Losing your Way” by Jennifer Morton

rating: N/A

“To Start A War” by Robert Draper

rating: 3 stars

Overview and next year goal

When the COVID-19 lockdowns first started, I imagined that I would have plenty of time to read more in 2020. But unexpectedly, I found myself with *less* free time than before. No commute meant no audiobooks on the way home. Limited childcare meant waiting until the evening to exercise, relax, decompress, etc. But overall, that’s ok. As bad as 2020 was on the macro-level, I still have great memories of quality family time, a time that I will always treasure.

I read five books, one being a three star. I look forward to what 2021 brings.

IN PROGRESS

“Polk:  The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America” By Walter R. Borneman (yep…still)

“Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World” by Fareed Zakaria

“A Promised Land” by Barack Obama

SHORT SUMMARIES

Narrative Economics – by Robert Shiller

Rating: 2 stars

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

—-

When you ask people to tell you their life philosophy, they struggle to find the words. But if you want to hear their values, ask for their stories. This is the cultural, psychological, and historical power of narratives. Robert Shiller extends this power to behavioral economics. As an aside, Shiller won a Nobel Prize in economics and he’s named in the Case-Shiller home price index. This book is important especially today, quarantined during the COVID pandemic and staring down a potentially deep and dark recession ahead. The language of the book – epidemics, viruses, contagion, infection rates – is eerily prescient.

The thesis: economic fluctuations are driven by oversimplified and easily transmitted economic narratives — stories with high contagion rates. Such narratives are typically ignored by classical economics, but have profound impacts on economic cycles. Narratives are not necessarily rooted in factual beliefs, but are more often rooted in perception — how people perceive expert observers of a narrative to react, how narratives are valued in a cultural context, and the perception of certain narratives relative to others stronger narratives.

But what does this practically mean? Well, potentially a lot. Are brands popular because of their products or because of their adjacency to other contagious narratives? Does the stock market move on the Keynesian explanation of traders predicting what the experts think? Do economic recessions end when there’s no more social capital in acting frugal? The behavioral context analysis of these examples and others will reshape my understanding of economic events. The big question today: how does this framework apply to COVID’s economic impact?

Oh, I also learned a lot about the Gold Standard.

—-

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – by Mark Twain

Rating: 2 stars

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

It takes a special type of arrogance (or ignorance) to rate the most popular work by Mark Twain as “2 stars.” But this isn’t an indictment of the book. I found it incredibly enjoyable and insightful–it just didn’t alter my perspective like other books have. The book was interesting in a several ways to me: the parallels of Huck and Jim’s journey as being a journey through American History (both physical expansion and expansion on and limitations on race); the fact that this book was published in the time period that it was, and the ensuing social commentary of it; the evolution of the story from a simple children’s book (like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) to a serious literary work; a footnote in the book that said that when Huck and Jim were on the boat, Twain initially had planned for them to turn North towards Ohio where Jim would receive his freedom, but after pausing from writing for several years, he picked his manuscript back up and had Huck and Jim go down south. That last element was insightful for me–Twain’s masterpiece came not in an instant strike of genius, but as something he worked and toiled over for years, taking long breaks and picking things back up.

Surprisingly I did not read this book when I was younger. But I see why it is such an keystone piece of American literature.

I’m glad I read this book.

AI Superpowers – by Kai-Fu Lee

Rating: N/A

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

—-

I started off excited to read this book, but as it went on, I liked it less and less. Not because of the writing or because of the subject matter. But mainly because of the broad predictions given by the book that I felt were posed with inevitability and infallibility without compelling context. I guess that was the purpose of the book, and maybe I’m to blame for expecting something different. I wanted more commentary that analogized historical economic/technology shifts (printed paper, currency, trade, energy) to emerging AI.

I didn’t finish the book, but from what I read, here are some nuggets:

-China is an ascending AI power in a world where AI will be crucial to economic security and global influence. The author proposes that AI is a winner take all economy, with only a handful of companies in the US and China poised to dominate. That sounds realistic. As a result, the author proposes that the biggest threat of AI is how it will enable widening economic gaps and social strife that derives.

-While we wait for the next AI breakthrough, the volume of data will be what feeds deep learning models and AI industries around the world.

-Chinese startups shifted from emulation to innovation.

-Deep learning/neural networks were once considered a fringe part of AI but now are mainstream. Deep learning does this by taking massive amounts of data to train itself–to recognize patterns and correlations to the desired outcome. This training is easier when data is labeled with the desired outcome (e.g. recognize a cat by looking at billions of pictures labeled cat/no cat).

Moving Up Without Losing your Way – by Jennifer Morton

Rating: N/A

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

The main thesis of this book is that students from disadvantaged economic classes (aka “strivers”) have many costs when it comes to pursuing upward economic mobility. We typically think of the traditional costs — student loans, part time jobs, time investments, etc. The additional costs that the author highlights are “ethical costs.” The idea is that in pursuit of economic advancement, strivers often have to make hard decisions–leaving their families (where they are often in caretaker roles), their communities, their culture–to adapt to their new strata.

Overall, the idea is that while everyone has tradeoffs in the career and economic pursuits, strivers have additional costs that are emotional and ethical, and those costs can often hold back people from fully pursuing the options in front of them.

I thought this was certainly an interesting idea and a good book to explore. Beyond that, I did not get too much actionable information from it, which is why I gave it zero stars. It still was a worthwhile read.

To Start A War – by Robert Draper

Rating: 3 stars

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

—

Perhaps no President has rehabilitated his historical image as drastically in such a short time as President George W. Bush. Even if you didn’t like his policies or didn’t vote for him, the contrast between him and President Trump is stark. It neutralizes (or at least gives you selective amnesia) on the missteps during W’s administration. This book takes a historical reflection, two decades in the making, on perhaps the biggest unforced error in US foreign policy in the 21st century–the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I was a college freshman on 9/11 and a sophomore when President Bush gave his St. Patrick’s Day address to the country announcing an invasion of Iraq. That by itself took me on a trip down memory lane.

However, as important as that historical context is, this book gets two stars because of its commentary on the perils of Bush’s style of leadership. After 9/11, Bush displayed a previously unseen streak of decisiveness, eloquence, unity, and clarity of purpose. That was very well received by the public, especially after the divisive 2000 election and Florida recount. But as he pivoted to Iraq, it seemed like his mind was made up beforehand and the facts were secondary. Repeatedly, the book recounts how his administration encouraged compliance and how his cabinet was incentivized to give thoughts on what they thought their boss would want to hear, rather than what their boss needed to hear.

We’ve all had “bad bosses” in our careers. This book is ultimately a lesson in management–surround yourself with diverse opinions, listen to dissenters, gather the facts, and *then* be decisive.

—

To Start A War, By Robert Draper

RATING

3 stars

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

—

Perhaps no President has rehabilitated his historical image as drastically in such a short time as President George W. Bush. Even if you didn’t like his policies or didn’t vote for him, the contrast between him and President Trump is stark. It neutralizes (or at least gives you selective amnesia) on the missteps during W’s administration. This book takes a historical reflection, two decades in the making, on perhaps the biggest unforced error in US foreign policy in the 21st century–the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I was a college freshman on 9/11 and a sophomore when President Bush gave his St. Patrick’s Day address to the country announcing an invasion of Iraq. That by itself took me on a trip down memory lane.

However, as important as that historical context is, this book gets two stars because of its commentary on the perils of Bush’s style of leadership. After 9/11, Bush displayed a previously unseen streak of decisiveness, eloquence, unity, and clarity of purpose. That was very well received by the public, especially after the divisive 2000 election and Florida recount. But as he pivoted to Iraq, it seemed like his mind was made up beforehand and the facts were secondary. Repeatedly, the book recounts how his administration encouraged compliance and how his cabinet was incentivized to give thoughts on what they thought their boss would want to hear, rather than what their boss needed to hear.

We’ve all had “bad bosses” in our careers. This book is ultimately a lesson in management–surround yourself with diverse opinions, listen to dissenters, gather the facts, and *then* be decisive.

—

LONGER SUMMARY

I first heard about this book while listening to Ezra Klein’s podcast, where Robert Draper was a guest. As Draper was discussing the book, Klein made a comment that resonated with me. Like me, he was in college during the (second) Iraq War, and revisiting this moment in US history decades later was an insightful, 20/20 hindsight trip down memory lane. I remember attending anti-war protests in Ann Arbor, arguing with roommates and classmates about the legitimacy of the Iraq threat, learning that friends I grew up with were about to be deployed for their first of several tours in Iraq. I remember feeling like we were experiencing this bizarre overreaction to the fresh wounds of 9/11.

But stopping at that would give me too much credit. I also remember being in a haze, honestly not quite sure what to make of the world. I don’t think that I opposed the war because I had such great intellectual foresight on the future consequences to US foreign policy. I think I mostly opposed the war because I kind of felt like it was wrong, but I couldn’t really articulate why, and my 19 year old self wanted a reason to protest against the Bush administration. If history had borne out the Iraq war to be the right decision, my protests would look foolish and incomplete. in fact, I’ve already felt this way with some of my young adult views–in the months after 9/11, I also opposed and protested the US invasion of Afghanistan, and looking back at that position with hindsight, history would surely tell us that I was very naive and incorrect.

But in 2003, as a sophomore in college, during the Iraq War debate, it just felt like something was different and something was wrong. I remember that feeling vividly, like it just felt like there was this drumbeat to war. You first would hear about Iraq after 9/11 and think something like “hmm…that’s interesting” and how an invasion eventually evolved into an inevitability. You went from speculating whether Bush would launch a war in the Middle East to assuming that it was certain to happen. The needle on the public perception seemed to move so incrementally, kind of like the analogy of a frog in a pot of water with the temperature turned up one degree at a time. And as gradual as this perception shifted, looking back, I also just remembering this feeling that this country wanted revenge, and that Afghanistan was not enough. Looking back, and reading this book, it feels like that public mentality set the conditions for a flimsily justified war. Or more cynically, it feels like that public mentality was exploited to fit a world view and perception towards Iraq and the Middle East that existed long before the hijackers flew planes into the twin towers on that terrible day.

A few things struck me while I read this book. The most important was how this book was a primer and a cautionary tale about the perils of presumptive management. I won’t summarize the details of the book here, but the big takeaway–almost immediately after 9/11, a snow ball started within the Bush administration for justification to take the country to war in Iraq. Some of that was a consequence of the new, post-9/11 world and the exigent need to keep the homeland safe in the wake of the terror attacks. But some of that was also a consequence of residual thinking, from the post-Cold War hegemony through the neo-conservative perspective to the lessons of the first Iraq War. Also, it made me wonder, what kind of psychology played into W’s decision, seeing his father triumph in the first major US conflict since Vietnam only to watch him lose reelection to Bill Clinton a year later.

The bottom line, for me, the atmosphere of management by President George W. Bush created an environment where preconceived conclusions came first and justifications were made to back into those conclusions, where dissent and diversity of opinion were not encouraged, and where those who had the opportunity to push back either didn’t do so at the right time, tried to thread an impossible needle to gain political standing, or simply stayed silent because it wouldn’t have mattered. At many times in the book, it seemed like people in the administration knew what the power players wanted to hear, and those people were lining up arguments to play to those conclusions rather than to provide objective facts. I know that happens all the time, in politics and in business, but when it is *war* that is at stake that atmosphere can be disastrous.

In a weird way, with some reflection, I feel like it’s both incredulous that we went to war in Iraq and also obvious that we would have gone to war in Iraq. I think about how we’re living through this COVID pandemic and how we as a country have not had that post 9/11 moment of national unity–maybe because times have changed or maybe because this pandemic isn’t a sudden discrete and scarring event like September 11, 2001 was. That moment of national unity in 2001 bestowed upon this country international capital and goodwill, and we could use it to bring justice, to wage war, to promote American and western ideals across the world. But also, that moment of national unity ultimately suppressed political dissent. I distinctly remember feeling that if you were against the war in Iraq, it was likely that you would be cast as un-American or at the very least, unsupportive of our troops. It seems trivial now, but when Barack Obama said in his famous convention speech in 2004 that “there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq and there are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq” — it was the first time that I felt like dissent could be patriotic.

This book is about how we went to war. Who the people were, how the argument was framed, how the case was made to the American public. President Bush seemed like a thoughtful and analytical president (moreso than I gave him credit for 20 years ago), but also his administration seemed to manage with a style that was incapable of listening to differing opinions. As I read the book, I thought of the different jobs and management situations that I have experienced throughout my career. Decisiveness is something valued from a leader, but if you have a leader who will not listen to a diverse set of perspectives and who will not encourage dissent, then eventually your organization or team is going to speak to what they *think* their leader wants to hear, not what they actually think is best for the group. It seems to me, this was how Bush’s defense team was set up–the bullying nature of Sec. Def. Rumsfeld; the strong headedness of VP Cheney; the caught-in-the-middle role of Sec. State Powell and NSC Advisor Rice; the political pressure to conform as experienced by Senators Clinton, Daschle and the 75 other senators who authorized the war resolution in October 2002 . The list goes on.

And maybe you can’t blame the conformity–in the fog of war, with the wounds being fresh, who would want to be on the wrong side of history, if being on the wrong side meant an attack on the homeland. Who would have acted differently a second time around? After all, the 2001 Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force became law in the week after 9/11 with only a single “no” vote in the entirety of the US Congress. Who would have the foresight to say no or to take more time to review in a moment like that? Perhaps it’s a lesson for all of us. When we find ourselves in situations where we are in the fog, how can we keep a level head and consider all the facts, even if the waters around us are flowing strongly and swiftly in one direction.

It’s probably unavoidable to have leaders who may govern like this. And often, decisiveness will carry the day, because the wins will outpace the losses. But every now and then, you’ll have situations where the loss that is at stake is so monumental. It might be politically ok to hold your line before the facts on things like fiscal policy or the national debt or economic regulations, but every now and then, if you get something really big wrong, like going to war on false pretenses, the country will pay an enormous cost. In the case of the Iraq war, the cost was 1M dead, $1 trillion spent, and a generational loss of US goodwill around the world.

After reading this book, I just pray that when we happen to be in those monumental situations, we find ourselves with leaders who will listen to disagreements and differing opinions and will take time to listen to facts. But as the mismanaged federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, history is certainly bound to repeat itself.

Moving Up Without Losing Your Way, by Jennifer Morton

RATING

N/A

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

The main thesis of this book is that students from disadvantaged economic classes (aka “strivers”) have many costs when it comes to pursuing upward economic mobility. We typically think of the traditional costs — student loans, part time jobs, time investments, etc. The additional costs that the author highlights are “ethical costs.” The idea is that in pursuit of economic advancement, strivers often have to make hard decisions–leaving their families (where they are often in caretaker roles), their communities, their culture–to adapt to their new strata.

Overall, the idea is that while everyone has tradeoffs in the career and economic pursuits, strivers have additional costs that are emotional and ethical, and those costs can often hold back people from fully pursuing the options in front of them.

I thought this was certainly an interesting idea and a good book to explore. Beyond that, I did not get too much actionable information from it, which is why I gave it zero stars. It still was a worthwhile read.

AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee

RATING

N/A

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

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I started off excited to read this book, but as it went on, I liked it less and less. Not because of the writing or because of the subject matter. But mainly because of the broad predictions given by the book that I felt were posed with inevitability and infallibility without compelling context. I guess that was the purpose of the book, and maybe I’m to blame for expecting something different. I wanted more commentary that analogized historical economic/technology shifts (printed paper, currency, trade, energy) to emerging AI.

I didn’t finish the book, but from what I read, here are some nuggets:

-China is an ascending AI power in a world where AI will be crucial to economic security and global influence. The author proposes that AI is a winner take all economy, with only a handful of companies in the US and China poised to dominate. That sounds realistic. As a result, the author proposes that the biggest threat of AI is how it will enable widening economic gaps and social strife that derives.

-While we wait for the next AI breakthrough, the volume of data will be what feeds deep learning models and AI industries around the world.

-Chinese startups shifted from emulation to innovation.

-Deep learning/neural networks were once considered a fringe part of AI but now are mainstream. Deep learning does this by taking massive amounts of data to train itself–to recognize patterns and correlations to the desired outcome. This training is easier when data is labeled with the desired outcome (e.g. recognize a cat by looking at billions of pictures labeled cat/no cat).

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

RATING

2 stars

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

It takes a special type of arrogance (or ignorance) to rate the most popular work by Mark Twain as “2 stars.” But this isn’t an indictment of the book. I found it incredibly enjoyable and insightful–it just didn’t alter my perspective like other books have. The book was interesting in a several ways to me: the parallels of Huck and Jim’s journey as being a journey through American History (both physical expansion and expansion on and limitations on race); the fact that this book was published in the time period that it was, and the ensuing social commentary of it; the evolution of the story from a simple children’s book (like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) to a serious literary work; a footnote in the book that said that when Huck and Jim were on the boat, Twain initially had planned for them to turn North towards Ohio where Jim would receive his freedom, but after pausing from writing for several years, he picked his manuscript back up and had Huck and Jim go down south. That last element was insightful for me–Twain’s masterpiece came not in an instant strike of genius, but as something he worked and toiled over for years, taking long breaks and picking things back up.

Surprisingly I did not read this book when I was younger. But I see why it is such an keystone piece of American literature.

I’m glad I read this book.

Narrative Economics By Robert Shiller

RATING

2 stars

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

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When you ask people to tell you their life philosophy, they struggle to find the words. But if you want to hear their values, ask for their stories. This is the cultural, psychological, and historical power of narratives. Robert Shiller extends this power to behavioral economics. As an aside, Shiller won a Nobel Prize in economics and he’s named in the Case-Shiller home price index. This book is important especially today, quarantined during the COVID pandemic and staring down a potentially deep and dark recession ahead. The language of the book – epidemics, viruses, contagion, infection rates – is eerily prescient.

The thesis: economic fluctuations are driven by oversimplified and easily transmitted economic narratives — stories with high contagion rates. Such narratives are typically ignored by classical economics, but have profound impacts on economic cycles. Narratives are not necessarily rooted in factual beliefs, but are more often rooted in perception — how people perceive expert observers of a narrative to react, how narratives are valued in a cultural context, and the perception of certain narratives relative to others stronger narratives.

But what does this practically mean? Well, potentially a lot. Are brands popular because of their products or because of their adjacency to other contagious narratives? Does the stock market move on the Keynesian explanation of traders predicting what the experts think? Do economic recessions end when there’s no more social capital in acting frugal? The behavioral context analysis of these examples and others will reshape my understanding of economic events. The big question today: how does this framework apply to COVID’s economic impact?

Oh, I also learned a lot about the Gold Standard.

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