Julian
Raises interesting points about variance in decision making, but is unnecessarily verbose. The authors also seem to consider algorithmic decisions noise free for some reason - this is only true in a very literal sense (same output for exact same input image), and even then only for the simplest systems (as machine learning practitioners will be happy to tell you).
The variance reduction strategies recommended by the authors are useful however:
- focus on accuracy, not individual expression (what would another judge think, checklists, etc)
- start from the outside view, think statistically
- structure judgements into independent tasks, do not mix them until evaluating all parts
- sequence exposure to information to avoid premature intuitions (eg blind studies)
- ensemble multiple judges
- prefer relative scales and comparisons over absolute judgements
A harrowing account of the oppression and sexism of a life under Islam. Shines a stark light on the double standards and cultural relativism applied to Muslim women.
Why are we fighting the patriarchy and freeing the nipple in the west, but support strict gender hierarchy, burkas and hijabs, systematic subjugation because it's “part of the culture”? (Hint: a religion is not a culture)
As the last chapter of the book says, “Religious rights cannot supersede human rights.”
A great autobiography, really consisting of two parts:
- the development of Singapore from British independence to 1990 under Lee Kuan Yew, and how it became a rich country despite a lack of natural resources and powerful neighbours
- the relationships of Singapore to neighbouring countries, and especially Lee's personal interactions with their leaders
Both parts are full of insights and very interesting. Lee was a truly great leader and his life impressive. We'd all be better of if more politicians and leaders followed his lessons.
Murray propose ten theses in this book. Some or all may be controversial, but he presents solid evidence for all of them. He goes on to argue that we should not tie our value judgements to attributes that may largely be due to genetic luck (such as intelligence) and instead treat everyone equally no matter their differences.
The ten theses:
Sex differences in personality are consistent worldwide and tend to widen in more gender-egalitarian cultures.
On average, females worldwide have advantages in verbal ability and social cognition while males have advantages in visuospatial abilities and the extremes of mathematical ability.
On average, women worldwide are more attracted to vocations centered on people and men to vocations centered on things.
Many sex differences in the brain are coordinate with sex differences in personality, abilities, and social behavior
Human populations are genetically distinctive in ways that correspond to self-identified race and ethnicity.
Evolutionary selection pressure since humans left Africa has been extensive and mostly local.
Continental population differences in variants associated with personality, abilities, and social behavior are common.
The shared environment usually plays a minor role in explaining personality, abilities, and social behavior.
Class structure is importantly based on differences in abilities that have a substantial genetic component.
Outside interventions are inherently constrained in the effects they can have on personality, abilities, and social behavior.
A bit of an erratic writing style, but it's well worth it to stick with this book - the scientific findings Plomin presents are very interesting, and probably not quite what you'd expect. Did you know that weight or autism are 7 times more heritable than breast cancer risk? What about spatial ability or general intelligence?
Raises some interesting points on how planning takes part within capitalist firms, but doesn't provide much detail. Additionally it misses the importance of competition in ensuring the efficiency of planning in a market economy - under monopoly conditions (which is what a state planned economy would amount to), planning in capitalism is just as inefficient as in failed communist states!
Entertaining, but ultimately the message of the book could be summarised in a much shorter space: the view of current populist / post-truth politics as an attempt at uniting a disparate set of voters behind a as large and as vacuous an idea as possible, enabled by the splintering of online communities and advertisment micro-targeting.
The author repeatedly draws parallels to Russia, which makes for interesting reading, but ultimately he doesn't offer much of a solution or proposed way forward.
The authors acknowledge the real solution - use nuclear for carbon free electricity - at the beginning of the book, then proceed to make many unrealistic or impractical suggestions. As they themselves point out, most processes are already within 2x of theoretical efficiency limits, so the only sustainable way is to switch to large scale carbon free electricity.
To make more of the books I've read and remember them better, I've started to keep notes while reading. I mostly follow the procedure outlined on Farnam Streetcache, but realized that realized that publicly posting my notes forces me to put a bit more thought into them. So here we go!
The main point of the book is that we humans are incredibly bad at dealing with probability, our only hope is to acknowledge our weakness and work around it. According to Taleb, the core generator of these ideas:
We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.
The book is mostly a collection of thoughts that are all related to randomness, in my summary I mostly try to follow the original ordering.
Read the rest at http://www.furida.mu/blog/2014/08/10/reading-fooled-by-randomness/