Bigger Leaner Stronger
This book is a really good summary of the latest science on bodybuilding. It doesn’t discuss the scientific studies at all; it just gives the conclusions. I would have liked to hear more about the science, but at least all of the conclusions in the book seem to be consistent with the scientific studies that I’ve heard about. I think this book is really useful for getting a quick summary of what you should be doing to build muscle.
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Freedom
This book had some really interesting themes, but overall it just wasn’t that entertaining. It had a great theme of self-sufficient community building and the corruption of government and power elites. But the bulk of the story was about a network of individuals who all wore augmented reality glasses that plugged them into a real-world MMORPG. It just wasn’t that interesting because it just reminded me of World of Warcraft too much. The opening scene was amazing though.
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The Willpower Instinct
This book discusses a variety of findings in psychology relevant to willpower. One of the main points was that mindfulness is very helpful. For example, instead of trying to suppress your urges, you should “surf your emotions”, feeling them without necessarily giving in to them. It also discusses a lot of pitfalls like how being too hard on yourself can backfire. However, I didn’t feel like I came away with anything new except that I should try harder to be consistent with meditation and mindfulness.
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Artificial Intelligence: The Basics
This book just didn’t have enough depth to provide any real educational benefit. It covered a lot of topics, but there was hardly any technical explanation.
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The Mindbody Prescription
Even though this book is not that fun or exciting, I still think it is a very important book to read because the main idea is so potentially important. The book argues that many chronic pain problems are “psychogenic” i.e. they are caused by mental processes. I decided to read this book after hearing about two smart and rational people who claimed to have miraculous cures to their chronic pain after reading this book.
The author’s theory, based on Freudian psychology, suggests that individuals with psychogenic pain have repressed narcissistic rage and their mind is using physical pain in an attempt to distract them from the painful thoughts so that they won’t reach consciousness. I am pretty skeptical about this theory, but I find it much easier to believe that the mind can cause pain for some reason, though maybe it isn’t always due to repressed rage.
He describes certain personality types that tend to have psychogenic pain, generally speaking, people who are ambitious and conscientious.
After reading the book, I am fairly convinced that their is some truth the what he is saying. I think everyone should be familiar with this concept just in case they ever experience this kind of chronic pain.
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Disruptive Possibilities
This book gave some perspective on the importance of big data in large institutions. It emphasized how big data requires experts that are well-versed in a wide range of areas, unlike the typical silo structure that most organizations currently use. There were a few interesting points that gave insight into how these institutions work, but overall there wasn’t a lot of interesting content.
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Valuing a Human Life
Can you put a price on a human life? This is a question that a lot of people have trouble answering honestly. They say “no”, but their actions say “yes”. In this video, Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman explains how people put a price on their own lives when buying cars. (It’s important to watch the whole thing!)
It isn’t that corporations are artificially making up a price for people’s lives; consumers are putting a price on their own lives by choosing cheaper cars over safer cars. The corporations are just trying to estimate that price on behalf of the consumers.
Friedman also points out how all budgeting decisions have an opportunity cost that may be less visible. For example, if $200 million is spent to save someone’s life, it is certain that many others will die who could have been saved by that money. According to the charity research organization GiveWell, the best charities can save lives at a cost of less than $3000 each. If it costs more than $30,000 per life, the charity is not considered cost-effective because so many better options exist. (GiveWell) Even using the conservative value of $30,000 per life, $200 million could save over six thousand lives.
But it is not just the poor in third-world countries whose lives are hanging in the balance based on the distribution of relatively small amounts of money. South Korea has the highest suicide rate among the 30 OECD countries and 15.9% were estimated to have been directly caused by economic difficulties. The most common cause was psychological despair (28.8%) which very plausibly could also be dependent on financial factors in many cases. (Wikipedia) It is clear that financial difficulties cause deaths even in highly-developed first-world countries.
The important point here is that economic decisions do have life and death consequences. If the government imposes a tax that utilizes funds less efficiently than the market would have otherwise, then we can presume that people will die as a result. A glaring example is provided by the famines and mass starvation that occurred in many communist countries in the past. But even in capitalist countries, a small increase in the tax rate can have a profound impact given the large number of people affected. Given the notorious tendency of governments to waste money, every time we vote on a tax increase, we should be mindful of the very real possibility that people could die as a result of our decision.
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Avogadro Corp
I think this is one of the most realistic and interesting portrayals of the development of artificial intelligence that I have seen. “Avogadro Corp” is a direct analogue to Google and it has an online email application just like Gmail. They are developing a new feature that auto-suggests ways to make your emails more persuasive. But due to resource constraints, the company is planning on scrapping the project. The leader of the project wants to save it, so he programs the service with the directive to manipulate all the emails in the company to support the success of the project. This creates a runaway spiral that nobody can stop. Absolutely fascinating story.
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Nexus
This book is about a futuristic “drug” called Nexus that is actually a liquid containing nanobots that interfaces with the user’s brain. When people take Nexus, they are able to feel the thoughts and emotions of other users around them. The main character of the book hacked the drug to allow him to install software on the nanobots to give him mental superpowers. There is a lot of emphasis on the moral questions that are raised by such technologies. The concept of the book was fascinating, but a lot of the plot is just action scene fillers, which weren’t as interesting as the technological side of the book.
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Volitional Action Items
When working on self-improvement, I often come across advice that sounds really good, but after reading it, I realize that I don’t have any practical ideas for how to incorporate the advice into my life. For example, if I hear “try to focus more on the present”, I recognize it as good advice and maybe I’ll be more mindful of the present for a few minutes, but soon thereafter I’m right back where I started.
The problem is that this kind of advice only has a lasting effect if it changes you in some way. Just thinking a thought could change you, but usually you just forget about it as soon as you return to your normal life. However, since your consciousness recognizes that you want to make this change, the solution is to find some way of allowing your consciousness to control the process of change. You can do this through volitional action, or action with a conscious intent.
The act of meditation leads to heightened mindfulness, so you may be able to will yourself to meditate and achieve the change you sought. But it is also possible that meditation itself is not volitional. You may be in such a frenetic state that your will-power isn’t strong enough to enable you to meditate at the moment. In this case, you may have to find an easier action item that is volitional that can calm you down enough to meditate, perhaps some physical exercise.
But perhaps your will-power is lacking and you are having trouble sticking to your exercise schedule. In this case, the first step may be to find an exercise partner who will encourage you to exercise every day. Ultimately, it may be that your root action item is to make a post on craigslist advertising for an exercise partner.
Effective self-improvement advice requires volitional action items. It is important to realize that will-power is limited and variable, so “volitional action item” is effectively a relative term in the sense that what is volitional at one point in time for someone may be non-volitional at a different time or for someone else. Thankfully, almost any shortcomings of our will-power can be overcome by a sufficiently sophisticated breakdown of objectives and action items into volitional action items.
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