Mid-length Non-fiction Book Reviews: Volume 3
WEIRD gods, intelligence, both natural and artificial, the (mis)management of savagery, two books on investing, anti-productivity, history to make you feel proud and history to make you feel guilty
Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by: Ara Norenzayan
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by: Max Bennett
The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump by: Max Blumenthal
What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by: Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
The Laws of Trading: A Trader's Guide to Better Decision-Making for Everyone by: Agustin Lebron
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by: Oliver Burkeman
I wasn’t sure what to put here, or if I should even keep doing these small slices of personal reflection at the beginning of my review posts. Seeking inspiration, I looked back to what I said last year at this time. I was full of holiday cheer but also full of apologies for my uneven writing output in 2023. This year I’m once again full of holiday cheer, and slightly less apologetic for my output. Though there really should be something between volume two and volume three of my seminal “Mid-length Non-Fiction Book Review” series. I have something else that was almost ready to go but not quite. So hopefully early next week. As this, sort of, hints at, things are happening behind the scenes, but obviously it may be awhile before you can fully verify that for yourself.
In any case I hope that your Thanksgiving was amazing, and to wish you beyond that a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict
By: Ara Norenzayan
Published: 2013
264 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The idea that the “invention” of omniscient deities made people far more cooperative and law-abiding, because they believed that their actions, even if unseen by their fellowmen, would be seen by god, and carry inevitable consequences—both in this life and the next.
What's the author's angle?
Norenzayan is a social scientist and, as such, he approaches things using the tools of social science. These tools have taken a real beating in the dozen or so years since the book was written.
Who should read this book?
I would recommend Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World (see my review here) over this book. It’s broader, more recent, and covers everything you need to know about this idea. If you’ve read that book, and you’re really taken by the specific mechanism of “Big Gods” (as I was) then it might be worth reading this book, but I found it a little disappointing.
Specific thoughts: We’re in an annoying situation if the premise of this book doesn’t replicate, but we’re in a potentially catastrophic situation if it does
This book draws heavily on the idea of priming, and if you’ve been following the replication crisis, priming has been called the “poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research” by no less a figure than Daniel Kahneman. This book even mentions the most infamous example of a priming experiment that failed to replicate: the claim that people walk more slowly when they’ve been primed with elderly stereotypes. So does this mean that we should toss the book in its entirety? After reading it, I don’t think so. The book draws on other evidence, both historical and behavioral, to make its point. Also it fits well into the broader WEIRD framework. Accordingly I’m inclined to basically accept its premise, but doing that leaves us in a very precarious position! Allow me to explain.
To his credit, Norenzayan notices that many western societies have become increasingly secular, while also continuing to be extremely law-abiding. This would seem to refute his premise. If the all seeing eye of “Big Gods” was required for the unity and cooperation that made the modern world, won’t the lack of it cause that world to collapse? He gets around this problem by imagining that the vast governments which accompany this secularization take the place of the “Big Gods” with both their near omniscience and their extensive ability to punish.
Another thing “Big Gods” provided was a way to develop trust, which greased the wheels of trade. If someone was a co-religionist then it was easier to trust them with a transaction. Of course it was not enough for the person to just claim to be a co-religionist, they had to demonstrate it. Norenzayan asserts that this explains onerous religious requirements—they were a way of signalling trustworthiness because they signalled belonging. Now we don’t need these credibility signals in order to conduct trade because we have a government that punishes fraud.
The problem is that trust isn’t just important for trade, it’s important for all sorts of things. The government can instrumentalize dollars and cents, but that’s only a small part of what passes between people in order to keep a society running. Consequently as countries have become more secular, it seems reasonable to assume that there has been a diminution of these credibility displays, of signalling trustworthiness in general. One can imagine that, initially, other signals get used instead, like nationality? If so this would help explain the huge problems Western countries are having with immigration. But how long can these other signals hold up? Particularly if they’re continually being undermined?
In the end “Big Gods” may be yet one more thing the modern world has replaced. It was replaced with something that looked very similar, that seemed to check off all the boxes, but which inevitably missed much of what makes the original truly important.
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains
By: Max Bennett
Published: 2023
432 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The evolutionary history of how intelligence developed—from the simplest forms of life all the way up through human level intelligence—and how these developments tie into the creation of artificial intelligence.
What's the author's angle?
Bennett is the CEO of one AI company (Alby) and previously co-founded another AI company (Bluecore) so he’s very bullish on AI and that comes through in his discussion of it.
Who should read this book?
Anyone interested in the raw components of intelligence, in particular how natural intelligence relates to and informs the pursuit of artificial intelligence.
Specific thoughts: A great overview of the current best thinking on the evolution of intelligence
This book felt very similar to Journey of the Mind which I reviewed recently. If you were trying to pick which of the two to read, I would give this one the edge, but only because Journey has a tacked on section about society level minds, which I found excessively speculative. They both do a great job of explaining things with the accompaniment of fantastic visual aids. (On the visual aid front, I would give the edge to Journey if that makes a difference to your choice.)
The other big difference is that A Brief History is always tying things back to AI. This adds an additional layer of interest to the book, but I also think that he’s sometimes guilty of overfitting. Bennett is very good at pointing out when our brain does something similar to AI, but he’s generally silent when the brain does something that AI doesn’t. That is to say he will mention that the brain does X and AI does not, but he doesn’t go on to say, “and this may present a major stumbling block to future progress.” Or even “and we’re not sure how important X is going to end up being.”
I considered this problem as I was reading about the granular prefrontal cortex.
…a human with damage to the [angular prefrontal cortex] has obvious and severe symptoms, such as akinetic mutism, in which patients become completely mute and intentionless.
In contrast to the alarming symptoms of [angular prefrontal cortex] damage, damage to the surrounding granular prefrontal cortex often results in minimal symptoms. In fact, the impairment from damage to these areas is so minimal that many neuroscientists in the 1940s wondered if these areas lacked any functional significance at all. A famous case study at the time was of a seizure patient named K.M. who had a third of his frontal cortex removed to treat seizures. After the surgery, K.M. seemed to have no deficits in intellect or perception whatsoever. K.M.’s IQ after the removal of a third of his frontal cortex was unchanged—if anything, it increased. In the words of a neuroscientist at the time, the function of granular prefrontal cortex was a “riddle.”
The function of the granular prefrontal cortex is to project yourself into a situation. For example, “If my boss asks me to move to a new position in Australia would I accept?” As it turns out, this isn’t something where the lack is immediately obvious when you’re interacting with someone, thus the neuroscientists’ confusion.
My suspicion is that when it comes to AI there will end up being lots of things like this—lacuna that are hard to detect. That even if we’re able to solve all of the obvious problems with AI there will still remain non obvious problems. These problems will be difficult to detect and even more difficult to solve.
I think this book was intended to make the reader bullish on the topic of AI, but it actually had the opposite effect on me. It made me more bearish. If I were going to distill this out, I think artificial intelligence is going to follow a Pareto distribution. Duplicating 80% of intelligence will require 20% of the total effort, but duplicating the remaining 20% will require the other 80%, with examples like the one I just provided being in that remaining 20%.
The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
By: Max Blumenthal
Published: 2019
400 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A better title for this book might be “The Mismanagement of Savagery”. Basically it’s a list of all the mistakes the US made in the post cold-war era when we thought we had a free hand to remake the world as we saw fit. You may have also heard it referred to as the “Unipolar Moment”.
What's the author's angle?
Here I can’t improve upon Wikipedia:
Blumenthal is the editor of the fringe The Grayzone website, known for its criticism of US foreign policy and its positive, often apologetic coverage of the Chinese, Russian, Syrian, and Venezuelan governments, including its denial of chemical attacks by the Syrian government and of human rights abuses against Uyghurs.
Who should read this book?
I suppose if you aren’t aware of the many US foreign policy misadventures, and additionally you want something to temper your jingoism, this would be a good book to read. Otherwise…
Blumenthal did a good job describing the massive failures of NATO’s Libyan intervention—the one that quickly resulted in the death of Muammar Gaddafi—which turned the country into a failed state. I think that’s also the intervention where awareness among the general public is the most lacking. So maybe just read Chapter Five: The Counter-Jihad.
Specific thoughts: Not entirely clear what we should have done differently
One of my goals for 2025 is to keep better track of how a book ended up on my “list”. Of course It may take until 2026 for that goal to fully manifest because of my large backlog of books. This is not to say I regret reading the book, more that I’m not sure what knowledge gap I was attempting to plug, or what area of interest I hoped to buttress.
Despite this, the situation in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan (MENAA?) is so complicated that it’s useful to get as many perspectives as possible, even perspectives labeled “fringe” by Wikipedia. Certainly it’s important to learn from our various misadventures, but it’s not entirely clear what Blumenthal wants us to learn. Plainly one could take a position of never intervening at all, but I didn’t get the feeling that this is what Blumenthal was advocating for. My sense is that he was asking us to intervene less, but also better. How do we intervene better? That was unclear. He never offered any concrete alternative path. Something like, “If we hadn’t gone into Afghanistan then obviously X would have happened, and X would have been better than what did happen.” He offers up an enormous number of examples illustrating how poorly it went, but he had no concrete suggestions for a different approach (at least none that I remember).
I know how easy it is to criticize from the sidelines, it might be my primary occupation. And I’m sympathetic to the idea that when all is said and done it’s better to just stand back and let nations work out their own problems. But the book isn’t titled “The Management of Peaceful Well-Functioning Nations Who Just Want to Be Left Alone” it’s titled “The Management of Savagery”. Savagery is difficult to deal with, but even more difficult to ignore. I didn’t need a whole book to convince me that we need to do better, that I already knew, what I didn’t and still don’t know is: ”How?”
What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
By: Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
Published: 2013
192 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
How luck is often conflated with skill when considering investment returns.
Who should read this book?
Taleb gives the book a blurb on the jacket, but I would just read Taleb. I think Fooled By Randomness does a better job of making the same point. Paul does give some more concrete advice on establishing an investment system near the end of the book, and if that sounds helpful you could check that part out.
Specific thoughts: It is admirable that he was willing to share his story
Despite what I just said, I do think more people need to share stories of their failures, and this one is a doozy. I think there are a lot of really interesting stories of hubris and failure, but the way the market works we generally only hear from people who are very successful. We imagine that they have some replicable secret for their success and if we adopt it we’ll be equally successful. That’s certainly one possibility, but it’s only one possibility among several. If we want to truly map out the probability space it would look something like this:
They have no secret to share, because there isn’t one. The key thing separating them from unsuccessful people who work really hard is luck. This is by far the most common situation.
They have some good advice, but it’s advice you’ve already heard a hundred times and you’ve already implemented it to the extent you’re able.
Their success does have a source other than luck, but they’ve misidentified the source, so while they’re preaching the virtues of X, it’s really some other Y that you need to replicate. (Much of the time Y is luck, but not always.)
They have some good advice and it’s something you haven’t heard already. You implement it and it’s actually helpful, but it’s only a small part of the overall success.
They actually have the secret to success, and it can be transmitted in written form. Perhaps this does happen, but if so it’s vanishingly rare. The most obvious reason for this is that if you have discovered the secret of wealth sharing it will only diminish your edge.
Okay that was a big tangent to illustrate that we actually need more stories of failure. That said: we do.
The Laws of Trading: A Trader's Guide to Better Decision-Making for Everyone
By: Agustin Lebron
Published: 2019
304 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The laws of being a successful trader. There’s some attempt to expand the laws of trading from actual monetary investment to all the trades we make, but mostly the book is focused on the former.
What's the author's angle?
With many financial books you have to ask yourself why the person is undergoing the opportunity cost of writing a book when he could be using his amazing financial knowledge to make more money. Lebron even brings this up, but it does seem like he genuinely has a desire to pass along some lessons it took him a long time to learn. (But perhaps sincerity is his “edge”.)
Who should read this book?
I think if you're really serious about trading financial instruments I would definitely read this book, but mostly as a kind of logistical exercise.
Specific thoughts: Maybe you should just buy SPY and call it a day.
The one thing that came across most clearly from this book was, given the competition for any degree of edge in investing, as a retail investor you are probably not going to beat the market. Accordingly, the very first lesson in the book is understanding your motivation for trading. Obviously we’d all like to make millions of dollars, but given how unlikely this is, unless you have some secondary motivation you should probably just invest in an index fund and call it a day.
Once you understand your motivation, and in particular understand how that motivation plays into the potential risks, then this book is a great source of education. But as my father always said, “A good education is expensive.” And should you really desire to trade, I expect you’ll acquire a very expensive education (see the previous review) on top of whatever education you might acquire from this book.
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
By: Oliver Burkeman
Published: 2024
208 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A set of 28 daily meditations covering Burkeman’s brand of personal happiness and productivity. Which, for a productivity system, involves a surprising amount of ambition renunciation.
What's the author's angle?
Burkeman is best known for his book Four Thousand Weeks (see my review here), and he’s successfully carved out a role as the productivity guru for people who are sick of productivity gurus.
Who should read this book?
If you loved Four Thousand Weeks, then I think you will be equally in love with this book. If you haven’t read Four Thousand Weeks. Then I might suggest starting with this book and reading a chapter a day (which is how the book is designed). I think this book provides an easier entry point, and if you like what you see then you can move on to Four Thousand Weeks.
Specific thoughts: Losing my religion
The last time I mentioned Burkeman I said that Four Thousand Weeks “sent me into an existential and productivity spiral that I've only barely recovered from”. One of my readers wanted to know what I meant by that, and while I responded at the time, I continued to think about the question. I believe I’ve come up with a better way of explaining things: The change wrought on me by Four Thousand Weeks was similar to the change someone might go through when they abandon their religion, or at least seriously reconfigure their relationship to it.
Now I have never abandoned my religion, or even seriously reconfigured how I relate to it, but I know lots of people who have, so I’m not speaking from a place of ignorance. Based on this, I think there is a sense that many people (myself included) view productivity as something of a secular religion, one with harsh laws, serious taboos, and enormous expectations. In contrast to that Burkeman preaches a kinder, gentler religion. I like the kinder, gentler religion, but I can’t entirely abandon the “faith” of my youth. And to be clear, I don’t think Burkeman is asking his readers to do that, but integrating the two is difficult. It is sometimes important to focus on “Winning!” even if it turns you into a ball of stress and anxiety, and that’s not very Burkemanian (?). Perhaps I’ll write a whole post on this tension at some point.
In any case, regardless of where the balance should be between these two competing impulses, for most people I know it’s been pushed far too much towards the “win at all cost” end of things. Consequently Burkeman is a welcome salve.
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Published: 1992
336 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The European Theater of WWII from D-Day through to the end, told from the perspective of a single company.
What's the author's angle?
Ambrose was a very well known author of popular American history books. Unfortunately his reputation took a sizable hit when it was revealed that he was a serial plagiarist. Apparently he did attribute the original authors, but only as sources, not as the originators of the prose he was actually using.
Who should read this book?
I read this book long ago, and really enjoyed it. Having read the book, I felt like I didn’t need to watch the HBO Miniseries based on the book. But after hearing so many good things about it over the years I decided to re-read the book while watching the series. This dual exercise turned out to be highly enjoyable and I recommend it unreservedly.
Specific thoughts: A great slice of WWII history
There’s a reason that they made this book into a miniseries, and there’s a reason that the miniseries is so well-regarded. This is just one gripping story after another from the frontlines of WWII, with a particularly compelling look at the individuals who made up those frontline troops.
I know it’s passé to complain about how soft people are these days, but a book like this does seem to offer powerful evidence that “the Greatest Generation” was made of tougher stuff. Sure there are some SEALS, Rangers, etc. who could pull off the same things that Easy Company did, and I even imagine that the current members of the 101st Airborne are similarly capable, but the people covered in this book weren’t self selected, gung-ho, fifth generation military. They were just average individuals who signed up to fight. Sure there was a winnowing process to make it into Airborne, but these guys were still closer to average, and it seems abundantly clear that what used to be average would now be considered exceptional.
The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement
By: Sharon McMahon
Published: 2024
320 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A selection of inspiring stories about the civil rights movement, with frequent emphatic interjections.
What's the author's angle?
McMahon is best known as a podcaster. I have never listened to her podcast, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I thought the book had a pretty hectoring tone, with frequent asides where she really rubbed the reader’s nose in this or that injustice. I thought it might just be me, but when I checked some other reviews it wasn’t hard to find other people complaining about it. There might have been something of the zeal of the recent convert. I get the impression that she used to be politically neutral, but in 2020 she took a hard left turn. Given how many people did the same thing I suppose this is forgivable, but I think the book would have been better if it had less of all that.
Who should read this book?
I certainly agree that we should read the stories of the marginalized—the stories of people who were mistreated by the government, and who were denied the promises of the Declaration of Independence. But I think we already do a fair amount of that, both in and out of schools. If we consider that the normal education, I think this would be like AP Injustice. It’s designed for those who really want to go above and beyond.
Specific thoughts: Some people should stick to podcasting
As I’ve said, I have never listened to her podcasts, but another thing I noticed while reading other reviews were people who were effusive about her podcast, but lukewarm about the book. And I remember feeling similarly about Dan Carlin’s book (of Hardcore History fame). Some people have a medium they’re best at, and they should stick with that.
It is also possible that I’m entirely too critical, the book has a 4.9 on Amazon, and a 4.6 on Goodreads. But it’s also interesting how many semi-critical reviews show up at the top of the feed (at least for me), so perhaps I’m not entirely alone in my feelings.
As an example of some of the book’s failings (outside the hectoring tone) I defy you to name the twelve unsung Americans she’s featuring. If you just count the names in the index you’ll see there are fourteen, all intertwined with each other. And this is actually a bigger criticism than the tone: It felt disorganized. The stories really were great, but they were broken up by the aforementioned asides, and other long tangents. It was sprawling and complicated.
Basically, I was annoyed by the tone and confused by the presentation. Also, and perhaps this is unfair, but when McMahon goes on and on about the horrible things done by people in the past, she’s talking about some of the same sort of people featured in Band of Brothers. The past was complicated. It’s like Solzhenitsyn said:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart…
In this book McMahon draws the line between groups of people, there are the good people on one side, and the bad on the other. Unfortunately that’s not how it works, and in the immediate aftermath of a very contentious election, that’s something we definitely need to remember.
Despite my initial cheer, by the end here I think I come across as pretty cranky. I guess the line between Santa and Scrooge runs right through the middle of every human heart as well. If you’d like to help push me towards the Santa half or at least exercise your own inner Santa, consider liking, subscribing, commenting, telling people, or at least consider a brief kind thought.