The 8 Books, 2 Graphic Novels, & 1 Podcast Series I Finished in August
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This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by: Nicole Perlroth
Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by: Mark Manson
Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore by: Michele Wucker
Golden Son by: Pierce Brown
Red Rising: Sons of Ares - Volume 1 and 2 (Graphic Novels) By: Pierce Brown
The Bear by: Andrew Krivak
The Phoenix Exultant by: John C. Wright
A History of North American Green Politics: An Insider View by: Stuart Parker
Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology by: Adam S. Miller
In August my youngest child left for college, and my oldest child started her graduate work. Next month another one of my children is getting married, though he’s been moved out for quite a while. Out of all of this only one child remains at home. He’s recently graduated from college with a computer science degree and is looking for his first job. Once he gets it, he too will move out. And, in what seems a very short space of time, my wife and I will be empty nesters. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for it.
One of the first things we’re going to do is move out of the house while it undergoes a long overdue remodel. I’m expecting it to start sometime in October. I’m obviously nervous about an undertaking of this size. Remodeling isn’t a huge gamble, but it is a costly one. It’s also asymmetric, the upside is essentially capped while the downside has a very fat tail. So lots of changes, but hopefully none of them will impact the mediocre logorrhea you’ve come to expect from me.
I- Eschatological Reviews
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race
by: Nicole Perlroth
528 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
The history, mechanics, and actors of a global and escalating cyberwar.
Who should read this book?
If you have enough worries about the future already I would avoid this book. If you’d like more or if you’re interested in cybersecurity this is the book for you.
General Thoughts
There are a lot of moving parts in this story, numerous actors, different incidents, and various technologies. One gets the sense that Perlroth is writing the history of something that hasn’t happened yet. Similar to someone writing the history of World War II at the end of August, 1939. Germany hasn’t invaded Poland, but they have annexed Austria, occupied the Sudetenland, and signed a nonaggression pact w/ Stalin (though no one knows that yet). Certain things are going to end up being very important and certain things are going to end up being entirely forgotten but none of that is clear yet.
Out of all the things Perlroth mentioned I’m going to make a few guesses as to which events and actors will end up actually being important when the war is finally over.
Stuxnet: This is the worm that was developed to take out Iranian centrifuges and slow down their uranium enrichment. It’s important for two reasons: It’s the first clear example of one nation attacking another using cyberweapons. Beyond that it undercut any moral high ground the US might have had. When the final history is written I think it will actually be less important than Perlroth claims, but it’s hard to imagine it not being included.
Heartbleed: This was a huge open source bug in the OpenSSL library that the NSA and others took advantage of for a long time. It illustrated that open source was not necessarily any more secure than the alternative (despite what some have claimed). Unsurprising given that the budget for the OpenSSL foundation was $2000/month.
Ukraine: The Russian cyber attacks against Ukraine are a huge part of the story, big enough that I’ll cover it in the next section.
China: As is the case with so many things these days, China also conducts extensive cyberwarfare operations. And the story is similar to all the other China stories. China does something completely ridiculous, but in the end there’s too much money at stake so we overlook it. The key story from the book was Google, which exited China in 2010 after a gigantic hack, but then by 2018 they were working on getting back in. Currently the situation is complicated, but it’s obvious that Google is trying to get back into China’s good graces.
Of course I could be wrong as well about what will end up being important, but I don’t think I’m wrong about this being only the beginning.
Eschatological Implications
Historically wars have been the most common way that one sort of world changed into another sort of world, what we might consider eschatology lite. But it was only with the advent of nuclear weapons that people started to seriously consider the possibility that we could have wars which ended the world. With the book’s title Perlroth is making the claim that we should add cyberwar to that category. I don’t think she makes a convincing case that it should be added to the list with other x-risks, still she does make the case for significant worry.
The book opens with the stories of Russia’s cyber attacks on Ukraine. The first, in 2015, took down their power grid, the second, in 2017, took down nearly every company in the country (though to the best of my knowledge the power stayed on this time). The second used the Petya malware, and apparently the Urkainians divide their lives into before Petya and and after Petya, in part because so much information was lost in the attack. From Pelroth’s description these attacks were obviously bad, but she claims that they could have been a lot worse. That this was just a test, not a real attempt to do as much damage as possible. That we should assume that if a big enough player, like Russia or China, really wanted to cause as much damage as possible, it would be far far worse.
This example of Ukraine and the other discussions of cyberwarfare remind me of discussions about strategic bombing during the interwar period. World War I had given people a taste of what might be possible, and the advancement of technology only served to make those possibilities more terrifying—possibilities which would certainly play out in future wars.
These discussions were not universally bleak. Many thought it would lead to war more terrible than any which had come before, but some thought it would actually lead to fewer deaths because it would end wars so quickly. People would just give up once you had air superiority and could bomb them at will. In particular it was widely believed that aerial bombardment would cause uncontrollable panic among civilians. As you can see some people got it right and others didn’t. But amidst all the theorizing, one thing was definitely clear, industrial capacity would be a hugely important factor. You had to be able to build both the bombers and the bombs and the more you could build the better.
We’re having the same discussions with respect to cyberwarfare. Some, like Perlroth, judging by the title of her book, think it has the potential to be apocalyptic, while others think that the danger is severe but manageable. (I assume Pinker is in this category, but this is another danger from progress/technology which doesn’t appear in Enlightenment Now.) I think I’m somewhere in the middle of those two positions. What I’m more interested in thinking about is which factors are going to end up ultimately determining success in cyberwarfare. If industrial capacity is what eventually allowed the US to win World War II, what factors will eventually allow which actors to achieve victory in a cyberwar?
From the book it’s clear that currently warfare revolves around highly talented individuals finding security holes in important software. From this you can imagine lots of ways this could go:
Is it a numbers game where the larger your country’s population the more talented individuals you possess and thus the more security holes your country has access to?
How does culture play into things? Are Chinese and Russian hackers more dedicated or less? If you’re a talented programmer in the US you’re working for six figures in silicon valley. If you’re a talented Russian hacker you’re building ransomware. The latter skill set would appear to be more useful if a cyberwar starts.
Related, our government seems to suffer from more leaks than the Chinese and Russian governments. See for example Edward Snowden. Does our expectation of openness work against us?
China seems to have a pretty tight clamp on its software companies. For example it’s widely believed that they can have them include whatever backdoors and spyware they want. While we do see some cooperation between our government and our companies, it’s not nearly so extensive, and there’s been enormous pushback. Who has the advantage here?
There’s a market for security holes and exploits. Given that you can buy your way into being competitive, but doing so is viewed as immoral, to whose benefit is that?
As I said, it’s impossible to predict which factors are going to be important and how things will play out in this arena, but reviewing the factors I just listed most of them seem to work to our disadvantage and to the advantage of our enemies. In particular this book has made me very worried about cyberterrorism. Thus far most terrorist organizations are fairly low tech, but that can’t last forever. In the old days it was assumed that the holy grail for a terrorist organization would be a nuke. With security vulnerabilities you have thousands of potential nukes wandering around. How long before a terrorist organization gets its hands on one?
Consider, what would cause more chaos? A terrorist nuke in a major city (probably closer to Hiroshima than an ICBM) or 20% of the country being without power for a month because terrorists managed to blow out a couple of critical transformers? Okay, now which is easier to pull off? My hunch would be that the power disruption causes more chaos and is easier to pull off. And if the terrorists can’t quite pull that off, there are thousands of security holes out there—some more damaging, some less damaging—but all with the potential to cause a lot of chaos.
Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope
by: Mark Manson
288 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
I’m honestly not sure. It was kind of all over the place. I think it’s primary theme was an admonition to accept the world as it is, and that hope and the search for happiness is the opposite of that.
Who should read this book?
If you loved Manson’s other books, you will probably like this one, beyond that. I’m not sure I would recommend it. There are good parts, but nothing you couldn’t get from reading Ryan Holiday or some other stoic.
General Thoughts
I’m not entirely clear on how this book came to my attention, but I had read Manson’s previous book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, and I enjoyed it, so that’s probably why I decided to read this book, plus it was short. The book is strange. It’s got a fair amount of philosophy in it, and most of that is pretty good. In fact Manson seemed to be making exactly the same connection I did between Nietzche and AI. It also had a lot of stories which I also enjoyed. The story of Antonio Damasio and “Elliot”, a man who couldn’t do anything because he felt no emotion is one I’ve heard, and even referenced on a couple of occasions, but Manson presents it with far more detail than any of the previous retellings I’ve encountered, so that was certainly useful.
One thing I hadn’t encountered, at least that I can remember, was the blue-dot experiment. In this experiment researchers ask participants to decide if a dot is blue, and initially they show them a set of dots where half are blue and half are purple. Then they gradually reduce the number of blue dots until all they’re showing is purple. As it turns out the number of dots identified as blue remains fairly constant, even as the actual number of blue dots goes to zero. As the occurrence of blue dots decreased, their definition of blue expanded. Thus far it’s interesting, but not particularly earth-shattering, but then they did some follow-up experiments:
In one follow-up experiment, the researchers showed the participants 800 computer-generated faces that varied on a continuum of "threatening" to "nonthreatening." When the number of malevolent mug shots the researchers showed the participants decreased after 200 trials, the participants started labeling nonthreatening portraits as threatening.
From this, people (including Manson) concluded that even if things are improving humans are wired such that they will always see a constant level of danger and disorder. That if we’re not feeling sufficiently threatened by external foes that we’ll make up the difference by perceived internal threats.
The things I’ve just mentioned along with other human biases are what lead him to conclude that Everything is F*cked. It’s when he provides his solution, in a chapter titled “The Final Religion” that things get interesting.
Eschatological Implications
So what is the FINAL religion? In Nick Bostrom’s foundational work on AI Risk, Superintelligence he proposes something he calls “The principle of epistemic deference”:
A future superintelligence occupies an epistemically superior vantage point: its beliefs are (probably, on most topics) more likely than ours to be true. We should therefore defer to the superintelligence’s opinion whenever feasible.
Manson takes this principle and turns it up to 11. I have never seen anyone lean into it as much as Manson does. He doesn’t suggest we defer to them “whenever feasible”. He suggests we worship them as gods:
AI will reach a point where its intelligence outstrips ours by so much that we will no longer comprehend what it’s doing. Cars will pick us up for reasons we don’t understand and take us to locations we didn’t know existed. We will unexpectedly receive medications for health issues we didn't know we suffered from...
Then, we will end up right back where we began: worshipping impossible and unknowable forces that seeming control our fates, Just as primitive humans prayed to their gods for rain and flame—the same way they made sacrifices, offered gifts, devised rituals, and altered their behavior and appearance to curry favor with the naturalistic gods—so will we. But instead of the primitive gods, we will offer ourselves up to the AI gods.
We will develop superstitions about the algorithms. If you wear this, the algorithms will favor you. If you wake at a certain hour and say the right thing and show up at the right place, the machines will bless you with great fortune. If you are honest and you don’t hurt others and you take care of yourself and your family, the AI gods will protect you.
[A]llow me to say that I, for one, welcome our AI overlords.
Needless to say there is a lot wrong with this. First it completely ignores the AI alignment problem. Do we care what location we’re taken to by the car that “pick[s] us up for reasons we don’t understand”? What if it’s an assisted suicide facility because the AI has decided we’re old, sad and lonely and all of those conditions are only going to get worse? What if it’s a eugenics facility? And these are the very mildest examples.
All of the foregoing might be forgivable if this conclusion was supported by a foundation built over the course of the previous 200 pages, or if it was foreshadowed at all. But instead it seems to come out of left field. A strange eschatology emerging, unheralded from a rambling mix of self-help, neuroscience, and Nietzsche.
II- Capsule Reviews
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
by: Chris Voss
288 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A method of negotiation which involves open ended questions designed to get the other side to solve your problems for you.
Who should read this book?
Someone, I forget who, pointed out that you’re never making more money, or losing more money in a given period of time than when you’re negotiating. If this book can improve your negotiating power by 1%, say by netting you $101k vs. $100K and you do this sort of negotiation a lot, then it’s value should be obvious.
General Thoughts
One would think based on what I just wrote that I have read every book on negotiation I can get my hands on. This is not the case, I mostly only read ones that have been recommended to me, and out of those I think this one, Influence by Robert Cialdini and Secrets of Power Negotiating by Roger Dawson have been the best. If you’re trying to decide between them it might be useful to point out that Influence has 365 ratings on Amazon with an average of 4.7 stars. Power Negotiating has 428 ratings also with a 4.7 average. Don’t Split the Difference on the other hand has 20,000 ratings with an average of 4.8. I’m not sure if these numbers should reflect on the author's negotiating prowess or not.
Beyond that, as I’ve already said, I believe this is a useful book. Voss has lots of great stories from his time as the FBI’s chief international hostage negotiator. And lots of good advice beyond that. With that in mind, my sense of things is that these sorts of books are best read right before a big negotiation. They’re useful in general, but they kind of recommend a different mindset, one you’re unlikely to practice enough (unless you’re in a position like Voss’s) to be able to recall at will.
So if you’ve got a big negotiation coming up, I would definitely recommend this book, and probably the other two as well.
Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore
by: Michele Wucker
284 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Catastrophes which have been predicted but not prepared against.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who’s interested in risk management, though, if you haven’t read The Black Swan you should read that first.
General Thoughts
In 2005 Hurricane Katrina caused the levees to fail in New Orleans. The resulting flood killed approximately 1500 people and inflicted $70 billion dollars in damages. This was a catastrophe, but it wasn’t a black swan, the potential for catastrophe had been foreseen well in advance of Katrina, and yet the necessary preventative steps were not taken.
Shortly after reading this book Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana and New Orleans, and while the levees fortunately held this time, the 911 system once again collapsed. Despite the 16 years that had elapsed since Katrina, New Orleans was only now putting in a new system and it wasn’t ready, and the old system collapsed in the same way it had the last time around.
All of the foregoing are examples of Grey Rhinos. Disasters which can be foreseen, even if the actual timing can’t be pin-pointed. Wucker uses the analogy of someone out on safari who wants a picture of a rhino. In their quest they get too close, ignoring all the rules given by their guide, and as a result they spook the rhino and next thing they know it’s charging in their direction, whereupon they freeze. Everything about the “grey rhino” crisis is predictable and obvious, but because people are more focused on short term incentives they ignore the giant, and possibly fatal risk, which is now barreling down on them.
Grey rhinos are obviously more common than black swans, and far easier to see, but as Wucker points out this doesn’t mean we’re great at dealing with them. If this book can help even a little bit it’s utility will be unquestionable. Despite that potential, reading the book was depressing rather than hopeful as it goes through example after example of people who got too close to the rhino, found themselves facing down possible catastrophe, freezing up and getting trampled. And yes, Wucker does provide plenty of advice for avoiding that fate, but people have been giving such advice for thousands of years and it hasn’t seemed to make much of an impact, it’s hard to imagine that this book is going to finally be the one that takes.
by: Pierce Brown
464 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This is book two of the Red Rising Trilogy. The continued saga of Darrow, a low caste Red who becomes a Gold and must navigate the various treacheries and machinations of their society while attempting to bring the whole thing crashing down.
Who should read this book?
Every series has its peak, if you’re lucky it comes at the end, but that’s actually fairly rare. I think this series peaks in book one. Book two is still enjoyable, but if you didn’t love book one this book isn’t going to improve things for you.
General Thoughts
I’ve decided this series is a combination of Dune, Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games. This is not necessarily a good thing. In particular it out paces all of them in the amount of deaths and duplicitous double dealing. (Yes, it even out paces Game of Thrones.) At a certain point I started to find this tiresome. My plan is still to read the third book, but I’m worried. The friend who recommended them said that each book is worse than the one before. Of course he told me this after I finished book two…
Red Rising: Sons of Ares - Volume 1 and 2 (Graphic Novels)
by: Pierce Brown
152 Pages and 132 pages respectively
Briefly, what was this series about?
This is a prequel to the main trilogy, in graphic novel form.
Who should read it?
First off you shouldn’t read this series before you read book two of the actual trilogy because it contains major spoilers. Second, unless you’re a Red Rising completist you probably shouldn’t read it at all.
General Thoughts
The back story provided by these graphic novels is somewhat interesting, though it doesn’t break any new ground. Also it’s incoherent in places, and I didn’t really like the art, which was kind of the whole reason I decided to check them out. (In this case, literally, I checked them out from the library.)
by: Andrew Krivak
224 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A man and his daughter making their living in the wilderness long after the rest of humanity has disappeared.
Who should read this book?
This is another instance where I think viewing something as a long podcast is very clarifying. The audio book is four hours, so if a great four hour podcast episode sounds appealing then this should as well.
General Thoughts
If you were to view this as a happy version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road you wouldn’t be far off. It also has hints of Jack London’s Call of the Wild. Finally it reminds me of some of the Native American mythology I’ve read over the years. Krivak does a great job of combining all of these elements together into something great. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about the book: the setting, the plot, the characters and the writing. It was great.
by: John C. Wright
304 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A story set in the far future, full of AI’s and humans in every variety you can imagine (from base neuroforms, to warlocks, composites and invariants). A story about one man’s quest to explore beyond the solar system and the forces trying to stop him.
Who should read this book?
This is also the second book in a series. It was also not as good as the first, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I expect this series might peak at the end, and thus if you’ve read the first one, read this one too.
General Thoughts
As I mentioned in my review of book one Wright is great at creating an interesting setting. That mostly continues to be the case, though this book takes place at a smaller scale than the last one, which is somewhat to its detriment. Also one thing I didn’t mention is that Wright himself is a conservative catholic. It's extraordinarily difficult to craft a book with an underlying ideology that doesn’t appear heavy handed, but I think Wright pulls it off. As you might imagine this gives the book a bit of an old school science fiction feel which I also enjoyed.
A History of North American Green Politics: An Insider View (Podcast Series)
by: Stuart Parker
15 hours
Briefly, what is this podcast about?
The history of North America environmentalism and the creation of the Green Party, which have not always been as closely aligned as you might think.
Who should listen to it?
From the outside looking in I always assumed that the environmental movement was well organized and monolithic. Parker shows that it was anything but. If you’re interested in a detailed story about how the narcissism of small differences plays out in politics, this is the series for you.
General Thoughts
Parker has been heavily involved in politics and environmentalism essentially his entire adult life. He was leader of the British Columbia Greens from the age of 21 to 28. So this really is an insider view of things. Parker is also a gifted academic and lecturer with a deep and eclectic knowledge of the history of environmentalism, the relationship between various factions (farm workers, rich elites, native americans, etc.) and how it all came to be manifested or ignored in the form of the Green Party.
As the series progresses it comes to events where Parker really was an insider. He is able to give more of a first hand account of how things played out and we get to really see how the sausage was made. Which is fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, and I don’t even have a dog in the fight. I really enjoyed the series, much more than I expected.
III- Religious Reviews
Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology
by: Adam S. Miller
132 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A collection of essays with a particular focus on what Mormonism has to say about grace and the atonement.
Who should read this book?
If you only dabble in Mormon theology, then there are easier books to read, but if you’re serious about the subject the essays in this book are deep and thought-provoking.
General Thoughts
I found Miller’s writing to be somewhat opaque, in my opinion more opaque than was actually necessary. Miller has some brilliant insights, but at times I felt like I was having to work too hard for them. My favorite essay from the book was “Notes on Life, Grace and Atonement.” Grace is going through something of revival in current Mormon dialogue and Miller’s contribution is fascinating, and almost Buddhist in nature:
With respect to grace, the legitimacy of my preferences for pleasant or productive things is a secondary issue at best. Grace is not concerned with preferences, legitimate or not. Grace, in its prodigality, is relentlessly and single-mindedly concerned with just one thing: the givenness of whatever is given, regardless of how such things may or may not comport with my preferences.
This definition of grace is all part of what he calls a non-sequential theology. We are not interested in cause and effect. We shouldn’t be focused on doing this in order for this to happen, but rather we should be focused on the totality of our lives at any given moment. I am certain I am not doing it justice, but perhaps I’m giving you enough of an idea to determine whether or not the book would appeal to you. And isn’t that the whole point of a review?
September looks to be the month when I finally finish reading Plato. So you’ve got more dilettantish commentary on ancient classics to look forward to. If that’s precisely what’s been missing from your life all this time, consider donating. If, inexplicably, you've already got enough of that sort of commentary, consider donating to support all the non-classical dilettantish commentary I do.