📔 Miscellaneous

Here is a review of some of the best non-fiction books that I’ve read. I also read a lot of fiction and manga, but I prefer not to include them here (Guilty pleasure 😄).

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (David Epstein)

Wow, this book is seriously mind-opening!! It delves deep into the idea that being a jack-of-all-trades can be awesome and help you become a master of some things, while being too specialized can actually hinder innovation. I’ve always believed that experience is crucial, but this book reminded me that it can also hold you back from innovating and tackling new challenges. It reinforced the importance of never getting complacent and always striving to improve and learn new things, even if you don’t think they’ll come in handy. It’s all about expanding your horizons, you know? Like they say at the end of the book, “Don’t compare yourself to younger people who aren’t you, compare yourself to the person you were yesterday.” This book is a fantastic read and I highly recommend it!!

If you’re not going to read this book, at least please watch this short video.

Complexity: A Guided Tour (Melanie Mitchell)

This book provides a general and immersive introduction to the fascinating field of complexity. Complexity, which covers various scientific areas like biology, computer science, genetics, and network theory, is explored with exceptional clarity and depth by the author.

The book explores topics like chaos theory, uncovering the secrets of how seemingly random patterns can arise from seemingly predictable systems. It also explores fundamental ideas like information and complexity, presenting different perspectives from computational, entropic, and statistical viewpoints.

Using captivating examples and thought-provoking studies, the book brings to life the idea of emergent phenomena in simple structures like “cellular automata.” It also explores the intriguing connection between computability and natural structures.

Throughout the book, the author emphasizes the importance of looking at complex systems through the lenses of nonlinearity, decentralized control, and statistical representation of information. By doing this, the book challenges the limitations of a reductionist approach.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Stephen Wolfram and cellular automata, as well as the section on evolutionary algorithms such as the genetic algorithm.

For anyone interested in a delightful and mind-expanding introduction to the study of complexity, especially those with a background in computer science, this book is a true gem.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

Black Swan, those crazy unlikely events (like google’s crazy success, 9/11 attack, and the internet being invented), show that social sciences suck at predicting all sorts of stuff (including people’s behavior), by only using that boring Gaussian “bell curve” thing. Using math in social sciences makes us think we know a lot (based on stuff that already happened), but really we don’t know squat about what’s gonna happen in the future. Not many science papers actually manage to predict stuff accurately, and most great inventions happen by accident. Taleb came up with a different approach, something called the Mandelbrotian thing (which I don’t really get).

To someone like me who loves stats, Black Swan is super convincing. Taleb’s got a funny way of talking, always throwing in some satire. Taleb is totally in that category. If we put him on a bell curve, he’d be way out there on one end (either super left or super right), but that’s not gonna happen ‘cause he hates bell curves.

I cannot fully describe the treasure that this book is, so I will stop here and highly encourage you to read it.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Daron Acemoğlu, James A. Robinson)

For a really long time, I’ve been super interested in understanding what makes some countries rich and successful. This question has been on the minds of people in less developed countries for like forever, as they look at their own situation and compare it to the fancy developed countries in the West. They see all these magazines, books, and movies showing how modern and inclusive the Western world is, and it makes them curious. In this age of postmodernity, with all the cool social media and communication tech, it’s like impossible not to make these comparisons. It makes a lot of people in less developed countries want to find answers that can help them improve their own situation and be on the same level as other countries.

So, there’s this book, right? It’s by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Basically, they talk about why some nations fail and others become all rich and successful. Their main idea is pretty straightforward: nations with inclusive political and economic systems do well, while nations with extractive systems struggle and make life hard for their people. The book can be broken down into 4 main parts:

1. There needs to be a centralized entity with some level of authority in a county for it to progress.
2. Revolutions only succeed if many parties are involved and not a single group. They will only succeed if they empower many groups to participate in the governing body.
3. Growth under extractive institutions is possible but not sustainable e.g., USSR, and China.
4. Extractive governments provide a larger incentive for groups or individuals to want to topple the current dictator and be the dictator.

A must read book for all people in 3rd world countries.
This book is one of the few that really changed the way I think about History and Democracy.

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt)

I’m seriously blown away by how people can completely toss reason out the window when it comes to public debates about land use.

In his book, “The Happiness Hypothesis,” Jonathan Haidt breaks down why we struggle so damn hard to change our opinions and behaviors. By mixing up old-school wisdom with cognitive research, Haidt dives deep into happiness, meaning, and what the hell makes us act so damn weird sometimes. He hammers home the idea that understanding how the human mind works is crucial, and he gives some killer tips for finding happiness. Haidt also gets into the nitty-gritty of how our minds are basically in a constant battle with each other, where emotions often take the lead over reason. He lays it out that our brains are wired to prioritize survival, which means we’ve got a major bias towards negativity and totally irrational reactions to stuff we think is threatening. These knee-jerk responses make it super tough to think ahead and let rational arguments sink in.

To make some real changes in our attitudes and behaviors, Haidt suggests putting our focus on training the emotional side of our minds instead of just relying on conscious thought. He’s all about self-improvement practices like meditation, cognitive therapy, and even Prozac. By helping folks get a handle on their social lives and automatic responses, we can dial down the influence of our emotional instincts during public debates and actually connect better with others.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner)

First of all, what does the title of the book mean? The book is about two prominent economists, Freakonomics (meaning “out of the ordinary” in their own words), who explore cultural and social issues and try to find unconventional answers using economic techniques (for example, one of the laws of economics: People react to incentives).

If you love economics, proving issues with statistics, thinking outside the box, analyzing data, and sociological issues in general, I’m sure this book can satisfy a good portion of your desires. Overall, this book does not have a unified theme. Each chapter raises a question and in pursuit of answering that question, we encounter dozens of other questions and answers. These questions may seem very ordinary at first glance, but in their depth, answers are found that we may have never thought of, and all of these answers are justified using statistics and data analysis.

In this book, what we are primarily dealing with is “Conventional wisdom”, meaning a unified cultural and social perspective on issues that the majority of society agrees on. The book begins with the sentence “The conventional wisdom is often wrong,” and the main focus of the book is challenging these social taboos.
In other sections, the book delves into the issue of cheating among students and even professors, examines the economics of drug substances up close, or addresses issues of racial and gender discrimination, proving that many things we accepted as facts may not be true and we need to look at the issues from a different perspective to find the real answer.

A significant portion of the book deals with a different view of the correlation and causality between common phenomena in society, which is extraordinary in its own right, to the extent that you probably won’t be able to put the book down until the end of the chapter!
If you have some social-cultural concerns and believe that some issues are not as they should be, give this book a try. Read it and feel the power of social sciences 😇

Lastly, a sentence from the book:
“If morality represents the ideal world,
Economics represents the actual world”

Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)

After having read this biography for a third time now, I have made peace with this fact and will just write whatever comes to my mind at this very moment.

Steve Jobs was a standout figure among entrepreneurs and celebrities. He had a unique and intense personality, driving him to revolutionize multiple industries in his relatively short but highly productive career. Jobs had a keen eye for beauty and a wide range of interests, positioning himself at the intersection of art and technology.
While Jobs was both a jerk and a genius, this biography presents an honest portrayal of him. It portrays his quirks, his ability to distort reality, and his binary worldview. Despite any personal opinions about him, the book evokes emotions, especially as it was written during his battle with cancer.
Jobs had the potential to continue changing the world, and it’s remarkable to reflect on the things we take for granted today because of his vision and determination. He often believed that people didn’t know what they wanted until he showed them, a mindset exemplified by his famous quote from Henry Ford.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

This is not just a success story. Jobs co-founded the world’s most valuable company in his parents’ garage. However, there were also failures after the initial success with the Apple II and the Macintosh. After detours with NeXT (another failure) and Pixar (a huge success), he returned to Apple (at the time a sinking ship) and turned them into a huge success story.

I gotta say, the main reason this book really hits home for me is that it was such an exciting time. Man, I would have absolutely loved to be there when Jobs (and his buddies and rivals) were inventing the future. I mean, with Jobs, it would have been an absolute blast, and yeah, probably pretty darn frustrating too.

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (Seth Stephens-Davidowitz)

In Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow,” he talks about dataism as the emerging ideology or even a new form of religion where “information flow” is the “supreme value”. And in another valuable book, we have another interesting author who sheds light on “Big data” and how we humans can use this data to study ourselves. It shows how Big data can be revolutionary, especially in areas where we lack sufficient information. Harari predicts that in the new age, the most powerful person is the one with the most data. In this book, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz benefits a lot from the data collected by Google, Facebook, and other firms, showing us just how powerful and influential these corporations are.

Throughout the book, there are many intriguing questions that lead to big answers. And more importantly, when Big data answers our big questions without proper explanation, it leads to practical ideas and pragmatic scientists and individuals. We may not know what happens between point A and point B, but that’s less important.

Some of the book’s titles include “Was Freud right?”, “The truth about Sex”, “The truth about the internet”, and “Can we handle the truth?”. These chapters reveal important facts about us, especially in regards to sexuality and the darker, undiscovered parts of our psyche. Towards the end of the book, there are many ethical and philosophical questions raised, as well as the limitations of big data.

The importance of this book lies in its ability to open new dimensions and stimulate the imagination of intellectuals and anyone interested in knowing what lies ahead. It’s crucial to have an understanding of Big data and how everything we do is being saved and turned into numbers that can be used to our advantage or against us.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Haruki Murakami)

A man who walked until he could

The book was very beautiful, revolving around several themes, and above all, my favorite author Haruki Murakami, a memoir blended with personality and individual philosophy beautifully expressed in the form of running. Most famous writers navigate through mixed problems in their lives, but undoubtedly Murakami is among the few writers who live even better and healthier than the general public, and perhaps these small differences create the main distinction.

How important can running be that we want to write a book about it? How much does a painful habit shape our character? All these are questions that it is impossible to find a worthy answer to until you become familiar with the book.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional

But when it comes to running, what are we really talking about? What factor exists that forces a person to leave the house before sunrise and endure the pain of running in heat and cold? Or spend half a year training for 100-kilometer marathons? Regular running is more than just a confrontation between pain and pleasure. The amount of suffering (not pain) necessary in each person’s life may be part of the individual’s character.

In a part of Murakami’s book, he refers to the idea that in order to become a writer, you must have a deadly poison inside you, and with the help of that poison, you can be a successful writer. But on the other hand, this poison gradually destroys your existence if you cannot control it. Firstly, it affects your writing ability, and secondly, it may end your life like other writers who have committed suicide.

Murakami is a strange person, and we must accept this. The fact that someone who was busy with his bar business until the age of 30 suddenly decides in the middle of a baseball game to abandon everything and start writing, just like that 😀

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (William Styron)

This tiny little book wasn’t an easy read. Mr. Styron eases us into his own story by sharing stories of other writers and artists who went through deep depression. Some made it through but most didn’t. His stories are filled with a deep understanding that he admits can only come from personal experience.

We’re not talking about a few days or even a week or two of feeling down, but rather months where the elevator keeps going down no matter how many times you press the Up button. The rawness of Mr. Styron’s descent into deep depression is what made it tough to read. Like he said, the wide range of symptoms and quirks of depression continue to make it hard to treat.

There’s no simple “cure” or “one-size-fits-all” remedy like there is for other diseases and illnesses. The relentless descriptions of the reality he faced every day for months were an eye-opener that I won’t forget anytime soon. I’ll also always remember that he did manage to get through it; just as his elevator hit rock bottom, it changed direction and slowly started to climb up again. Not without a close call, and not without a lot of help.
He stresses this point and also provides some solid advice and words of wisdom for anyone living with someone who suffers from depression, whether it’s a family member or a friend. Oh, and he also mentioned that he hopes a better word will be found someday for this condition, as he believes “depression” is too dull and boring and doesn’t come close to describing the intense and painful storms that occur in the minds and emotions of those struggling with debilitating depression.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is dealing with depression themselves or has a family member or friend who is. It could potentially save someone’s life.

Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel (Tom Wainwright)

This is not just a book about drugs, but it takes a practical look at many areas of business and economics. It’s strangely addictive, informative, and engaging. Don’t worry, tabloid newspapers, this book doesn’t promote using illegal drugs or idolize drug cartels in any way. With a conservative worth of over USD300 billion a year, the people running this business clearly know what they’re doing. Laws aside, you can’t run something of this scale without well-established structures in place. If anything, the operation could potentially be even larger and more efficient if it were legal.

You can approach this book from two perspectives. You can learn more about the global drugs trade and see how it successfully applies big-business techniques. Or, you can use the examples provided to better understand business concepts that are often wrapped in theory and can be challenging to grasp. This book serves both purposes well, presented in an easy-to-read and informative format.

The author demonstrates how business practices like mergers and acquisitions, competition and collaboration, social responsibility, media relations, human resources, franchising, and strong management oversight are utilized within the drugs business. You might never see it in the same way again.

You don’t have to be a business enthusiast to gain a lot from this book. It’s great for general readers and particularly suitable for those interested in business or the global drugs industry.

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts (Annie Duke)

This book is really awesome when it comes to the basics of making smarter decisions. It’s just simple and easy-to-understand advice backed up with cool stories, examples, and lots of references to other books to read more. The main point in this book is that the world is hardly ever black and white. Nothing is 100% certain. Instead of being super confident about something, you should start thinking about how confident you really are about it. Some people only care about the results and don’t even consider that the decisions they made might have been right based on the odds. They mix up the result with the correctness of the decision. When you get a result from your decision, you first need to figure out whether the reason for that result was skill or just pure luck. After that, you can start learning from your experience.

Annie does an amazing job covering the best strategies for making decisions, the different flaws in our thinking, and so much more, like game theory. But you know what my favorite part was? Annie teaches us about what she calls “resulting”, which is basically how we judge our decisions based on the outcomes instead of the process. Let me tell you, that really hit home for me.

Now, I’m not gonna lie, I’m still not a poker pro, but reading this book, along with all the others that I read as a result of this one, has seriously improved my life in so many ways. It’s been a game-changer, no doubt about it.