Reading
A selection of books I have read recently. No particular theme was intended, though one probably emerges anyway.
Range
The case against early specialisation. Breadth of experience turns out to be a genuine advantage in most of the domains that matter.
Prisoners of Geography
Maps don't just show you where things are. They explain why almost everything happened the way it did.
A Trick of the Mind
The brain does not receive reality. It constructs it. The implications of that for how we teach, manage and persuade people are still unfolding.
The Secret of Our Success
Culture is a technology we mostly inherit unconsciously. The best explanation I know of why humans behave so differently from each other.
Alchemy
The best argument that logic alone is a bad guide to human behaviour. The irrational solution is often correct, and we can't model our way to that conclusion.
AI Snake Oil
A useful corrective to most of what gets published about AI. The distinction between genuine capability and statistical pattern-matching turns out to matter enormously.
How Minds Change
On why people update their beliefs, and why rational argument is almost never the mechanism. More practically useful than it sounds.
Right Kind of Wrong
On the science of intelligent failure. The distinction between preventable failure and productive failure is simple to state and almost impossible to get right in practice.
The Unaccountability Machine
On why organisations so rarely do what anyone inside them actually wants. A book about systems that feels like it should be about ethics.