I recently started reading David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart. The book is expanding on the author’s blog of the same title. Here is one of the book’s trailers that effectively introduces it.
It is a very entertaining read and it will likely appeal to lots of people interested in behavioral psychology or popular science. Apparently, it is doing well on Amazon, too. As of today, the hardcover version is ranking on four different lists:
Surprisingly, here is how the Kindle version is ranking.
“Me, I wait for inspiration,” he said, but he did it methodically every morning. He believed that a professional writer needed to set aside at least four hours a day for his job: “He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. He can look out of the window or stand on his head or writhe on the floor, but he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks.”
[...]
“Write or nothing. It’s the same principle as keeping order in a school. If you make the pupils behave, they will learn something just to keep from being bored. I find it works. Two very simple rules, a. you don’t have to write. b. you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.”
This is an interesting approach and it apparently worked for him to some extent, given his productivity as an author. The aforementioned book also explains why this would have worked:
The Nothing Alternative is a bright-line rule: a clear, unmistakable boundary [...]. Chandler’s particular rule – If I can’t write, I will do nothing – is also an example of an implementation plan, that specific if-x-then-y strategy that has been shown to reduce the demands on willpower.
He made it a personal policy, essentially resolving to not allow himself any other real options, during the time that he dedicated to writing.
Particularly with modern web applications we voluntarily give up a certain degree of privacy, so that we can enjoy the benefits that we perceive from those applications. On the one hand this is something that we largely opt in for, but on the other this is certainly not a straightforward discussion and the privacy debate is increasingly a complex one.
In Privacy Is Dead – Long Live Surveillance Symmetry, Jakob Eriksson describes an interesting view on our current landscape of increasingly changing privacy expectations. His main point: We would not be as concerned about losing our privacy, if those spying on us lost it equally.
If we weren’t so careful about hiding our differences from each other, we’d come to realize that not fitting the standard stereotype is the real norm. If you’re not an alcoholic, a neat freak, in debt to your ears, battling hair loss, having an affair with the neighbor’s wife, or something equally shocking, then something is probably wrong with you, not with the rest of us. I believe technology will force this societal change to happen, but even if it didn’t, it really is time we all grew up and came out of our respective closets.
In a recent tragedy, a college student committed suicide after a revealing video was posted online. My hypothesis is that the problem wasn’t that he was doing anything wrong in the video or even anything particularly unusual or shameful. Fundamentally, this was a problem of information asymmetry. While the rest of the world could all see him in his most private moment, this insecure young fellow couldn’t see them in theirs, and it was too much to bear.
It is an interesting thought. I also do not think that this could be a complete answer.
Would travelers at airports be more accepting of being examined with backscatter x-ray machines, if they could also view images of security personnel that were produced by those machines, when that staff was examined?
Would we be understanding, if our neighbors positioned motion-activated cameras to capture the activities in our home, if we did the same to them?
Many, many more examples can be imagined. Like so often, I think the answer here is: It depends. What is acceptable for one person in one context will not be for a different person or in a different context.
Max Barry‘s new novel Machine Man is a story about a scientist who loses his leg in an industrial accident and then proceeds to replace it with an artificial version – and embark on a quest of hacking himself. This is a cyborg story. It is also love story.
I discovered an excerpt online that happens to include one of my favorite sections: A conversation between the main character and his love interest. During a regular interaction (dinner), he explains the concept of deadlocks to her (via io9).
One night I reached for the salt but Lola had already moved it to her side of the table. I looked at her. She was drinking from her glass of water. “Salt,” I said, but she just nodded and kept drinking. She drained half the glass. When she set it down, she picked up a napkin and dabbed her lips. She tapped salt into her soup and handed it to me. I stared. “What?” she said.
“Nothing. It’s just . . . nothing.”
“What?”
I put down the salt. “You locked the salt while performing an unrelated task.”
She blinked. “You mean drinking?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t wait five seconds for salt?”
“I can. But salt is a shared resource. If you’re going to lock it, you should use it as quickly as possible, then release it. You can’t leave it locked while accepting an interrupt.”
“I got thirsty.”
“Then first return the salt to general availability.”
“Just in case you happen to want salt in that five seconds?”
“Yes.”
She stared at me. “Really?”
“Otherwise you compromise the system.”
“What system?”
“The . . .” I waved my hands. “The system.”
“There isn’t any system.”
“Everything is a system. Look.” I leaned forward. “What if I had your water and I suddenly decided I wanted the salt? And instead of giving you back the water I just sat here waiting for you to release the salt, which you didn’t because you were waiting for the water? It’s a deadlock, that’s what. It’s catastrophic system failure. And you’re probably thinking, ‘Well, I could just ask Charlie to give me the water in exchange for the salt.’ But that requires you to understand my resource needs, and violate process encapsulation. It’s a swamp. I’m not saying it’s a big deal. I’m just pointing out that locking the salt like that is incredibly inefficient and systemically dangerous.”
Lola snickered. “You’re insane.”
“I’m not insane. It’s a fundamental principle. You’re insane.”
“Regular people don’t bring fundamental principles to the dinner table.”
“Well,” I said.
We ate. “Explain that again,” said Lola. “That stuff about locks.”
I found this book to be as humorous and entertaining as it was thought-provoking. The author also created this helpful trailer:
