inquiry_from_an_anti_library's reviews
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The first stage was about women getting power parity with men.  Showing that women can do more than just be housewives.  But as women entered the workforce, there was a clash between work and family.  Between work and any other pursuits.  The second stage is about the changing roles of work and family, to find better alternative ways on how to be.  The second stage is about reconciling demands of independence with emotional needs. 

Women and men need each other for emotional, financial, and other needs.  When someone is dependent on someone else, psychological insecurities develop that make any relationship difficult.  Those who lack independence, tend to lack confidence in themselves, and take out their frustrations on the one they are dependent on.  When a woman performed many household tasks and participated in supporting the man’s ambition, women did not receive the monetary benefits or recognition for their efforts, while the men could not function without the support.  When the man was the sole monetary earner, the man was extremely anxious about job prospects, forcing them to stay at terrible jobs.  When men and women share the monetary, family, and emotional burdens, they have higher chances of economic survival and live more fulfilling lives. 

 

This is a sensitive topic that shares the complexity of the situation.  The second stage came about through new demands on social and economic life that needed a response.  As society changes, so must the responses.  Each society, each era, need to find their own responses to their different situations.

There are passages with various diverse perspectives that provide evidence for claims.  They can provide addition explanations, but can lack a systemic analysis. 

John von Neumann’s logic and mathematic skill effected civilization.  Brought up in a culture that prioritized intellectual ability.  Abilities that were used in the development of game theory, a method of making decisions based on how everyone is affected by a decision reacts to the decision.  Game theory was used in understanding war decisions.  John von Neumann participated in the war effort, and was part of the development of bombs and improved their trajectory accuracy.  Developments which enabled the foundation of computers, and artificial intelligence. 

 

Much of the book is a description of various forms of mathematics, that would be better understood by those who already know the complexity of mathematics.  

Capitalism is transitioning into a different economic system, a different economic paradigm.  Capitalism is transitioning into the Collaborative Commons.  Markets are transitioning into networks.  Ownership transitioning into access.  Capitalisms’ internal mechanisms are enabling the transition into Collaborative Commons. 

Competitive pressure generates improvements to productivity, that leads to the optimum general welfare.  Productivity reduces costs of production, which causes the cost of production to approach near zero.  As costs of production approach zero, the price of the products approach zero as well.  Products become free, which undermines the profitability motive of capitalism.  Capitalism cannot function without profits, therefore there are many industry incumbents who attempt to prevent the reduction in profit by reducing the competitive pressure.  But the attempts fail as entrepreneurs find ways to circumvent the incumbents. 

Within the Collaborative Commons, everything is connected through the internet to improve efficient use of natural resources, economic production, and social life.  Sensors using data that enables analytics that automate systems to further improve efficiency and productivity.

 

What is shared are the benefits of the different economic system, while the consequences are not shared.  Benefits of data and surveillance on efficiency is shared, but not consequences on mental health of always being surveilled and lack of data security. 

There is a claim that capitalism is about scarcity while Collaborative Commons are about abundance.  Abundance of Collaborative Commons is based on near zero marginal cost.  The problem is that abundance is not absolute, its relative.  Scarcity is defined by resources which are more limited.  The relative abundance and scarcity of resources changes.  Capitalism used the relatively abundant resources, but there were other resources that were scarce.  Collaborative Commons is a different system which have different scarce and abundant resources, but scarcity still exists.  The scarce resources of the Collaborative Commons have become time and attention. 

People might be able to contribute to tasks that they want to without pay, but they would need to obtain an alternative income to pay for resources they need to survive.  The Collaborative Commons work is subsidized by work that provides people with an income.  

Thoughts change through physical modifications of the brain.  Changing the brain physically, changes how the brain interprets information.  The brain seeks information only when needed, to obtain knowledge useful during the circumstance.  Information might be present, but the brain will not see the information until concentration is used.  Observing only what is needed to be known, not more.  The brain gathers information and directs behavior, but the individual is rarely conscious.  The brain runs on automatic responses, habits.  Conscious awareness comes about when the individual’s expectations are violated.  Consciousness is used when dealing with novel tasks, to resolve problems not faced before, which uses more energy than similar tasks that the individual has dealt with before. 

 

Different species have different umwelts, different ways they engage with and perceive reality.  Even within species, different brains uniquely determine what they perceive, what they are capable of perceiving.  Reality is more subjective than is understood.  Reality is actively constructed by the brain, rather than passively recorded.

 

The brain spends a lot of effort and energy disambiguating information entering the senses, such as eyes.  The brains fill in missing information from eyes.  The individual perceives not what is there, but what the brain tells the individual.  People are not seeing rich details or aware of most information that enters the eyes.  The brain has change blindness, as seeing change requires attention that takes energy and effort.  Senese cannot be trusted, as they can make the individual believe things that are not true. 

 

The brain has competitive rivals.  Some parts prefer gratifications, others long-term outcomes.  A conflict between emotions and rational system.  Feelings have been adjusting decisions, such as making wrong behavior feel bad.  Emotions and rationality are needed for appropriate behavior. 

 

This is an introductory book on how the brain processes information.  Making overt what the brain hides from the individual.  The brain is complex, with much still not understood.  What still needs to be researched is how much free will there is, for much of how the brain processes information is not independent of the various conditions and sources that cause certain decisions. 

Is This An Overview? 
Forecasting is a skill that everyone uses everyday to predict the effects of potential changes.  Like any skill, forecasting can be improved.  Experts are often sought out for decisions and event interpretations, to forecast what will come about.  Although many provided forecasts appear valuable, their quality is often undetermined.  The public tends to favor those who make the future appear more certain, even though their overconfidence is a source of lower quality forecasts.  On average, experts can provide a better narrative of events, but their forecasts are as good as random guesses.  

Part of the reason for the poor performance of forecasts is that reality is complex and dynamic, making predictions difficult.  Society might have more knowledge and computational power, but less confidence in predictability.  There might be limits on predictability, but people can become better at making forecasts.  To find out how people can make better forecasts, and methods to avoid, many diverse people participated in a forecasting research project.  

What made some people better at making forecasts, what made people superforecasters, was based on how they thought about information, how they used information.  Not intelligence, not ideology, not numeracy skills.  The forecasters were doubtful of their claims, and sought to improve them.  Complex problems which seemed impossible to forecast, were reconsidered through a variety of questions seeking to find ways for the event to occur, or not occur.  They looked for the base rate, a general probability of an event happening before going to the unique case.  Anchoring their views to the outside view, rather than the inside view.  They seek to improve their own forecasts by looking for what others think about the event, they look for alternative forecasts.  They adapt to new information, update their forecasts to new information, and try to not underreact or overreact to the information.  

These methods of thinking, these guidelines might improve decision making, but better to change guidelines than make a terrible forecast.  People can become better at forecasting, but teams have better results than an individual superforecaster, as each member can help others to refine ideas, and no individual can do everything.  But teams take effort to make them productive, and can create processes that exacerbate bad decisions. 

How To Get Better At Forecasting?
To become better at forecasts, people need to practice.  There is a lot of tacit knowledge that cannot be learned through how others describe forecasting.  Feedback is needed to train in any skill, including forecasting.  But the feedback to forecasts, usually lack quality.  They do not provide immediate feedback nor provide clear results.  Without appropriate feedback, people can become overconfident in their forecasts.  People can gain an illusion of control from seemingly favorable random outcomes.  Judging forecasts would depend on running many forecasts, such as in weather.  But there are forecasts that cannot be rerun, such as history.  Need to run experiments to verify claims.  

The language around what people mean by possibilities need to be more specific rather than ambiguous.  People can mean drastically different possibilities, which can create a dangerous misunderstanding. Teams can use a chart to numerically define possibility claims, to reduce confusion.  Numbers are an opinion, but can be used to reduce confusion.  Forecasts also need timelines.  Without timelines, forecasts become perpetually in dispute at what they meant.  

Caveats? 
Forecasting on problems will always have uncertainty.  As referenced in the book, no matter the quality of the better decision making, there will be uncertainty and wrong decisions.  The process of decision making matters more than the outcome, as there will be more opportunities for better decisions with a better decision making process than a randomly favorable outcome under a worse decision making process. 

The brain has hemispheres that are involved in every task.  But, the way in which the hemispheres are involved are different.  Their roles are different.  They deal with the same information in different ways.  The different roles of the hemispheres enable the brain to function effectively, but the differences also provide different experiences of reality which creates conflict.  They have different values and priorities.  They function well when cooperating, but their competition with each other creates friction.  Problems occur when giving prominence to a hemisphere over another.  The problems occurring due to the conflict are felt indirectly, through culture.  Social problems develop through lack of tolerance at other methods of thinking, as they appear incompatible, with the other being wrong.

 

This book contains a myriad of different cultural and philosophical references.  Prior knowledge of the references would enable the reader to better understand the book.  References that can be interpreted to favor the primary claims about the hemispheric differences. 

The immortals do not fear death, but they do fear power.  Among the immortals is a hierarchy defined by power, with Circe wielding none.  Sibling or not, many gods find ways to demean Circe.  Unlike most gods, Circe is interested in connecting to humans.  For such a connection, Circe discovered the power of witchcraft.  Power that Circe turned against a sibling as a method of retaliation.  Although other gods misused their power, Circe is used as a bargaining tool for those with more power and sent to exile. 

An exile that enables Circe to refine the powers of witchcraft.  The exile has its moments of loneliness, but also company.  Circe might not be able to leave the island, but many come to Circe.  From bandits, to heroes, to gods.  Experiences that Circe learns from.  Learns to become someone with power.  Learns that those who need help, might not be noble after help is received.  Learns how to challenge the more powerful gods.  Experiences that Circe will need to protect Circe’s child from a powerful god who wants to kill the child. 

                     

This is a retelling of popular Greco-Roman myths.  Those who know the myths can have different reactions to this story.  Knowledge of the myths would enable a reader to better understand the politics and social structure of the gods.  But there can also be dissidence between what the reader expects of the myths, and the represented contrast. 

Japan has been influenced by various cultures.  Cultures with different values, which challenged their fusion.  Tension formed between perceived unique traditional values, and the alternative values that are often foreign.  Threatening Japanese identity, their sense of self.  A cultural change that effects how people live.  Changing how people behave, find meaning, and find belonging within school, family, work, society, and politics. 

 

A society in which people tend to be willing to defer to the community.  People found belonging being part of the community, but communities are becoming isolating experiences.  The changing family structure and the traumatic school experiences, prevent people from building friendships and developing communication skills.  School and working hard used to provide people with an appropriate work and rewards, but the state of the economy led to a loss of jobs, a lack of potential reward to look forward to.  Various people are seeking differing ways to resolve the economic and social challenges facing Japan.

 

This book provides an introduction to the changing society in the late 20th century.  For a deeper political, cultural, and historic understanding of Japan would require more research.  

Wealth is an emergent property that evolved through people’s cooperation.  Cooperating for rewards, for mutual benefits.  Society enables synergy between people, differences within people, to create non-zero-sum outcomes.  Wealth that is enhanced by the productivity of labor, through specialization created by division of labor.  Cooperation made possible by various social technologies, which are the rules people abide by. 

Wealth is contained in knowledge, for knowledge enables people to transform resources into value.  Originating and improving through the process of evolution.  A method of competing to survive that filters out errors and enables the successful competitors to share their traits.  There is no best strategy for survival, no sustainable competitive advantage.  Any competitive advantage is temporary.  Survival itself is success.  Competition allocates finite resources, with markets being better due to their ability to innovate in disequilibrium.

 

Evolutionary successful strategy of cooperation builds on past methods.  Innovate based on what was, but innovations have diminishing returns.  To keep high returns, more innovation is needed.  It might be impossible to predict the changes that evolution enabled, but societies can be designed better.

The collective has emergent properties.  Properties that do not exist within the individual.  Emergent properties such as complexity.  Enabling systems that are dynamic and nonlinear.  Systems that have self-reinforcing cycles of positive feedback, and self-regulating cycles of negative feedback. 

Cooperation can have a network effect, in which products that garner more users based on the number of users the system has.  Networks can provide a lot of value, but they can have consequences.  Networks can become too complicated.  Creating a complexity catastrophe.  When the networks grow too much, a negative change somewhere has drastic effects on various other parts.  Networks create interdependencies that have conflicting constraints, that create gridlock.  Local pain in change can prevent change in the whole system even if the change would improve the whole system.  Hierarchy can enable a better flow of information, to enable complexity along with the interdependencies.  But hierarchies have their own informational problems, such as information degrading.

 

Physics was imported into economics which gave economics mathematical precision, at the cost of realism.  For some, it did not matter that the assumptions were not realistic, as long as they made correct predictions.  That the system acted ‘as if’ the assumptions were correct.  But, the purpose of science is explanations, not predictions.  The explanation and conclusion need to be tested.  Economics took ideas from physics, but while physics kept changing, economics did not.  Physics went from deterministic to dynamic and indeterminate.

Various economic ideas were wrong because economists were using science appropriately.  Assumptions are meant to simplify, but not contradict reality.  Economists used assumptions inappropriately by taking them to an extreme, that contradicted reality.  But there has been improvement, by enabling more realistic assumptions such as through the satisficing rather than making perfectly rational decisions.

 

Evolution is an integral concept to explain wealth, cooperation, and complexity.  Evolution is considered to provide beneficial change by error correcting problems.  The problem is that evolution does not provide only benefits, but also consequences.  Evolution can enable traits that are better for the individual at the expense of the system, at the expense of cooperative ventures.

While the author critiques various economic ideas, and referenced them as having been more static, there are also references to how the ideas have changed, improved, and were integrated within various fields.  The author provides various updated ways that economics has improved, has evolved. 

 Is This An Overview?

To prevent a war that results in self-obliteration, requires an understanding of what war provides.  How war functions and changes behavior.  War is a destructive act, but tragically also has value.  War can become an addition, like any other.  War provides excitement, power, purpose, and meaning.  War removes the trivia, the shallowness of life.  Allows people to rise above the divisiveness.  War makes reality more understandable, by simplifying reality.  A clear dividing line is made between us and them.  Makes people ready to pursue suffering for a higher good.  Enables people to do evil, that is difficult to reconcile with after the war. 

War is perpetuated by myths, news, entertainment, and history.  Myths twist all information to serve the myth.  The myths are meant to separate people, to prevent communication with the opposition.  Myths invoke a threat to community’s sacred values, with the community perceived as the victims who are justified in their violent reciprocation.  With the myths, the opposition is demonized, with their values inverted to justify cruelty.  Wars that lose their mythic stature, are doomed to fail.  Without the myths, war becomes recognized as organized murder. 

 

The cause needs to be just to fight.  Wars are difficult without an appropriate cause.  Which is why states take tremendous time and effort to promote their cause.  At war, the state becomes the guide for moral righteousness.  To try to expose the myth, would mean removal from the group.  Reporters provide legitimizing support for the for the state. 

Death of innocent ignite conflicts.  The innocent builds the cause.  Each group perceives themselves as victims.  Sharing and distorting the excess of others.  Victimhood is cultivated by showing the injustice carried out against their group.  Atrocities are justified by the atrocities of the opposition.

The dead do not have equal value.  The dead of others mean little, while the dead of supported group matter.  The opposition lacks humanity for killing, but the killing done by the supported group is praised.  War turns people into killers.  For want of power, or under peer pressure.  Martyrs provide a way to prevent arguments for compromise or tolerance.  The dead speak and ask for revenge.

 

The dissidents to conflict are the earliest to be silenced, for they are the most dangerous, as they provide an alternative way to think.  The opposition is not silenced, for they enable the sought after conflict.  Most people self-censor their views to not be branded as outsiders to their community.  Unwilling to help neighbors to prevent being attacked themselves. 

States destroy their own culture to prevent the people from finding critical and moral restraint.  Without the restraint, states are more effective in their attack against the opposition.  Replacing authentic culture with a warped reality.  Generating a conflict between good and evil.  To glorify the myth.  Seeing the humanity of the enemy makes for ineffective soldiers.  Therefore states obliterate self-awareness and self-criticism.  War removes individual consciousness and responsibility, in favor of communal effort.

The problem with silence, is that the silence of past atrocities, enables further atrocities.  War does not free people from ethics of responsibility.  But at times, immoral behavior needs to be reciprocated with less immoral behavior. 

The press sees itself as part of the war effort.  War is perpetuated by the news, as wars garner more views.  The press is being shown only what the military wants them to see.  The press share only what the state wants people to see.  The press show little of reality.  Reporting what makes people feel better about themselves. 

 

Real conflict is very different than what is portrayed by the entertainment industry.  Most people do not behave the way they expected to in actual combat.  Imagined heroism is quick to fall apart.  Individuals betray themselves, for want of safety.  To avoid the primordial fear.  There are few heroes, who usually do not support what they did.  Combat humiliates.  Words used to inspire, become hollow and repugnant.

 

This book covers many sensitive topics, sensitive wars, sensitive traumas.  A diverse history is provided to support the claims.  But the history is limited.  To understand the history of the various conflicts would require more research.