Interesting Excerpts From The Books I Read In 2020
I spent most of the 2020 at home and I thought that it would result in a lot more reading than usual (~12 books a year). I was wrong but not entirely, I read 14 books last year:)
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| 2020 Books |
Following are some random and interesting excerpts:
There is a "preanalytic" process that precedes our logical scenarios, a process which we cannot escape, and which is inescapably colored with our innermost values and preferences. "Analytic work", writes Schumpeter, '...embodies in the picture of things as we see them, and whenever there is any possible motive for wishing to see them in a given rather than another light, the way in which we see things we can hardly be distinguished from the way in which we wish to see them.
When the good leader's work is done, his aims fulfilled, the people will all say, "We did this ourselves." - Lao Tzu
Definition of [technology] architect's work: it comprises the set of strategic and technical models that create a context for position (capabilities), velocity (directedness, ability to adjust), and potential (relations) to harmonize strategic business and technology goals. There are three primary concerns of the architect:
a. Contain entropy.
b. Specify the nonfunctional requirements.
c. Determine trade-offs.
b. Specify the nonfunctional requirements.
c. Determine trade-offs.
3. Alchemy
As the novelist Upton Sinclair once remarked, 'it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
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The brilliant American physicist Richard Feynman, in a Lecture in 1964, describing his method: 'In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it...Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to...experience, compare directly with observations to see if it works...in that simple statement is the ky to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't matter how smart you are, who made the guess or what his name is...if it is disagrees with the experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.
4. Humanocracy
In 1911, Frederick Taylor, the patron saint of standardization, published his opus, The principles of Scientific Management. In the introduction he laid out the case for the systemizing work:
We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them. Their appreciation calls for an act of memory, an effort of the imagination. And for this reason, even though our daily loss from this source is greater than our waste of material things, the one has stirred us deeply, while the other has moved us but little.
Near the end of his tenure as co-CEO of SAP. Jim Hagemann Snabe discovered that the German software giant had amassed more than fifty thousand key performance indicators (KPIs) covering every job across the company. Snabe was horrified, "We are trying to run the company by remote control, " he recalls. "We had all this amazing talent, but had asked them to put their brains on ice."
David Bohm: We tend to think things are real and have substance; that is, that they exist in themselves. We tend to think that what is is reality and that truth would only be correct knowledge about reality. But what we are proposing here is to turn it around to say that truth is what is and reality as a whole is nothing but appearances. Reality is a kind of appearance that may be a correct appearance or that may be incorrect, may be an illusion. There is tremendous habit to say that reality is what what is.
Krishnamurti: We have said that reality is a projection of thought, of what we think about, reflect upon. And anything that thought creates, makes, is a reality either as a distortion or as an actuality. We accept that and we were trying to find out the relationship between truth and reality. Is there a connection between the two? That's one point and the other is: is there an action that is different from the action of reality that is, that is the action of truth - no, not action of truth but truth acting? Whereas there is a division in reality [between the observer and the observed].
6. Open Borders
As usual, it's the places least affected by immigration that most oppose it. Nationalist ideology, not life experience, drives opposition.
Early Greek and Roman orators delivered lengthy speeches with unfailing accuracy because they learned the speeches thought for thought, by applying memory systems.
What they did, basically, was associate each thought of a speech to a part of their own homes. These were called "loci," or "places." the opening thought of a speech would, perhaps, be associated with to the front door, the second thought to be the foyer, the third to a piece of furniture in the foyer, and so on. When the orator wanted to remember his speech, thought for thought, he actually took a mental tour through his own home.
Remember the order in which we form abstract beliefs:
1) We hear something;
2) We believe it;
3) Only sometimes, later, if we have the time or the inclination, we think about it and vet it, determining whether or not it is true.
Most of the security events can be traced to one or more of the four system properties:
1. Complex: The security problem with Windows 2000's Active Directory can be directly traced to the complexity of any computer-based directory system. This is why I believe it is a design flaw; Microsoft made a design decision that facilitated usability, but hurt security.
2. Interactive: An interaction between the software on Intuit's Website and the software that DoubleClick uses to display ads to Web users resulted in the information leaking from one to the other.
3. Emergent: According to the news story, Sony programmers had no idea why credit card information leaded from one user to another. It just happened.
4. Bug Ridden: The vulnerability in Netscape Enterprise Server 3.6 was caused n a programming bug. An attacker could exploit the bug to cause a security problem.
10. Invent & Wander
Math-based decisions command wide agreement, whereas judgement-based decisions are rightly debated and often controversial, at least until put into practice and demonstrated. Any institution unwilling to endure controversy must limit itself to decisions of the first type. In our view, doing so would not only limit controversy - it would also significantly limit innovation and long-term value creation.
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No customer was asking for Echo. This was definitely us wandering. Market research doesn't help. If you had gone to a customer in 2013 and said "Would you like a black, always on cylinder in your kitchen about the size of a Pringles can that you can talk to and ask questions, that also turns on your lights and plays music?" I guarantee you they'd have looked at you strangely and said, "No, thank you." Since that first generation Echo, customers have purchased more than one hundred million Alexa-enabled devices.
11. Work Rules
American companies spent $156,200,000,000 in learning programs in 2011, a staggering sum. A hundred and thirty-five have GDPs below that amount. Roughly half the money went to programs put on ny the companies themselves, and the other half was paid to outside vendors. The average employee received thirty-one hours of training over the year, which works out to more than thirty minutes each week. Most of the money and time is wasted.
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Chris Argyris, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, wrote a lovely article in 1977. In which he looked at performance of Harvard Business School graduates ten years after graduation. By and large, they got stuck in middle management, when they had all hoped to be CEOs and captains of industry. What happened? Argyris found that when they inevitably hit a roadblock their ability to learn collapsed. What's more, those members of the organizations that many assume to be the best at learning are, in fact, not very good at it. I am talking about well-educated, high-powered, high-commitment professionals who occupy key leadership positions in modern corporations....Put simply, because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure....They become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the "blame" on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it the most.
A basic ingredient of outstanding common stock management is the ability neither to accept blindly whatever may be the dominant opinion in the financial community at the moment nor to reject the prevailing view just to be contrary for the sake of being contrary. Rather, it is to have more knowledge and to apply better judgment, in thorough evaluations of specific situations, and the moral courage to act "in opposition to the crowd" when your judgment tells you you are right.
The studio guys, the business heads, know less than nothing about creating. This is no sin. Those of us who make movies know almost nothing. It is not an exact science, every film is a new experience with unique problems. You use your brains, you use your experience to the degree it means anything, mostly you use your instinct. But at least the artists are full of insecurity and know they know nothing. Most of the money guys know nothing, have no instinct, but often fancy themselves guys who do know, even better than the artist.
14. They joy of x
The Babylonians were not nearly as attached to their fingers. Their numeral system was based on 60 - a clear sign of their impeccable taste, for 60 is. an exceptionally pleasant number. Its beauty is intrinsic and has nothing to do with human appendages. Sixty is the smallest number that can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. And that's just for starters (there is also 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30). Because of it promiscuous divisibility, 60 is much more congenial than 10 for any soft of calculation or measurement that involves cutting things into equal parts. When we divide an hour into 60 minutes, or a minute into 60 seconds, or a full circle into 360 degrees, we are channeling the sages of ancient Babylon.
The excerpts are from what I underlined while reading. Underlining what I find interesting while reading is an old habit and what I find interesting depends on my frame of mind at the moment.
See the 2019 book excerpts here.
