Author

Tim Palmer

Summary

An introduction to the geometry of chaos and the important role it plays in understanding scientific phenomena.

Takeaways

The climate and the economy are examples of highly complex non-linear systems. The evolution of these systems follows a fractal geometric pattern along an attractor, i.e. a set of allowed states in a high dimensional state space. Despite the fact that an exact future state is often uncomputable, mathematical models have been successfully developed to characterize possible future behavior in the form of ensembles along the attractor. These models allow to make probabilitic forecasts and statements about the likelihood that a future state will be vastly different from the present.

Invariant set theory applies the concept of the “geometry of chaos” to quantum mechanics and concludes that the laws of physics are deterministic and that its laws describe the geometry of the attractor/invariant set of the highest-order system imaginable-the universe as a whole.

Quotes

“The whole universe is a nonlinear dynamical system evolving on some fractal attractor in cosmological state space."

“Using the geometry of chaos, Einstein’s picture of an ensemble of deterministic worlds may be right after all. If this is so, we conclude that we do live in a world in which elementary particles, and indeed the notion of reality, are certain and definite."

“In short, I am suggesting that to be conscious of an object is to be aware that the object has an existence independent of the rest of the world. I am speculating that this awareness is itself a consequence of two claims: that for reasons of energy efficiency quantum physics does play a role in cognition, and that the laws of quantum physics at their most fundamental describe the geometry of the cosmological invariant set."

Author

Sabine Hossenfelder

Summary

Scientific answers to existential questions.

Takeaways

Existential questions deal with the origin and working mechanisms of the universe, and the role of humans in it. While the fundamental theories of the standard model of particle physics and the theory of general relativity have been very successful in providing explanations, many questions have no scientifically sound answer yet. In their attempt to extend our knowledge, some scientists include assumptions in their theories that are unnecessary to explain observations, conflating scientific reasoning and belief.

Quotes

“While the situation is not entirely settled, it seems that the laws of nature preserve information entirely, so all the details that make up you and the story of your grandmother’s life are immortal."

“But in which sense are they real? Unobservable universes are by definition unnecessary to describe what we observe. Hence, assuming they are real is also unnecessary. Scientific theories should not contain unnecessary assumptions, for if we allow that, we would also have to allow the assumption that a god made the universe."

“That way, we can rephrase any discussion about free will or moral responsibility without using those terms. For example, instead of questioning someone’s free will, we can debate whether jail is really the most useful intervention."

Author

David Goggins

Summary

The personal story of former Navy SEAL David Goggins who overcame traumatic experiences to become a successful soldier and athlete.

Takeaways

Most people do not know what they are truly capable of and resist challenging themselves physically and mentally to stretch the limits of their potential.

Unlocking this potential requires hard work and dedicated exposure to uncomfortable experiences and pain to “callous” the mind and become mentally strong.

Quotes

“By the time I graduated, I knew that the confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self-respect, and self-respect will always light a way forward."

“A true leader stays exhausted, abhors arrogance, and never looks down on the weakest link. He fights for his men and leads by example."

“Starting at zero is a mindset that says my refrigerator is never full, and it never will be. We can always become stronger and more agile, mentally and physically. We can always become more capable and more reliable. Since that’s the case we should never feel that our work is done. There is always more to do."

Author

Vincent A. W. J. Marchau, Warren E. Walker, Pieter J. T. M. Bloemen, Steven W. Popper

Summary

A review of methods and applications for decision making under deep uncertainty.

Takeaways

Situations with deep uncertainty are characterized by a lack of knowledge about how future events will unfold. In complex systems, the predictability of potential outcomes is low.

When confronted with deep uncertainty, decision makers are advised to shift from a predict-then-act paradigm to a monitor-and-adapt strategy. Traditional planning approaches make assumptions, predict outcomes, and tailor a policy to the predictions. Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMUDU) approaches, on the other hand, propose a policy, identify vulnerabilities, and assess the best options for reducing the identified vulnerabilities.

Quotes

“The intrinsic limits to predictability, the existence of legitimate alternative interpretations of the same data, and the limits to knowability of a system have important implications for decisionmaking. Under the label of ‘decisionmaking under deep uncertainty’, these are now being explored."

“There is ample evidence that human reasoning with respect to complex uncertain systems is intrinsically insufficient. Often, mental models are event based, have an open-loop view of causality, ignore feedback, fail to account for time delays, and are insensitive to nonlinearity (Sterman 1994)."

“That is, under deep uncertainty decision support should move away from trying to define what is the right choice and instead aim at enabling deliberation and joint sense making among the various parties to a decision."

“In short, there are five categories of components: policy architecture, generation of scenarios, generation of alternatives, definition of robustness, and vulnerability analysis. Any given DMDU approach makes choices with respect to these five categories. For some, these choices are primarily or almost exclusively in one category while remaining silent on the others. For others, implicit or explicit choices are made with respect to each category."

Author

Cathy O’Neil

Summary

A warning of the destructive power of black-box algorithms that govern our lives.

Takeaways

Algorithms and mathematical models are ubiquitously applied and drive decisions in every aspect of our lives. They, for example, determine college admissions, calculate insurance fees, and determine the content in our social media feeds. Many of the algorithms are intransparent, making it impossible to understand and challenge the results. If there is no alignment between the objectives of the models and the interest of the modeled subjects and if there is no feedback loop to improve the model over time, these “weapons of math destruction (WMD)” can cause significant harm.

Quotes

“The first question is: Even if the participant is aware of being modeled, or what the model is used for, is the model opaque, or even invisible?"

“That makes it extra hard to answer the second question: Does the model work against the subject’s interest? In short, is it unfair? Does it damage or destroy lives?"

“The third question is whether a model has the capacity to grow exponentially. As a statistician would put it, can it scale? This might sound like the nerdy quibble of a mathematician. But scale is what turns WMDs from local nuisances into tsunami forces, ones that define and delimit our lives."

“So to sum up, these are the three elements of a WMD; Opacity, Scale, and Damage."

Author

Mik Kersten

Summary

A practical guide to developing a product focussed management framework that allows competing in the Age of Software.

Takeaways

We are at the turning point of the digital revolution. Companies need to transform their business practices to effectively leverage software development and technology. Many companies realize the need for transformation but rely on management practices that are not adequate for the task.

Products differ from projects in multiple ways. Products have a longer life cycle and receive incremental funding based on business results. The direct mapping to business results enables transparency into the delivery progress and the impact a product has. The Flow Framework is a way to track and visualize the network of product value streams of an organization and identify bottlenecks that require attention.

Quotes

“Software delivery concepts near and dear to technologists, such as technical debt and story points, are meaningless to most business leaders who manage IT initiatives as projects and measure them by whether they are on time and on budget."

“The problem is not with visualizing the information; the problem is that, at a business level, we have not come up with a compelling set of abstractions for what to visualize. Contrast this with the DevOps team, who knows the exact telemetry to show, such as deploys per day and change success rate. Or contrast it with the development team, who uses Scrum or kanban boards to make work in progress visible to the entire team. In other words, the work should already be visible at the specialist and team level. It’s the business-level visibility that organizations lack. This is what flow metrics provide."

“In contrast, the key aspect of tracking business outcomes using the Flow Framework is that they are tracked continually for each product-oriented value stream. This is in contrast to many existing approaches, which track metrics according to project or organizational structures. It is this shift in what we measure that is key to accomplishing the move from project to product, as accurate feedback at the right level of granularity is essential to supporting decision making."

Author

Peter Thiel

Summary

Practical advice for founders how to build a successful startup and create something new.

Takeaways

Competition is a concept that has a high value in our educational system and economic thinking. The emphasis on competition leads to a uniform approach to development and only incremental improvements. Innovation and success come from avoiding competition and focusing on individual strengths and believes that set yourself apart from others.

If we believe the future to be something definite, we can create bold plans and see them through completion. An indefinite attitude leads to a lack of specific plans, missing innovation, and prevents us from shaping the future.

Quotes

“Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival. So why do people believe that competition is healthy? The answer is that competition is not just an economic concept or a simple inconvenience that individuals and companies must deal with in the marketplace. More than anything else, competition is an ideology –the ideology– that pervades our society and distorts our thinking."

“If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it. Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options."

“Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it ‘well-roundedness’, a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substansive–to be a monopoly of one."

Author

Hans Rosling

Summary

A plea to overcome the human instincts that prevent us from developing a fact based worldview.

Takeaways

Knowledge of global patterns and trends is poor across demographics even though data is publicly available. Common assumptions about topics like population growth, income inequality, education and health, are not only wrong but are systematically distorted. Developments appear more negatively than they are. Reasons are a lack of statistical literacy and our instincts to generalize, blame others, and consider things without appropriate comparison frames and proportions. To develop a fact based and more accurate worldview, we need to be aware of these instincts and work actively to overcome them.

Societal change is happening steadily but slowly and often not considered newsworthy. The lack of attention makes it hard to identify emerging patterns and adapt to a changing landscape. The Western view is systematically underestimating the progress in Asia and especially Africa, and the significant role these continents will play in a future global economy.

Quotes

“The data shows that half the increase in child survival in the world happens because mothers can read and write. More children now survive because they don’t get ill in the first place. … So if you are investing money to improve health on Level 1 and 2, you should put it into primary schools, nurse education, and vaccinations. Big impressive-looking hospitals can wait."

“People in North America and Europe need to understand that most of the world population lives in Asia. In terms of economic muscles ‘we’ are becoming the 20 percent, not the 80 percent. But many of ‘us’ can’t fit these numbers into our nostalgic minds. Not only do we misjudge how big our war monuments should be in Vietnam, we also misjudge our importance in the future global marketplace. Many of us forget to behave properly with those who will control the future trade deals."

“Anyone who claims that democracy is a necessity for economic growth and health improvements will risk getting contradicted by reality. It’s better to argue for democracy as a goal in itself instead of as a superior means to other goals we like."

“In fact, resist blaming any one individual or group of individuals for anything. Because the problem is that when we identify the bad guy, we are done thinking. And it’s almost always more complicated than that."

Author

Jack Welch

Summary

The life and professional career of Jack Welch, Chairman of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, described in his own words.

Takeaways

Leadership requires more than the knowledge to make sound business decisions. It is equally important to establish the right culture with a focus on people that allows for differentiation and development, and that empowers everyone to contribute ideas (“boundaryless”).

Being able to react to changes trumps a well thought out longterm strategy. Speed and decisiveness are important to remain competitive in changing circumstances even if not all decisions or judgment calls stand the test of time. The characterization of some associates who receive high praise in the book but were later on criticized for their leadership (Jeff Immelt, Bob Nardelli) or general conduct (Roger Ailes, Matt Lauer), is one example that appears to not have aged well.

Quotes

“We learned the hard way that we could have the greatest strategies in the world. Without the right leaders developing and owning them, we’d get good-looking presentations and so-so results."

“Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur. That’s why strategy has to be dynamic and anticipatory."

“Informality isn’t about first names, unassigned parking spaces, or casual clothing. It’s so much deeper. It’s about making sure everybody counts–and everbody knows they count."

“Your back room is somebody else’s front room … Don’t own a cafeteria: Let a food company do it. Don’t run a print shop: Let a printing company do it. It’s understanding where your real value added is and putting your best people and resources behind that.”

Author

Adam Rutherford

Summary

A scientific view of the role that DNA plays in understanding human history, and what we can and cannot conclude when analyzing it.

Takeaways

Depicting our ancestry looks more like an entagled mesh than a tree. Everyone living today shares the same group of ancestors if we go back long enough in time.

DNA influences observable characteristics in a probabilitic way. There are only a few genes that have a clear physical manifestation. The scientific reality is more complex than newspaper headlines make you believe.

Quotes

“It’s important to remember that the commercial DNA ancestry tests don’t necessarily show your geographical origins in the past. They show with whom you have common ancestry today."

“The truth is that we all are a bit of everything, and we come from all over. Even if you live in the most remote parts of the Hebrides, or the edge of the Greek Aegean, we share an ancestor only a few hundred years ago. A thousand years ago, we Europeans share all of our ancestry. Triple that time and we share all our ancestry with everyone on Earth."

“No one will ever find a gene for ‘evil’, or for beauty, or for musical genius, or for scientific genius, because they don’t exist. DNA is not destiny. The presence of a particular variant of a particular gene may just have the effect of altering the odds of any particular behavior. More likely, the possession of many slight differences in many genes will have an effect on the likelihood of a particular characteristic, in consort with your environment, which includes all things that are not DNA."