Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are

Book Review: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Author: Frans de Waal  My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This is a provocative title for a book! Before I discuss this book, let me mention that I had previously reviewed another book by the same author, “Mama’s Last Hug” and I had given it my “MUST READ” rating. In that book, Frans de Waal tackled the topic of “Animal Emotions”. In this book, the focus is on “Animal Cognition”.

It’s my impression that most people by now agree that animals have feelings. Even then, it can come as a surprise to many that they have emotions, such as guilt, revenge, empathy, cruelty. Many people, again my impression, still hold the view that animals are just driven by stimuli and instincts. To those, it will come as a bigger surprise that animals have “cognition”.

But first, we have to understand what is meant by the word “cognition”. If you want a formal definition, please refer to the Wikipedia page. Informally, cognition implies the abilities of acquiring new knowledge, having memories, solving problems, making judgements and so on. We pride ourselves as a species which has the brain with the capabilities of  logical reasoning, information processing, computation, imagination, complex planning, and above all our highly prized abilities to have abstract thoughts and communicate using languages. Do animals possess any of these abilities or are we unique?

The very first question to ask is, how can we even find out? Of course we cannot expect a fish to answer a question about philosophy and we certainly haven’t seen any animals solve trigonometry problems in the wild.

This is where the author steps in with this immensely valuable book. With examples after example, he illustrates how it is up to us to set up the correct experiments. For example, some experiments have shown that chimpanzees do not perform well in facial recognition tests. But, and this is huge, as it was later found, if the experiment is changed from using human faces to using chimpanzee faces, they do extremely well. This totally makes sense. In the wild, what helps a chimpanzee is the ability to differentiate between chimpanzees, and the skill to differentiate between human faces is almost never needed. There are many more such examples in the book, where the older conclusions about Animal Cognition were wrong because the set up of the experiments were wrong.

The next question that arises then is, even if we agree that animals have cognitive abilities, are they as smart as we are? Should we consider smartness as a spectrum and put ourselves at the smartest end of it? The author argues that smartness should be treated as a multi-dimensional space and not a linear axis. Yes, we may be smarter in some aspects, but the animals can be and are smarter in other aspects. When the bird known as Clark’s Nutcracker stores tens of thousands of pine nuts in hidden caches, it can remember these locations even months later. It doesn’t do that using any strong sense of smell. Rather it has a highly evolved brain that is able to store spatial memory at a scale that we humans simply do not have.

Other studies have shown that chimpanzees can beat even a trained human competitor at a game that tests short term memory. The results of this experiment became famous and shocked almost everyone, I think mostly because it bruised our hyper inflated egos. I was searching for an article to link here in my review, and when I found it, I was immediately struck by the irony. The headline of an article in a newspaper perfectly captures our own ignorance about the world, albeit completely unintentionally, “Chimps are making monkeys out of us”. This title clearly displays an ego, and an implicit bias that “monkeys are stupider than us”.

This very idea of “Human Exceptionalism” is what Frans de Waal is railing against in this book as well. He mentions many examples of this tendency, and how that had clouded the judgment of the scientific community at large for a very long time. It’s not that humans are not exceptional. We are. But so are other animals. For example, a bat is exceptional too. Not just for having the ability to fly in the dark using the echoes of its sounds to navigate, but also being able to distinguish between the echoes it made, versus the echoes made by many other bats who are also flying at the same time! It requires a highly evolved brain with some exceptional circuitry to process acoustic waves. After reading such books, I absolutely think that we humans need a big dose of humility.

I understand that the author is one of the revolutionaries in this field and has contributed a lot to our understanding of animals. I am in awe of what he and others have achieved. More than that, I am grateful to scientists like him for improving my understanding and teaching people like me to look at the animal world in a much humbler way. But the point about how the establishment was not scientific enough in their approach was hammered a perhaps bit too much. That part was repetitive to me.

Having mentioned this minor quibble, I can salute the author for writing this book in such a wonderful and accessible style. It educates as well as entertainers. It’s a very easy book to read, and I highly recommend it.

Book Review: The Elephant Whisperer

Book Review: The Elephant Whisperer

Author: Lawrence Anthony My Rating: 4 out of 5

The complete title of the book is “The Elephant Whisperer: Learning about Life, Loyalty and Freedom from a Remarkable Herd of Elephants”.

 

I came across this book by luck, even though it is a bestseller by a celebrated conservationist Lawrence Anthony. The title intrigued me, and I decided to give it a chance. And I am so happy I did.

I do not read much about a book beforehand, except the blurbs on the back. So I didn’t have much idea as to what to expect. And the book started very slowly for me. In the beginning I had questions, as to what exactly is a “Boma” and how exactly is an entire elephant family transported? But quickly, the book moved on to the real story. The story of a herd of elephants, in the Thula Thula reserve owned by the author.

And what a story this is! This is a deeply personal account of how the author Lawrence Anthony, acquired the herd, won their trust, and eventually their friendship. I must clarify, the herd remains wild and more importantly “free”. The author is requested to take responsibility for a family of elephants. Since they had been causing trouble, the only other option was to kill them. The author, who has no experience in dealing with elephants, let alone “troublesome” elephants, decides to do his best to save them from certain death. After the herd is transported into the reserve, or the “Boma” part of it, which is an enclosure to keep them safe till they get acclimatized, they make numerous attempts to escape. These are intelligently planned attempts by the matriarch, and they almost succeed. But their escape and attempts to return to their original habitat means getting too close to human settlements and once again invites certain death for them.

Eventually, the author manages to make the elephants comfortable in their new habitat. The herd thrives and grows. And the author gets to know each of them. He learns about their personalities, manages to establish communication with them and even shares their rituals. The encounters are amazing to read. Some are heart-warming, some nerve wrecking scary, some tear-jerking and they all will leave a mark in your memory. There are many ups and downs. Not everything goes on as planned. There are tragedies and terrible mistakes. And there are also many moments of joy and wonder. It’s life after all.

The book tells how amazing these creatures are. What shines through all this is the respect the author shows for them. He doesn’t venture into their space unless they “invite” him. The elephants remain truly in charge, as they should. He also doesn’t romanticize everything about them. He shows keen awareness of life in the wild and has a bit of a philosophical approach toward dealing with it.

Elephants are extremely intelligent and empathetic creatures. I have been lucky to have visited Africa and saw them roaming freely in the wild. See the photos here. The word that comes to mind is “majestic”. It’s not only important for the ecosystem to have the elephants thrive, but also as a reflection on humanity, that we can peacefully share this planet with all creatures. People like Lawrence Anthony and many other conservationists who dedicate their lives to this cause are the rays of hope, and we must thank them.

It’s a fabulous book. Not written in a literary language, but in an honest personal style. Read it.

We Have No Idea

Book Review : We Have No Idea
Authors: Jorge Cham, Daniel Whiteson My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “We Have No Idea : A Guide To The Unknown Universe”.

I love reading books on Science and Math, and within Science especially Physics. I have written many reviews of popular science books, and have highly recommended quite a few of them. I can unequivocally say that “We Have No Idea” is the most readable book of all of them. If you have read many popular science books, you should still read this. If you have avoided reading any science related books so far, please do yourself a favor and read this one.

In the early part of the 20th century, new advances and discoveries in physics revolutionized our understanding of the universe, both at the atomic scale as well as the galactic scale. These discoveries, quantum mechanics and theory of relativity, are counter-intuitive to say the least. It takes time to understand them even at the superficial level. Still it’s worth spending the time, because the universe is mind bogglingly weird. Even a glimpse of this knowledge is enough to make you philosophical about everything. Since the topic is really hard, a large number of books have been written to explain these concepts to laypersons. Many are good. Of all the ones I have read, none is as easy to read and as fun to read as this book “We Have No Idea”, by the duo Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson.

As the title says, the book emphasizes what we don’t know, even after so many advances in the last nearly 100 years or so. That’s what makes the book so accessible and non-intimidating. Let me explain what I mean by examples.

I have read books that try to explain the Theory Of Multiverse or the latest advances in String Theory and so on. The thing is, many such topics are speculative, as in, these have not been proven. There is a good chance that these theories might turn out to be true, but we really don’t know that. That’s precisely the point of this book. Instead of advertising how cool a theory is, the book honestly admits that we have no idea.

For example, we know that the universe contains many times more “dark matter” than regular matter that we can see as stars and galaxies. What is dark matter? We have no idea. The universe contains something else in even more quantity - what we call “dark energy”. What the heck is that, we have no idea. And to even more basic questions - what is really “space” and what is “time” at a fundamental level? We have no idea.

Of course, just the admission of lack of complete knowledge is not a reason to read this book. The book is organized into many chapters which can be read independently of each other. Each chapter tackles a topic, explaining what we know and then explaining what questions remain unanswered and why. So you can pick up the book, just read one chapter and then later come back to read some other chapter. 

That organization, the diagrams and the lucidity of the language makes it an easy read. What makes it fun is the quirky humor. Many puns and jokes (admittedly geeky) are sprinkled throughout the book. I decided to not give any examples, because I don’t like to include even a tiny spoiler in my reviews.

The topics are very advanced but you will come out with an understanding of the questions the scientists are trying to answer. This is really a book about the questions and not the answers. Sometimes I wonder, are we even equipped with brains smart enough to comprehend the universe? Well, even if we are not, the quest is still a lot of fun for laypersons like us, because of books like these.

I cannot recommend this book enough, and including it in my "Must Read" recommendations. Especially for those who have not tried reading any popular science non-fiction. Read it, you will thank me.

Dark Matter

Book Review : Dark Matter

Author : Blake Crouch

My Rating : 4 out of 5 stars

It’s been a while since I have read any science fiction. The name of the book, and the praise it received got me curious. Blake Crouch has multiple books on New York Times Bestseller list, and his trilogy has been made into a TV Series on Fox. I haven’t watched it, but this is enough to get me to read one of his books.

The story is told from the point of view of Jason Dessen, a quantum physicist who is happily married to Daniela.  As the story begins, Jason gets out of his cozy home in a nice Chicago suburb to have a drink with his friend. On his way back, he is kidnapped by a person who seems to know a lot about him, a bit too much to seem possible. His attempts to get out of this situation fail completely. When he wakes up, he finds himself surrounded by total strangers, who on the other hand seem to know him very well, but what they know about him is not at all familiar to him. It takes a while for him (and the readers) to figure out what’s going on.

This is just the first half of the book, but it would be inappropriate for me as a reviewer to give any more details about the plot devices used by the author. Unfortunately, many other reviews on the web clearly spell them out. Now, it’s possible that many readers, especially SciFi readers, may easily guess what the underlying scientific premise is. Still, I would prefer to not spell it out.

The first half of the book is very captivating. It’s written very well, and draws the reader in. The suspense builds up, and we can feel what Jason feels. The characters are well developed and their interactions are authentic. A good science fiction also needs to be a good fiction and the first few chapters start with a great promise.

That promise is kept all the way till the end as far as writing is concerned. Along the way, difficulties arise in the plot because the author boxes himself in a situation from which there is really no convincing way out. It remains an engaging and mind-bending story, but fails to wow us. 

Most science fiction has to transcend existing laws and knowledge. For example, without hyper-space how can authors make their protagonists travel at a speed faster than light? This book takes such liberties with the speculative theories that are in fashion currently. That’s perfectly fine, in spite of a few logical holes in the plot. The liberties taken with the laws of physics is not the real issue, rather how they are used to construct a plot, a plot that has no satisfying resolution.

I enjoyed this book. It's good fiction and good science fiction. Although it’s not completely satisfying, it’s a page turner of sorts. In spite of the concerns I outlined above, it still gets my recommendation.

Mama’s Last Hug

Book Review : Mama’s Last Hug Author : Frans de Waal My Rating : 5 out of 5 stars - MUST READ

The complete title of the book is ‘Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves’.

Let me start the review with the video from which the book got its title.

The last hug

 

It feels really weird to ask if animals have emotions. Of course they do! Ask any pet owner, ask anyone who has seen some of the countless animal videos circulating on social media. So why write a book (or multiple) books, trying to prove what seems as obvious as saying, the sky is blue. The reason, the author explains, is to dig deeper. What kind of emotions? Are their emotions similar to ours? Is there a purpose for these emotions? And so on.

Dr Waal has spent years studying this subject, and has written multiple books, highly regarded and widely read. I had heard of his perhaps most famous book, “Chimpanzee Politics”, but this is the first book I read that was written by him. Now, I am definitely going to try to read his other books as well.

Throughout the book, Dr Waal gives interesting accounts of experiment after experiment, each one making it crystal clear that animals feel, and have emotions. Feelings are not the same as emotions, something that may be obvious to people who study sociology and psychology, but I understood clearly from reading this book. The real insight is provided not only by the experiments, but also by the author’s explanation of how these emotions structure our lives and our societies. The emotions of compassion, revenge, empathy, hunger for power etc all are crucial factors that govern our decisions regarding everything from health care systems to legal institutions.

Most of the book is about primates, and chimpanzees in particular, which is what Dr Waal has specialized in. After reading his accounts and explanations, I can agree with him when he says, it’s really hard to draw the line between them and us. We are so similar. At the same time, he also cautions against projecting our feelings onto them. We often talk about animals, especially our pets, as if they are humans. In spite of that, and paradoxically, we are also surprised when we see animals reacting like us! Neither is a scientific approach. This book, as the complete title says, is as much about us, as it is about animals. 

Another new insight I learned here was how similar animals' body language can be with ours, including facial expressions. Just as our facial muscles pull our lips to reveal complex emotions, so do the animals. A smile can be because of happiness or it can be a nervous grin, both in humans and in primates. It’s just one of the many indications that their emotions are just as complex as ours. This complexity makes two opposite emotions, just two sides of the same coin. An ability to feel empathy is needed not just to help others, but also to be cruel and hurt others. He gives many accounts of not-so-good behavior by the primates.

The book goes much further than that. It’s very likely that for many readers, it won’t come as a surprise to know that animals have joy, fear, empathy and so on. But what about feelings that are indicative of a more complex morality such as guilt, or shame? It seems animals do have those feelings! As the later chapters explore, the real questions are, how complex are their emotions, do they have free will like us, are they rational maximizers, can they be capitalists and so on.

This is a beautiful book. Written in such a simple to understand style, and yet at the same time asking and often answering many deep philosophical questions. It draws from years of research of many, including Darwin. I very highly recommend it, giving it my “Must Read” rating. It will amaze you, delight you, inform you and make you self introspect. It’s a brilliant book. Read it.

In the end, I will leave you with this amazing video featuring the author, that I had seen many years ago, may be on “60 minutes”. It’s often mentioned in the management training :-)  about fairness. Enjoy!

Fairness

A Universe From Nothing

Book Review : A Universe From Nothing

Author : Lawrence M. Krauss

My Rating : 5 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “A Universe From Nothing : Why there is something rather than nothing”.

Most of the books that aim to explain physics to a lay person are written about prevailing complex theories. Only rarely, a scientist writes a book aimed at a lay person and at the same time, explaining his or her original ideas in theoretical physics. This is one of those rare books.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Krauss has a very clear purpose in writing this book. He wants to prove to us that it is not really necessary to believe in God. Please note the phrasing. This book doesn’t aim to prove that God does not exist. Rather, it argues that, perhaps the most fundamental philosophical and theological question does not require a belief in any supernatural being. That question is, “Why there is something rather than nothing?”.

Now that is a loaded question. First of all, defining “nothing” is not at all straight-forward. More importantly the reasons behind this question, and many different implications around it, will lead to a discussion that is completely out of scope for a blogpost. (Even if I had the competence to explain that, which I clearly don’t have.)

Superficially, the general premise of that question is, a Creator is needed to create something. Whether you believe in a God as defined by a religion, or you believe in a supernatural spiritual being - whatever that may be, that’s “who” created the Big Bang, or at a more fundamental level - the laws of physics. What Dr Krauss is driving towards is, even that is not necessary. “Something” will always pop out of “nothing”. Because, “nothing” is unstable!

Now there seems to be a lot of semantic jugglery going on there. Trust me, that's not the case. This is a book about advanced physics, not philosophy. The main argument being, as quantum mechanics predicts and it has been verified, at the sub-atomic level quantum fluctuations can cause “something” to be created out of “nothing”. But can it create a whole new universe?

To answer that question, Dr Krauss takes us on a fast paced tour starting with the general theory of relativity, how it predicted a non-static universe and based on Hubble’s observations, an eventual realization of the Big Bang. While these advances were happening in Cosmology, quantum mechanics was being developed and was offering a strikingly non-intuitive understanding of the subatomic world. As we know, these two theories have not been able to get married to each other, and we do not yet have a theory of everything. Still, Dr Krauss argues that these advances have sufficiently increased our understanding to see that nothing can produce something, even a universe, or infinite parallel universes.

It’s an argument that’s not easy to grasp, and not at all easy to explain. I am not sure I understood it perfectly. But I can see how it might be, because of Dr Krauss’ efforts. This philosophical argument makes the book stand out from many other popular science books. 

Another interesting new aspect I learned here, was about the future of this ever expanding universe. As Dr Krauss explains, many many billions of years from now, future cosmologists would simply not have any evidence that Big Bang happened. All they will be able to see is their local galaxy cluster, as all galaxies would have sped away far enough to be completely undetectable, no matter what technological advances happen. It’s a bleak picture.

This is a remarkable book. Dr Krauss has courageously taken the atheist argument to a whole new level and made it reasonably accessible to a layman like me. I had to read a few paragraphs again to make sure I understood them. So it wasn’t a completely smooth reading for me. In spite of that, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Sapiens

Book Review : Sapiens

Author : Yual Noah Harari

My Rating : 5 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “Sapiens : A Brief History Of Humankind”.

Only once in a while a book gets written that is immensely vast in scope, challenges your worldview at a very fundamental level and tackles extremely difficult topics in such an accessible manner that everyone can enjoy it. Sapiens, is such a book.

Ever since Dr Stephen Hawkings wrote “A Brief History Of Time”, there have been way too many books that announce themselves as “Brief history of …”. This book by Dr Yual Noah Harari deserves to be in the same league of the trailblazing book by Dr Hawkings. 

It’s impossible to put Sapiens in one simple category. The twenty odd amazing chapters cover everything from evolution, history, economics, politics, religion, spirituality, science, anthropology, psychology, philosophy and so on. It would have been a great feat just to weave these disparate threads into one cohesive book, but to do it in such an easy to read manner is an astounding achievement.

The book starts at the evolutionary beginnings of Homo Sapiens and ends at a chapter that speculates what might be in store for us as a species. Along the way almost every branch of knowledge gets covered in surprising detail. Now, this book is not an overview or a survey of these fields. Neither is it an introduction to all fields of human knowledge. It travels through these vistas with a singular destination in mind - to explain how we Homo Sapiens have evolved differently than any other lifeform.

What makes the book impossible to put down, is the spicy mix of opinionated commentary with generally accepted scientific theories. The range of topics and author’s fearless discourse almost ensure that everyone is going to be at least somewhat angered and/or offended. True, it will most likely offend religious and conservative readers more, but the liberals and free market capitalists are also likely to find many arguments difficult to digest. And a friendly warning to readers from India, you in particular may not like many discussions, especially if you have a defensive conjecture about how casteism took roots in Indian society. 

I am not saying that the author is deliberately trying to offend. No, not at all. And leaving aside the topics such as religion and social customs, that raise the heat rather quickly, that’s not the primary focus of the debate either. Most of the topics are morally ambiguous to say the least. A simple binary good or bad evaluation misses the really important nuances. For example, are we really happier than our hunter gatherer ancestors? Was the nexus between imperial colonialism and science good or bad? Is industrial animal farming the largest cruelty in the history of mankind? Are our cherished ideals of democracy and human rights, just a myth that exists and works only in our collective minds? The book is full of debates on such thorny issues.

So, before you embark on reading this, and it does get my “must read” recommendation, ask yourself. Do you like to be challenged on your most fundamental beliefs? Do you like to read intelligent arguments even when you don’t agree with them? Do you like to be intellectually stimulated with subtleties of historical analysis? For liking such a book, you have to be welcoming to opinions that make you uncomfortable.  That’s my view. I did agree with most of what the author had to say. But I also appreciated the views that I did not agree with. In the end, I came out with a far deeper understanding of Home Sapiens. And for that, I absolutely loved this book, and cannot recommend this highly enough. Do yourself a favor and read it.

Here’s Looking at Euclid

Book Review : Here’s Looking at Euclid

Author : Alex Bellos

My Rating : 4 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “Here’s Looking at Euclid : A surprising excursion through the astonishing world of math”.

On the back cover of the book, there is a large paragraph praising this book, written by none other than Martin Gardner. That caught my attention. There is also a chapter in the book related to toys and puzzles based on mathematics, in which the author describes his meeting with Martin Gardner, and about his influence on recreational mathematics. This book seems to be in the same tradition that Gardener was instrumental in popularizing. Blending Math, History, Mind bending puzzles, and much more in an entertaining package.

This book too is fun to read, although it starts slow. The initial chapters were a bit of a drag for me. I was also irritated by the constant reference of Amazonian native tribes as “Indians”. This is not about political correctness, it’s just flat out wrong. Especially for someone who has taken the trouble to travel to India to personally research about ancient Hindu mathematics. Even setting that aside, it took a few chapters for the book to pick up speed for me.

Luckily, as the book progressed, it became a lot more entertaining and informative. Each chapter has a theme. Although sometimes there are references to earlier chapters, I don’t think it needs to be run sequentially. It can be thought of as a collection of essays, and can be read in any order.

Each chapter is about a different area of mathematics. Of course, there is no hope to even touch upon all the areas. These topics are what the author has chosen to show that Mathematics is accessible, fun and inspiring. Some of the topics of the chapters are so extensive that entire books of recreational math have been written about them. For example, see my previous reviews about books on topics such as the “non-Euclidean geometry” or “probability”. In spite of the limitation of condensing the material to one chapter, the author has succeeded in giving a thorough introduction to the history and ideas involved, and kept in a fun to read.

The last chapter, unconvincingly bundles non-Euclidean Geometry and Cantor’s theory of infinity together. It’s still a good chapter, but I would have preferred more detailed chapter on each. Some of the middle chapters are a breeze to read. The information about Sudoku, or the Bell Curve was brilliantly presented.

Most people who like reading books on Math will like this book as well. If you haven’t read a lot of books on Math, this is a nice place to start. Especially if you have been intimidated by high school math, you should definitely try this one, as there are many facets of Math that are just delightful and everyone deserves to be delighted by Math.

The Silent Wife

Book Review : The Silent Wife

Author : A.S.A Harrison

My Rating : 4 out of 5

I have always liked mystery/thriller genre and for a long time I have been trying to find a satisfying read in vain. Many months ago, while reading reviews of “Gone Girl”, I stumbled across lofty praise for “The Silent Wife”, and added it to my “to be read” list. 

Right in the beginning, the book tells us that very soon the wife Jodi is going to murder her husband Todd. Why and how is not mentioned. Right now, she thinks she is in a stable marriage. Far from perfect, and not completely happy, as Todd is an unfaithful husband. Jodi knows that, but she has made peace with it, assuming that these are temporary occasional indulgences. They are affluent. Todd is a successful small business owner. Jodi is a psychologist, although her practice does not generate much income. It’s more of a hobby. She really enjoys her role of a home maker, making dinners and keeping everything neat and perfect.

The story of the slow disintegration of their marriage is told in alternating viewpoints of Jodi and Todd. One chapter for her, and one chapter for him. It’s told using sentences that are in present tense, a style that I dislike. But the viewpoint idea works. The author uses it very intelligently to give a close up look at what’s going on in their minds. As the story unfolds, we learn more about them and their flaws. How Todd rationalizes his behavior and how Jodi’s past is shaping her present. This is a well written novel in terms of getting to know the characters.

This is the first novel of Canadian author A.S.A. Harrison. Unfortunately she died before her book was published. It’s sad that she did not get to see the success of her book. She has used her knowledge of psychology well. It’s less of a mystery book than what the marketing blurb would suggest. Make no mistake, the mystery part works, as the author slowly reveals how things lead to the murder. Since we already know that there is a murder, this build up keeps us turning the pages to figure out the why and how. As far as the suspense goes, it depends on how many mystery books you have read. It’s not impossible to guess the outcome. The real focus of the book is two human beings, their shortcomings, their self serving minds and their complicated relationship. It’s fascinating, and dark at the same time.

It’s an interesting book, but definitely not great. So I am hesitatingly giving it a 4 star rating. I think there isn’t enough material here even for the approximately 300 pages. There are only two main characters, and the plot is not that complex. I can go only so much into someone else’s life details. Afterwards, it seems like a drag to me. The memories of Jodi’s session with her psychology professor were definitely overwritten.

With those caveats, I can recommend the book.

The Undoing Project

Book Review : The Undoing Project

Author : Michael Lewis

My Rating : 4 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds”.

Michael Lewis is one of the most famous authors of our time. He has written many best sellers, and a few of his books have been made into successful movies. His latest book tackles a subject that is perhaps far more fundamental than his other books.

The scientific advancements that have happened in last few decades have had a huge impact on our understanding of the world. That includes not just about the universe and subatomic particles, but also about the evolution and our own mind. How our mind thinks, and how it comes to conclusion is a topic that interests me greatly. I am not talking about the anatomy of brain, but the thought process and its implications.

A big contribution to the very foundation of what we know today, was laid in 70s and 80s by two scientists in Israel - Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Their work on coming up with a model of decision making  - “Prospect Theory” as they called it - is one of the cornerstones of a new field that emerged from it - “Behavioral Economics”. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 (Tversky had passed away then, and Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously). Later other economists have also won the Nobel Prize due to their contribution to Behavioral Economics. This is field that intersects both Economics and Psychology.

This book tells the story of how these two very different personalities came to collaborate together in Israel. It starts at their childhood, their early careers in Israel of the 60s, how the wars impacted them and how they came to be collaborators. The author also goes into many details to explain their personalities and their friendship. A lot of research must have been done to gather this information, and kudos to the author.

The book tries to be both a biographical account and a primer on their work. It works very well, although the focus in mainly on the human story. The scientific work and the explanation is interspersed with the life stories. I think it’s very well done. This way the reader is not overwhelmed with the technical details, and the biography doesn’t remain just a story of two extraordinarily talented people. The aim is to also convey how their work came into existence and how seminal it it was, and the book succeeds.

I could have given this 5 stars, and some readers may very well do so. There are two reasons for my not giving 5 stars to this book. The biography part, on a few occasions, felt repetitive. Especially, about how like Amos Tversky was. After a few times, I was saying, yes, yes, yes, we get it - He was a popular figure. Second reason is, the explanation of the ideas in Prospect Theory is good, not great. I won’t recommend this as a popular science book. If you want to read how we handle uncertainty then I can recommend to you The Drunkard’s Walk, or The Improbability Principle. If you want to read about how we think, then I can recommend to you, The Righteous Mind and Some We Love, Some We Hate and Some We Eat. None of these are on Behavioral Economics, but they do a great job of explaining their respective ideas.

With that said, I can definitely recommend this book. It’s very readable, has great story-telling and has enough educational material. It’s a story of two great minds, whose work is profoundly impacting Economics and something worth knowing about.

The Great Unknown

Book Review : The Great Unknown

Author : Marcus du Sautoy

My Rating : 4 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science”.

Author Marcus du Sautoy has chosen to take a “one pot meal” approach in this book and has greatly succeeded. It’s a tour of the areas of scientific knowledge that we struggle to find answers, and which have a strong possibility that the questions there may remain forever unanswered.

This is a challenging task. You can easily find full length books on each of the seven topics covered here. Condensing them to just one section of a book comes with a two pronged risk. Either it can become a shallow overview that’s too simplified, or it can become too narrow, focused only on certain aspects. To his immense credit, the author has managed that balance extremely well in first five sections. The final two sections were good too, but did not impress me as much as the previous sections.

The first section explains the recent branch of mathematics “Chaos Theory”, famous for the commonly referred, and commonly misunderstood “Butterfly Effect”. This section explains how a small gap in initial conditions of certain systems can lead to very large differences in eventual outcomes. The next section is about matter. Currently our experimentally verified understanding stops at quarks, the smallest building blocks of matter. Will we ever know if this is really the limit? There is a lot of “stuff” that we don’t know much about, like dark matter and dark energy. As you can expect the next two sections are about Quantum Physics and Universe, respectively. Quantum Physics literally puts a limit on our knowledge. At the largest scale, Black Holes and Multiverses may limit what we can know. The next section, and the last one about Physics is on “Time”. 

All those sections are well written, well explained and fun to read. The next section is first to veer directly into philosophy - Consciousness. The author prefers to look at using his mathematical lens to examine what it means to have consciousness. It’s an interesting approach, and I learned about advances in this field that of course are not covered by books on physics. Still, I felt this section wasn’t as deep as previous sections. The last section, at least to me, should have been the most exciting. It tackles the limits of mathematics, using Godel’s theorems and Cantor’s theorems about infinity. Godel’s theorems are simple to state, but trying to understand them is dizzying. Their importance for axiomatic systems (such as Mathematics) is monumental. I don’t think this section does justice to the beauty and creativity involved in these theorems. I learned something new about the theory of infinity (specifically the continuum) and it felt great.

Each section has a very personal touch. The author is not shy in admitting his preferences, biases and his struggles to understand many of these concepts. Each section also has dialogues with one or more prominent intellectual forces of that field. All this makes the book easier to read.

It’s a long book, and needs some investment of time from the reader. I think it’s worth it. You don’t have to read it in one go, and can take a pause between sections. It’s a nice tour of many prominent fields of knowledge where we are trying hard to push the limits of knowability. It’s especially useful to those who read only a few books on science if at all, because a lot is covered in one single book. So take your time, and read this one.

Golden

Book Review : Golden

Author : Marcus Thompson

My Rating : 3 out of 5

The complete title of the book is “Golden : The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry”.

Even though I am addicted to watching sports, reading about personal life of sports personalities, is something that I have absolutely no interest in. So I am not sure why I picked up this book. Perhaps I thought it will improve my understanding of the sport, that I have fallen in love with for last 10 years or so.

I didn’t grow up with Basketball around me, and I have never played the sport. Even after I moved to USA, I didn’t watch Basketball for many years. My interest grew when I started understanding the game a bit, started appreciating the fadeaway jump shots of Kobe, then the completeness of LeBron and now this jaw dropping shooting by Steph Curry. So when I read the title, I was intrigued.

Author Marcus Thompson is a sports columnist, which turns out to be a big plus as well as a big minus for this book. The entire book feels like a big newspaper column, and not in the best possible way. There is very detailed play-by-play description of many games. So many that I started just skipping these multi-page replays. I think this book would have been greatly benefited by a good editor who would have ruthlessly chopped down the running commentary of so many games.

In between these lengthy game recaps, there is good information and insight sprinkled in. You will learn about Steph’s childhood, his family, his values, his hard work and his determination. I would have preferred a better structure to this information, as it feels arranged a bit randomly in different chapters. You will also find some new information here that was never mentioned in sports columns before.

One thing that I would highlight is the candid discussion about race and privilege. Curry, unlike many other basketball players, did not have to battle financial adversity in his childhood. As a son of an NBA player, his childhood was comparatively comfortable. The adversity he has faced is due to his smaller relative size on the court, and he has overcome it with spades. Still, he is not “black enough” for many. This particular discussion was very illuminating me. I applaud the author for being very forthright and open about this issue.

The book is written from the point of view of a fan, so expect little criticism of Steph here. I am ok with it, as I was not looking for a bland balanced approach anyways. 

I can only offer a lukewarm recommendation. I have no idea how a die-hard Basketball fan, already with a lot of insight, will feel about this book. How much new would he or she find in this book, is something I cannot say. For a casual fan, this can be an interesting book to read.

Rising Out Of Hatred

Book Review : Rising out of Hatred

Author : Eli Saslow

My Rating : 5 out of 5

The complete title of the book is “Rising out of Hatred : The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist”.

Just 3-4 years ago, a well known thought leader of White Nationalism, Derek Black, renounced his cause and turned into a liberal. He wasn’t just some leader, he was looked at as “The” future leader. As a son of a former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, as an eloquent speaker, very polished in debates, with a radio show that was widely popular among the followers, as the main speaker at their conferences, he was the rising star and universally loved by White Nationalists. And all this even before he was in college. In changing his positions, he had to publicly admit that he was wrong, and proclaim that the views he once espoused were dangerous. He had no choice but to go against his father, his family and cause them great emotional stress. He had to accept the danger that he will be labeled as a “traitor to the cause”. But he did the right thing. Because he clearly understood how illogical his ideas were, and how much harm they can cause. And he had to fight against those ideas.

This is an incredible story of transformation, courage and honesty. If I had watched such a story in a Hollywood movie, I would have most likely shaken my head in disbelief. “Such things don’t happen in real life”, is what I would have said. But reality is indeed stranger than fiction. That may be a cliche, but it’s true here.

I learned about this book on “The Daily Show” where both the Pulitzer Prize winning author Eli Saslow and Derek Black appeared together. I got so intrigued by the interview that I had to read this book, and I am glad I did.

The story is incredible, and Eli Saslow’s writing is smooth and gripping. This is not a story that can be written with politically safe language. It’s just not possible. This book tells things as they are. This is a history of last few years. As Derek Black was transforming himself from a White Nationalist into a liberal, at the same time, the Republican Party was transforming itself from a conservative party to Trump’s party. Many of the ideas of the White Nationalists which were considered fringe a few years ago, were becoming mainstream and foundational to the new Trump party. What the White Nationalists were hoping to happen for many many years, was suddenly happening with Trump (and of course his team) taking the charge. They were speaking the same language, expressing the same victimhood and proposing the same talking points. While Derek was giving up these ideas that he once promoted on his radio show, those exact same ideas were actually being taken up by the Presidential candidate of the Republican Party. 

These two separate but opposite transformations have been very superbly captured by the author. I am sure, given the current state of affairs, many people on the right, and especially Trump supporters would not like reading these details. But the author has no qualms in stating the facts and writing with complete candor. As many of us know and argue, he documents how the transformation of the Republican party started with the election of President Barack Obama. It was then aided by Fox News and completed by our current President Trump and his team.

It’s not just ironic, it horrified Derek. His transformation took place over the years when he was in college, with help from his unlikely friends which included one deeply religious Jewish friend and one immigrant from South America. His girlfriend was instrumental in challenging his views with facts after facts very patiently presented over many many months. But it was personal. He did not want to make a public scene out of it. But Donald Trump’s rise was the reason he decided to write editorials in liberal newspapers including The New York Times. He felt a personal responsibility to oppose the direction taken by the new politics of our country.

It is impossible to not feel respect for Derek Black. Very few people like to admit, even to themselves that they were wrong. To do it publicly, and going against their family is extremely rare. To do so at this extent - from a White Nationalist to a Liberal - is unheard of. And remember, all this in his twenties. It’s not just that he did it, but why he did it. As the book demonstrates, Derek changed his views, because of his analytical and highly intelligent mind. When presented with facts, it became clear to him that he was horribly wrong.

I cannot recommend this book enough. Especially if you are leaning on the Republican side of the spectrum and even more so, if you are a Trump supporter. No, I am not naive to think that anyone would change their mind by reading a book. But at least to some people, it will be help understand why many of us think that the politics of Trump is so dangerous to the fabric of our society. Well that’s my hope. Not expecting any agreement, just a bit of understanding.

Everybody Lies

Book Review : Everybody Lies

Author : Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

My Rating : 5 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are”.

Like I have done for some other book reviews, I must start this review with proper disclosures. I spent a significant portion of my career at Yahoo, where “Big Data” or “Data Science” or whatever you want to call it, is a big part of the strategy. I have myself worked on projects related to this field, and the results of my own code have astonished me by the sheer amount of insight that can be extracted out of sometimes simple techniques. I am not new to this field, and I am very familiar with the potency of such data mining exercises. 

So a lot of insights presented by this book were not surprising to me at all. That includes the techniques explained in the book for finding correlation using statistics, as well as the kinky nature of a lot that people search for. Like many software engineers do, almost a decade ago, I downloaded Apache Lucene to familiarize myself with the search engine technology. This download includes the sample of actual search terms used by internet users, and it felt that almost all the terms were pornographic in nature, and sometimes quite disturbing. So yes, I kind of knew a lot of the findings of this book already.

If you are not from a similar work background, be prepared to be surprised, enlightened, entertained, disturbed and a bit depressed. Sometimes, all at the same time.

In this fascinating book, the author will give you a grand tour what insights about specific individuals, as well as society in general can be inferred these days. The main source of this information is internet of course. As the book explains, the interaction people have with the various websites, and especially Google and PornHub are much much richer in terms of data mining, compared to the traditional mechanisms such as surveys. Of course the main reason is anonymity - as in people thinking that they are not revealing their identity. So they search for things and visit sites that they would not admit in polite company. They leave anonymous comments that can be analyzed using natural language processing techniques. The quantity of such interactions rise and fall with events that happen in real world. Such trends give far deeper insight into what people are actually feeling, which non-anonymous methods of interactions would simply not reveal.

All this is possible, because people behave differently in public and in private - especially when they are alone and think they are not being monitored. Hence the title of the book - Everybody Lies.

We all know that Facebook posts by users are nothing but advertisements (often false) about what they want their friends to perceive about their life. Reality is very different. But how different? By how much? And what about politically incorrect issues? For example, how racist people really are? What social policies do they really support? And so on.

The author gives a very nice introduction to techniques that have been used by companies, and individual researchers that have access to such internet interactions, what insights we can derive from this research and how valuable this can be.

I will be doing a terrible disservice to this book, if I give an impressions that everything is all dark and gloomy. Or this books is all about interactions on Google, Facebook and PornHub. The author himself takes pains to clarify that this is about “New Data” not just the size of the data. Also included are many many examples of non-internet data that can be as insightful.

This book is not a sales pitch for “Big Data”, and that’s great. You will also learn the limitations of these new techniques, and how mis-interpretations can happen. It’s all written in a very accessible way. No knowledge of economics or computer science is required. In fact, on few occasions, I felt that the author is trying to simplify it too much. Just a quick note : it’s clear that the author’s own stance on many political issues is towards the left. I am fine with it, but some readers may not appreciate it too much.

It’s a wonderful book, very relevant to what’s happening today. It will remind you of the great book “Freakonomics”. If you liked that one, you will like this one too. The findings are sometimes as you expect using common sense, but more often than not, they will be new insights. I highly recommend it.