#The_Laws_of_Human_Nature by Robert Greene - Review

 

    This is another book that I would classify under the 'fast-read' category because of its narration about human tendencies rather than laws. For an efficient slow reading, one must be in his early 20s as later on he might learn by himself these facts of life. It just appeared to me that with each chapter I was assigning people around me with all the laws and characters the author was mentioning. As most of his 'reviews' were around human nature one might find some or other author of these types of thoughts or reviews around the literature of his time. I found some of his despairs in the voices of some Urdu writers like Akbar Allahabadi, Meer Taqi Meer, and Khaleel Gibran (Persian). But this book is not void of worth as the author has classified the tendencies into laws that can serve to forewarn a beginner who experiences rational emotions around him as he starts working.

 Here is the list of 'laws' from this book

 1. The Law of Irrationality

Often people are dominated by emotions and behave irrationally without realizing it. This is the source of bad decisions and negative patterns in life. Example: Athenes prospered when it was led by Pericles in 400 BC, who is believed to have been a very rational man. After he left the political arena Athenes started to regress.

 2. The Law of Narcissism

Many people are narcissists and thus focus and admire on themselves. This hinders success when interacting with others is essential.   Example: Joseph Stalin — the premier of the Soviet Union — was a very charming and influential person. He was also a narcissist who killed many people during his reign. Leo Tolstoy — a Russian novelist — and his wife Sonya were both narcissists. Their relationship was complicated.

 3. The Law of Role-playing

People tend to wear the mask that shows them in the best possible light hiding their true personality. Example: Milton Erickson — an American psychiatrist and psychologist of the 20th century — was paralysed when he was young and became a master reader of people body language.

 4. The Law of Compulsive Behaviour

People never do something just once. They will inevitably repeat bad behaviour.    Example: Howard Hughes Jr. — an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist — had a weak character since his childhood. He managed to disguise it in his early career which brought him success. However, it manifested later in his life and resulted in many failures including Hughes Aircraft Company.

5. The Law of Covetousness

People continually desire to possess what they don’t have.  Example: Coco Chanel — a French fashion designer and businesswoman — became so successful not only because she created great products but because she understood that people desire what they don’t have and created an air of mystery around her work.

6. The Law of Short-sightedness

People tend to overreact to present circumstances and ignore what will happen in the future. Example: The South Sea Company — a British joint-stock company founded in 1711 — became known as the South Sea Bubble. It was obvious that the company could not succeed long-term but it didn’t stop many people from investing in its shares.

7. The Law of Defensiveness

People don’t like when someone is trying to change their opinion. Example: Lyndon Johnson — the 36th president of the United States — gained his influence and power by focusing on others, letting them do the talking, letting them be the stars of the show.

8. The Law of Self-sabotage

Our attitude determines much of what happens in our life.  Example: Anton Chekhov — a Russian playwright and short-story writer — had a tough childhood but despite that was able to change his life by changing his view of the world from negative to positive.

9. The Law of Repression

People are rarely who they seem to be. Lurking beneath their polite, affable exterior is inevitably a dark, shadow side consisting of the insecurities and the aggressive, selfish impulses they repress and carefully conceal from public view. Example: Richard Nixon — the 37th president of the United States — always had a positive image in the public. Everything changed after the Watergate scandal which revealed his hidden personality.

10. The Law of Envy

People are envious.  Example: Mary Shelley — author of the novel Frankenstein — was betrayed by her close friend who envied her.

11. The Law of Grandiosity

Even a small measure of success can elevate our natural grandiosity — an unrealistic sense of superiority, a sustained view of oneself as better than others. This can make us lose contact with reality and make irrational decisions.  Example: Michael Eisner had to resign from the CEO position of The Walt Disney Company. In the author’s opinion, the cause is Eisner’s grandiosity elevated by previous successes.

12. The Law of Gender Rigidity

All of us have masculine and feminine qualities. But in the need to present a consistent identity in society, we tend to repress these qualities, overidentifying with the masculine or feminine role expected of us. Thereby we lose valuable dimensions to our character.  Example: Caterina Sforza became an Italian noblewoman and Countess of Forlì and Lady of Imola. Such titles were unusual for women in her time. In the author’s opinion, her masculine qualities helped her to achieve this.

13. The Law of Aimlessness

People become most successful when they have a sense of purpose in their life. Example: Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience. His calling directed his actions and helped him go through many failures in his life.

14. The Law of Conformity

We have a side to our character that we are generally unaware of and is related to social life. We tend to become different people when we operate in groups of people such that we unconsciously imitate others. Thus we act and believe differently. Example: Gao Yuan’s story in his book Born Red showed that people in groups behave emotionally and excitedly.

15. The Law of Fickleness

People are always ambivalent about those in power. They want to be led but also to feel free; they want to be protected and enjoy prosperity without making sacrifices; they both worship the king (leader) and want to kill him.    Example: Elizabeth I — Queen of England and Ireland in the 16th century — had to constantly prove herself as the leader of the country.

16. The Law of Aggression

On the surface, the people around you appear so polite and civilized. But beneath the mask, they are all inevitably dealing with frustrations. They have a need to influence people and gain power over circumstances.    Example: John D. Rockefeller — an American oil industry business magnate — used aggressive strategies to gain power and control.

17. The Law of Generational Myopia

You are born into a generation that defines who you are more than you can imagine and this generation wants to separate itself from the previous one to set a new tone for the world. In the process, it forms certain tastes, values, and ways of thinking that you as an individual internalize. As you get older, these generational values and ideas tend to close you off from other points of view, constraining your mind. Example: King Louis XVI of France is shown as an example of someone out of tune with the times. He fell victim to the French Revolution when France was declared to be a Republic and abolished the monarchy.  Keep yourselves updated?

18. The Law of Death Denial

Most people spend their lives avoiding the thought of death.  Example: Mary Flannery O’Connor — an American novelist and short story writer — was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus when she was 27. Her proximity to death was a call to stir herself to action and she used this aspect to teach her selves what really mattered and to help her steer clear of the petty squabbles and concerns that plagued others.

    Some of the chapters can drag you as the author repeats the same point, and you get the feeling that the book could have been made shorter without loss of content. It is also difficult to tell which ideas are supported by solid science/research and which are not, as this is not referred to anywhere. Some ideas are backed by solid historical and scientific evidence, such as a chapter on narcissism, but in other sections, the ideas are more ambiguous, as, for example, when the author seems to believe that Milton Erickson recovered quicker from polio through the mental stimulation of his nerves.

     Also, there could have been more evolutionary psychology as there is nothing more fundamental to our nature and this could have included the cognitive biases. But overall the book can be enjoyed as there is a lot of advice related to the ‘laws’ mentioned.

 

 

#Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Review

    The initial chapters would enter the cranium smoothly but midway the reader’s intuition might suggest that the author is determined to make us believe more about the risks of AI than its advantages, in a repetitive style, albeit with a variety of words on clairvoyance. The concept of superintelligence means that the machine can perform better than humans at all tasks including such things as using human language to be persuasive, enhancing the economy, developing strategies, designing and making robots, advanced weapons, and other similar applications! A super-intelligent machine will solve problems that humans don't know exist.

The first and the last two chapters were rather like a parenthesis within which we may be deliberating on the debate around the concept of the boon or bane of AI, as the book is more about epistemology than science. Thus, the bulk of the book would probably be best for undergraduate philosophy students or AI students, foraying more like a textbook than anything else, particularly in its details with a wide variety of synonymic words. 

The real subject, however, is how we, the intelligent beings, would deal with a ‘cleverer than us’ AI. What would we ask it to do? How would we motivate it and control it? And, bearing in mind it is more intelligent than us, how would we prevent it from taking over the world or subverting the tasks we give it to its own ends? A truly fascinating concept, explored in great depth, there are enough reasons and logic for every issue raised. Supplementary to this is the frequent text in shaded boxes and synopsis at the end of each chapter. At times we might think that reading these would suffice.

The theorem set up is as follows: As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more proficient in the future it will have the ability to learn (Machine Learning) and improve itself as it examines and solves problems. It will have the ability to change (i.e. reprogram) itself in order to develop new methods as needed to execute solutions for the tasks at hand. The observation is the chronology of certain events related to ‘memory’ and neural networks.  These will be using techniques and strategies of which the originating human programmer will be unaware. The result is that once machines are creatively strategizing better (i.e. smarter) than humans, the gap between machine and human performance (i.e. intelligence) will grow exponentially. Here are some chapter-wise excerpts.

# “Problems that look hopelessly complicated turn out to have surprisingly simple solutions” – looks something like Occam’s razor principle. That Japan was the first to go after GOFAI (Good old-fashioned AI) after the AI winter – 1980, was a piece of news to me and several countries followed suit. More than 1,50,000 academic papers have since been published on artificial neural networks which is nothing less than an approach to ML.

# Bayesian inference and Monte Carlo methods find mention while ML gets the nod.

 “As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore - John McCarthy”

     The next chapter discusses every concept about evolutionary algorithms and neural networks, including the great genome project. There is a quote about Genetic Algorithms,

“One planet out of 10³⁰ on which replication arises would try Genetic Algorithm as a path to Machine Learning via Brain science”. This seems out of comprehension as there is not a single habitable planet to consider at least now. 

That GA or ML might not directly influence the 'intelligence' is summed up with a quote – “The existence of birds demonstrated that heavier than air flights is possible, yet first functional airplanes did not flap their wings”. Emphasis is that AI need not resemble a human mind but whole brain emulation would be of great assistance to ML. This is done via a simple procedure: Scanning – translation –emulation and there are tables that have classification over the technological front as Imaging –scanning- CPU storage (respectively). The author wishes to imagine emulating a brain at the level of elementary particle ‘hits’ using the QM Schrodinger Equation.

     There is a reference to the lifelong depression of intelligence due to Iodine deficiency which has been found to be widespread. But there is also the idea of developing specific genotypes of embryos so that elite schools can be filled with generically selected children (prettier, healthier, and more conscientious). Brain-computer–interface collective intelligence is limited by the abilities of its member minds.

# Three forms of Super-intelligence is suggested:

 Speed SI – that can do all that a human intellect can do, but much faster - To fast minds events in the external world appear to unfold in slow motions- thus a fast mind might commute mainly with other fast minds rather than with bradytelic, molasses-like humans.

Collective SI – A system composed of a larger number of smaller intellects such that problems can be readily broken into parts and parallel solutions are ensued.

Quality SI -A system that is at least as fast as the human mind and vastly qualitatively smarter. ‘A zebrafish has a quality of intelligence that is excellently adapted to its ecological needs’.

Bio intelligence is compared with computational elements: neuron speed is about 200 HZ – a full 7 orders of magnitude slower than a modern microprocessor (2GHZ), but the human brain relies on parallelization. Thus, the latter cannot do rapid calculation which is sequential. Human minds have fewer than 100 billion neurons but in terms of storage and reliability, the computing power is still comparable with digital.

 The Kinetics of intelligence explosion describes the “Rate of intelligence” = [optimization power /recalcitrance]. This seems to prove well as optimization is a factor of computing power while recalcitrance is in the human hands. Thus, there is a focus on Non-machine intelligence.

About the emulation of the AI path, there is little point in reading the entire library if you have forgotten all about Aardvark by the time you get to Abalone.

 # Hubble volume – cosmic endowment finds a mention and could not be related

 # Our intuitions are calibrated on our experience, so we should view persons differently  - AI doesn’t care about that.

# Intelligence and final goals are orthogonal

# Human beings tend to seek and acquire resources sufficient to meet their basic biological needs and that makes them selfish which the AI cannot judge.

 # AI may operate human instruments including military vehicles and if such an AI project runs out of funding this might result in failure to extend cognitive capacities.

# Benign Failures are bound to occur – one feature of a malignant failure is that it eliminates the opportunity to try again. IOT also presupposed a great deal of success.  

 There is a separate chapter dedicated to Goals which talks about every other thing and this section spurts out the need for ethical values.

 # Mind crime is another failure mode of a project whose interests incorporate moral considerations

 # Control problem: Two agency problems like ‘human vs human’ (sponsor vs developer) are supposed to occur mainly in the developmental phase, while the other problem, namely, ‘human vs superintelligence’ (project vs system) is bound to occur in operational phase. The author comes up with a plethora of suggestions on methods to control them. The table at the end of the chapter summarizes all.

# Three laws of robotics by Asimov get a meager mention and the rules are so esoteric in nature that one might wonder what their significance might be.

# Everything is vague to a degree you do not realise till you have tried to make it precise – Bertrand Russell.

# Oracles / Genies/ Sovereignty Tools is a section where you would feel that you should finish the book as fast as you could because of the summarization of the entire written ideas in a new Avtar of words.

 # Wages + unemployment: The only place where humans would remain competitive may be where customers have a basic preference for work done by humans.

 # Subjective experience may have ideological and religious roots – and an example of such ideology is both Muslims and Jews having haram and Treif vying for it when food matters.

 # The world evolution is not necessarily a synonym for progress

 # When AI reaches a certain state of cognitive development it may start to regard the continued operation of the accretion mechanism as a corrupting influence!

About digital hierarchy: how police hierarchy is made – each layer that oversees another has at least half the other number of the layers it oversees. The supervisor has a high advantage over subordinates (obvious?)

    Choosing the criteria for choosing is a title that re-kindles what you need to remember again when you are about to finish the book! How can we get superintelligence to do what we want and what we want superintelligence to want!

 #Theory of Hedonism: states that all and only pleasure has value and only pain as dis value.

Extrapolation: An individual might have a second-order desire that some of his first-order desire not be given weightage when his volition is extrapolated.  An alcoholic who has a first-order desire to booze might also have a second-order desire not to have that first-order desire! 

    Coherent Extrapolated volition is a concept where one would be unlikely to get a delicious meal by mixing together all the best flavours from everyone’s favorite dish. What is utopia is dystopia for others!

    It is not necessary for us to create a highly optimized design rather focus should be on creating a highly reliable design! A strategic picture talks about Afghan Taliban and Swedish human rights supposing themselves morally right while suppressing terrorists and renegades at home.

 # Whole Brain Emulation would be safer than AI but might lead to the worst outcome (neuromorphic AI) and second-best outcome (synthetic AI)

 # The highest honour in Maths (Fields medal) is given to one who is capable of accomplishing something important and that he did not – means a life spent solving the wrong problem!

 The author ends the book expecting another AI winter.

#Life 3.0: Being human in the age of AI - Max Tegmark - Review

    For the first time I came across a book where the author tries to coerce us to read the 'prelude', which, of course, I did and later found that it was only a cold-war-era type introduction to a clandestine group that forms the dark side of the internet- and that controls the artificial 'statistical' intelligence. This, the author asks while I was fast reading the second chapter. The Omega and Prometheus are probably the fictional entities that rule the internet and thus have scores of information and data that could be used constructively or otherwise.

Written in an accessible and engaging style- and at times tedious- the book is aimed at the general public and offers a political and philosophical map of the promises and perils of the AI revolution. Instead of pushing any one agenda or prediction, Tegmark seeks to cover as much ground as possible - as you would read here, reviewing a wide variety of scenarios concerning the impact of AI on the job market, warfare, and political systems.

However, Life 3.0 does a good job of clarifying basic terms and key debates (with enough references), and in dispelling common myths. While science fiction has caused many people to worry about evil robots, for instance, the author rightly emphasizes that the real problem is the unforeseen consequences of developing highly competent AI. Artificial intelligence need not be evil and need not be encased in a robotic frame in order to wreak havoc. In Tegmark’s words, “The real risk with artificial general intelligence isn’t malice but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.”

            On the easier side, instead of diving deep into ethical issues and valid concerns around AI, he speculates on different scenarios in great detail. So much so that at times we would think that this is a purely fictional work.  He goes into endless speculations of how AI might go wrong in multiple ways and takes the obvious joy of making those as detailed and long.  And then he would suddenly talk about the existing computers and their accomplishments with the aid of Physics and Biology. 

    To give an example of how preposterous his scenarios are he claims the advanced AI will need a lot of energy that would be hard to fulfill (about half an mg of matter to empower the 13W brain) and also that once we are able to build mega architectural structures we could tap into the energy of a black hole to provide the necessary power to get along Life 3.0 (AI revolution). Of course, Life 1.0 is pure bacterial and animal evolution while Life 2.0 is cultural evolution as a result of human beings. The Pandemic was secretly targeted to ensure that nobody who knew anything about Science and Technology survived.

Here are some highlights in the order of the book:

Tiruchirappalli gets a mention as a place for fake suppliers of 'orders' based on AI by the ghost Omega.

That the DNA can store 1GB of energy and not beyond is a topic to ponder upon.

Intelligence is the ability to accomplish goals. John McCarthy coined the word Artificial Intelligence. Natural language translation using AI would be very easy in the future. There is a lot of detail into how memory works and the description of AND and NAND gates take an entire chapter.

    There is a description of the Ariane 5 rocket of the ESA which exploded 37 seconds after its launch due mainly to intelligence failure and was mainly a buggy software manipulating a number too large to fit into 16-bit allocation. The same kind of thing occurred with NASA's Mars climate orbiter - the difference in units caused a 445% error. Another of its Mariner spacecraft malfunctioned due to an incorrect punctuating mark and a Hyphen caused end of shutting down the mission to Phobos.

Robotic surgery accidents were linked to 144 death and 1391 injuries in the US during 2000-2013 and AI drones can kill accurately. Was that catching?

A chapter endorsing fears talks about AI generating fake realistic videos which could help the government and pose dangers of misuse by miscreants. An instance quoted was the failure of a guided missile system that killed 290 people in a Gulf war.  Just as chemists and biologists have no interest in chemical and biological weapons AI researchers also have no interest in building AI weapons.

Work keeps at bay three evils; Boredom, Vice, and need - Voltaire

An intelligence explosion is expected just like an explosion reaction that can occur due to chain reaction as depicted in Nuclear Science. Game Theory and Nash equilibrium find mention.

Freeman Dyson gets almost a chapter. His sphere the size of Earth's orbit would give us about 500 million times more surface area to live on!

The efficiency values given in Table 6.1 is nice and a few are mentioned below:

• 1.     Digesting a candy bar is 0.00000001%
• 2.     Burning Coal is 0.00000003%
• 3.     Burning gasoline is 0.00000005&
• 4.     Fission of Uranium is 0.08%
• 5.     Black hole evaporation is 90%

Galaxies, ET life, and Inorganic intelligence are cited in an elaborate manner in a chapter. Chandrasekar limit which says any mass 1.4 times greater than the sun would explode supports all the explosions observed by present-day telescopes using AI.  Big Crunch is also obvious. For the Big Crunch to occur a rubber band is equated that can burst with over expansion.

Goals: If we cede control to machines that don’t share our goals then we are like to get what we don’t want. Pursue goals instead of following rule of the thumb. That reality is relative and more so because visual experience can’t reside in the retina.

Brain rebels against its genes to become a monk or nun. To gain weight we carve to have more sweets. It is a kind of hacking. The ultimate goals of the system can be independent of intelligence and Consciousness is subjective experience. Water is wet but ice and steam are not - arrangement governs the emergent phenomenon

If it is falsifiable it is not scientific - karl Pepper

The last chapter about AI ethics and principles would make an interesting reading if only the reader is truly connected with AI and the photos pertaining to these meetings and conferences of all the scholars involved make a banging end.

 

#Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain - David Eagleman - Review

There is a perpetual myth about the brain that we do not use it fully to its capacity and that if we start using it to the fullest we might be able to move objects at our will. The ‘Network’ that it is, the brain is not hardwired, David Eagleman contends it is livewired. With his new theory of infotropism, he demonstrates why the fundamental principle of the brain is information maximization: in the same way plants grow toward the light, brains reconfigure to boost data from the outside world.

There is new insight into how the brain can ‘re-pair’ or adapt to new circumstances. This is very close to what we have been discarding lately – ‘evolution theory’. The author starts his narration with a case of a child who can function with one-half of his brain removed, how a blind man can hit a baseball via a sensor on his tongue, how new devices and body plans can enhance our natural capacities, and how paralyzed people will soon be able to dance in thought-controlled robotic suits.

Here are some highlights of the book in the order it goes.

#As we grow, we constantly rewire our brain's circuitry to take challenges, leverage opportunities and understand social structures. The brain consists of 86 billion neurons that shuttle information - 20 times more connections in a cubic centimeter of tissue than the entire Earth’s population. This amounts to adaptability.

“Unconscious actions are more rapid than conscious liberation”. The brain’s plasticity or neuroplasticity is discussed in a few case studies and the conclusion was that it would hold and keep the information forever if needed. When you compare this ‘memory’ with the electronics, you cannot slice out half of them from your smartphone and hope to make a call - Livewire endures!

“Brains are not born as blank, instead they arrive pre-equipped with expectation and the growth of the brain is based on the environment”. So, what we bequeath is more from our ancestors, and rather refined. Research on monkey nerve severed arm did not respond in the cortex but after some months this area was found to get excited when a part of the face was touched. The brain's map is thus flexible.

Phantom Limb, a subject of many a neurosurgeon, has found a mention but with meta-physics- “if an absent limb could give rise to conscious feeling then an absent body might as well”. So where do we go after we die?

An accomplishment of the rewiring is mentioned with an instance of Ronnie, born blind who used other senses to master music – violin - and won as many as six Grammy awards!

Competition for brain cells ‘real estate’, is that our visual system has to deal with darkness for almost 12 hours (from sunset to sunrise). To counter this the brain’s occipital cortex keeps itself active during the night and thus dreaming exists to keep the visual cortex from being taken over by neighbouring areas. And here we have so many interpretations for a dream that merely shuffles the memories! The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are less active during dream sleep than during walking state. Thus we cannot remember dreams, perfectly.

A hypothesis about cochlear and retinal implants read as the “Potato head hypothesis” where plugging into sensory organs the brain figures out how to use them! 

Another research by Nobel Laureate goes as “Vision substitution by Tactile Image projection” in nature - by Bachy-Rita – Here the brain is able to use information coming from the skin as if it were coming from the eyes! Different types of information are found lurking in different regions and the one for vision hearing has a case study. The skin is a mind-boggling sophisticated computational material!

“How to get a better body” deals with unusual growth and abnormal body but with additional talent. Here ‘thinking’ is considered remarkably similar to ‘motor movement’. The neural storm of activity that causes the brain area to light up is much like what you would think you should tell to a depressed friend!

Bauby, an editor of Elle magazine suffered a stroke and could only move his left eyelid. He was able to communicate with the aid of therapists and he thus relayed the agony of being unable to interact with the outside world. 

 All new ideas in the brain come from a mash-up of previously learned inputs and today we get more new inputs than before as children now live in an unparalleled richness.

The discussion about ‘illusion’ takes up some significant space. The brain considers walking as ‘real’ as walking over a treadmill just conveys the stationary fact by the vision. The IBM logo finds a mention due to its illusionary appearance. The Troxler effect is an illusion that demonstrates that an unchanging stimulus in your peripheral vision will soon evaporate so that the parts of the invisible would be obvious to us. Imagine cosmic rain that exists and is invisible. If it is stopped it might give you vision otherwise!

How drugs modify our system is another area of discussion. The drugs change the number of receptors in the brain - so much that the analysis of the dead brain can be used to determine the deceased’s addiction. Neural prediction is mentioned as “People you love become part of you - not just metaphorically but physically”.

The strategy of bacterial movement when searching for some food was interesting to read as how they group and have an objective for movement.

The cognitive area gets sharpened by learning a new language. The language is localized on the left hemisphere and if the left side of the brain comes under the stroke, the person may no longer be able to speak or understand words.

The brain figures out the body map from a simple rule!

The areas that send the most information with the largest representation!

Benefits of a good death:  An example is a sculpture carved out from marble. Creation emerges by taking stone away, not by adding anything. Similarly, neurons look for the right place. They put in feelers. If they’re getting a good response they keep it going. If they get cold shoulder they try luck nearby with other neurons (they get the message that they do not belong)! Thus training for anything new is very significant!

Cell death, apoptosis (suicide), and necrosis (inflammation) are briefly discussed as chemical leak out that can damage neighbourhood but is not a bad thing as it is considered as an engine for sculpting a neuron system!

Saving Brain Forest (re-wired brains, particularly) is compared to rain forest because the neurons are like members of a forest/network which are in constant competition to stay alive!

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference - Aristotle

Brains plasticity is a form of generic expression, for example, the skin pigment genes are variable because humans find themselves at different altitudes and need to change pigmentation to absorb vitamin D!

The enemy of memory is not time, it is other memories. Reading a new book does not overwrite your spouse's name in your memory nor does learning a new vocabulary word makes the rest of your vocabulary worse.

The brain passes what it has learned to another area for more permanent storage.

Memories beautify life, but only forgetting makes it bearable - Honore De Balzac

Different kinds of memory: With each new thing we learn, the better we are able to absorb the next relative fact. The last part of the book is more of a technical aspect including how the brain can be trained and memory or performance be enhanced. The amazing network and memory are discussed brightly and the book made an excellent read.

#The_Intelligence_Trap: Revolutionise your thinking and make wiser decisions – Review

     At a stage of life where we become experts in analysing errors others make, this book comes as a panacea for getting rid of the lingering thoughts on why people often stick to their thoughts stupidly or rather “Why do smart people act stupidly?”

     A fascinating and enjoyable investigation of what intelligence is and isn't, this book tells us about the details that can be sought to analyse why some people lack skills and fail to explain the mistakes they commit.  This thought-provoking and brilliantly researched guide to achieving true wisdom shows us how to be smarter - and how to protect ourselves from the cleverest fools.

     The author points out to certain events with ample examples and references to scientists, scholars, and thinkers on how to cultivate the required qualities to protect us from those errors. “We respect people who act quickly and to be slow is a synonym for stupidity”.

Intelligence is the ability to achieve success in life according to a personals life. And Cultural intelligence is a new term that can open us towards a new window – for instance, for studying abroad or enjoying holidays and maybe on Charity work. The author quotes a few good examples as a corollary to research which can go wrong if viewed by logic alone. “All insects need oxygen, mice need oxygen and, therefore mice are insects!”.  Scientific evidence for all carbon emissions from humans leading to global warming is another often misunderstood term.

Everyone commits mistakes that is not visible to them and even Einstein’s mistakes by behavior were glaring with his colleague Freeman Dyson who spent 8 years avoiding him on the campus! Likewise, Linus Pauling, the man behind the nature of ‘bonds’, falsely claimed that vitamin supplements could cure cancer!

Luc Montagnier’s case was very disgusting to read. He was one of the few scientists who helped discover the HIV virus. After his Nobel award, he was seen proclaiming the idea that highly diluted DNA can cause structural changes to water leading to the emission of electromagnetic radiation. So much he was advocating this that about 35 Nobel laureates signed a petition to strip him of the Nobel! Likewise, Thomas Edison, the discoverer of DC, claimed that AC was too dangerous since it led to death by Electrocution. Edison even dismissed Tesla’s ideas on AC transmissions. Steve Jobs also suffered from a dangerous skewed perception of the world.

In each case, the author permutes that greater intellect was always used for rationalisation and justification rather than logic and reason! 

            Below are some excerpts from the book with direct quotes:

Moral Algebra - dividing a piece of paper / writing advantages and disadvantages like pros and cons and then assigning numbers based on importance and then finding out the balance. Another simple strategy would be to consider the best/worst scenario for each situation offering some boundaries for our estimates.

Mindfulness meditation, which trains people to listen to their body’s sensations and then reflect on them in a non-judgmental way has found a mention along - the emotional compass.

The author maintains that taking up a practice like devoting 15 minutes a day to writing and reflecting on any subject may improve the deliberation process to rule out the most possible error in life. An example quoted was from a study in Bangalore, where a 23% increase in performance was noted after 11 days of rigorous practice.

About native language or importance of mother tongue: If you tell to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head and if you talk to him in his language it goes to his heart - Nelson Mandela

Many doctors make one error for every six patients they see and often these can be corrected before harm is done. Nearly 10% of the deaths in the US could be traced to diagnostic mistakes (that contribute to about 40-80,000 deaths per annum!).

Dunning Kruger effect (The skills you need to produce the right answer are exactly the skill you need to recognize what the right answer is!)  finds a mention in a distinct way though - Reduce over confidence by training or Increasing knowledge to understand the limitation. It also supplements the effect that losers have the delusion of grandeur.  Photos or rather images were supposed to increase participants’ acceptance of statements. It is not just what people think that matters but how they think.

About three Cognitive reflection examples in an arithmetic flavour have been mentioned that are interesting but may be skipped if one has tasted these tests earlier in some form or other. 

Writer Mike Shermer met a nutritionist who advised him to try multivitamin therapy - ingesting a month full of foul-smelling tablets and the result was one of the most expensive and colourful urine in America! I don’t know why this paragraph was mentioned but reading along, it made me laugh out louder.

Sceptical movement encourages the use of rational reasoning and critical thinking in public life. So, it goes about 9/11 that an insider’s job would point to the fact that jet fuel from planes could not have burned hot enough to melt the steel girders in the Twin towers whose melting point is 1500 ºC while the aviation fuel has an m.p of 852ºC.  The lesson is to beware of the use of anomalies to cast doubts.

On Richard Feynman: “He was never content with what he knew or what other people knew. He pursued knowledge without prejudice” -  James Gleick

Polish mathematician Mark Kac wrote in his autobiography.  An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they have done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with magicians . . . the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark . . .Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre.

General intelligence, curiosity, and conscientiousness are together Three Pillars of academic success – a Psychologist. Here’s how it can be. A man throwing plates and catching them is an ordinary event for all, but, Feynman put it into an equation and saw parallels with the electron’s orbit leading to the theory of QED. His best quote, “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing anything than to have answers which might be wrong” is a factual provoker of thoughts.

A simple way to boost curiosity includes, being more autonomous while learning this can be writing out what you already know about the material to be studied and then settling upon the question you really want to answer.  I remember more when I feel like I am struggling that when things come easily (rote learning).

By splitting our studies into smaller chunks, we create periods in which we can forget what we have learnt, meaning that at the start of the next session, we need to work harder to remember.

Making of dream: Many Soccer times were losing games despite having top-ranking players. To find out if this was a common phenomenon, social psychologist Adam Galinsky first examined the performance of soccer teams in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.  Galinsky’s team found a ‘curvilinear’ relationship; a team benefited from having a few stars, but the balance seemed to tip at about 60 percent, after which the team’s performance suffered.  The Dutch football team offered a perfect case in point after disappointing results in the Euro 2012 championships and the coach, Louis van Gaal, reassembled the team – reducing the percentage of ‘top talent’ from 73 percent to 43 percent - and they won several matches post shuffling.

Underline each person’s expertise at each meeting and their reasons for appearing in the group.  Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote, “Let others succeed must be the top role of a leader”.

#If you have ever worried that your work environment is dulling your mind the best way to protect yourself is to stop imitating mistakes (individual thinking errors).

#For many varied reasons employees simply aren’t encouraged to think. Some companies allow- accidentally or deliberately - functional stupidity within their offices

#German word FACHIDIOT is a one-track specialist who takes single-minded inflexible approach to a multi-faceted problem.

#Nokia's engineers were the best in the world and they were fully aware of the risk ahead and the CEO had said that he was paranoid about all the competition.

#Mindset was if you criticise what is being done, then you are not genuinely committed to it

Hydrocarbon leaks from NASA's disaster in both with Challenger and Columbia space shuttle is mentioned.  Columbia disaster Engineers knew this could happen when the insulating chunk broke off. The damage never occurred in the right places to cause a crash!

Concorde ran over sharp debris left on the runway causing a 4.5 kg chunk of tyre to fly into the underside of the aircraft’s wing - resulting shockwave ruptured fuel tank leading it to catch light during take-off. The plane crashed into a nearby hotel, killing 113 people. Subsequent analyses revealed 57 previous such instances, and in one case the damage was very nearly the same as for Flight 4590 – except, that the leaking fuel had failed to ignite.

     #People are far more likely to note and report near misses when safety is emphasised.  Hence you experience a near miss your risk tolerance will increase and you won’t be aware of it – the blind spot.  The intelligence trap often emerges from an inability to think beyond our expectations.