HOW THINGs work
Khnemu Shapes Pharoah's Son on a Potter's Wheel While Thoth Marks Life Span (papyrus, Ptolemaic, Egypt, c. third-century BC)
Last updated: August 28, 2020
The books below shine a light on some fundamental characteristic, such as human nature, politics, religion, and mythology.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. The late Joseph Campbell spent his life studying mythologies around the globe and across history. In this, his seminal book, he makes an amazing claim: all mythologies (religious mythologies, ancient mythologies, etc.) share the same basic structure, what he called “Mankind's one great story.” That structure, the Monomyth, is as follows: separation—initiation—return. As described in the book:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder (Separation); fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won (Initiation); the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man (Return)
There are other common elements, such as helpers (consider the angel Gabriel and the poet Virgil in the Divine Comedy). The reason this story is so constant is that it flows from within us. The dream is to man what myth is to mankind. Or, myth is mankind's dream. The symbols captured in these myths with amazing similarity are statements of basic truths. One of my favorite lines in the book: “as we are told in the Vedas: ‘Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.’”
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I loved many things about this book, starting with the introduction. I've never heard anyone describe a working relationship with the warmth and respect with which Kahneman described his collaboration with Amos Tversky. I also appreciated the fact that Kahneman pointed out the immense susceptibility of our brains to the errors he describes in the book, highlighting that even he is at risk. Understanding the power of social influence, his goal in writing the book is to create a vocabulary by which we may judge others' decisions. And once we know we're being judged, then we might create processes to make better decisions.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Ray Cialdini. Cialdini is a professor of psychology, but he wrote this book by combining research with practice, shadowing highly persuasive people, such as sales people and Hare Krishnas. What emerges are six powerful principles of persuasion. Once you read this book, you'll see them in play everywhere.
Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. If you believe we have a free, impartial press that promotes an unfettered exchange of ideas, you're wrong. In countries where the press is known to be controlled, such as China, the people can at least frame what they're hearing appropriately. The real danger is when you think you have access to a free press and allow your thinking to be shaped accordingly, most significantly by the absence of certain ideas.
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. Most people will say that the opposite of something that is fragile, such as a champagne glass, is something sturdy, like a table. But that's wrong. Where a glass will break with disorder, something that is antifragile will benefit from disorder. Taleb believes that in our modern society, in everything from our decisions around health to our financial system, we've create fragile systems, when we should be creating antifragile systems. His ideas apply to everything from personal decisions to career decisions to parenting to creating companies.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. Adam Smith's ideas have been narrowly interpreted. When people cite “the invisible hand” as justification for a free market they ignore the fact that the concept had one narrow part in a broader framework within The Wealth of Nations. And The Wealth of Nations itself was part of a broader framework of morality captured in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The edition linked here has an introduction by Amartya Sen, which is worth the purchase price alone. Another good essay on this topic is here. Reading these things made me realize that an overriding belief in a free market can be almost religious in nature. Many people want to believe that a free, unfettered market can lead to an optimal society, but like many religious fundamentalists, they're reading what they want to read in the foundational philosophies and texts. (To be clear, I believe that capitalism is a key element of a just society, but it must be tempered by other rules, regulations, and institutions.)
Probably Approximately Correct by Leslie Valiant. Leslie Valiant won the Turing Award—essentially the Nobel Prize of computing—in 2011 for his theory of probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, among other contributions. In this book, he applies PAC, a foundation of machine learning, to evolution, with an amazing observation. Valiant pointed out that, while it's clear Darwin's theory of evolution is essentially correct, there is a significant hole: no simulation of evolution demonstrates that we can arrive at the complexity of life we see today within the timeframe under which we know evolution to have worked for various species, humans in particular. This means that something more than random mutation and selection must be taking place, something like probably approximately correct learning. While he focuses on biology and evolution, Valiant points out that this model applies to any learning environment. I think this should apply equally well to companies and countries, or any system that adapts to an environment and then has to evolve as that environment changes. I think the best companies, like Amazon and Bridgewater, have essentially executed this algorithm.
The Language of the Night by Ursula Le Guin. Quite independently of Campbell, I began reading Ursula Le Guin's writings after her passing. Amazingly, I found her non-fiction writings to be about the same topic: mythology, symbols, and human nature. Three particularly beautiful essays are: “Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” “The Child and the Shadow,” and “Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction.”
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick. I really enjoyed this book for its ability to place our information revolution into the broad sweep of history, from the invention of writing to the invention of the printing press to the telegraph and so on. I think about something Marc Andreessen said—how, when he first got to Silicon Valley, he thought the exciting times were over, that all the good ideas had been taken. This is one of the books that makes it clear we're still very much at the start.
Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change by Edmund Phelps. This book (a good short essay by Phelps is here) combined economic and individual growth in a way that resonated strongly with me.
“Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations — also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations. It also brought flourishing to large and increasing numbers of people — mass flourishing. There were experiential benefits: Routine work, dull and lonely, gave way to careers that took twists and turns and jobs that were rewarding. There were also developmental benefits: As people used their imagination to create new things and their ingenuity to meet challenges, they found self-expression, self-realization and personal growth in the process.”Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen. Sen's basic idea is that there is a tendency to group people into single identities: Muslim, American, Chinese, Democrat, etc. This is a tactic used not only by fundamentalists to foment hatred but often used (with good intent but to ill effect) by many westerners and liberals as well. In reality, each of us is a collection of identities, and our ability to reason among them and reconcile them is key to a peaceful and beautiful society. For example, I am an: American, Muslim, Pakistani by heritage, Wash U alum, HBS alum, Bay Area technologist, Medallian, former BloomReacher, avid reader, squash player, male, father, husband, supporter of the Kurdish cause, liberal, Democrat, capitalist (with serious concerns about capitalism), fan of Noam Chomsky, etc. I can be all of these. Some elements of these identities may clash at times, but it's up to me to use reason to reconcile them. Sen takes issue, in particular, with Samuel Huntington's concept of “clash of civilizations,” arguing it is a very narrow way to group people. I wholeheartedly agree.
The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen. This book is a collection of fourteen beautiful essays about India. All are worth reading, but my favorite was “Tagore and his India,” which revealed fascinating insights in almost every paragraph. In particular, I enjoyed the stories about Tagore and Gandhi's different, often clashing, philosophies.
Zero to One by Peter Thiel. This book should be read periodically for its uniquely amazing ability to stimulate your thinking. Every chapter breaks some limit in your thinking. For example: What would it take to achieve your ten year plan—in six months? Also: What is something you believe that nearly no one agrees with you on? (The question highlights something else Thiel believes: it is very difficult and rare to find someone that really thinks for themselves.)
Deep Work by Cal Newport. Deep Work is a book that makes a very elegant argument: (i) we're living in a world where there are dramatic returns to concerted effort to create high quality creative work (writing, programming, analysis, etc.) and yet (ii) we live in a world of dramatically increased distraction from mobile devices, social media, email, etc. that prevents us from doing precisely that sort of work. Newport then lays out a plan for how to achieve great work in this distracted world.
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. This is an eye-opening, life-changing book. Clay Christensen, a strategy professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Innovator's Dilemma, applies strategic principles to the goal of living a good life.
The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler. I'm astounded by how much research and insight went into this book. Koestler lays out a framework for creativity, combining insights from humor, science, and the arts.
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Postman was often called a critic of technology for this and another book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. But I disagree. I felt he astutely drew attention to the negative and unintended consequences of technology. And in Amusing Ourselves to Death he outlines the effects of television. The book was written in 1985 and was based on an earlier talk he delivered at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Despite the book being a bit dated and focused on television, if you literally substituted “social media” for “television” in the book, the argument only strengthens. Postman’s fundamental argument is as follows: we all mistakenly focused on the dystopian future in George Orwell’s 1984, when in fact we should have been concerned with the dystopian future that actually emerged—that of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in which “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”
The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert Lustig. Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF, became famous for a video called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” in which he lays out the case for sugar’s central role in the obesity epidemic. The key mechanism he elucidates is how sugar “hacks” our bodies by hijacking dopamine receptors—our “pleasure” receptors. This book extends that argument to a number of other things that hack our brains in similar ways, not least social media. He draws a distinction between pleasure (“I want more of this”) and contentment (“this is all I need”). Dopamine is associated with pleasure; serotonin with contentment. Dopamine and serotonin operate very differently, not least in the number of receptors in the brain. Dopamine has five, serotonin has fourteen, which means dopamine is easier to manipulate. This is a powerful book about how our brains work, and how society’s “machine” has oriented itself to manipulate it. There are some solutions, but the book is most effective in describing the mechanism by which our brains and bodies work and how they are susceptible to large scale hacking.
The Nature of Technology: What it Is and How it Evolves by W. Brian Arthur. The central message of the book is that technology evolves. Arthur breaks down technology into an “inside view”—that all technology is made up components of technology. In other words, all technology is made up of technology. Therefore, all new technologies emerge from existing technologies. In turn, these new technologies become the foundation for future technologies. The mechanism is ultimately similar to Darwinian evolution. Though, in contrast to the key mechanisms of mutation and selection in Darwinian evolution, here the mechanism is combinatorial evolution—combinations of technology. The extensions of this idea, which Arthur lightly touches upon, are fascinating, too—e.g., the economy is technology and therefore evolves similarly; social technologies, such as corporations, the monetary system, etc., are also technologies and therefore behave similarly; etc.
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan