| Fooled by Randomness
| This is a fascinating books that protrays that where we are in life, is just one playing out of randomn
outcomes, and we shouldn't be so smug, since this is most likely due to random affects, not any skill on our part.
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| The Open Society and its Enemies, by Karl Popper
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An utterly fascinating book. Karl Popper is intriguing, as he professes that in science, there are
two types of theorems, those that have been disproved, and those that haven't been disproved yet. After seeing a few
hundred white swans, you might be tempted to say "All swans are white", but it only takes one black swan to destroy
that proposition. This book is a long discussion about Plato. Plato, we are given to understand has predated Hegel,
and has his own vision of the progression of society. He feels it is all downhill, and goes from the ideal to
- Timocracy
- Oligarchy
- Democracy
- tyranny
Never knew Plato was such a pessimist
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The Triumph of the West
| After reading Outliers, I wondered why if the East requires such discipline in rice farming, and the
west adopted a feudal system, where the peasants were at ease in the long winter months, how on earth did the west
eventually dominate the planet. Maybe we just had better weapons.
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