An enjoyable blend of biography, literary criticism, literary influence, and travelogue. I downloaded the sample after seeing it recommended by the AmAn enjoyable blend of biography, literary criticism, literary influence, and travelogue. I downloaded the sample after seeing it recommended by the Amazon algorithm, enjoyed it, and so read all of it.
Kafka is so impossible to place geographically, linguistically, ethnically. Is he Czech? Austro-Hungarian? German writer? Jewish? He was all of these and none of these. To learn more about him Karolina Watroba travels around to all of these places and more--including Oxford where many of his papers are and Korea. We learn a little more about Kafka's person, writing and impact in each of these places. She has a deeper discussion of a few of his works (Metamorphosis, The Judgment, The Trial) and also some discussion of a lot of works influenced by Kafka.
Most of all Watroba's relatively light and enthusiastic and curious tone shows through from beginning to end, making the book particularly enjoyable....more
I like to read books by my friends. But Cass writes more quickly than I can read. I confess that I only read this one out of guilt because he handed mI like to read books by my friends. But Cass writes more quickly than I can read. I confess that I only read this one out of guilt because he handed me a copy that he had just purchased for me at full price in a bookstore. But I'm really glad I did.
In lieu of a review I'm pasting the email I sent to Cass after reading it (with a few names of friends and former classmates redacted to XX's, sorry you won't know the other great actors in Harvard's Class of 1992):
---- From: Jason Furman To: Cass Sunstein Subject: A few comments on your book Date: June 13, 2024 9:41am
1. It is outstanding. A lovely combination of social science, speculative thinking, literary appreciation, and being inside your strange mind.
2. In the paperback you should fix the only error in the book: deleting the words “still is” after talking about the importance of Scientific American. At least on gender issues it is deeply unscientific and an embarrassment.
3. You are reasonably objective about the Yesterday thought experiment, even managing to be objective about the role of chance in such world historical geniuses as The Beatles and Bob Dylan. But I found you lost all objectivity and reason in discussing Star Wars which came across as something that surpassed and transcended all contingency to be pure, unadulterated timeless fame.
4. You don’t appear to read enough foreign language fiction, just about the only foreign reference was to Tolstoy and you didn’t provide any evidence that you read past the first sentence of Anna Karenina. In my book about how to become famous there will be an entire chapter on Cervantes and the only element of luck will be that the bullet that hit him in the Battle of Lepanto missed his head/heart by a foot. Other than that his fame was inevitable and based on the fact that Don Quixote is even better than Star Wars. I would also have Pushkin, Gogol and Kafka. And more Dickens, but I was glad to see the enthusiasm for Great Expectations even if it is not as good as Bleak House.
5. I often do the “run history 100 times” thought experiment with various things. Like Obama’s effort to pass an immigration bill (it passed in 25 of the times), XX being successful (80 of the times, part of the evidence is the “independent draws” of his success in different context that were not just the Matthew Principle), or fame.
6. I’ve had this idea, possibly infeasible, that we might be able to get at some of the issues about “objectivity” vs. information cascade/polarization/chance with LLMs. The idea would be to train a model only on data through, say, 1860. And then give it all the books published in 1861 without telling it the authors and ask it to rank them. Would Great Expectations be first? If you’re worried that it already formed its views about what greatness was based on earlier Dickens novels and their reception then cut the training off in 1836.
7. I wish you had more on scientific genius and fame. You mostly deal with “subjective” greatness but there is something objective about how much more Newton got new and right than anyone else in his time. The big issue raised by scientific fame (and possibly is related to artistic fame, although a bit less obvious), is the issue of “inevitability’ and “simultaneous discovery”. If there was no Newton we would have had calculus (in fact was simultaneously discovered), would we have had everything else and in short order? Darwin is enormously famous but mostly because he accelerated publication and wrote a bit better, we would have basically had the same theory even without him. Most of quantum mechanics seems like simultaneous discovery where if this person didn’t do it then would that person. Is Einstein different? Special relativity comes straight out of Michelson-Morley, the Lorenz Transformations, etc., hard to believe it wouldn’t have been found soon after 1905. But general relativity? Is it possible that absent Einstein we still would not have it? I’ve had the same fantasy about the LLM experiment, but might need better AI, but train it on data through 1910 and see if it figures out general relativity.
8. Next time we’re together I have to tell you about my family’s friendship with the Dylan family when I was young. It is related to fame.
9. The example I use with people on fame, chance, hard work and ability is my freshman year roommate (and still friend) Matt Damon. Matt was one of the 4 best actors in my class (along with XX, XX and XX), I’m reasonably confident in the objectiveness of that assessment, ability to do different voices, characters, etc. He was one of the 2 most focused on being a movie star in my class (our first conversation was about how he would be a movie star), tied with XX. So relative to Harvard he was a 1 in 800 talent. Harvard recruits based on exceptional talent so I’m willing to stipulate, guessing here, he was a 1 in 4,000 talent for people born in 1970. But that means there were 1,000 people who were just as good at acting born in that year and luck was the reason he did better than the other 1,000 of them (including Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Rachel Weisz).
10. I’ve always meant to read Joyce Carol Oates. But I’m a bit of a completist which would be rather dangerous in her case (or yours for that matter).
11. I enjoyed the Houdini chapter but wasn’t sure I understood the point of it.
What’s your address, I want to reciprocate by sending you a great novel about how to become famous—and reversals of fame. [NOTE - Cass will be getting a copy of [book:The Fraud|66086834] which, in part, illustrates some of the reversals in fame that he discusses in the book--with William Harrison Ainsworth getting massively eclipsed by Charles Dickens over time, a reversal from their contemporaneous positions.]...more
An enjoyable read which has a little about how generative AI works, a little about some of the bigger questions like existential risk and superalignmeAn enjoyable read which has a little about how generative AI works, a little about some of the bigger questions like existential risk and superalignment, and a lot about the practical mentality you should adopt in working with AI. The title gives the broad approach, it is about how humans can work with generative AI to strengthen and extend what they do. It centers around four rules: (1) use AI to help with everything; (2) be the human in the loop; (3) think of AI as a person (even if it is not); and (4) understand today's AI will be surpassed.
Would also add that it is delightfully written including several passages by AIs--which are called out as such and used for pedagogic purposes....more
It's complicated and highly interconnected. That is the biggest takeaway from this engaging, well done and highly scholarly informed graphic novel aboIt's complicated and highly interconnected. That is the biggest takeaway from this engaging, well done and highly scholarly informed graphic novel about the set of events involved in the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, which eliminated the civilizations of the Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians (although they re-emerged centuries later), and others.
I started reading the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline but it was too scholarly for me (sorry!), with way too many names of people, cities, civilizations, and also academic controversies for me to follow it very well or feel engaged. So I put it aside. Then my daughter, not knowing any of this, pointed out this graphic novel version of it in the bookstore and I was excited to buy it. It too is quite complicated with lots of people, cities, civilizations but the pictures are really good and engaging and the story is slimmed down and shorter than the original scholarly book. So I ended up liking it a lot.
(I confess that although this graphic novel version looks like it was written for me I'm not sure who else would read it, most "serious" adults would not want to be caught reading a comic book and most younger people would be put off by the complexity of even this version. But hopefully there are others like me out there and that is why we have this book and hopefully will have many more like it.)
Back to substance, the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations was extraordinary. Flourishing societies with urban areas, writing, rulers, advanced agriculture disappeared around the same time in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the centuries that followed writing disappeared in Greece, for example, and people were left with legends of a previous advanced society in the form of epics like The Iliad.
Eric Cline argues that to understand this we need to appreciate how interconnected the societies of the time were by trade, migration and intermarriage. The one mega event that looms large is a huge drought lasting 200 years that has only recently been conclusively (?) established by scientific studies of things like ancient sediment. But this interacted in Cline's interpretation with migrations of people (the "Sea People" loom large in this), possibly some earthquakes, illegitimacy or rulers and other factors.
Eric Cline has now written another book After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations that I'm planning to read--hoping that this background and the greater familiarity of the Iron Age make it more enjoyable and easy to follow. But if I have to set that one aside too I'm very much hoping that Cline once again teams up with Glynnis Fawkes on another excellent graphic adaptation of a scholarly work.
An excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that aAn excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that appeared to my unskilled eyes as deeply and originally researched, largely from primary sources. It is a cradle-to-grave biography (with a brief epilogue about how Herzl is remembered and misremembered to this day), and a substantial fraction of it takes place before Herzl comes to Zionism, but that part is interesting too as a portrait of late 19th century Jewish life in Europe among upper class intellectuals. The story really gets going as Herzl starts going through different ways of thinking about a national homeland for the Jews and rediscovers his own Judaism. The substance, process and charisma and also confusion they are bound up with are all on full display. Penslar is balanced and trying to tell the Herzl story from his time not re-reading in ways to fit it into our current debates. Overall, highly recommended--and would love to read more in the Jewish short lives series....more
This comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in WesThis comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, have shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party over the last seventy years, with most of the shift concentrated in the last two decades. Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol tell a rich and nuanced story while bringing lots of new data to the fore, including systematic cataloging of changes in union newsletters/newspapers over time, tallies of bumper stickers in a Steelworkers parking lot, extensive interviews, as well as synthesizing other scholarship.
Their argument in part rests on the familiar story of deindustrialization and the effects it had on employment and communities. The novel twist, which they develop and emphasize, is that this ended up shifting unions from being at the center of a rich social network that fostered social events and ties to unions being simply about collective bargaining. For example, when everyone lived in one town the local could organize bbqs, sporting events and the like--but with sparser employment people started commuting much longer distances to their jobs and were less likely to have social ties to co-workers or through the union. This vacuum ended up being filled by other associations, like the National Rifle Association, that often connected people to the Republican Party, particularly the ascendant populist strain under Trump.
Some of their argument is bolstered by an interesting contrast between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). People in the building trades move from job to job so the union plays an important role in allocating the jobs but also is more active in fostering ties because of what would otherwise be a very lonely way to operate.
A lot of social scientists are content with just documenting and explain but Newman and Skocpol seek to provide advice to labor leaders (who still support Democrats) about how to bring their rank and file along, most notably through trying to resuscitate some of the richer social ties. They also have a plea to Democrats not to give up on this group and instead more actively court and engage it.
Overall, this was a really enjoyable and enlightening read that brought a lot of new data into the world. Ultimately, however, it documents a series of associations and sequences of events so cannot settle questions of causation. The atomization of workers is a consequence of deindustrialization but is it itself a cause of shifting party affiliations? Or is the deindustrialization also the cause of that? And the advice to union leaders is worth a try but there are, as they document, very good reasons unions no longer serve the social functions they used to and so it may be fruitless to try to bring that back....more
An excellent short book about how George Eliot came to write Daniel Deronda, the broader philosophical and intellectual questions the book was engagedAn excellent short book about how George Eliot came to write Daniel Deronda, the broader philosophical and intellectual questions the book was engaged in, and some about its afterlife. It vividly portrays just how intellectually engaged George Eliot was, situating her novel in a broader set of political philosophical debates about the meaning of citizenship, nationality, rationality, and religion.
The book is well organized in six parts that cover: (1) the debates over the "Jewish question" in France, Germany and the UK--the big question being whether Jews could be citizens of countries, especially ones like England that were based on an official state religion, (2) George Eliot's initiation into this question, including through some of the work she did as a translator engaging with important texts that debated it, (3) a summary of Daniel Deronda, focusing on the ways it was in philosophical dialogue about this issue, (4) a discussion of an essay she wrote after Daniel Deronda expanding on the Jewish themes, and (5) a discussion of the changing reception to Daniel Deronda, from skepticism about the Jewish parts, to her falling out favor, to her regaining stature.
I learned both some interesting intellectual history and gained even greater appreciation for George Eliot....more
It is tempting to say that American Default is shockingly readable for a book written by an economist. But it is probably more fair to say that it is It is tempting to say that American Default is shockingly readable for a book written by an economist. But it is probably more fair to say that it is shockingly readable period. It is a history of the banking crisis around the onset of the Great Depression, the role that devaluing gold played in reversing deflation and reducing the value of debts, and the subsequent legal battle over the abrogation of “gold clauses” in those same debt contracts. It reads like a history but also has a substantial legal element while having insightful and always accurate economics woven throughout.
Sebastian Edwards is an excellent international macroeconomist who has spent most of his career writing about emerging markets, particularly economic disasters in Latin America. Which makes him well prepared to take on the United States’ emerging-market like crisis, the Great Depression.
The story starts with a cascading series of bank failures, the efforts of the outgoing Hoover to address them, and how Roosevelt and his incoming team reacted.
At the same time he traces the attitudes towards the gold standard and macroeconomic policy from a sleeper issue into Congress basically forcing the President’s hand to reinflate, which ultimately required revaluing gold at a higher value per dollar--a step that followed the UK. It is fascinating to read about how much Roosevelt was focused on and even targeting particular commodity prices and how quickly they all moved in proportion to the price of gold—just like the quantity theory of money would say. It is also fascinating to read about how the U.S. dollar behaved vis-a-vis the British pound (which was off the gold standard) and the French franc (which was still on it).
A big part of the economic boost caused by the devaluation was due to reducing the real value of debts, basically borrowers could repay them in cheaper money (or, equivalently, had to sell less cotton or whatever to get the dollars to pay them). But this was the rub: debt contracts had a “gold clause” that they were payable in dollars or gold, much for the same reason that emerging markets borrow in dollars—because it increases the certainty and security of lenders thus enabling borrowers to borrow for longer periods at lower interest rates.
The creditors sued and the case ended up in court litigating government bonds, private borrowing, and other aspects as well. Edwards tells an interesting legal drama of whether the Supreme Court would uphold the gold clause, which would have required debtors to repay about 67 percent more dollars—potentially causing an economic calamity. (In fact, an interesting part of the history is government officials debating whether or not to scare markets so they would go down while the Supreme Court was deliberating in an attempt to scare the Court into ruling against the gold clauses. Another interesting part, which I found personally resonant, was all the discussion of contingency planning for all of the possible outcomes of the case.)
Ultimately the Supreme Court ruled that the government had broken the law by retroactively breaking the gold clauses but that there were no damages because the inflation simply reversed the previous inflation so creditors ended up getting what they would have expected, in real terms, when they first made the loans.
Edwards is not completely convincing when he tries to defend the Roosevelt decision and court upholding it as a one-time necessity for the sake of the economy while simultaneously condemning Argentina for taking similar types of actions (in its case dollar clauses instead of gold clauses). There are more parallels than he admits. He is also not completely convincing in his attempt to make the case relevant to issues today. But ultimately this does not matter, what does is just how interesting this book is—and how much I learned about an aspect of going off the gold standard that I had never known about before....more
There are lots and lots of opinions on policy towards and governance of AI. A lot of those opinions are based on recycling the same sets of arguments There are lots and lots of opinions on policy towards and governance of AI. A lot of those opinions are based on recycling the same sets of arguments or facts. Some of those opinions are that others should not have opinions on these matters. Now enter Verity Harding, who has worked in government, industry, and at universities, with a book that is truly additive by bringing new ideas and insights to bear into what is already starting to feel like an old debate. It is also a really fun and stimulating read.
The bulk of Harding’s book is a history of the governance, mostly by government, of three postwar technologies: space exploration, IVF and human embryonic research, and the internet. Each of these are interesting in their own right, filled with lively characters, big stakes, and something that is much harder ex post—a sense of the many different, and worse, possibilities and paths that were not taken because of the choices that were made.
What emerges is a subtle interplay of contingency, individual government actions, the importance of ethics as a North Star and motivation, diplomacy (in some cases), and also the participation, and in some cases, centrality of businesses. The result was a treaty that space should be disarmed, a broad societal consensus in the UK on embryonic research, and the extraordinary rise of the internet as a global system that is not controlled by any one country or corporations (in part because of wise choices made in the United States).
Harding links each of these histories to their relevance but also limitations for thinking about AI. The individual histories are bracketed by a discussion of the rise of digital platforms in the Bay Area, Harding’s thrill and disappointment with them, and then a discussion of what lessons we should take from all of it.
Harding’s commitment is not to a specific policy but instead to a process that respects the importance of government but also the essential role of business, the need for ethics on the part of both players, and a passionate belief that “you” have a role to play as well....more
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