Book Summary: Tribe by Sebastian Junger
Humans are tribal creatures. Much of modern life makes us less social and tribal and therefore less happy. Outside threats such as wars tend to strengthen social bonds.
Author: To Summarise
Prosecutor’s Fallacy and Base Rate Fallacy
The prosecutor’s fallacy and base rate fallacy are related ideas that both involve conditional probabilities. The prosecutor’s fallacy mixes up the probability that someone matches, given their innocence, with the probability that someone is innocent, given a match. You don’t care about the first probability – you already know there is a match.
Book Summary: Calling Bullshit by Bergstrom and West
There is a lot of bullshit out there, probably more than you think. It takes a lot more work to refute bullshit than to create it. Bergstrom and West describe how to spot some of the most common ways to spot bullshit so you can call it out.
Book Summary: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
Steal Like An Artist is a short book that encourages you to just start creating. Don’t worry about whether your work is original (nothing is, anyway) or if it’s any good. You will learn more about who you are through creating and sharing your work.
Book Summary: Political Tribes by Amy Chua
The main thrust of Political Tribes is that group identities based on things like ethnicity, religion and skin color are very important but the US has often failed to recognise this in its foreign policy.
The Zettelkasten method
The Zettelkasten note-taking method involves taking lots of short notes containing only one idea. The notes can then be linked to other notes.
Book Summary: How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
Ahrens’ book is about the Zettelkasten note-taking method developed by Niklas Luhmann. A lot of time is spent explaining the benefits of this method.