gihan

• Rated 1 stars

“A huge disappointment.

This book touts itself as "an invaluable tool in the quest to better understand our world" and "a remarkable portrait of the twenty-first century". Hardly! It's so U.S.-centric that it's almost laughable. It may or may not help you understand something in the USA, but it's certainly not even CLOSE to helping anybody better understand the world.

Even the token "International" chapter at the end of the book features trivial trends (such as art appreciation in China), while ignoring far more significant world-wide trends in China, India and other important nations of the 21st century.

Ironically, in one section Penn and Zalesne take a dig at New Yorkers for not recognising anything outside their tiny little world. And then they go ahead and makes exactly the same mistake.”

gihan wrote this review Tuesday, November 27 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“A charming, fascinating and thought-provoking book, well ahead of its time (it was written in the late 19th century).

"Flatland" is a gentle satire of life in the Victorian era. But it's also a simple and beautiful metaphor for the possibility of a God in our universe.

Flatland is a two-dimensional universe, inhabited by Circles, Lines, Triangles and various other polygons, including our main character - the narrator - a Square.

In the book, the Square experiences a mysterious and miraculous visit from a strange creature, who turns out to be a Sphere from "Spaceland". The Sphere turns up as a circle in Flatland, but can seemingly perform miracles by changing size and disappearing at will. The Square is amazed at this God-like behaviour, until the Sphere gives him an experience of a universe outside his own. He then realises the truth, but of course is scorned and rejected by his fellow citizens when he tries to describe it to them.”

gihan wrote this review Friday, November 23 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“The test for breast cancer is extremely reliable. It correctly detects breast cancer in 90% of cases when the cancer does exist, and only mistakenly reports it in 9% of cases when the cancer doesn't exist. The incidence of breast cancer in women is 1 in 100. Suppose you (or, for men, a woman close to you) take a test for breast cancer, and unfortunately it returns a positive result (i.e. it detects the cancer). What is the probability that you do have breast cancer? Would you be surprised to know it's just 10%? Not 90%, 99% or some other high number?

Another example: DNA testing on a murder weapon matches your DNA, and a forensic expert says there's only a 1 in 100,000 chance of that happening. Are you doomed? Would you be surprised to know that in a city of, say, 2 million people, this means you're 95% likely to be NOT guilty, based on that DNA evidence alone?

Do these examples surprise and confuse you? If so, take heart: They surprise and confuse most people - laypeople and experts (doctors and lawyers) alike. Unfortunately, this can have disastrous - sometimes tragic - consequences in law, medicine and other fields.

This is the topic of Gerd Gigerenzer's excellent book about working with risk and uncertainty. Read it and you might be horrified at some of the horrible mistakes being made by experts giving advice. At least you'll be in a better position to question them and become better informed.

Is this the best book ever written about dealing with uncertainty? I'm not sure. But it's certainly well worth the read.”

gihan wrote this review Wednesday, November 21 2007. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“This is a wonderful book! It's an unexpected surprise to find a "personal development" book that's backed by solid science instead of feel-good platitudes.

Haidt examines a number of factors affecting happiness, and presents interesting - and sometimes confronting - ideas. For instance, there's some evidence that your average happiness is genetically determined, not solely the result of a "positive mental attitude". And he suggests Prozac as a solution for a certain condition - which flies in the face of motivational authors who insist that drug-free answers are the only "true" answers.

If you're interested in an in-depth - but still readable and inspirational - study of what makes you happier, this is it.”

gihan wrote this review Tuesday, November 13 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“A disappointment.

Dawkins spends most of the book criticizing religion rather than God. Fair enough - there's a lot to criticize, but that's not how the book is positioned.

I eagerly turned to Chapter 4, "Why there almost certainly is no God", but it's fairly shallow. That chapter would have been better titled, "Why Intelligent Design proponents are almost certainly morons". No argument there. But that's not the point.

Dawkins' biggest point against the existence of God seems to be the "Who designed the designer?" argument. In other words, a God who could have designed the Universe must be a highly evolved being, and that can only happen through evolution. So what? Belief in evolution isn't incompatible with belief in God.

In fact, it's easy to imagine a not-too-distant future where technology is powerful enough for us to design thinking, feeling, computer-generated characters who "live" in cyberspace. In their world, WE would be their God - with omniscience, omnipotence and supernatural powers. If that could be the case, why couldn't the same thing be true of a God who created us? I'm not saying this IS true, just that it COULD be true. And Dawkins doesn't address this question at all.

All that said, when Dawkins takes aim at religion - which, in fact, is the majority of the book - he makes some good points, albeit obvious points to anybody who takes more than half a nanosecond to think about them.

An interesting read if you're planning to debate religion with true believers, but a waste of time if you're curious about GOD.”

gihan wrote this review Sunday, September 9 2007. ( reply | view 4 replies | permalink )