pro libertate net

While Ayre’s Super Cruncher invited to find patterns in seemingly random data (and running controlled experiments to assess differences in treatments, e.g. maximizing sales revenue by the “right” choice of book title) Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk is more a warning of seeing patterns in seemingly non-random data.

Life is full of randomness and Mlodinow’s little book raises some awareness to the random factor in our lives. He gives a nice historical account of the concept of randomness in mathematics and other sciences as the disciplinary borders were once not as distinct as they are now. This reminded me a bit of Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods. Though Mlodinow’s work is considerably shorter and more focused owing to the more directed topic of his book. My recollection may be wrong, yet I believe his work is also more sanguine.

In short, he did a very good job. The Drunkard’s Walk is entertaining, balanced and instructive and covers considerably more than just the economic side of randomness: the chance element in our lives, luck and misfortune, the misperception of probabilities and causality, and psychological biases. Finally, he also cautions all those who rely a little too much on their statistics…

After having read Ian Ayres’ Super Crunchers I feel more like listing what the book is not than what it is.

It is not about Super Crunchers. The title was chosen just for its appeal. Ayres explains that he experimented (using google ads) a little with different titles to find out what wold generate the most interest and consequently sales. Super Crunching is about data mining in huge data sets, Super Crunchers is more about raising the general awareness of the impact statistics can and should have on everyday decisions.

The book is not about the people that do the number crunching, it rather is a collection of anecdotal stories that point to the increasing possibilities data nowadays offer the decision maker.

Nor is the book a homage to statistical methods and theoretical research in statistics and econometrics. In his stories, Ayres sticks to the most simple statistics or jumps to something very far removed, neural networks. He presents some applications, some are first-hand (and never using huge data sets) others are only third-hand re-iterations. He adds a lot of personal details, politics and own business ventures. This makes the book kind of diverting to read. Yet I do not feel these diversions add to the supposed topic of Super Crunchers.

And finally, even though Ayres adds a little cautious note after a lot of praise what can be done with data and how we all surely will benefit from losing our informational self-determination, our privacy to the data mining industry and government, he falls short of any standard a lawyer should adhere to when it comes to privacy issues.

Having said all that, do not get me wrong: I enjoyed reading the book. Only afterwards I noticed all its different short-comings.

It is curious how one little detail can spoil a whole story. If it was not for this one little detail Cussler’s Valhalla Rising would be a really good and entertaining novel. It still is, of course. I liked the references to Jules Verne. I kind of liked the ending when the hero finally gets to know his offspring. A family moment that, in the end, will keep the series going on even when Pitt, sen. retires.

Yet, I really hate that science fiction crossover. Dirk Pitt novels are about adventure, a little mystery, bringing down the villain, marine science, and the invincible womanizing hero himself. Though often the plot, some elements of the plot, are quite a stretch everything stays within what is currently (almost) possible. The odds of some of the events may be astronomical, the technology is state of the art — not something far beyond current technology. But please, teleportation? This really spoils everything. Especially, if the technology is used for one thing and subsequent explanations for why teleporting living beings is not possible are totally bogus given the explanation for what is done with the non-animate matter. Cussler, stick to your last.

Free riding — to an economist — is a rather opportunistic and consequentially rational behavior humans show in situations where they can reap private benefits from not participating in an action while still enjoying the public benefits of other’s participation. If, of course, everyone wants to enjoy the private benefits and nobody contributes there are no public benefits, and in the end, if everyone just behaves opportunistically, they may be worse off than if everyone, or at least a substantial number of people, contributed.

Richard Tuck poses the question whether this can indeed be rational behavior — again, to an economist, rational behavior is just behavior that is logically consistent with a person’s preferences that, in turn, need to conform to only a few innocuous axioms. (Ok, I am understating.) He argues that if an action is in some way efficacious and therefore causal for the ultimate result, it has to be rational to perform the action. He presents a rather long winded argument about negligibility that in my opinion ultimately does not necessarily support his conclusions. And it seems, this is not just my opinion…

In brief, I do not agree with Tuck. At all. And this is not because I just do not like some of his implications. Still, his book is a rather nice historical account of the notion of rationality of cooperation in public good and competitive scenarios in philosophy, political science and economics.

In contrast to the other mystery novel I read recently, most of Tom Harper’s The Book of Secrets does feel ‘right’. It is well paced. The motivation for the protagonists actions is clear and credible. The interleaving of the two time lines slowly builds a momentum that lead to the novel being a real page turner. Since to story focuses on one person in each time line these protagonists are rather well portrayed, they just have the right amount of depth; the minor characters are, however, a little under-developed.

Since the protagonist of the present time line is not an “expert” on the central elements of the past time line — in fact, he is rather ignorant about almost everything except his profession, hobbies ans social network — there are, fortunately, only a few pseudo-scientific-accurate references and explanations about what is / was going on. A circumstance that lends the story more credibility — paradoxically.

Another noteworthy difference to many other history-mystery novels that contain references to religion and the catholic church: there is no holy grail, no artifact designed to bring down the church.

In a nutshell, I enjoyed this novel. It is certainly one of the better fiction books published in 2009.

While Michael Tomasello cannot give an ultimate answer to the question on why we cooperate his book is an interesting contribution to the ongoing discussion. And thus his book’s form is also more styled as an discussion. In the first part he presents his own research on primates and young human children and his own conclusions. In the second part some additional prominent scientists from the fields of developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy are allowed to respond with their opposing views on his interpretations based on their own research.

It is clear that the different authors do not agree on the details but there seems to be some overlap. All in all it is a nice cooperative effort. By allowing opposing views to be voiced the whole endeavor becomes more balanced and the reader gains a more comprehensive picture of the research on human cooperative behavior.

Though I was already more or less aware of the various approaches there was something I did not consciously know so far. Tomasello distinguishes three domains of altruism: goods, services, and information that translate to the actions sharing, helping, and informing. As Tomasello points out, these domains entail different costs and benefits. Therefore I am inclined to adopt this categorization for my own research.