Book-Summaries

Thinking In Bets is a book by professional poker player Annie Duke. Its a book about better decision making under uncertainty.

The book takes a nuanced take on the uncanny marriage of corporate America and the “woke” social justice movements. The author, Vivek, was born to an immigrant Indian family, studied at Harvard, worked on wall street, and started his own biotechnology company before writing this book.

Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives is a collection of 40 short stories, describing what could happen in our afterlives. Here are my key takeaways from the book.

The story of the rise and fall of the biggest foreign investor in Russia.

Another great read in the Incerto series by Taleb. The core idea is that certain systems benefit from uncertainty. And our goal should be to make all systems antifragile, so that, they can benefit from uncertainty.

Digital Minimalism is a philosophy of technology in which you focus your online time on a few carefully selected activities that support the things you value.

Why Nations Fail The book is a good read on why some nations are rich today while others are poor. While the book Breakout Nations provides useful information on the current situation in many countries, Why Nations Fail offers valuable historical lessons on critical aspects of economy and politics that have shaped countries around the world. The theme of this book includes: Inclusive vs. Extractive Economic and Political Institutions The Myth of Geography/Culture Path-dependence of the Past Centralization of Power Creative Destruction Critical Junctures Defending Prosperity

The book is aimed at anyone who has an idea to convey and is trying to ensure that what they are trying to communicate sticks with their audience. Proverbs and folklores survive while corporate marketing material does not.

Skin in the game Skin in the game creates a diversity of beliefs and ideas, for example, restaurant businesses. Lack of it creates a monoculture, for example, journalism. Skin in the game comes with a conflict of interest. For example, a shareholder is more inclined to say positive things about the company, whose shares he holds. Even then, skin in the game is preferable over no skin in the game. A lack of skin in the game, usually, produces a monoculture of beliefs. Bureaucrats, with no skin the game, usually make the problems worse by deciding things from the top. Beware of “good” advice where you will get both the good and the adverse outcomes of that advice while the advice-giver will only get a good result. Metrics puts one’s skin in the wrong game. For example, a doctor who has to optimize for a five-year survival rate of a cancer patient might go for radiation therapy as opposed to laser surgery even though radiation therapy has worse 20-year survival rates. Pilots have more skin in the game than surgeons. If a plane has a 98% chance of surviving a flight, then all pilots would have been dead for now, while medical science can operate with a much lower survival rate since skin in the game is primarily of the patients and much lower of surgeons. An academic experiment where one is supposed to wager a bet and hypothetically believe in a specific scenario is devoid of real risk and hence devoid of skin in the game. Academia, when left unchecked, for the lack of skin in the game, evolves into a ritualistic self-referential publishing game.

The book presents an interesting viewpoint on the meaning of life, questioning traditional self-help gurus, consumerism, and over-obsession with positive thinking.