Pop Sci and Business Books

[unJon]

We used to have a thread on this but my searchfu is turning up nothing. Thought I'd start agains to see if anyone has any recs.

I just finished Michael Lewis's new book Flash Boys. It's classic Lewis form. Informative and entertaining. If you like popular business books definitely pick it up. It's about Wall Street greed,etc., this time High Frequency Trading. I learned a lot of crazy stuff.

[Borque]

One great pop sci book is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. About evolutionary theory and how and why it works. This is from before he turned into an atheist preacher, so it is actually focused on science and not the absence of God.

Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Deals with various aspects of uncertainty and risk. Very good and thought-provoking, despite that the author at times comes across as both pompous and arrogant. Ties nicely into Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, which is more polished and a very good read on our cognitive biases.

If you are interested in personal investing, Winning the Losers' Game by Charles Ellis, and A Random Walk down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel are classics and required reading.

[sologdin]

popular business is an odd expression. is there some kind of more rigorous writing against which it is contrasted--such as the distinction between popular science and real science, popular history and real history, &c.?

[Happy Ent]

One great pop sci book is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. About evolutionary theory and how and why it works. This is from before he turned into an atheist preacher, so it is actually focused on science and not the absence of God.

He still writes lots of books about science. The Ancestor’s Tale is another splendid work from Dawkins. I wish I could write like him.

[Sci-2]

I'm enjoying or have recently enjoyed the following:

The Future of Mind by Kaku

Mind and Cosmos by Nagel, even if the critics seem to have made good points against it

Stuart Kauffman's collected NPR posts on quantum physics, philosophy, and biology

[Sci-2]

One great pop sci book is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. About evolutionary theory and how and why it works. This is from before he turned into an atheist preacher, so it is actually focused on science and not the absence of God.

You might be interested in this critique of the selfish gene concept.

This raises a question: if merely reading a genome differently can change organisms so wildly, why bother rewriting the genome to evolve? How vital, really, are actual changes in the genetic code? Do we always need DNA changes to adapt to new environments? Are there other ways to get the job done? Is the importance of the gene as the driver of evolution being overplayed?

You’ve probably noticed that these questions are not gracing the cover of Time or haunting Oprah, Letterman, or even TED talks. Yet for more than two decades they have been stirring a heated argument among geneticists and other evolutionary theorists. As evidence of the power of rapid gene expression and other complex genomic dynamics mounts, these questions might (or might not, for pesky reasons we’ll get to) begin to change not only mainstream evolutionary theory but our more everyday understanding of evolution.

[Borque]

You might be interested in this critique of the selfish gene concept.

Yeah, that's definitely very interesting. Thanks for posting it. However, I don't read it as a general critique, more like an improvement and expansion on the theory. Genes are still as selfish as they can be, basic mechanisms of selection are largely the same, but this certainly complicates things a bit and improves our understanding of evolution.

[Sci-2]

Yeah, that's definitely very interesting. Thanks for posting it. However, I don't read it as a general critique, more like an improvement and expansion on the theory. Genes are still as selfish as they can be, basic mechanisms of selection are largely the same, but this certainly complicates things a bit and improves our understanding of evolution.

Ah, that's probably a better way of looking at it.

I'm also going to note that NPR has some interesting dialogue about Nagel's inflammatory Mind & Cosmos.

[Zoë Sumra]

Favourites include Life; An Unauthorised Biography, Schrodinger's Kittens, and Too Big To Fail. The latter I refused to stop reading at several points during my honeymoon. My reading has fiction and non-fiction phases: in a non-fiction phase I'm glued to a string of popular science books, climbing books, and rereads of Too Big to Fail. The best title among my collection is possibly When Life Nearly Died, which is a pretty good book.

[SilentRoamer]

I'm enjoying or have recently enjoyed the following:

The Future of Mind by Kaku

Mind and Cosmos by Nagel, even if the critics seem to have made good points against it

Stuart Kauffman's collected NPR posts on quantum physics, philosophy, and biology

I like Michao Kaku but sometimes he comes across as a total crackpot. The TV shows he has been in are the worst. Wildly speculative without affirmation to the viewer. Leads a lot of people into incorrect assumptions. I have found this mostly with his Cosmology work.

Its a shame because the guy is seriously smart and some of his papers were good scientific texts

I think this is one of the drawbacks of Pop-Sci, they sometimes become more Pop than Sci. Brian Cox is terrible for this. He stated on Jonathan Ross a loose interpretation of the many Worlds theory and not once did he disclaim it as speculative. Which IMO he has a moral duty to do so.

Rant not aimed at you Sci! Love your inputs on the Bakker threads btw, always enlightening.

[Sci-2]

I like Michao Kaku but sometimes he comes across as a total crackpot. The TV shows he has been in are the worst. Wildly speculative without affirmation to the viewer. Leads a lot of people into incorrect assumptions. I have found this mostly with his Cosmology work.

Its a shame because the guy is seriously smart and some of his papers were good scientific texts

I think this is one of the drawbacks of Pop-Sci, they sometimes become more Pop than Sci. Brian Cox is terrible for this. He stated on Jonathan Ross a loose interpretation of the many Worlds theory and not once did he disclaim it as speculative. Which IMO he has a moral duty to do so.

Rant not aimed at you Sci! Love your inputs on the Bakker threads btw, always enlightening.

Thanks! Just seeing this now, but I didn't take it personally. I like Kaku for his interesting speculations, but rest assured I'm not convinced we'll be able to transport our consciousness across the solar system via laser beams.

One of our board physicists, IheartTesla, actually offers his criticism of MWI here.

[Sci-2]

An interesting defense of Nagel's Mind & Cosmos by Feser, stretched across several blog posts.

If nothing else, it gives a healthy respect toward a thinker very different than the ones we usually come across in these parts.

[Night's_King]

Everything by Stephen Hawking.

The elegant universe by Brian Greene.

Everything by Richard Feynman.

And the best of them all: Fermats Enigma by Simon Singh.

[Wilbur]

If you enjoyed Michael Lewis' books or A Random Walk Down Wall Street, I recommend the best book about Silicon Valley to you entitled Accidental Empires by Robert Cringely as well as Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning...Was The Command Line. Both are excellent stories written with humor and insight.

Accidental Empires tells the story of how the Silicon Valley inventors and investors created the semiconductor and PC revolution accidentally, as the title suggests. Cringely is a Valley insider of the same generation as John Parker, but with a knack for storytelling and an acidic tone and black sense of humor. I have met several of the people described in the book during my career and can attest to the accuracy of his descriptions of their quirky personalities. His commentary site is http://www.cringely.com/ if you want to follow his thoughts on a contemporary basis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Empires

Two different TV shows and a movie were eventually based on Accidental Empires.

Another excellent look at the even more specific world of the creation of operating systems is In The Beginning...Was That Command Line by Neal Stephenson. This is another very funny book that also teaches the differences between the different flavors and options of OS's that were vying for market share before Windows won the crown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line

This was a book that I required new staff coming into my department to read just because it is so educational in terms of understanding the history of computing development.

[Spring Bass]

He still writes lots of books about science. The Ancestor’s Tale is another splendid work from Dawkins. I wish I could write like him.

I'd recommend The Greatest Show on Earth as well. It does touch on his work against creationism, but it's done really well and it's a good, more recent book on evolution. It's much better than The God Delusion, which is . . . okay, but suffers from the fact that he's not really operating on his home territory here like he is when he talks about evolution. If I want to read something about Early Christianity, the origins of religion, or philosophy, there are good popular writers out there who specialize in those.

[Night's_King]

I'd recommend The Greatest Show on Earth as well. It does touch on his work against creationism, but it's done really well and it's a good, more recent book on evolution. It's much better than The God Delusion, which is . . . okay, but suffers from the fact that he's not really operating on his home territory here like he is when he talks about evolution. If I want to read something about Early Christianity, the origins of religion, or philosophy, there are good popular writers out there who specialize in those.

The God Delusion isn't even okay. It is just bad.

[Wilbur]

Another interesting book that seeks to answer the question of whether the patent system is now stifling or enhancing American innovation is The Patent Wars by Fred Warshofsky. Subtitled "The Battle to Own the World's Technology", It is a readily accessible book even to those who are outside of the legal profession or the semiconductor industry.

Conor Cunneen wrote a very charming book on corporate strategy called Why Ireland Never Invaded America that you might enjoy. Inside the covers FInbarr and Jake discuss various issues in a Pat-and-Mike fashion to illustrate important points.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene is the cult classic of anecdotal descriptions of how to succeed in power, politics and business. Each chapter features a story from a different historical character to illustrate the particular "Law" of power. Contradictory? Controversial? Yes. Supported by actual research? No. A fun book to read? Yes.

Two engaging books on how management can screw up a business are In Search of Stupidity by Merrill R. Chapman and Management Mess-Ups by Mark Eppler. Enjoy a little schadenfreude as you peruse the downfall of well-known firms and leaders.

And of course, there are so many good books that showed the moral bankruptcy and pointed at the signs of the coming 2007-2009 failure of the banksters, private equity firms, sovereign funds, white-shoe Wall Streeters, and the rest of that oily ilk. Siphoning off the profits of American companies, besmirching the reputation of capitalism, strangling economically productive businesses to ensure another big year-end bonus, thinking up means to use high-speed networks to front-run the market, inventing re-hypothecation and ensuring that it cannot be prosecuted, they have done it all. A list of these books would include some of the following that I can see on my own bookshelf as I write this.

- Infectious Greed by Frank Portnoy

- Inside Arthur Andersen by Squires, Smith, McDougall and Yeack

- Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart

- The Big Eight by Mark Stevens

- The Vandals' Crown by Gregory Millman

- Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

- Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald

- Free to Trade by Michael Ridpath

- Sudden Death by Mark Stevens

- The Smartest Guys in the Room by McLean and Elkind