Yates’ tour of the predictions business covers much interesting ground, which he tills with an entertaining sense of humor.
From tarot cards to forecasts of Armageddon, a mathematician examines the psychology of predictions, debunking myths and setting an agenda for clear thinking.
It’s human nature to want to know what is going to happen in the future. However, writes Yates, author of The Math of Life and Death, doing so with a useful degree of probability is extremely difficult—or even impossible. The author pleasantly explains the tricks used by psychics and charlatans, which usually involve telling paying customers what they want to hear. He tracks numerous apocalyptic predictions and the reasons given by the forecasters for their obvious failure. There is also a tendency of people to see patterns in events and data that don’t exist. Random distribution can throw up apparent causations and connections, but they are really no more than background noise. Humans think in linear terms, assuming that the future will be like the present and therefore precise extrapolations are possible. Not so, says Yates. There are too many variables to consider. True, linearity is needed for everyday existence, but when it comes to making predictions, it is more hindrance than help. The author examines the different types of delusional thinking and outlines the mathematics of probability, and he devotes a useful chapter to chaos theory. The only field with a scientific basis seems to be short-term weather forecasting, although even there, things can go disastrously wrong. Math-based models can be important tools, with the proviso that the output is only as reliable as the input. In the end, there is no perfect prediction method. The best we can do is think broadly, be prepared to change our minds in light of new evidence, and understand our own biases.
Yates’ tour of the predictions business covers much interesting ground, which he tills with an entertaining sense of humor.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781541604933
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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