Fiction · history

Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears

Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

What a brilliant novel. I will keep this short but suffice it to say, one of the best books I have read in many years, beautifully constructed.

The story is historical fiction centred on a fictional industrialist pre World War One, built around a spy/murder who-dun-it plot. What makes it brilliant is the construction where the book is really made up of three novels, each building on the same story but being told from completely different perspectives, each entertaining in its own right, and each giving a glimpse of more and more of the truth until everything is masterfully brought together in the very last chapter.

The descriptions of finance are fun and insightful, giving an insight into how important commerce and finance is in world events including countries going to war.

I also enjoyed the historical context, I knew little of the political history pre world war 1 with the rise of Bismarck and Germany and this was fascinating reading.

Thoroughly recommend reading for anyone who enjoys history, has a little background in finance or would like to learn more of that, and enjoys a spy type novel.

Fiction

Little, Big by John Crowley

Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

This will be a short review of this Fantasy Novel recommended by a podcast, I took it up for holiday reading. It was a hard slog for me, 538 pages of very dense ornate prose, with a slow moving story. Sort of “Midnight in the garden of good and evil” set just outside of New York City crossed with a fairy fantasy world story. On the plus side I would say if you enjoy books for their writing for the style and intricate descriptions, it’s worth a read. If you are after a little light holiday reading, as I was, it won’t fit the brief.

Health · Learning

Why we sleep by Matthew Walker

Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

This book was recommended by so many podcasts and work colleagues and I finally got around to reading it. It’s an excellent read I would thoroughly recommend it as one of the most potentially life changing reads you could complete. As a society we don’t understand sleep, and don’t value it. This book will change your attitudes towards sleep completely.

Sleep is one of the oldest evolutionary functions present in all known animals even down to the most basic like worms (and sharks and fish in case you wondered do sleep even though they keep moving, just like your heart keeps pumping). So it must serve some very useful functions! But the nature of the sleep does differ significantly between species

The basic structure of sleep

NonREM sleep – slow wave sleep with regular pulses of activity from the prefrontal lobe to the back of the brain. These are accompanied by occasional “spindles” of electrical activity that appears to be associated with the transfer of memories. This deep sleep facilitates the “file transfer” or consolidation of information recently learnt from the hippocampus used for short term memory to the neo-cortex for longer term storage, freeing up space to absorb new information. It is also used to pair down unnecessary connections and undo information that we know to be incorrect. Ie it is selective and intelligent about what memories and facts are stored or forgotten depending on how they are labelled! This seems to happen because of cycles of the spindles between the frontal lobe which directs intention and action, and the hippocampus. This storage function also applies to “motor memory” (particularly in hours 7 and 8 of sleep) and in fact can even enhance performance of repetitive tasks relative to what we were able to do pre sleep! We actually get better at tasks because of sleep!

REM sleep – rapid eye sleep, when we dream, the brain switches off our voluntary motor control systems so that we are paralysed and don’t act out our dreams. In this stage it seems new data is integrated into our brains forming and strengthening new connections between neurons allowing association between very different historic experiences to develop, and creativity to flourish. Our prefrontal lobe which regulates emotional control when we are awake is more disabled during this period allowing emotional processing to occur, almost like having your own therapist. (Disorders like PTSD could be due to an inability to process emotionally traumatic events during sleep). Without this sort of processing during sleep our ability to respond appropriately to emotional cues decreases substantially the next day.

We cycle between NREM and REM every c 90 minutes throughout the night, typically for about 5 cycles in a night. We get more NREM earlier in the night and more REM later in the night. The mix and length of sleeping also varies dramatically over our lifetimes. Babies have massive REM as the brain forms, in the late teenager years we need more NREM in order to prune down the connections and develop more emotional control.

The most important point is that your really really need both types of sleep to function well.

What drives sleep?

Melatonin production is triggered by darkness in the early evening leading to the onset of sleep a few hours later, but it’s not what makes us specifically go to sleep. Melatonin production is substantially decreased by blue light especially LED light from our devices.

Our circadian rhythm is our “wake up drive”. It is controlled by our bodies internal clock driven by a group of neurons in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that sits just above the crossing point of the optical nerves. This naturally keeps track of an approximately 24 hour cycle but takes signals from senses such as our eyes and eating cycles to keep the clock synchronised to 24 hours.

The circadian rhythm drives many functions across the body including in part our sleeping rhythms but also core body temperature which peaks in the evening and then drops as we go to sleep until the early morning when it starts increasing again.

Adenosine is a “sleep pressure hormone” that creates our “go to sleep drive”. It increases steadily from morning until late evening. Once we fall asleep it decreases until we wake up again in the morning.

It’s the combination of the circadian rhythm and Adenosine that makes us go to sleep or wake up. The difference between our circadian rhythm and adenosine peaks in the late evening when we feel tired, and troughs in the early morning as the Adenosine is at its lowest and the circadian rhythm begins to pick up.

Fun facts and hypotheses

The patterns of sleep differ substantially between species. Most fish, insects, amphibians seem only to have NREM sleep. Most birds and all mammals with a few exceptions seem to have REM sleep (birds and mammals evolved separately so REM sleep seems to have evolved twice independently). The exceptions are aquatic mammals like dolphins and killer whales because they can’t afford to be paralysed in the water (they may experience REM sleep but for very brief periods of time). Seals have REM sleep on land but only NREM sleep if in the water. Some mammals and birds can sleep one half of their brain while the other half remains active! Some birds can literally have one eye open and vigilant for danger, the other closed and sleeping, but they can’t sleep for long periods while flying (on long migrations some do have short periods of sleep in the air).

Humans have more REM sleep than other species. Unlike all other apes we have much more REM sleep. Probably a function of not sleeping in trees: during REM sleep muscles are paralysed which is a bad idea if you are sleeping in a tree. Apes sleep in trees to avoid predators and ground bugs. It’s possible the development of REM came about as a result of the mastery of fire which allowed human ancestors to start sleeping on the ground with smoke and fire scare off predators and bugs. Hence enabling greater periods of REM sleep and perhaps leading to our greater creative intellect.

Babies in the womb have huge amounts of REM sleep as the brain develops, in the second and third trimesters, peaking at up to 12 hours a day just before birth. However that’s not when baby is kicking you because the REM sleep paralyses the muscles!

Infants have 50/50 % NREM/REM decreasing to 70/30 % by age 5 and 80/20 by the late teens. NREM is also when the brains usage is “pruned” aiding brain development and maturation as a teenager refining cognitive skills, reasoning and critical critical thinking.

Teenagers also have a shift in their circadian rhythm towards waking up later. There are compelling studies to show that allowing teenagers to sleep in rather than waking too early for school dramatically improves their mental and learning abilities. There is good evidence from many studies globally that starting school later in the morning eg. A 9am or even 9:30 start leads to better outcomes particularly in teenagers.

In mid to old age, quality of sleep deteriorates. It’s not that older people need less sleep, it’s that they fail to get good quality sleep. NREM sleep quality is typically what deteriorates into late 20s and 30s. By your 40s your quality of NREM sleep has typically decreased by 60 to 70% compared to your teenage years. Sleep becomes more fragmented. Starting off with having children. Then later we wake up more often at night, for many reasons but including because of a weakening bladder, needing to head to the loo more often. One challenge is that we are really poor at self assessing the quality of our sleep so we may not notice this, or make the association between poor sleep and other health conditions we might be facing.

The human population consist about a 1/3rd Larks, 1/3rd Late Night owls and 1/3rd in between. These are genetic drivers linked to the circadian rhythm. Evolutionarily this is valuable because it gives members of a group ability to overlap their wakeful hours reducing the total time the whole group are asleep and might be exposed to danger because of sleep.

Health and lifestyle impacts

Matt Walker links a lack of sleep to a whole host of health problems. Good sleep is linked to a whole host of lifestyle benefits. At first you think these will just be associative links but in case after case he points to very tangible scientific evidence of the linkage to sleep with credible biological mechanisms. These are the things that really drove me to seriously consider changing my sleeping habits. Whether they actually achieve that shift is another thing… check in with me in a year!

Humans do naturally have biphasic sleep. We tend to want a post lunch afternoon nap of 30 to 60 minutes, preferably before 3pm so as not to interfere with our night time sleep. And then 7 to 9 hours of night time sleep. There seems to be good evidence of increased risk of 37 % of death due to heart disease in societies forced to move from a siesta to a continuous working culture eg. A study done in Greece.

To learn best we need to have had good sleep before we start learning. This resets the hippocampus, transferring information to longer term memory allowing us to store new information. Naps during the day will allow us to reset and store more information.

A good sleep the night after and for the next several nights then seals this storage of information (via NREM sleep, particularly later NREM closer to the morning even though sleep is the night more dominated by REM) and makes new creative associations (via REM sleep). Good sleep can even allow us to repair and remember past memories we might have been unable to recall. And you can even be intentional about which memories you wish to store by intentionally recollecting those specific thoughts prior to going to sleep. The brain will actively filter those for storage and discard any data you are intentional about wanting to forget! And the brain can even improve on what you learnt during the day, working on problems that you could not master during the day but having slept on them, you can find they come naturally the next day.

REM sleep drives creativity by creating links between distant ideas stored in our brains, particularly as the executive function control and logic is suspended allowing us to make unusual leaps.

Conversely studies show that poor sleep makes us much more likely to forget things. Not only because the “file transfer” doesn’t happen front he hippocampus but also because the hippocampus is less able to absorb new information.

Poor sleep makes our emotional control less good the next day and we are less able to assess social cues. This is driven both by more activation of our amygdala (which controls flight or fight responses) and by our striatum (which is assosciated with reward responses) and deactivation of our prefrontal cortex which gives us executive function and control. It can cause us to swing both positive and negative exacerbating conditions like depression, aggression, overeating, and substance abuse.

Poor sleep is a massive contributor to motor accidents. People who have been sleep deprived are not only less alert, they can experience “micro sleeps” when they loose consciousness for a few seconds often leading to dangerous motor accidents. You are 11 times more likely to be involved in a car accident if you have had less than 4 hour sleeps, and twice as likely if you have had between 5 and 6 hours sleep compared to over 8 hours.

Caffeine has a half life on 5 to 7 hours, ie 50pct is still active after 5 to 7 hours. Caffeine bonds to receptors of all of the cells in our body preventing the normal sleep hormone Adenosine, binding keeping us awake. Once the caffeine wears off the built up Adenosine hits and you crash Ie. Don’t have caffeine after mid day if you want a good nights sleep. Caffeine disrupts NREM sleep.

Alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep. Alcohol is a sedative. But sedation is not sleep. It has more in common with anaesthesia than natural sleep. Alcohol results in very fragmented sleep, though we may not be aware of this fragmentation afterwards. It is a significant suppressor of REM sleep, due to aldehydes that are metabolised from the alcohol by the body. Memory retention is far worse in experiments for those having alcohol compared to those don’t who did not.

Athletes perform more poorly and get more injuries on less sleep. On less than six hours, physical endurance can decrease by 30 %.

A lack of good quality REM sleep could be correlated with conditions like autism, as REM sleep is thought to be important in wiring the brain, and there seems to be some correlation between atypical sleep patterns (30 to 50 pct less REM sleep than a normal child normal ) and autism. Causality is unclear.

Other psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, ADHD, bipolar, depression all tend to appear first in teenage years and their may also be linkages to sleep quality, here particularly to do with NREM sleep. ADHD in particular symptomatically is easily confused with poor sleep, and unfortunately the treatment with amphetamines like Ritalin causes those children to be very much awake.

In older age poor sleep can also contribute to and is Assosciates with diabetes, depression, stroke, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s!

Stroke recovery is aided by good sleep, particularly REM sleep as the brain rewires itself to bypass injured parts of the brain.

In older age, some symptoms that might be attributed to dementia might in fact be due to poor sleep quality eg. Forgetting things. There is a link between deterioration in brain health and deep sleep in that brain deterioration often begins in the middle frontal lobe that generates NREM deep sleep waves. This may explain the forgetting since it’s not the memory part of the brain but this “file transfer function” that is most affected.

NREM sleep already deteriorates with age, but in Alzheimer’s patients that is much more pronounced. Alzheimer’s is assosciated with a build up of a protein called beta-amyloid, particularly in the frontal lobe, responsible for generating NREM deep sleep. Rather than affecting the memory parts of the brain (the hippocampus and neocortex) the protein buildup is seen more in the frontal lobe. Hence the poor memory may be a function of the failure of the file transfer part of the brain because of the failure of the NREM sleep. A system in the brain called the glymphatic system, is responsible for “clearing the brain” of all the waste products produced by metabolism in the brain throughout the day, including the beta-amyloid and tau proteins associated with Alzheimer’s. This systems functioning increases 20 fold during NREM sleep, as glial cells shrink between neurons allowing a deep “wash” of cerebrospinal fluid cleaning out the brain. Without proper NREM deep sleep this cleansing system may not be working properly allowing further buildup of the harmful proteins and hence further deterioration in NREM in a self reinforcing cycle that makes the disease worsen.

In support of these hypotheses, there is now increasing evidence that getting too little sleep through the adult life may heighten the risks of Alzheimer’s disease, explained by the mechanisms above. Conversely it may be possible to delay or minimise the chances of getting Alzheimers by getting good sleep.

Poor sleep is also directly associated with heart disease and heart attacks. Studies show this even after correcting for other influences such as smoking diet etc. A short nights sleep increases blood pressure and heart rate measurably, people is less than 6 hours sleep are 2 to 3 times more likely to have calcification of arteries which can lead to heart-attacks. The bodies sympathetic nervous system controls the fight or flight response we have when we come under stress. A lack of sleep puts this nervous system into a continual state of activation, causing higher heart rates, construction of blood vessels through, higher cortisol release (a stress hormone), and a reduction in Growth hormone – a repair hormone that is released at night that repairs arteries and other parts of the body. NREM sleep is usually associated with a slower heart rate, and a calming effect in the cardiovascular system so you need it! Every year when we switch to daylight savings time with one hour less sleep, that day correlates with a spike in heart attacks relative to base rate, and when we get an extra hour sleep it’s associated with a drop!

A lack of sleep is also assosciated with weight gain and increased chances of type 2 diabetes. Like heart diseases the effect is found in studies even after allowing for other common correlates such as body weight, alcohol consumption, smoking etc. After a week of sleeping only 4 hours a night, participants in a study were 40pct less able to absorb a dose of glucose than normal. This was due to both less insulin release and cells becoming less sensitive to insulin. Also affected are hormones grehlin which triggers the sensation of feeling hungry and leptin which signals feeling full. With short sleep, grehlin increases and leptin decreases causing us to eat more and put on weight. In well controlled trials people on short sleep ate significantly more calories and tended to gravitate more towards unhealthy snacks. This may be explained by sleep depravation decreasing activity in the prefrontal cortex where we exercise judgement and increased activity in parts of the primal brain like the striatum that drive desire. On top of that when sleep deprived we tend to feel more lethargic and be less prone to exercise. Further more if you are sleep deprived and trying to diet, more weight loss comes from muscles, whereas if well slept more comes from fat. When sleep deprived the body tries to hang on to its fat reserves.

Very interestingly, some argue that we need more calories when we are sleep deprived because we will burn more as we are awake longer. it turns out this is not true. A person who is awake for 24 hours burns only 147 more calories than someone who has 8 hours sleep! Sleep is actually quite a metabolically active state for the brain and the body.

Ample sleep can really help achieve the opposite in many of these cases. It may also affect your microbiome, again through less activation of the sympathetic nervous system which cultivated different bacteria in our guts compared to when less cortisol is present.

Sleep seems essential for a good immune system response to infection. Hence why we tend to sleep when we get sick. Those with better sleep have better initial immunity to avoid catching a cold. You are much more likely to build much higher level antibodies if you get good sleep prior to a flu vaccine than not (and this must therefore be similar to getting sick since a vaccine is using a dead virus to activate the immune system to get antibodies).

Disruption of sleep and circadian rhythm is assosciated with increased risk of various cancers shown by studies on shift workers. The WHO classifies night time shift work as a possible carcinogen. A european study showed a 40 % increase in cancer risk for those sleeping 6 hours or less. Again the sympathetic nervous system seems to be implicated here, putting the body into a state of more sustained inflammation when we get less sleep. Some cancers use the bodies inflammatory response to start growing, and may aggravate metastasis (spreading to other parts of the body). In mice models sleep deprived mice develop cancer tumours at 3 times the rate of non deprived mice. It looks like a lack of sleep may also diminish cancer fighting M1 macrophage immune cells and increase cancer inducing M2 macrophage cells in the body.

Finally it seems that poor sleep can actually damage cells directly though shifting the expression of different genes, (increasing harmful, decreasing helpful expressions by as much as 200%) and even damage the DNA in our cells through shortening the telomere tips that protect chromosomes in our DNA from damage. This is a very similar effect seen in natural aging a telomeres get shortened… ie poor sleep makes you age faster literally.

Poor sleep in the health professional, especially by doctors where long shifts are seen as a badge of honour could be contributing to massively to incidence of mistakes, so our life might depend on other people’s lack of sleep

A final finding: there is no good evidence that too much sleep is bad for you. We naturally seem to need somewhere around 8 hours in 24. If you are sleeping for significantly longer on a continual there might be something else going on but sleep itself does not seem to be harmful. Ideally you sleep until you wake up naturally rather than having to have an alarm clock.

What’s going on when we dream?

One function of Dreaming is to be our own inbuilt therapist to help us process emotional experiences. We dream during REM sleep. During REM sleep a key stress hormone Noradrenaline is completely shut off within our brain (the brain equivalent of the bodies adrenaline). Key emotion and memory related structures are activated during REM sleep. It’s possible to therefore reprocess emotional states in a “safe” dream state. This may help us remember helpful details and forget some of the more painful parts as we experience the experience without the same stress.

PTSD sufferers suffer from disrupted REM sleep. PTSD might well be contributed to by a breakdown in this emotional trauma processing function in REM sleep, particularly because noradrenaline is not shut off. A drug that reduces noradrenaline has now been approved for the treatment of PTSD.

REM sleep generally seems to retune our emotional calibration and function the next day, making us more able to understand the emotions playing across other peoples faces, a key skill in navigating every day life as a human.

Dreaming also seems to be the creative centre of our brain. Many great breakthroughs seem to have come to people after a night of dreaming including the construction of the periodic table by Mendeleev, some of the great songs by the Beatles etc. Experiments on associations formed in wakeful periods versus just after REM sleep show very different associative patterns, with dream associations being far less obvious and connecting more distant concepts compared to the waking associations which tend to be far more logical.

In studies participants are far more able to spot short cuts and innovative solutions after sleeping on a problem, 20 percent when presented with the problem and asked for a solution 8 hour later compared to 60 % spotting it if they had slept overnight!

It does seem that the content of the dream matters. If you are dreaming about something related to the problem you are working on you may fix it, if it’s something else it might not be very effective.

Some people including Thomas Edison develop habits of waking themselves up from a dream to then write down the creative ideas they had.

Some people seem to experience “lucid dreams” where either they are aware that they are dreaming or in some cases they seem to be able to direct what the dream is about. Experiments have shown that lucid dreamers are able to communicate to researchers through their eye movements while in REM sleep.

Recommendations for good sleep

Matt has a whole section on sleep disorders which I will not recount, if you suffer from any then please read the book. His biggest recommendation is to be very wary of sleeping pills, most of which do not result in a proper natural restful sleep but more like a coma induced state without the benefits of either REM or NREM sleep.

He also makes the point that the issue is really as a society we need to change our attitude towards sleep: to move away from wearing short sleep as a badge of honour and undervaluing it and towards understanding that getting proper sleep is one of the most powerful life and health enhancing habits we develop.

His strongest recommendation To get good sleep: go to sleep at a consistent time every night (including weekends) and wake up at a consistent time every morning. This stops unnatural shocking of the circadian rhythm on a regular basis.

Don’t look at blue light late at night, this suppresses melatonin production by only 50 %. Make sure your device tones down blue light after a certain time. Ideally just ban devices from the bedroom.

Maintain darkness for your sleep, blackout curtains, no flicking lights from devices.

Keep the temperature cool. To initiate sleep your body’s core temperature needs to drop by 1 degree Celsius. Hence it’s easier to fall asleep in a cool room. A drop of temperature also indices melatonin production. Your hands feet and head help radiate away heat from the core. A room temperature as cold as 18.3degree C seems to be optimal given standard bedding. A hot ironically helps with this because it draws blood to the skins surface allowing you to cool off as you dry off and go to sleep.

Don’t doze off or nap after 3pm, that will disrupt the later circadian rhythm. Don’t doze off in the evenings infront of TV, if your are sleepy go to bed.

If you are awake in bed, struggling to sleep, don’t lie there, get up and do something and then come back to bed

Cut out alcohol and caffeine at night, perhaps even after 3pm

An alarm clock can be bad for your blood pressure. Hitting the snooze button repeats this. Try to just have a consistent time getting to sleep and waking up. But if you need to use an alarm clock this is okay if you are following a consistent sleep schedule.

Exercise is good for sleep and sleep is good for exercise but don’t exercise in the three hours before going to sleep.

Don’t eat and drink too much late at night

Do something relax before going to bed, not on a screen. Eg have a hot bath, read, listen to music

Get bright light, preferably sunlight in the morning. 30 minutes of sunlight is good.

Culture · Evolution · Genetics · history · Learning · Science

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

A fascinating read about human evolution from c 12000 bc by a scientist anthropologist with tremendous real world experience. He hypothesises about the key driving forces that have really made the world as we know it today, a world largely dominated by Eurasian societies and provides compelling evidence in support of those hypotheses.

This book has been recommended on numerous podcasts and one the Pulitzer Prize. I think it connects well with some of Edward O Wilson’s themes from Consillience and I suspect, though I have not read it it should connect through to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari which is still on my reading list.

Jared argues persuasively that the differences in human development across the globe come not from innate differences in the cleverness or superior culture of one group of individuals versus another but really due to a few simple overarching realities of human development driven ultimately by geography. I like it because it really addresses and decimates some of the common rather racist views of cultural superiority that tend to be espoused.

He traces the dispersion of humans from Africa through Eurasia, to New Guinea and Australia, to North and South America and to the islands of the Pacific.

In the end he argues that there are several very basic key determinants of human development:

1. The development of agriculture through the domestication of plants and animals which allowed a move from simpler hunter gatherer clans into more complex societies. Agriculture allowed specialisation with some members feeding more than just themselves, allowing others to become crafts men, warriors or politicians. This also lead to our more familiar societal structures with leaders and hierarchies, and tax and tribute and the need for collective narrative like religion and culture to keep those societies working effectively together. Effectively in almost all instances globally, agrarian societies displaced hunter gatherer societies.

2. That the domestication of animals lead to us being exposed to many of the germs from to those animals that created many of our common disease: measles, tuberculosis, smallpox, flu, whooping cough etc. The more domesticated animals, the more diseases. This lead to greater immunity via natural selection in those communities who first domesticated these animals. Later contact with communities who had not domesticated as many animals or the same animals resulted in massive devastation by the germs carried in by those with immunity eg. The Spanish and European invasions of America introduced these new diseases with devastating consequences.

4. That it was pretty much evolutionary luck across the globe as to which particular areas had more plants or animals that could in-fact be domesticated, with the Fertile Crescent and Eurasia happening to be particularly lucky in this regard.

5. That simple Longitudinal geography makes a huge difference. The Eurasian/North African east west landmass along similar latitudes made it possible to have rapid transmission of technology, agriculture and germ immunity across that land mass with similar enough climate conditions. It was much harder to move North South, the Tropics have very different diseases to the temperate regions, very different cultivatable plants, hence transmission of agriculture and technology along north south continents like from North Africa to Southern Africa, or North to South America, or North Asia to Australia was far slower.

4. That cultures with head starts in agriculture then developed further technological advantages, from metal working, first copper, later iron, to boats and sea-faring, to writing as a means of organising and transmitting knowledge, to eventually guns allowing the further consolidation of power ultimately into empires.

He covers developments of all parts of the world in fascinating detail including China, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific islands.

This book has really brought home to me the power of evolution over long periods of time to completely transform societies. Also very relevant today as we face new viral pandemics to understand that and the innate connection between humans the contacts we have with animals.

Overall I found the book fascinating but it is a long read where he argues and seeks to prove his hypothesis and it can feel a little repetitive in places. Still I enjoyed it immensely.

Culture · Fiction · history

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

A wonderful introduction to Greek mythology which I have always been curious about but never found a really accessible read.

For my own remembrance I am just going to summarise some of the key characters and relationships here:

The First Order – primordial deities – often the idea of the god and the thing they represent are mixed together

  • Chaos gives birth to
  • Erebus – darkness
  • Nyx – night
  • Who couple and give birth to :
  • Hemera – day and
  • Aether – light
  • Chaos also gives birth to
  • Gaia – the earth, hence words like geology and geography
  • And Tartarus – the caves beneath the earth
  • Gaia gives birth to Pontus the sea and Oranus, the sky (hence the planet Uranus in Latin, all the planets are named after Roman gods, and the word Uranium)
  • Herma and Aether couple and give birth to Thalassa, the female sea

Nyx also gives birth to

  • Moros- doom and destiny
  • Apate- deceit (Romans called her Fraus, from which we get fraud and fraudster
  • Geras – old age (hence geriatric) but also wisdom and dignity (in Latin Senectus – hence senile, senior and senate)
  • Oizys – (in Latin Miseria) hence misery, also depression and anxiety
  • Momos – personifying mockery, scorn and blame

Nyx and Erebus also give birth to further dark progeny

  • Eris (Discordia in Latin) – strife
  • Nemisis- fateful retribution
  • Charon- ferryman of the dead
  • Hypnos – sleep ( hence hypnotic)
  • The Onerio – beings who bring dreams, such as Phobetor, bringer of nightmares and Phantasos, fantastical dreams
  • Hypnos has a son Morpheus who shifts shapes in dreams (hence morphine and morphing and metamorphosis)
  • Thanatos – is death himself hence euthanasia (good death), in Roman Mors, hence mortals, mortuary and mortified

And three lovely daughters, the Hesperides, nymphs of the golden hour of sunset, heralding their parents, darkness and night.

The second order – the Titans and others

Gaia earth, and Oranus the sky god give birth to 12 Titans (the striving ones),

6 male

  • Oceanus – the seas and oceans
  • Coeus
  • Crius
  • Hyperion
  • Iapetus
  • Kronos, the youngest

6 female

  • Theia
  • Themis – justice and wise council
  • Mnemosyne – memory, mnemonics,
  • Phoebe – prophesy
  • Tethys – the sea
  • Rhea

Three Cyclopes, one eyed giants

  • Brontes – thunder
  • Steropes – lightning
  • Arges – brightness

Three Hecatonchires, fifty headed 100 handed monsters,

  • Cottus the furious
  • Gyges the long limbed
  • Aegaeon or Briareos the sea goat or vigorous one

All of whom who disgusted Ouranos and he banished them back into Gaia’s womb

  • Tethys and Oceanus give birth to
      • Clymene lover of Iapetus
      Metis, who is clever and wise
      Nilus the Nile
      The Oceanids – sea nymphs

    Theia and Hyperion give birth to

    • Helios the sun
    • Selene the moon
    • Eos the dawn

    Crius and Pontus give birth to

    • Eurybia – flint hearted

    Clymene and Iapetus give birth to

    • Atlas
    • Epimetheus
    • Prometheus

    Gaia and Tartarus give birth to

    • Typhon a monster (hence the words typhoid and typhoons)

    Gaia turns to Kronos to punish Ouranus for what he did to the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes, making him a sickle/scythe made from adamantine, with which to arm himself. Kronos gelds Ouranus who curses him with “May your children destroy you as you destroyed me”

    From where the blood of Ouranus touched the ground (Gaia) sprang up:

    The Erinyes or Furies, nicknamed Eumenides (ironically the “kindly ones”)

    • Alecto – remorseless
    • Magaera – jealous rage
    • Tisiphone – vengeance

    The Gigantes, hence giants, gigantic, (having arisen from Gaia, the earth)

    Kronos then releases the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires from Gaia’s womb, and takes them together with Ouranus down to Tartarus, the depths of the earth

    Other spirits that come into being include the Gorgons, children of Phorcys and Cato, themselves son and daughter of sea god Pontus and Gaia, with hairs of snakes and who will turn you to stone if you make eye contact

    • Sthenos
    • Euryale
    • Medusa

    The Moirai or Fates, daughters of Nyx were

    • Clotho, who weaves the thread of life
    • Lachesis, who measures its length and
    • Atropos who chooses when to cut it short

    The Keres, the carrion daughters of Nyx, spirits of violent death.

    The nymphs are female deities:

    • Oreads look after mountains, caves, and islands
    • Nereids descendants of Oceanids, love in the sea
    • Naiads, look after fresh water lakes and streams
    • Leimakides love in meadows
    • Dryads and Hamadryads love in woodlands and trees
    • Meliae are ash wood nymphs

    Atlas fathers 7 daughters with the Oceanid Pleione called the Pleiades, which we know as the meteor shower and the constellation of 7 sisters. The eldest is Maia.

    The Third Order – the Olympian gods

    Gelded Oranus’s gonads fall into the sea and from their arises Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans), goddess of love who first makes landfall on Cyprus.

    Kronos takes his sister Rhea to be his wife and they have children. However Kronos fears his fathers curse that his children will turn against him, and so he swallows each of them as they are born: Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera until at the last Rhea tricks him into swallowing a magnetite stone, which he thinks is another child, and she goes on to give birth to Zeus in hiding on Crete. Zeus is raised by a she goat called Amalthea (from whose horn we get the Horn of Plenty or Corncupia), and taught by Metis, the wise. Rhea, Metis and Zeus make a potion which Kronos drinks, causing him to vomit up his children and the magnetite stone.

    Thereafter comes a ten year war called the Titanomacy between the gods (Zeus and his Siblings and two of the Titans: Clymenes sons Prometheus and Epimethius who side with him) and the Titans lead by Kronos. Metis advises Zeus also to release the three Cyclopes, and the three Hecatonchires that Kronos had imprisoned in the underworld. The Cyclopes crafted Zeus’s thunderbolts for the fight and the Hecatonchires hurl rocks with their hundred hands, and help the gods defeat the Titans.

    Zeus punishes the Titans who opposed him:

    • Atlas he sentenced to hold up the sky for eternity
    • Kronos he sentenced to measure every day, hour, and minute of eternity, with his scythe he becomes “old Father Time”, from whence we get words like chronograph, chronicles, synchronised and chronic. The Romans called him Saturn, and he hangs in the sky between his father Uranus (Ouranus) and his son Jupiter (Zeus).

    And he rewards those who fought with him. The Cyclopes become Zeus’s armorers, the Hecatonchires become guardians of Tartarus, and Prometheus becomes his confidant.

    Zeus goes on to father many children!

    With Mnemosyne (memory), Zeus fathered the 9 muses

    • Calliope – epic poetry, the beautiful voice, and mother to Orpheus, the musician
    • Clio – history
    • Erato – lyric and love poetry (symbolised by the lute, golden arrows, turtle doves and myrtle)
    • Euterpe – joyful music
    • Melpomene – all tradegy (music, poetry, drama etc), mother to the Sirens, sad mask
    • Polyhymnia – hymns, praise and sacred music
    • Terpsichore – muse of dance, mother of Sirens
    • Thalia – comedy and idyllic poetry, happy mask, ivy, a bugle and trumpet
    • Urania – muse of astronomy and the stars, universal love

    With the beautiful Oceanid Euronyme, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, he fathered the three beautiful Charities or Graces

    • Aglaea – spleadour
    • Euphrosyne – mirth
    • Thalia – cheerfulness

    With Themis, embodiment of law and justice he fathered the Horai (the Hours, embodiment of the serendipitous moment)

    • Auxesia – summer
    • Carpo – winter
    • Thallo – bringer of flowers, spring (Flora to the Romans)

    And

    • Eunomia – law, legislation
    • Diké – justice and moral order (Justitia to the Romans)
    • Eirene- goddess of peace (Pax to the Romans)

    And so we are introduced to the Olympian gods:

    The direct children of Kronos and Rhea

    • Zeus, leader of the gods, Jupiter to the Romans
    • Hestia – Vestus to the Romans, hospitable center of hearth and home, celibate and attended to by the Vestal Virgins who keep her flame alight in a bowl.
    • Poseidon – Neptune to the Romans, god of the sea. The Cyclopes forge him his trident. Horses are sacred to him. He marries Amphitrite, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys (perhaps), and creates a dolphin for her as a wedding present. She is mother to Triton, a merman. Poseidon, is father by other mothers of numerous monsters, demigods and human heroes including Percy Jackson and Theseus.
    • Hades – Pluto to the Romans, god of the underworld Tartarus, and therefore not actually one of the gods on mount Olympus, (hence plutocrat and plutonium), becomes lord of Nyx, Erebus and Thanatos. The river Styx (hate) is daughter of Tethys and Oceanus, flows in the underworld. Charon ferries the souls over the Styx. The Furies live there too. And Hades acquires the three headed dog Kerberos (Cerberus), and Hydra, the many headed sea monster guards the entrance.
    • Demeter, goddess of the harvest, Ceres to the Romans hence words such as cereal. With Poseidon she has a daughter Arion, a speaking horse.
    • Hera – Junoesque to the Romans, is the haughty, proud and jealous wife of Zeus. Goddess of marriage and symbolised by the peacock and cow.

    We have Aphrodite who is furthered by Ouranus and the ocean

    • Aphrodite, Venus to the Romans, goddess of beauty and love, particularly sensual love.

    Then gods whom Zeus himself fathers

    • Hephaestus – the first son of Zeus and Hera, is ugly and diminutive and his mother throws him down from mount Olympus when he is born. He makes a throne as an anonymous wedding present for Hera at her wedding to Zeus, the Throne traps her and will not let her go until Hephaestus commands it. In exchange he asks for Aphrodite in marriage. Hephaestus, god of fire, artisans and blacksmiths becomes the smith of the gods, assisted by the Cyclopes, fashioning their weapons. To the Romans he is Vulcan, hence volcano and vulcanise.
    • Ares – second son of Zeus and Hera, Mars to the Romans, god of war, lover of Aphrodite (Venus) before she marries Hephaestus. His form of war is strength power and violence rather than tactics which belong to Athena.

    Zeus seduces his tutor Metis (at his wedding feast to Hera). Afterward Metis metamorphasises into a fly, Zeus into a lizard and he eats her. Some time later Zeus then gets a massive headache. After some time and various plans put forward by Triton and Prometheus, eventually Hephaestus fashions a double edged axe which he uses to cleave open Zeus’s head, from which proceeds fully clothed in armour and with a spear, his and Metis’s daughter Athena, after which his head heals up. Metis infact allowed herself to be swallowed and she lives on in Zeus’s head, counselling him and checking his reckless excesses.

    • Athena (Minerva to the Romans) is goddess of wisdom, statecraft, handicraft, and strategic warcraft and tactics, law and justice. Idealised beauty, and aesthetics are hers as are ideals of platonic love. She is symbolised by an owl and by a serpent, and the olive tree is sacred to her. She remains celibate, the Greek word for virgin Parthenos is often associated with her, hence the Parthenon in Athens dedicated to her.

    Zeus also seduces the Titaness Leto, daughter of Phoebe and Coeus. Hera, jealous bans her from giving birth on land and she bears her children, twins, on the floating island of Delos:

    • Artemis, (in Rome Diana) a girl, silver is her colour, with a silver bow and arrows made by Hephaestus, goddess of the moon, mountainsides and forests, hunting, hunting dogs and stags and childbirth. She remains celibate. Her tree is a Cyprus.
    • Apollo, (in Rome also Apollo!) a boy, golden in colour, with a golden bow by Hephaestus, god of the sun, lord of mathematics, logic, reason, poetry, medicine, rhetoric and enlightenment. He was also god of prophecy and in charge of the oracles at Delphi, who’s priestess was called the Sibyl. The python is sacred to him – he kills the original serpent Python sent by Hera soon after he is born, to kill Leto, him and his sister with Hephaestus’s golden bow and arrows – as is the laurel tree, the dolphin and the white raven.

    Finally with Maia, daughter of Atlas and Pleione, eldest of the Plaiedes sisters, Zeus fathers

    • Hermes (Mercury to the Romans) As an infant barely a day old he kindles fire, herds Apollo’s cattle, and invents music and the Lyre, which he then gifts to Apollo to avoid being punished for steeling and slaughtering two of his cattle. He is quick of mind and foot and so he became the messenger of the gods. Hephaestus fashions his winged boots, the Talaria, a winged helmet he Petasus and a silver staff with wings entwined by two snakes called a Kerykeion, the symbol of medicine. He is god of rascals, thieves, liars, sportsmen and story-teller, commerce and tradesmen, herdsmen, science and medicine. And his symbols of the lyre cockerel. The element quicksilver/mercury is named after him and we get words like mercurial from him.
    artifical intelligence · Big data · Business Culture · decision making · Investment · Learning · Maths · Statistics

    The unrules by Igor Tulchinsky, founder and CEO of WorldQuant

    Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

    Igor’s rules

    1. The UnRule: all theories and all methods have flaws. Nothing can be proved with absolute certainty is, but anything may be disproved, and nothing that can be articulated can be perfect.
    2. You only live once. Your time on earth is the only truly irreplaceable resource. If today was my last day, what would I be doing with it?
    3. Life is unpredictable. There are limits to planning; the key is to act. Foster opportunities, then take advantage of outcomes. If you have to decide and you can’t, flip a coin. If it’s the wrong action, you will feel it and reverse course. Actions have a compounding effect; it’s bad to deliberate for too long.
    4. Establish concrete quantifiable goals and always go from A to B. Concrete things are attainable. Abstract and nebulous wishes are not.
    5. Develop willpower and persist. The most important limit is how much ability and persistence you have. Age means little.
    6. Play to your strengths, don’t compromise. Weaknesses can only be improved marginally, but strength can be improved more.
    7. Obstacles are information. If you can’t get something to work there is a reason. Learn adjust and attack it again.
    8. Aim for the anxious edge, the point of mild anxiety
    9. Arrogance distorts reality. Arrogance makes you perceive the environment in the way that maximises your ego. Environment does not exist for you, so your perceptions turn into fiction. You make bad decisions by chasing illusions. This gets harder after success when hubris slips in.
    10. Make everyone benefit
    11. Opportunity is unlimited, ideas are infinite
    12. Blame no one else. Minimise regrets.
    13. There is a virtue in economy of expression. Efficiency implies clarity and economy of thought. Pretend you have a fixed number of words in your life. The sooner they are all said, the sooner you’ll die.
    14. Value diverse and competing methods. Because all theories are flawed, the best approach is to collect as many of them as possible and use them all, in as optimal a fashion as you can devise, simultaneously.
    15. Value multiple points of view.
    16. Make everyone benefit. Align your endeavours with everyone around you and you will create your own tail wind.

    Quotes and other insights

    1. To be successful in this investment business you have to think about it all the time. Thomas Peterffy
    2. Keep losses small. Profits will take care of themselves. Izzy Englander
    1. Don’t get emotional about your trades. React instantly to bad news. If it’s scary run. Take aggressive risks but manage losses. Aggressive behaviour forces your environment to react to you, rather than the other way around. You’re in control; you have the wider array of options in a higher probability of success. You need an exit route if it doesn’t work out.
    2. In systems with a high degree of interactive complexity, multiple and unexpected interactions of failure are inevitable.
    3. A good business runs itself. And create this by choosing the right people. A lot of time should be invested in that activity. Optimal compensation schemes are vital.
    4. Minimise bureaucracy. Time is money; time is scarce. Bureaucracy wastes time and money. If you have the right people, right systems and the right compensation scheme you can scale without adding bureaucracy.
    5. What makes a good trader? Intelligence, focus, action orientation, and the ability to learn from errors; economy of words and thoughts, honesty, and a strong sense of self; the ability to take risks, compartmentalise, and handle setbacks without ego getting crushed.
    6. What makes a good researcher? Creativity, tenacity, attention to detail, intelligence, relentlessness, follow-through, and top-level programming skills.
    7. What makes a good manager? Empathy, intelligence, creativity, relentlessness, and follow through.
    8. In their view, quantity of alphas is far superior to quality. Quality cannot easily be defined. They seek to maximise exponentially the number of Alphas they pursue.
    9. If data increases exponentially, predictability should improve linearly.
    10. They key to testing ideas is to have good simulation software.
    11. As complexity increases so will the number and frequency of non linear events will also increase (ie many std dev events – rogue waves, schrodinger equation)
    12. Power laws very common in nature. In some systems the largest entity often brakes scale invariance, ie. it is even bigger than predicted eg. In network systems, dominant player much bigger.

    WorldQuant online university in financial literacy worth checking out.

    Business culture · Culture · Learning · Relationships

    Team of teams by General Stanley McChrystal – leading teams to work effectively together

    Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

    The book has a few essential ideas which are worth while but it takes quite a lot of background to get to them. Below are my key takeaways.

    The context for McChrystal was trying to get specialist units in very different parts of the military, who each worked incredibly effectively in their specific area, to form a cohesive whole to adapt to rapidly changing situations in Iraq Eg. Getting Army Rangers, working with Navy Seals, with airforce, with the NSA and with the CIA. Each branch tended to create its own cohesion creating tightly knit teams but resulting in territorial behaviour and collectively failing to complete their missions.

    The basic message is that in the the 20th century progress was made through industrial efficiency with perfectly planned production processes around complicated problems but with perfectly predictable outcomes that engineer can solve. In these structures vertical command and control management worked effectively with each team operating efficiently but limited need for close interaction between teams.

    In the 21st century, in modern organisations, we face problems of complexity, networked systems where small perturbations can lead to unpredictable outcomes. To operate in complex problems we need to be able to function with much greater flexibility and adaptability, connecting disparate information, and making quick decisions with dynamic and changing plans. To do this requires a very different management style for our organisations.

    His prescription is three fold

    1. A need for complete information sharing across all teams to create contextual awareness across teams and a “shared consciousness”

    2. A need for strong trust between teams with multiple connection points, to create a team-of-teams type operating mentality

    3. The need for the right type of leadership creating an environment of “empower execution” , where the leader is focused on culture and prioritisation to drive the team dynamic

    Taking each of those in turn

    1. The need for information sharing across teams

    • “In a domain characterised by interdependencies, what ever efficiency is gained through silos is outweighed by the costs of “interface failures””
    • Emergent intelligence between teams can be achieved in larger organisations willing to commit to the disciplined deliberate sharing of information
    • Fuse generalised awareness, “shared consciousness” with specialised expertise
    • To achieve this there needs to be common purpose.
    • Emphasis on group success to spur trust, cooperation and common purpose.
    • To do this they created a daily common forum, using technology, like a global video conference where everyone called in from all of the world. Anyone from any team could participate, everyone had access to all the information with almost total transparency.
    • The success of this depended on it being quality useful information rather than beautifully dressed up rehearsed message sending.
    • The update piece from a team outlining their facts would be short eg 60 seconds, then there would be 2 to 3 minutes of open questioning and conversation from leadership. Key is active listening and real exploration, potentially followed by some perspective or framing from the senior team, but then letting the individual team decide how they would proceed. Allowed all teams to see problems being solved real time and the perspectives of senior leadership team. This gave teams confidence and permission to solve their own problems, rather than having to have decisions come from the top.
    • Think about the physical space and the way you go about doing this information sharing carefully, but also about your decision making procedures.
    • Information was shared widely without constraint. As information was shared, it encouraged others to share.

    2. Creating real trust and collaboration between teams

    • The key issue is that good collaboration between teams requires sacrifice (of resources or achievement in one area) on behalf of each team for the greater good. This happens any time there are scare resources, eg engineering resources working for something good for one team or something else for another team.
    • In Game theory the prisoners dilemma type problem illustrates a situation where the individually dominant strategy (betrayal, taking the resource to further your own ends) is suboptimal to the collectively dominant strategy (cooperation but sacrifice of the resource to the greater good). Even with wholistic awareness of the situation the prisoner still has to take a leap of faith in trusting the other party.
    • The dominant strategy in a multi round game is to start with cooperation and then to always follow what the other person did in the previous round. If they betrayed you, you betray them in the next round as punishment. If they cooperate you continue to cooperate. The punishment only lasts as long as the bad behaviour continues and stops as soon as there is cooperation. A track record of cooperation at a certain point then becomes the norm and trust builds.
    • Leaps of faith are only possible when there are real relationships of trust between individuals on the different teams.
    • To build trust they encouraged individuals from one unit to spend a secondment with another unit, to be a liaison officer with that unit. And they encouraged the teams to send their best people on these assignments. People capable of building relationships even in an initially hostile environment on another team, people with low ego. They encouraged the units “if giving up this person does not cause you pain, you are sending the wrong person”
    • They supplied the liaison officer with continued intelligence and information that would be useful to the unit they were in, and gave them access to the senior team so that when a liaison officer called in a favour, they could deliver value to that team.
    • This built a system where teams got more out of accepting these liaisons and were then willing to commit their own best people to do the same in reciprocation.
    • When it comes to sharing scarce resources, if teams can understand why and how their resources will make a difference somewhere else they are much more willing to make the sacrifice of giving up that resource.

    Together, the strong sharing of information around a common shared purpose, and a strong bond of trust and mutual cooperation at multiple levels between teams create the ground for “shared consciousness” across teams. Hence the books title team of teams.

    3. The role of leadership

    So their aim is coordinated operations that exhibit an emergent adaptive intelligence, decentralised control with empowered decision making built around a shared consciousness and information. The role of leadership is to enable all of that.

    • The role of a leader is to build, lead and maintain a culture that is flexible and durable.
    • Don’t misinterpret empowerment. Simply taking off constraints can be dangerous
    • It should only be done if the recipients of new found authority have the necessary sense of perspective to act on it wisely.
    • Team leaders and members can be free to make decisions as long as they provide full visibility under the “shared consciousness” model. They have to provide sufficient clear information to leadership and other teams about what they are doing.
    • It’s an “eyes on – hands off” model of leadership.
    • The objective is “smart autonomy”, not total autonomy, because everyone is tightly linked in a shared consciousness with the same purpose.
    • The role of the senior leader is “empathetic crafter of culture, rather than the puppet master”. It’s a gardner creating the right environment rather than the heroic leader or chess master taking all the big decisions.
    • The leader should be taking fewer decisions, but should be keeping the organisation focused on clearly articulated priorities.
    • This leadership comes from consistently explicitly talking about what the priorities are but also demonstrating the way the team should operate, leading by example,
    • Less is more, focus on only a few key messages and repeat them consistently. Nothing is learned until it’s been heard multiple times, and it’s only sunk in when it’s echoed back in the words of others.
    • Your strongest form of communication is your own behaviour.
    • Eg. Information sharing sessions never cancelled and attendance mandatory
    • The rules for any meeting are established more by precedent and demonstrated behaviour than by written guidance.
    • Be clear on your central role as a leader. To lead, to inspire, to understand, to guide, to prioritise
    • Watch the small behaviours. If you look bored, if you are unprepared you send a message. Interest and enthusiasm are your most powerful behaviours. Prepare, ask questions, demonstrate you have really listened, compliment work publicly, suggest improvement privately, and say thank you often.
    • Get the balance of reporting information vs active interaction right for the meeting. Get the right level of candour through the way you interact.
    • Think out loud, summarise what you have heard, how you process the information, outline your thoughts on how we might proceed, ask the team members what would be an appropriate response and what they plan to do. Ask for opinions and advice. Admit when you don’t know. Empower them to take the decisions.
    • Develop the art of asking good questions. Questions that help people arrive at the answers and see errors for themselves.
    • Be careful of overcommitment on your schedule, when you cancel people get disappointed, work done preparing for meeting with you is wasted.
    • Avoid a reductionist approach, no matter how tempting micromanaging a situation may be. The leaders first responsibility is to to the whole, to the big picture, no matter how good they may be at the particular situation.
    artifical intelligence · Business · General · Learning · Philosophy · Psychology · Science

    Books of 2018

    Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

    As I don’t have time to do full write-ups on everything I get through, here is just a brief few comments on the books I chose to read in 2018 and the key things I want to remember of them. Roughly in the order I would recommend them for general consumption…

  • 1. Man’s search for meaning by Victor Frankl
  • (See the separate blogpost on this) This is the book I would most recommend you read, it addresses very deep and meaningful challenges we all face, particularly suffering. It’s a short and easy read, but very powerful.

    • 2. Poor Charlie’s Almanac, Charlie Munger

    An amazing read, in echoes of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richards’s Almanac, full of down to earth wisdom and common sense, not to mention that this should be compulsory reading for anyone in the investment field.

    The single biggest concept is the idea of being well acquainted with the core mental models used in a wide variety of disciplines, and then be able to apply those in other situations in a methodical way. This is perhaps the best articulation of the multidisciplinary approach to which I aspire.

    The incredible moments for me are his insights into psychology. Many of these are now better understood with progress in modern behavioural economics, but Charlie Munger was years ahead in figuring out a lot of this for himself. He also makes some astute observations about the current state of psychology which, relative to many other sciences, seems in its infancy.

    3. The biography of Benjamin Franklin: an American Life by Walter Isaacson

    I had no idea just how prolific a thinker, scientist and statesman/politician Benjamin Franklin was. This book gives a real sense of that. Standout thoughts for me:

    • He was in many senses the ultimate pragmatist, choosing what was useful over ideology over and over again
    • His basic industriousness and strong drive towards practical daily work
    • His own awareness of his fallibility, while striving towards this industrious ideal
    • His role as a scientist and his curiosity about the natural world, including much around an understanding of electricity, inventing descriptions such as battery, positive, negative, charge etc.
    • His role as a printer, the power of the media in influencing society’s direction and thoughts
    • His passionate forming of societies to further all sorts of ends, and his ability to network
    • The interplay between aiming to find a diplomatic solution versus knowing when to take a stand. The role he played in the founding of America and its independence from Britain was quite incredible – from diplomacy to the leading of militias. And while this happened over much of his life, he achieved the majority in his last 10 years from the age of 65 to around 75.
    • He was instrumental in writing of, and was the only common signatory to the Declaration of Independence, the peace treaty with Britain (and with France) and the US Constitution. He was instrumental in forming a governance system that would bring the various independent states, into one United States, and in creating the two chamber structure of the Senate and the House.
    • The contrast between his pragmatic beliefs in “salvation by works” and a frankly not very deep religious conviction, versus Jonathan Edwards’ thinking, a leading Christian spiritual thinker of the timewho emphasised salvation by grace and grace alone, which I find spiritually curious.
  • Takeaways for myself: to be more industrious, pragmatic, and turn to action when needed, to be more outgoing in fostering connection (which is possible in a very different way in today’s internet-centric world) to continue to be curious, broad ranging and diplomatic.
  • It’s a fairly easy read, quite long and a bit repetitive at times but definitely worth pushing through. The second half of the book, which concentrates on the last 10 years of his life and many of the political developments between the US and Europe, is very interesting.

    • 4. Consilience by Edward O. Wilson

    His key concept is the unification and “consilience” of all fields of knowledge, the natural sciences, social sciences, art, spirituality and religion, with a scientific underpinning. The book was helpful to me in several ways:

    • In furthering this idea that what are traditionally thought of as separate fields of enquiry, are in fact highly related; and understanding one, may lead to deeper understanding of another.
    • Along side this, is the observation that most people become specialists in one area and few are the generalists making connections across what are considered separate areas of expertise. There is great opportunity for those willing to span the fields.
    • The idea of deeply rooted genetic origins to some of our cultural- and spiritual practices, and that our minds grow in a cultural context as part of a communal mind.
    • He was quite prescient in his insight that it would be the development of our understanding of the mind, that would become a connecting force across many of these areas.
    • The idea of social- or collective-Darwinism, the importance of culture in creating cohesion, that group cultures can evolve and individuals may subserve their needs to the group in order to ensure its survival.
    • This then leads to discussions of the social sciences from evolutionary biology to economics to psychology and hence onto art, ethics and religion.
    • While many may disagree, I found he had a positive light on spirituality and religion in the sense that, it is necessary for the effective organisation of our cultures
    • He is again prescient in looking forward at issues like gene therapy and environmentalism

    This is an intellectually exhausting read, with many concepts tightly packed and demanding language, so I would recommend it if you are interested in the idea of reconciliation as the basis for all forms of human knowledge; but be prepared to put the effort in.

    5. Deep Work by Cal Newport

    An easy read and some good practical advice too which I will be applying in the coming year to try and improve my productivity and general focus. (I have put out a separate post summarising my takeaways on this book.)

    6. The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin

    This book has been hugely helpful in understanding our family’s internal motivations and drivers. The world can be split into two types of people: those who believe in personality types and those who don’t! Jokes aside, personality types can be useful mental models. Rubin develops a mental model of what motivates people: are we driven by what others expect of us, or are we driven internally by our own expectations, do we balance other people’s and our own expectations or do we reject all expectations – those arising from within and those of other people? Which of these types is dominant, has a great deal to say about how we approach life, and what approach in work or relationships will be effective in motivating in specific situations.

    In our experience her mental model was highly descriptive of the different members of our family. Each of the four different ‘types’ she describes is a good fit to one of the four of us. It’s been very helpful in understanding what approach to take in working with one another. Recommended for anyone in a relationship or parenting, struggling to make things work better.

  • 7. Life and Work Principles by Ray Dalio
  • I am a huge admirer of what Dalio has achieved at Bridgewater having followed their investment thinking for many years. He is possibly one of the most systematic of thinkers and this book of his Principles does exactly that, starting from elementary components and building up. The book also gives a good insight into him as a person and family man which round out a view, if you know him only as an investor.

    • There is too much to distil into one summary but a few of the key highlights and takeaways for me include:

    Life principles

    • What I have seen is that the happiest people discover their own nature and match their life to it.
    • Two worthy life goals: meaningful work and meaningful relationships
    • Embrace reality, see it as it truly is, and deal with it
    • Love your mistakes and learn from them. pain plus reflection = progress
    • Weigh second- and third-order consequences when making decisions
    • Have good mental maps (to help you understand the world), humility and open mindedness (to know you don’t have all the answers and be open to other’s solutions)
    • Understand your own ego barrier, preventing you from understanding or accepting your weaknesses and blind spots, versus your executive function, a higher level ‘you’ that wants to make the right decision – these are in conflict.
    • A concept of believability: weighted decision making I think is very powerful – weight the opinions of those with proven track records and who are most expert. This is a better model than either consensus decision making or dictatorial decision making. One of the most important decisions you can make is who you ask the questions of.
    • Other people genuinely see the world very differently from the way you do. Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path. You must suspend judgement and empathise to properly evaluate another person’s perspective.
    • Decision making is a two step process. Take in all the relevant information, then decide.
    • Thoughtful disagreement is an art: how to be both open minded and assertive.
    • Everything looks bigger closer up, and ‘new’ is overvalued relative to ‘great’.
    • Navigate levels effectively, high, intermediate, detailed. Synthesis requires back to the big picture, not getting lost in the detail. Simplify. It takes a genius to make it simple.

    Work principles (a few of the many he suggests)

    • Organisations consist of people and culture
    • An idea meritocracy = radical truth + radical transparency + believability weighted decision making
    • You have to be able to put your honest thoughts on the table, have thoughtful disagreement and abide by agreed-upon ways of getting past disagreement
    • Be loyal to the common mission, not to anyone who is not operating consistently with it
    • Create a culture where it is okay to make mistakes but unacceptable not to learn from them
    • Get in sync
    • Don’t leave important conflicts unresolved
    • Once a decision is made everyone should get behind it, even if individuals still disagree
    • Who is more important than what, hire right: for values, then abilities (ways of thinking and behaving), then skills (learnt tools), pay attention to track record
    • Don’t tolerate problems
    • Diagnose problems and get to their root cause
    • Evolve the machine
    • Have good governance

    My suggestion for using this book in a business context (after you have understood the big principles and concepts) is, if you have a specific set of challenges you’re facing there will probably be a section of his book that applies to that. See if applying them in your situation would be helpful. There is way too much to hold it all in mind, at once.

  • 8. 21 lessons for the 21st century by Yuval Noah Harari
  • I have wanted to read this author for some time (his book, Sapiens in particular). This one touches on most of the major themes that I think will be hugely important trends over coming years. In some ways it is a short cut covering many of the topics in both Edward Luce’s Demise of Western Populism and Kasparov’s Deep Thinking, including
      • Politics and the rise of populism
      The rise and impact of Artificial Intelligence
      Issues around education, truth and fake news, power
      The development of secular spiritualism
      The workings of the mind and our understanding of it
  • One key perspective that he brought through for me was the power and centrality of the narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves and our tribes, that this is both a defining feature of humanities success and our own greatest chains and shackles.
  • (With all it covered and some great quotes, there is a separate blogpost on it.)
  • 9. Deep Thinking by Gary Kasparov

    • I put out a separate post on this book too picking up on the themes of Artificial Intelligence and its increasing impact on work and the world, and on decision making psychology. A relatively accessible read with a bonus for anyone interested in the chess itself.

    10. The retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

    (Again, one I have done a separate blogpost on.) Articulate, and well-written, this is an excellent read for anyone wanting to understand the changing political landscape and rise of populism.

    11. The Psychology Book (published by DK)

    Psychology and the way our brains work has been an increasing area of interest for me both professionally and personally. I believe that psychology and the mind is going to be greatest and most important frontier on which we will make progress over the coming decades. I see its relevance everywhere: in interpersonal relationships between adults, both personal and professional; with children, as parents; in the aged; in the rise of interest in meditation and self help, in the rise of mental health issues amongst friends, colleagues and our community, and in my own self. I think mental health will become bigger than physical ailments as the frontier to address of human suffering. And compared to many of the other sciences it is its infancy, only just emerging from the dark ages. The subject it is studying is the most complex machine ever devised, the human brain. And studying cognition as opposed to the physical brain, is one of the most difficult things to do scientifically because most of it is happening in our heads, which to date are not terribly transparent to scientific inquiry.

    However as one approaches this subject it’s inevitably starts off as very confusing, with lots of different terminology and theories, and everyone appears to think that their theory is the perfect one to address your current situation. In the words of Charlie Munger, “to the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. In an attempt to try to make some sense of the cacophony of theories and approaches I am trying to get a more global picture of the field of psychology, this book by DK has been immensely helpful. It summarises the key ideas that each major psychologist contributed to the field and its helping me create a mental map of the different approaches and lineages we know of to date.

    12. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

    This was my fiction read of the year, a wonderful yarn combining the modern history of cryptography from World War Two through to today (slightly before the advent of crypto currency). It’s a bit long and some descriptions of less relevant facts can go on for a while but it’s a good nerd’s adventure, and he certainly knows his facts when it comes to cryptography.

    artifical intelligence · Culture · decision making · Learning · Philosophy · politics · Psychology

    21 lessons for the 21st century by Yuval Noah Harari

    Keith GuthrieLeave a comment

  • The book picks up on several themes that I think are very important for understanding where the world is trending over the coming years.

    Politics

    • Disillusionment picks up on the rise of anti ellitest autocratic and populist rulers (connections to The Demise of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce).
    • Issues of identity, nationalism clash with global problems. Identity and the definition of your tribe are themselves changing rapidly in today’s world.
    • Immigration also poses growing challenges in many parts of the world, both to the countries from which people are departing and those to which they are aiming to immigrate to.
    • Traditional democracy offers no solutions to the global technological disruption and ecological challenges we are facing.
    • All the existing human tribes are absorbed in advancing their particular interests rather than understanding the global truth.
  • Many are writing about the potential impact of AI on jobs in future (connections to Deep Thinking by Gary Kasparov). Yuval draws out some interesting insights:
    • In the past machines competed with humans in raw physical abilities, while humans retained an immense edge over machines in cognition. AI has the potential to change that.
    • In the future machines will become better at analysing human behaviour and predicting human decisions. (Already happening with social media’s ability to draw and captivate us). AI May out compete us in jobs that require intuition about other people, it may be able to more accurately assess people’s emotional states.
    • AI gets its power and ability to outcompete us not from replacing a single human but through integrating the experience of millions in a single network. AI cars will have far more driving experience than any human. AI doctors similarly. Healthcare could become far better and far cheaper.
    • What jobs will be more immune from relegation? Jobs that require a wide range of skills and an ability to deal with unforeseen scenarios. Human care for young, sick and elderly will probably remain a human activity. Human creativity is often lauded as the area AI will least impact but there he argues as AIs get to understand what touches human emotion they will start to impact this.
    • The idea of human being augmented by machines in all of these areas will inevitably be correct, hopefully greatly improving productivity but continuing the acceleration of change.
    • What do we do to try to create enough new jobs? Will governments create effective retraining programs? How will we cope with the psychological challenges of having to retrain multiple times in our careers?
    • And what happens if job losses far outstrip job creation? What if we get to the point where a large portion of society just don’t have much of a relevant role to play in the work that is economically valued and paid for?
    • What sort of changing social policies will we need eg. Universal Basic Income and what sort of tax policies if the value creation is owned by a few large data owning corporations?
    • Will we start recognising the enormous value of jobs that are not currently paid for such as careers and parenting?
    • Can we envisage a society where work is not where most people find their meaning and purpose? How will we pay for that?
    • Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations, and how we compare our condition to those of other people. How will we adjust our expectations in this new world.

    The other big questions he raises

    • How do we regulate the rise of big data and protect freedoms, who owns the data (see Kasparov’s comments about us sacrificing our privacy for service willingly, and the need for transparency from the big data owners)
    • What does terrorism look like in future?
  • On spirituality, ethics, secularism and religion
    • The future of spirituality, our concept of God, the contradictions between religions preaching individual humility but exercising collective arrogance in its exclusive demands. Marrying this with secularism and science, a seeking of objective truth, the development of secular ethics around concepts such as compassion, equality, freedom, courage.
    • “Questions you cannot answer are usually far better than answers you cannot question.”
    • But even secular movements repeatedly mutate into dogmatic creeds, especially in times of war or economic crisis where societies must act promptly and forcefully. Eg. communism’s of capitalism both become dogmas. Even the right to freedom can become a dogma against all censorship. At some point in time a search for objective truth is circumvented by the desire for expediency and simplicity.
    • “Every religion, ideology and creed has its shadow, and no matter which creed you follow you should acknowledge your shadow and avoid the naïve reassurance that ‘it cannot happen to us’.”
  • On truth and power
    • Ignorance: you know less than you think. “People rearely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like minded friends and self confirming news feeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged.
    • Providing people with more and better information is unlikely to improve matters. Most of our views are shaped by communal groupthink rather than individual rationality, and we hold these views out of group loyalty. Bombarding people with facts and exposing their individual ignorance is likely to backfire.
    • “If you want to go deeply into any subject you need a lot of time, and in particular the privilege of wasting time. You need to experiment with unproductive paths, to explore dead ends, to make space for doubts and boredom, and to allow little seeds of insight to slowly grow and blossom. If you cannot afford to waste time you will never find the truth.”
    • Power inevitably distorts the truth. Power is all about changing reality rather than seeing it for what it is.
    • Power depends on creating and believing fictions. We are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of others to believe in them. As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively.
    • For better or worse, fiction is among the most effective tools in humanity’s toolkit. By bringing people together religious and cultural creeds make large scale human cooperation possible. The power of human cooperation depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction.
    • As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it – and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control it.
    • How to avoid fake news? If you want reliable information, pay for it. If some issue seems exceptionally important to you, make the effort to read the scientific literature on it.
  • On education
      • You will need to reinvent yourself again and again in order to keep up with the world.
      To survive and flourish in such a world you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. Unfortunately teaching kids to embrace the unknown and keep their mental balance is far more difficult than teaching them a physics equation.
      People don’t need more information, they need the ability to make sense of the information, to tell the difference between the important and the unimportant and to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.
      What should we teach: critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity
      To do this you need to work hard on knowing who you are, and what you want from life, know thy self.
  • How do we usually get to know ourselves? The power of stories
      • We usually do this by telling ourselves stories to give meaning to our lives. My story must give me a role to play, and it must extend beyond my horizon, giving me an identity and a meaning to my life by embedding me in something bigger than myself.
      However when you believe a particular story, it makes you extremely interested in its minutest details, while keeping you blind to anything that falls outside its scope.
      Often we want our personal story to carry on beyond death, either through religious reassurance or through something tangible in either cultural or biological form.
      Why do people believe in these fictions? One reason is that their personal identity is built on the story. By the time their intellect matures they are so heavily invested in the story, that they are far more likely to use their intellect to rationalise the story than to doubt it. Most people who go on identity quests are like children going treasure hunting. They find only what their parents have hidden for them in advance. Second, not only our personal identities but also our collective institutions are built on the story. Once personal identities and entire social systems are built on top of the story, it becomes unthinkable to doubt it, because its collapse will trigger a personal and social cataclysm. Once you suffer for a story it’s usually enough to convince you that the story is real. And in following our own story we may even inflict suffering on others. We do not want to admit either that we are fools or villains and so we prefer to believe that the story is true.
      Throughout history almost all humans believed in several stories at the same time, and whenever absolutely convinced of the truth of any one of them. This uncertainty rattled most religions, which therefore considered faith to be a cardinal virtue and doubt to be amongst the worst possible sins. With the rise of modern culture the tables were turned. Faith looked increasingly like mental slavery, while doubt came to be seen as a precondition for freedom.
      Modernity didn’t reject the plethora of stories it inherited from the past. Instead, it opened a supermarket for them. The modern human is free to sample them all, choosing and combining what ever fits his or her taste.
      One common modern story is the Liberal story. Like all of the cosmic stories, the liberal story to start with a creation narrative. It says that the creation occurs every moment, and I am the creator. What then is the aim of my life? To create meaning by feeling, by thinking, by desiring, and by inventing. Anything that limits the human liberty to feel, to think, to desire and to invent, limits the meaning of the universe. Hence liberty from such limitations is the supreme ideal.
      In order to understand ourselves, a crucial step is to acknowledge that the ‘self’ is a fictional story that the intricate mechanisms of our mind constantly manufacture, update and re-write. There is a storyteller in my mind that explains who I am, where I am coming from, where I am heading to, and what is happening right now. And like government Spin Doctors, the inner narrator repeatedly gets things wrong but rarely, if ever, admits it. My inner propaganda machine builds up a personal myth, with prized memories and cherished traumas that often bear little resemblance to the truth.
      We humans have conquered the world thanks to ability to create and believe fictional stories. We are therefore particularly bad at knowing the difference between fiction and reality. Overlooking this difference has been a matter of survival for us.
  • Philosophy and the final frontier: our minds
      • In Yuval’s view the big question facing humans is not “what is the meaning of life?” But “how do we get out of suffering?” (Vs Victor Frankl who looks to find meaning even in suffering). He believes “suffering is the most real thing in the world”.
      He goes on to discuss how he can, as a sceptic still wake up cheerful in the morning.
      He turns inward on himself in mindfulness meditation.
      How does one study the mind? The only mind I can directly observe is my own. If I cannot observe some external thing without bias, how can I objectively observe my own mind? But the only tool available is meditation: the direct observation of one’s own mind.
      “The most important thing I realised was that the deepest source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind. When I want something and it doesn’t happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Learning this is the first step towards ceasing to generate more suffering.”
      Serious meditation demanded minutes amount of discipline. If you try to objectively observe your sensations, the first thing you notice is how wild and impatient reminders.
      We had better understand our minds before the algorithms make our minds up for us.