Amazon.com
"Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective," writes Robert Greene. Mastery of one's emotions and the arts of deception and indirection are, he goes on to assert, essential. The 48 laws outlined in this book "have a simple premise: certain actions always increase one's power ... while others decrease it and even ruin us."
The laws cull their principles from many great schemers--and scheming instructors--throughout history, from Sun-Tzu to Talleyrand, from Casanova to con man Yellow Kid Weil. They are straightforward in their amoral simplicity: "Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit," or "Discover each man's thumbscrew." Each chapter provides examples of the consequences of observance or transgression of the law, along with "keys to power," potential "reversals" (where the converse of the law might also be useful), and a single paragraph cleverly laid out to suggest an image (such as the aforementioned thumbscrew); the margins are filled with illustrative quotations. Practitioners of one-upmanship have been given a new, comprehensive training manual, as up-to-date as it is timeless.
Book Description
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power in to forty-eight well explicated laws. As attention--grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers. Some laws teach the need for prudence ("Law 1: Never Outshine the Master"), the virtue of stealth ("Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions"), and many demand the total absence of mercy ("Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally"), but like it or not, all have applications in real life. Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P. T. Barnum, and other famous figures who have wielded--or been victimized by--power, these laws will fascinate any reader interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.
Customer Reviews:
VERY USEFUL IF YOU ARE NEW TO A BIG CITY.......2007-10-08
The world as battle-field. It doesn't get any better than this if success is what you're looking for!
Disgusting! Don't buy this book!.......2007-10-06
If you want a guide on how to be manipulative, amoral and corrupt at everyone else's expense...this is for you. As for me, I was disgusted from page one....it goes completely against everything I believe in. "Never put too much trust in friends" ...must be awfully lonely in such a world where you can trust no one. Perhaps that's because you've stabbed everyone in the back. This "looking out for #1" at all costs is what is wrong with the world today. If any book EVER deserved to be burned...this is it!
Portrays a realistic view of the world while rising up in power........2007-09-16
When I first acquired this book, I delved into the text and was fascinated by what is never taught in school, hardly at work, even with people; as this book states wisely, many people would like to keep to themselves and therefore many who have power hardly share it, unless a deal is behind it. The book itself may be a paradox in parts, and the methods used may be controversial; yet it has the essential basic "training" in order to strive to the top.
Sometimes one wonders if this will work, or does this author fool us into purchasing this book. It may show a pessimistic world of beguile, secrecy, envy and greed; however this portrays a realistic view of the world while rising up in power.
Brilliantly written, with worthy examples of great thinkers, philosophers and military officials of history; this concise edition will keep you on the ground reading, whilst teaching you how to propel in the air and on top of the world.
USMC- Commandant's reading list.......2007-07-25
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm Army - 16yrs. From 2000 thru 2006 I was stationed in Okinawa and the best place for all service members to buy books so deployed (Amazon aside) was from the bookstore on Camp Foster (across from the movie theatre). For at least a good 6 months (in 2002) this book was prominently featured on the shelves with a tag identifying it as having made the USMC Commandant's Reading List (or, a book senior commisioned Marine Corps leadership consider beneficial to Marines (enlisted and commisioned) seeking guidance on professional development). Intrigued, I bought it. I won't go into a lengthy review here: in a nutshell; the book lists a series of TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures) designed to maximize one's advantage when negotiating interpersonal realationships both professional and personal. Some of these TTPs involve elements of manipulation, subterfuge, and dishonesty that clearly cross the boundaries of unethical behavior. It bothered me not just a little that Marines or Soldiers (young and old) might consider using the advice in this book as means of advancing their careers or solidifying leadership positions within their respective units.
I do know some of the book's reccomendations are in direct conflict with The Army Values, and according to at least two USMC Staff NCOs (both good friends) this is also the case regarding their own code of professional conduct. One of the Marines in question wrote a letter (to whom -I don't know) expressing his concern. A few months later the book assumed a less prominent residence on the shelves. Nonetheless; I never failed to see it lodged in the odd bookshelf in someone's (usually an officer) professional space - from time to time. I consider its presence an indicator for stepping up one's vigilance when dealing with the books's owner.
Fabulous!.......2007-07-20
I bought this book for a good friend of mine, and he said it's excellent reading. I also bought him Blood On The Altar, which he took a peek at, and he said he looks forward to reading that as well.
Book Description
Probation and Parole: Theory and Practice, Ninth Edition takes a look inside the real world of probation and parole. Featuring a front-line practitioner's insights based on the author's extensive experience as a senior New York State parole officer, this book exposes readers to the complex, ârealâ world of probation and parole.
Comprehensive in approach, this book provides a thorough understanding of the field of probation and parole covering these topics: history and administration, sentencing and the pre-sentence investigation, juvenile court, probation, institutions, and aftercare, prisons and community-based corrections, indeterminate and determinate sentences, the theory and practice of rehabilitation, parole supervision and special problems and programs.
For future or practicing probation and parole officers.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting History.......2007-03-28
If you have ever been in law enforcement and have a curiosity of the system that you are apart of this is a good overview with interesting connections to the legal system.
Book Description
Max Weber's Economy and Society is the greatest sociological treatise written in this century. Published posthumously in Germany in the early 1920's, it has become a constitutive part of the modern sociological imagination. Economy and Society was the first strictly empirical comparison of social structures and normative orders in world-historical depth, containing the famous chapters on social action, religion, law, bureaucracy, charisma, the city, and the political community with its dimensions of class, status and power.
Economy and Status is Weber's only major treatise for an educated general public. It was meant to be a broad introduction, but in its own way it is the most demanding textbook yet written by a sociologist. The precision of its definitions, the complexity of its typologies and the wealth of its historical content make the work a continuos challenge at several levels of comprehension: for the advanced undergraduate who gropes for his sense of society, for the graduate student who must develop his own analytical skills, and for the scholar who must match wits with Weber.
When the long-awaited first complete English edition of Economy and Society was published in 1968, Arthur Stinchcombe wrote in the American Journal of Sociology: "My answer to the question of whether people should still start their sociological intellectual biographies with Economy and Society is yes." Reinhard Bendix noted in the American Sociological Review that the "publication of a compete English edition of Weber's most systematic work [represents] the culmination of a cultural transmission to the American setting...It will be a study-guide and compendium for years to come for all those interested in historical sociology and comparative study."
In a lengthy introduction, Guenther Roth traces the intellectual prehistory of Economy and Society, the gradual emergence of its dominant themes and the nature of its internal logic.
Mr. Roth is a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Mr. Wittich heads an economic research group at the United Nations.
Customer Reviews:
classic.......2007-01-05
Weber is great, so is this book. You can find the most origins of modern thoughts in his book
A Classic .......2005-05-06
This is an uncommly brilliant work in social theory and sociology. Moreover, economic sociology was founded through "Economy and Society", especially its second chapter ("Sociological Categories of Economic Action") which is the size of a small book (approx. 200 pages).
The general theoretical approach of Weber can be characterized as one of "interpretive economic sociology", that is, as a type of economic sociology in which the concept of "meaning" is at the very center of the explanatory exercise.
Social action (to follow Ch. 1) is defined as a type of behavior to which meaning is attached ("action"), and which is oriented to the behavior of others ("social"). Economic sociology consequently deals with "economic social action".
"Economy and Society" was part of a larger work entitled "Handbook of Social Economics", which included volumess on "Economy and Nature", "Economy and Technology" - and "Economy and Society". In his work Weber explores such topics as "economy and law", "economy and religion", "economy and politics", and much more.
The work "Economy and Society", finally, is a bric-a-brac. Weber himself only sent 4 chs to the printer (=Chs 1-4). The rest of the 2 volumes consists of manuscripts that his wife and economist Melchior Palyi put together, pretty much as they saw fit. Caution is consequently necessary when reading "Economy and Society"; and this work should not be treated as "a book" by Weber.
comment of a comment made four years ago.......2004-03-30
I expect this comment is going to be useful, if at all, only to first year graduate students, so it'll be understandable if it's not rated very highly.... Anyway, just a quick note on Mr. Jack White's comment of April 11, 2000. One thing that Max Weber's Economy and Society is NOT, is a foundational text for structural-functionalism. That honor would probably go to Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society-- to be followed oh-so many years later by seminal works of Americans Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. I'm not sure what Mr. White was thinking, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't about classical sociological theory.
What??.......2004-03-23
I'm a little confused. I purchased this book because of it's comprehensiveness (1400+ pages of work by Weber), but when the book arrived, it was only about 700 pages long. Am I missing something here? If I paid $20 for a used 1400 page copy and receive a 700 page book, should I only be charged $10? Strange.
ES and Schluchter's developmental history.......2003-10-10
It seems that many people comment this book with the difficulty to read and the bad organization. However, I want to suggest that after read Schluchter's 'The Rise of Western Rationalism', you will know more about why Weber's writings are in this style. Simply speaking, it links to Weber's view of History, and if he want to elaborate the history in a approiate way, not a simple linear evolutionary way, he had to demonstrate the whole picture--or in Schluchter's word, 'basic configuration'--of history. History, in this case the rise of Rationalism, is not compose solely by few influential events, but also related to the others. Those 'significant historical events' are only the consequence of the competition between ideas and historical events, therefore, Weber wanted to explain why the configuration favour the rise of western rationalism, so he must concern all elements constitute the history. That is, Weber showed us the conditions and the process of competition within or among the many spheres, I think that is why Weber had to use this seems fragmented writing style.
Book Description
CRIMINOLOGY: THEORIES, PATTERNS AND TYPOLOGIES, EIGHTH EDITION provides a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of all areas of criminological theory and crime typologies and effectively links criminological theory with the formulation of criminal justice policy. Renowned for its unbiased presentation of theories, issues, and controversies and its exhaustive research base, this book presents cutting-edge, seminal research, as well as up-to-the-minute policy and newsworthy examples. This edition provides students with a gateway to online and multimedia resources that capture the immediacy of the field through CNN video and an interactive, integrated Web site.
Customer Reviews:
Good.......2007-05-11
Topics were covered very well and this book will help me a lot with future classes.
Book Description
In this wide-ranging second edition, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic bring together the finest, most illustrative, and highly accessible articles in the fast-growing legal genre of Critical Race Theory. In challenging orthodoxy, questioning the premises of liberalism, and debating sacred wisdoms, Critical Race Theory scholars writing over the past few years have indelibly changed the way America looks at race.Contributors: Regina Austin, Robin D. Barnes, Adrienne Davis, Derrick Bell, Kevin Brown, Paulette M. Caldwell, Robert S. Chang, Robert J. Cottrol, Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr., Peggy C. Davis, Richard Delgado, Raymond T. Diamond, Mary A. Dudziak, Leslie G. Espinoza, Monica J. Evans, Daniel Farber, Alan D. Freeman, Trina Grillo, Alex M. Johnson, Jr., Sheri Lynn Johnson, James W. Gordon, Angela P. Harris, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Randall L. Dennedy, Ian F. Haney Lopez, Sylke Merchan, Kathryn Milun, Margert E. Montoya, Michael A. Olivas, Deborah Waire Post, Thomas Ross, Jennifer M. Russell, Margaret M. Russell, Suzanna Sherry, Girardeau A Spann, Jean Stefancic, Gerald Torres, Patricia J. Williams, Stephanie M. Wildman, Robert A. Williams, Fr., Adrien, and Datherine Wing.
Customer Reviews:
Great resource.......2007-06-08
the cutting edge is a great introduction to critical race theory if you have never really read anything about it. It has many essays that give you a good survey of the different writers that are out there from a variety of perspectives. For those of you doing dissertation writing, this is a great resource to get a "quick and dirty" look at CRT.
PC Theory.......2005-12-30
It is tough to rebut a work like this. It is a rambling, incoherent series of stream of consciousness, conclusory mish mash. The authors believe that we are supposed to believe their arguments by authority.
The arguments involve children's fairy tales about spacemen. There is medical quackery that the cause of black hypertension is the White race. The entire work is a mess and a hate speech tirade, of crucial omissions, and of racist lies. Rebutting Mein Kampf, barking back at dogs seem more productive use of one's time.
What is useful, is that this book lays out the theoretical jusitification for PC speech codes and other constitutional torts. If any plaintiff is injured by such, this book is worth perusing for specific guideline makers, and potential co-defendants. As guideline makers, and the inspiration for these violations, the relevant author should be held accountable, to deter. You may think that the authors are unlikely to have assets. However, whom do they work for, and under whose auspices and for whose benefit were these articles written? Most of the authors are law school or college professors, hired by schools with big endowments.
It is not clear that the guideline makers are shielded by the First Amendment.
Otherwise, every article should be challenged by any intellectually honest student forced to study this book.
Excellent for the new, but acquainted CRT reader.......2004-03-17
This is an excellent array of essays and articles from the legal genre of Critical Race Theory. I recommend reading Kimberle Crenshaw's Critical Race Theory: A Reader to begin with. This would be part 2 so to speak. After that, I would recommend reading the following: Devon Carbado's Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality; Adrien Wing's Critical Race Feminism and Global Critical Race Feminism; and of course, last but not least anything and everything by Derrick Bell.
Cutting Edge.......2001-06-10
My class used this book as a text and resource in a course on Advanced Torts. While only sections of the book were assigned, I grew so interested in the subject matter that I read most of the rest on my own.
The editors have collected some of the most outstanding texts in this area and compiled them for reference. Included are sections on critical feminism, queer issues, intergroup relations, the black-white binary, and crime issues. The top writers in the field are all included, such as Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado. While the book is easy to use, none of the texts are easy but rather are challenging of deeply-held ideas and ideals.
As critical race and gender studies continue to proliferate in undergraduate colleges and law schools, I am sure that this text will recieve a great deal more attention. It is certainly a worthy and thought-provoking read.
Book Description
"One of the great political works of our time, . . . the twentieth-century successor to John Stuart Mill's essay, 'On Liberty.'"—Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek
"A reflective, often biting, commentary on the nature of our society and its dominant thought by one who is passionately opposed to the coercion of human beings by the arbitrary will of others, who puts liberty above welfare and is sanguine that greater welfare will thereby ensue."—Sidney Hook, New York Times Book Review
In this classic work Hayek restates the ideals of freedom that he believes have guided, and must continue to guide, the growth of Western civilization. Hayek's book, first published in 1960, urges us to clarify our beliefs in today's struggle of political ideologies.
Customer Reviews:
Philosophy - Libertarian perspective .......2007-06-18
This review will be mostly technical in nature. Some good reviews already exist that discuss the overview of the material.
1. Part 1 The Value of Freedom, 8 chapters.
2. Part 2 Freedom and the Law, 8 chapters
3. Part 3 Freedom in the Welfare State, 8 chapters
4. Postscript: Why I am not a Conservative, 13 pages
5. End Notes = 100 pages
6. Analytical Table of Contents (valuable for reference), listing sub-topics by page number = 7 pages
7. Name Index = 10 pages
8. Subject Index = 16 pages.
My Remarks: this is philosophy of government, plus some historical development, plus economic theory-and-practice. It is a rather tough read, exact logic and completed thoughts until each point is carefully constucted and then commented on.
There are many quote-able passages, and the exhaustive referencing confirms the scholarly style.
The print is small: 42 lines per page, 17 characters per inch.
So, the 3-stars are given so as to ward-off readers that are looking for libertarian views of a popluar nature. Though the reading is somewhat hard, the individual cases discussed make this a perfect source for a dedicated libertarian to reference.
The greatest political philosophy book of the 20th century.......2007-05-27
This is the most consistent level headed book of political philosophy I have read. The first section in particular has a new fascinating idea on almost every page. Hayek was not a libertarian. His thought allowed a fair amount of elbow room for public policy as the third section will show. I also found his postscript "Why I'm not a conservative" very interesting.
Individual Freedom.......2007-05-24
Frederich August Hayek
"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."
"Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom."
"If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this justly and equitably."
Excellent book service.......2007-02-20
The book came very quickly and was packaged well. Service excellent. Book was in excellent condition, even better than advertised. I appreciate the professional service.
Hayek--Orwell's Mentor.......2006-01-02
At the height of socialist popularism in England, cir. 1944, George Orwell, a leading proponent of socialism, believing in its promises as did many,if not most of Eurpose's leading intellectuals and politicians, wrote a review of Hayek's famous book, "The Road to Serfdom." Orwell wrote the review in the "Observer," London April 9,1944.
Hayek, mentions this fact as a footnote in chapter 17 of his classic book, "The Constitution of Liberty" published in 1960, as evidence of the disillusionment of socialist intellectuals, when they were confronted with the observation that individualism and socialism were mutually exclusive. Those same intellectuals had not accepted the proposition when advanced by Karl Mannheim in his book, "Man and Society in an Age of Reconstrucion" (1940). Mannheim had been a long opponent of socialism, but Orwell had only been converted after being exposed to "The Road to Serfdom." By 1960, when Orwell had become a world renowned author and staunch opponent of Big Brother doublespeak, Hayek recognized that the political proponents of socialsm which was dying as a political ideal, were now introducing the concept of the welfare state.
While virtually everyone alive today have been effected by Orwell's works and his prescient warnings about Big Brother, how many of us are aware of Hayek's infulence on him?
"The Constitution of Liberty" provides its readers with an enormous wealth of knowledge, of which this one footnote is only a small example. Each reader is bound to be effected in one way or another by the knowledge imparted to them, and this is one of the main lessons to be learned about "liberty" which requires the "rule of Law" to exist in today's society, but that Rule of Law must be understood. The failure of today's inteligencia is to fail to fully comprehend the meaning of liberty and its necessity in a world full of confusion from the confrontation of competing civilizations.
Unfortunately, Hayek is no longer alive to help guide us through the new millenium. Fortunately, he has left us a large volume of work, perhaps more relevant today than it was when written years ago. While "The Constitution of Liberty" is voluminous in itself, it should be kept as a reference book. Hayek's other works, "The Road to Serfdom" and his last published volume, "Fatal Conceit-the Evils of Socialism" published in 1980 is a magnificent continuation of Hayek's life long discertation on the evolution of mankind's growth from a tribal, familial society which did not require man to understand or protect Liberty, to a group of city-states that prospered because of the Liberties protected in Athens, but only moderately understood, so that such a great and wise philosopher as Aristotle would believe that freedom could only exist as far as a man could yell.
Hayek's understanding that Western Civilization has prospered from individualism, that it has grown and prospered from the freedom to travel, to trade, to exchnge property, material, real and intellectual. He explains why man must be humble, that humans progress from trial and error, not from conceited belief that one way or another way is correct. That to be free and liberated is to be free to make mistakes and government should exist to protect individuals'rights to make mistakes while they attempt to profit in their own ideals and beliefs.
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Law As a Social System (Oxford Socio-Legal Studies)
Niklas Luhmann
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ASIN: 0198262388 |
Book Description
Modern systems theory provides a new paradigm for the analysis of society. In this volume, Niklas Luhmann, its leading exponent, explores its implications for our understanding of law. Luhmann argues that current thinking about how law operates within a modern society is seriously deficient. In this volume he lays out the theoretical and methodological tools that, he argues, can advance our understanding of contemporary society and, in particular, of the identity, performance, and function of the legal system within that society. In systems theory, society is its communications: they are its empirical reality; the items that can be observed and studied. Systems theory identifies how communications operate within a physical world and how different sub-systems of communication operate alongside each other. In this volume, Luhmann uses systems theory to address a question central to legal theory: what differentiates law from other parts of society? However, unlike conventional legal theory, this volume seeks to provide an answer in terms of a general social theory: a methodology that answers this question in a manner applicable not only to law, but also to all the other complex and highly differentiated systems within modern society, such as politics, the economy, religion, the media, and education. This truly sociological approach offers profound insights into the relationships between law and all of these other social systems.
Book Description
The rise of the "information society" offers not only considerable peril but also great promise. Beset from all sides by a never-ending barrage of media, how can we ensure that the most accurate information emerges and is heeded? In this book, Cass R. Sunstein develops a deeply optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives. In an age of information overload, it is easy to fall back on our own prejudices and insulate ourselves with comforting opinions that reaffirm our core beliefs. Crowds quickly become mobs. The justification for the Iraq war, the collapse of Enron, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia--all of these resulted from decisions made by leaders and groups trapped in "information cocoons," shielded from information at odds with their preconceptions. How can leaders and ordinary people challenge insular decision making and gain access to the sum of human knowledge? Stunning new ways to share and aggregate information, many Internet-based, are helping companies, schools, governments, and individuals not only to acquire, but also to create, ever-growing bodies of accurate knowledge. Through a ceaseless flurry of self-correcting exchanges, wikis, covering everything from politics and business plans to sports and science fiction subcultures, amass--and refine--information. Open-source software enables large numbers of people to participate in technological development. Prediction markets aggregate information in a way that allows companies, ranging from computer manufacturers to Hollywood studios, to make better decisions about product launches and office openings. Sunstein shows how people can assimilate aggregated information without succumbing to the dangers of the herd mentality--and when and why the new aggregation techniques are so astoundingly accurate. In a world where opinion and anecdote increasingly compete on equal footing with hard evidence, the on-line effort of many minds coming together might well provide the best path to infotopia.
Customer Reviews:
Read the 1/5 about deliberation, leave the rest........2007-06-14
In the 1960's, legal scholars discovered what the rest of us always knew: that pure legal scholarship is really, really boring. Law and economics demonstrated that a multidisciplinary approach could breath fresh life into the corpse of law. Then, suddenly, all the rock star law professors were interdisciplinarians. And along with this devaluation of pure legal thought came a general loss of intellectual rigor. By the 1990's, celebrity law professors were becoming like journalists with really good grades, each writing outside of his or her area of competence with an astonishing self-confidence. Richard Posner, who was on relatively solid ground in economics, crowned himself an expert on military intelligence. Lawrence Lessig wrote a whole series of books without any thesis or logical argument. And this new breed of scholar seemed to be in a race to publish as much as possible as quickly as possible, without regard for quality.
I have always thought that Cass Sunstein epitomizes the worst of this trend. He seems to rush a book into print every couple of years, and with each new work drifts further and further away from "law." But after hearing him on Russ Roberts' fantastic EconTalk podcast, I was genuinely dying to read this book. The topics chosen are all fascinating, and no one has really treated them all under one roof before.
The problem is that, once again, Sunstein has given short shrift to these topics. All of them, with the exception of group deliberation, has been covered better elsewhere. Where Sunstein is not stealing the limelight from people like Robin Hanson (prediction markets) he is rehashing the pop science books of people like James Surowieki (statistical group judgments).
The reason this book gets three stars instead of zero is that the material on bias in group deliberation is genuinely insightful and original. In brief: deliberative bodies make very poor decisions, due to a whole slew of biases and feedback loops. When Sunstein suggests that we reform deliberative bodies, generally, to incorporate anonymous voting and minority voices, he is offering something genuinely useful. (Interestingly, at one point in the podcast mentioned above, Sunstein all but admits that this was initiated as a book about deliberation and that the project was changed to incorporate the other topics in media res. This explains a lot.) Read it for the bits on deliberation, but be prepared to be bored and underwhelmed by large portions.
I added it to my syllabus immediately.......2007-06-07
I originally bought this book as a birthday present for my brother, a philosopher, and then immediately stole it from him. (I gave it back after I bought my own copy.) The book paints a frightening picture of how group processes can lead us very, very astray. In many ways, it reads as a sequel to his book on Punitive Damages, which documents frightening trends for experimental jury pools to assign harsher damages than the individual jurors planned to assign in pre-deliberation surveys.
I quickly added the chapters on group deliberation failures to the syllabus for my class on psychology and economics. My only trepidation was that I am also assigning sections of Punitive Damages and Laws of Fear, so there's now an entire unit on Cass Sunstein's work. But he does an excellent job of exploring in readable prose the societal consequences of psychological influences on choice. As such, his books offer a very accessible mirror into aspects of bounded rationality or heuristics & biases that we study in economics. I figure the marginal contribution of this book, in terms of class discussion and actual post-exam take-aways, exceed the contribution of a few more technical empirical papers.... At least, I hope that turns out to be the case!
A thoughtful consideration.......2007-05-25
Of when and why these techniques (polling, prediction markets, blogs, wiki, FOSS) work -- and when they don't.
Despite the title this isn't a collection of breathless prose, but a thinking through of the underlying principles e.g., prediction markets don't work for supreme court justice picks because real information about the choice is highly concentrated.
Which is exactly the type of thought process that is necessary if you want to put one of these techniques to use.
Complements Wikinomics, Solid but Incomplete.......2007-01-17
I was initially disappointed, but adjusted my expectations when I reminded myself that the author is at root a lawyer. The bottom line on this book is that it provided a very educated and well-footnoted discourse the nature and prospects for group deliberation, but there are three *huge* missing pieces:
1) Education as the necessary continuous foundation for deliberation
2) Collective Intelligence as an emerging discipline (see the Innovators spread sheet at Earth Intelligence Network); and
3) No reference to Serious Games/Games for Change or budgets as a foundation for planning the future rather than predicting it.
In the general overview the author discusses information cocoons (self-segregation and myopia) and information influences/social pressures that can repress free thinking and sharing.
The four big problems that he finds in the history of deliberation are amplifying errors; hidden profiles & favoring common or "familiar" knowledge; cascades & polarization; and negative reinforements from being within a narrow group.
Today I am missing a meeting on Predictive Markets in DC (AEI-Brookings) and while I regret that, I have thoroughly enjoyed the author's deep look at Prediction Markets, with special reference to Google and Microsoft use of these internally. This book, at a minimum, provides the very best overview of prediction markets that I have come across. At the end of the book is an appendix listing 18 specific predictions markets with their URLs.
The author goes on to provide an overview of the Wiki world, and is generally very kind to Jimbo Wales and Wikipedia, and less focused on the many altneratives and enhancements of the open Wiki. It would have been helpful here to have some insights for the general reader on Doug Englebart's Open Hypertextdocument System (OHS) and Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language (IEML), both of which may well leave the mob-like open wiki's in the dust.
Worthy of note: Soar Technology is quoted as saying that Wikis cut project development time in half.
The book draws to a close with further discussion of the challenges of self-segregation, the options for aggregating views and knowledge and for encouraging feedback, and the urgency of finding incentives to induce full disclosure and full participation from all who have something to contribute.
This book excels in its own narrowly-chosen domain, but it is isolated from the larger scheme of things including needed educational changes, the importance of belief systems as the objective of Intelligence and Information Operations (I2O), the role of Serious Games/Games for Change, and the considerable work that has been done by Collective Intelligence pioneers, who just held their first convergence conference call on 15 January 2007.
Final note: the author uses NASA and the Columbia disaster, and CIA and the Iraq disaster, as examples, but does not adequately discuss the pathologies of bureaucracy and the politicization of intelligence and space. As a former CIA employee who also reads a great deal, I can assert with confidence that CIA has no trouble aggregating all that it knew, including the reports of the 30 line crossers who went in and then came back to report there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. CIA has two problems: 1) Dick Cheney refused to listen; and 2) George Tenet lacked the integrity to go public and go to Congress to challenge Dick Cheney's malicious and impeachable offenses against America (see my reviews of "VICE" and of "One Percent Doctrine" on Cheney, and my many reviews on the mistakes leading up to and within the Iraq war). See also my reviews of "Fog Facts" and "Lost History" and Gaddis' "The Landscape of History."
To end on an upbeat note, what I see in this book, and "Wikinomics" and "Collective Intelligence" and "Tao of Democracy" and my own "The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political," is a desperate need for Amazon to take on the task of aggregating books and building out from books to create social communities where all these books can be "seen" and "read" and "understood" as a whole. We remain fragmented in the production and dissemination of information, and consequently, in our own mind-sets and world-views. Time to change that, perhaps with Wiki-books that lock-down the original and then give free license to apply OHS linkages at the paragraph level, and unlimited wike build-outs. That's what I am in Seattle to discuss this week.
Infotopia - .......2007-01-10
I have an interest in development of creative ideas and themes by small groups. I read this book to expand my knowledge.
On the high side, I was fascinated with the Jury Theorem and outcomes of statistical groups. I derived the formula on page 234 and played with different probabilties and group sizes to understand sensitivities. Lots of fun. I can see why political strategists would want to identify and slant a campaign to a (probably) small percentage of people to sway an election.
I was a little disappointed in the chapters about deliberations and problems in groups which seemed to apply to larger group sizes. Much seemed to be common sense not worthy of a lot of theoretical research - my personal interest is different. In my own career, I found that understanding personalities and agendas was extremely important because my arguments could then be tailored so others could best hear.
I played a prediction market game (MIT Technology Futures) for a while, but drifted away because I had no vested interest. Winning a TV set didn't turn me on. It seems to me that the prediction market must have real significance to succeed and be useful. If the emotions aren't there or are negative (eg. DOD predicting wars), it may not draw a large and informed crowd.
I am a casual user of Wikis and find Wikipedia useful especially in math and science. The soft stuff takes me a lot of time to understand writers' viewpoints, true also for blogs that I occasionally run across. That certainly stretches my critical thinking, but sometimes I don't want to think - I just want the answer or an answer from someone I trust.
Regarding the author's bottom line, I certainly agree that markets and democracy rest on the belief that many minds can be trusted. I would like to see the author make the jump from his theoretical world to that of real people working in small groups.
Book Description
In these two important lectures, distinguished political philosopher Seyla Benhabib argues that since the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, we have entered a phase of global civil society which is governed by cosmopolitan norms of universal justice--norms which are difficult for some to accept as legitimate since they are sometimes in conflict with democratic ideals. In her first lecture, Benhabib argues that this tension can never be fully resolved, but it can be mitigated through the renegotiation of the dual commitments to human rights and sovereign self-determination. Her second lecture develops this idea in detail, with special reference to recent developments in Europe (for example, the banning of Muslim head scarves in France). The EU has seen the replacement of the traditional unitary model of citizenship with a new model that disaggregates the components of traditional citizenship, making it possible to be a citizen of multiple entities at the same time. The volume also contains a substantive introduction by Robert Post, the volume editor, and contributions by Bonnie Honig (Northwestern University), Will Kymlicka (Queens University), and Jeremy Waldron (Columbia School of Law).
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- The Canon of American Legal Thought
- The Complete Taj Mahal
- The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Popular Science)
- The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America
- The Foundation: A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World
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- The Legislative Labyrinth: A Map for Not-for-Profits (AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series) (The AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series)
- The PowerScore LSAT Logic Games Bible
- The PowerScore LSAT Logic Games Bible
Books Index
Books Home
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