derifatives

I've managed to make time to read a bit more fiction. I partially blame the iPad and its Kindle functionality. Some spoilers on older books follow.

"Consider Phlebas", Iain M. Banks. What a weird book. I finished and can't decide how much I liked it. Which I guess means it was OK? You starts off thinkng you're in for a grand epic space opera a la Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep", but then midway through you realize it's more of a fun romp with the intergalactic war set as a background. Then it gets to the end, and you die, the girl dies, everybody dies, for no good reason. You are wondering if perhaps the whole book is a joke, or a meditation on the futility of war. You read the epilog, where it is revealed that any surviving characters have lost their zest for life and kill themselves or put themselves into cryosleep and wake up millions of years later and THEN kill themselves, that everyone who won a battle went on to lose a war, and you learn in passing that the protagonist's entire race goes extinct later in the conflict. I wish I knew what Banks was trying to do so I could understand whether he'd done it. Three stars, with a big standard deviation.

"Revelation Space", Alastair Reynolds. OK, sure, I enjoyed. Ancient galactic civilizations, threats to the existence of the human race, mysteries, bravado, etc. I'm not great at analyzing plots, but this one suffered from one flaw I know how to look for since my friend Laura tipped me off to it back when we both read "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." "OK, let's get this straight. We're the forces of evil. We are trying to kidnap Harry Potter. We've got a professor at Hogwarts who's on our side, and he can magic up any item such that when Harry Potter touches it, he'll teleport wherever we want. Now, what item should we magic? How about we magic up a pencil and then leave it on his desk? No, wait, I've got a better idea! We'll magic up the cup he'll find at the center of the maze when he WINS THE ENTIRE OLYMPICS." Ummmm... really? Really? Anyways, this book is the sci-fi equivalent, a ridiculously complicated plot to achieve a straightforward result. Still, I couldn't put it down, so three and a half stars.

"What Ho, Automaton", Chris Dolley. Short and sweet. It's steampunk Wodehouse. If you think you want to read that, you most certainly do. The narrator is pretty much a complete Rif character [the sort of character I nearly invariably play in role-playing or assassin games], going off on random tangents, holding on way too tight to his obviously ludicrous ideas. I could not stop laughing. FIve stars.

"Zoo City", Lauren Beukes. It's South African noir with animal familiars. It ended up feeling like maybe a little less than the sum of its parts, and the end was a little more violent than I care for, but solid. Three and half stars.

"Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else" by Geoff Colvin

A short, fast, enjoyable read. The basic arguments of the book, all of which I found more or less compelling, if not entirely groundbreaking:

• There is very little evidence of "innate talent" in most fields, such as chess, music, mathematics, or business. (In sports, there is obviously some influence of body type; the book argues that this is less profound than you might think, although it's obviously important.)


• The way to get good at something is to practice it. The way to get very good is to practice it a lot.


• "General intelligence" is not well correlated with being world-class.


• The kind of practice that actually helps is "deliberate practice", which is practice that focusses on specifics, has short direct feedback cycles, and is at the boundaries of current performance. Deliberate practice is difficult and mentally demanding. Teachers are often crucial in designing deliberate practice regimes, especially in the early stages.


• Many so-called "geniuses" (Mozart and Tiger Woods are studied in some detail) who have exhibited astonishing skill at what seem to be astonishingly young ages are often touted as having innate skills, but they are in fact the product of precisely this sort of deliberate practice.


• It takes about ten years and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become world-class. This is a rule of thumb. There is evidence that in the current world, it takes longer than that in the sciences.


• In some fields such as music or athletics, it is very important to start young, because the effect of practice compounds over time and once adolesence ends, other demands have a very strong tendency to interfere if the practice isn't central to someone's life. A study examined music students in three different departments: one in which the students could go on to become international soloists, a second in which they went on to become orchestra players, and a third in which they went on to become teachers. The only variables that had any real explanatory power for dividing these groups were how many hours they practiced, and how many hours they had practiced before turning 18.


• In business it is less important to start young, primarily because very few people are trained to be business leaders from an early age. The book briefly examines the wisdom of this, and suggests that this is likely to start happening more.


• At any stage of life and for nearly any skill, deliberate practice is a key to increasing performance.


• Most organizations and businesses are very bad at encouraging deliberate practice. (In general, I found the section on organizations to be the weakest, although I will have to think about it some more).


• To become world-class, achievement has to be primarily intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated. However, extrinsic motivation is frequently a good way to start children on a path --- they'll either get into it or they won't. Additionally, the line between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations is blurry: specific, constructive feedback is both at once, and many child prodigies start out of a desire to spend time with or imitate their parents.


• To become world-class takes a huge amount of sacrifice, and there's nothing intrinsically right or wrong about making this sacrifice. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. In general, the older you are, the greater the costs relative to the benefits.

I'm still digesting the implications for my own life. I think my practice often tends to by nature by somewhat deliberate, although I could (and will try to) apply this principle more consistently.

I've been thinking about love recently and wanted to learn more. I read this book last night. Well, actually, Anna told me it had to go back to the library today, so I decided to read the first chapter to see if I wanted to order it again, and then I got a bit sucked in, and then I decided it didn't require full reading but only skimming, and then I was done skimming it.

I was hoping that the book would be a "General Theory" a la Einstein's "General Theory", but it ended up feeling more like "Unspecific, Vague Theories of Love." I was also pretty familiar with a lot of the material. I can't really recommend this book, but I'll quickly summarize the key points:

• In some sense, we have three brains: the reptile brain, the limbic brain, and the neocortex. All mammals have at least some limbic brain. Higher mammals have more limbic brain and at least some neocortex. Abstract reasoning and logical thought are all about the neocortex. Love and emotions come more from the limbic brain. Thus they cannot be (fully) controlled rationally.
• Neural networks are rad. I don't necessarily agree with this point or understand why the book was making it.
• Traditional psychoanalyst theories (Freud etc.) are not valuable. The authors clearly had an axe to grind here. I have no dog in it.
• We fall in love because we're mammals, and mammals need affection and close connection. This was really the main point.

The authors were trying to argue that new insights in brain theory tell us a lot about love, but I dind't find it especially compelling. It's always fun to read about chicken wire mother experiments, and how emotional expressions cross culture and also species barriers to a large extent, but it didn't really make me think about how to live my life. At least the book was short. A fun fact:

• Echidna's are pretty much as close to the borderline with reptiles you can get and still be mammals. They are solitary and meet only to mate. They lay eggs and carry the eggs around in a kind of open-air uterus. They also have the smallest limbic brain of any mammal.