Including my attempts to learn from history….
Ng (2025) The Great Sleepwalk: The Markets That Program Us
Norberg J (2025) Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
Aurelius M (180) Meditations. 2023, Editor Hays G, Foreword Holiday R.
Daston L (2022) Rules: A Short History of What We Live By
Deacon TW (1998) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
Hoffman PM (2012) Life’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos
Stauss W, Howe N (1997) The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Fleming M (2023) Breakthrough: A Growth Revolution
Bregman R (2020) Humankind: A Hopeful History
Ridley M (2011) The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
Davies D (2024) The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind
Lowney C (2010) Heroic Leadership: Best Practices From A 450-Year-Old Company That Changed The World.
(still need to add all the Harari books to the list – though I disagree as much as I agree with his perspective and insights on history)
… In order to imagine and build a better future.
Deming J & Hamel M (2025) Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition
Sanders B (2025) Fighting Oligarchy
Wright R (1999) NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny.
Toyama K (2015) Geek Heresy: Rescuing social change from the cult of technology.
Arbesman S (2025) The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created And Connects Our World
Atkins WB, Wilson DS, Hayes SC (2019) “Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups”
Heath S (1957) “Citadel, Market, and Altar: Emerging Society”
Lem S (1976) Cyberiad: Fables from the Cybernetic Age.
Gada K (2019) The ATOM (or Third Millenium Economics)
Taleb NN (2014) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Johansen B, Kirshbaum J, Cervantes G (2024) Leaders Make the Future, Third Edition: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI.
More comments below about the books…
BiblioN2025 Ng I (2025)) The Great Sleepwalk: The Markets That Program Us
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Sleepwalk-markets-that-program-ebook/dp/B0G3LYM9MJ/
Via_Irene_Ng
Quotes: “This was the earliest form of programming – not digital, but behavioral. When repeated reward shapes repeated action, action becomes habit.” (pg. 8);
Imagine living in a world with no coercion
BiblioD2025 Deming J & Hamel M (2025) Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition (By John Deming, with Mike Hamel)
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-Spacefaring-Civilization-Science-Volition/dp/B0DV4HB4R5
Via Joseph_Hentz
Quotes: “Cultural evolution is open-ended, yet, like physical and biological evolution, it is subject to underlying universal constraints. Once we understand those constraints, we can apply them to induce cultural evolution that becomes stabilized and impervious to systemic failure.”;
BiblioN2025 Norberg J (2025) Peak Human:
What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
Via: David_Gurteen
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Human-Historys-Greatest-Civilizations/dp/1838957294
Quotes:
“
All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it be because of external pressures or internal fracturing; too much hubris or too little wariness. Looking at seven of humanity’s greatest civilizations – ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, Renaissance Italy, the Dutch Republic and the Anglosphere – historian and commentator Johan Norberg seeks to distil their strengths and shortcomings in answering the question: how do we ensure that our current golden age doesn’t end? As insightful as it is riveting, Peak Human is at once a paean to our incredible progress and a warning that we cannot afford to be complacent.
“;
“
One of the most important works in the Stoic tradition was written by Marcus Aurelius. (pg. 89)
“;
A short, small, inexpensive book that packs a hell of a punch
BiblioS2025 Sanders B (2025) Fighting Oligarchy
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Oligarchy-Senator-Bernie-Sanders/dp/B0FLTLP4WK/
Via_Bernie_Sanders
Quotes: “The most powerful tool that the ruling class has to protect their interests is to make ordinary people feel powerless. Their message: You are alone, and there is nothing you, or anyone else, can do to stop us. We have wealth. We have power. Just shut up and get out of the way.” (pg. 88);
Sam makes a subject I know well come alive with new insights in his latest book ‘The Magic of Code’Sam writes a nice blog too and writes things like: “the world is combinatorially weird and fractally interesting. And therefore, omnivorous curiosity is the only proper response.”
BiblioA2025 Arbesman S (2025) The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created And Connects Our World.
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Code-Language-Connects-World_and/dp/1541704487/
Via_Sam_Arbesman
Quotes: “Another aspect of magic and ritual is that of sacrifice: something of value must be given in order for the spell to work…
The realm of artificial intelligence and machine learning provides an example. Do you want a powerful system that can generate text, or code, or images? Then you must place a large corpus of humanities creations upon the altar. These systems are greedy demons, insatiably consuming vast quantities of data….
Many creators are disturbed – rightly so – by what is required for these AI systems to work, the sacrifices that are incinerated by these massive data-processing centers in order to give us the wonders of artificial intelligence. But these systems only work with sacrifice….
So the power of AI comes at a price. There are vast resources that must be consumed to train these systems (computational power and electricity) and these systems stand upon a heap of creative work of human beings…
AI aside, computing is not free… computation is a very real and physical system.” (pp. 58-60);
A bit expensive, a long and hard read, but definitely what the world needs now to improve individual and collective cognition for collaboration and multi-scale cultural evolution, in hierarchy, market, and commons…
BiblioA2019 Atkins WB, Wilson DS, Hayes SC (2019) “Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups”
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Prosocial-Evolutionary-Productive-Equitable-Collaborative/dp/1684030242
Via_Ray_Fisk
Quotes:
“Polycentric governance [of commons]: Beyond [hierarchies] regulation and markets.” (pg. 28);
“The oldest (600 million years old or more) form of learning (that is, behavior change) is habituation, in which repeated irrelevant sensory stimulation leads to a reduction in responding.” (pg. 51);
“Outside/Inside: Human beings care about, and worry about, a lot more than animals thanks to our capacity to imagine and tell inspiring and terrifying stories about the past, present, and future. As we explored in the last chapter, humans live in two worlds simultaneously: the world of actual physical contacts and causes, and the world of language and the mind. We can transform the meaning of any situation through the way we relate to our experience. Winning the lottery can become painful when it causes strife with relatives, and having a leg blown off by a landmine or experiencing cancer can become a source of meaning and joy when the processes of survival and recovery awaken one to the beauty of life. These are not hyperbole – these are actual examples.” (pp. 75-76);
“Our work is about both thinking globally and acting locally. Participants are uplifted not just by the toolkit, but by a new shared story about the nature of humanity — a story that provides realistic hope that we can do something about our challenges, locally and globally, by cultivating shared purpose while also managing the inevitability of self-interest in cooperative situations.
In this new story, human beings can develop and sustain shared commitments to improving the quality of our relationships, conversations, and agreements so as to ensure that self-interest is protected but cannot dominate collective interest. If we had to summarize in a sentence the journey we’ve taken in this book, we’d say it this way: Complex adaptive systems of cooperation can grow out of more psychologically flexible people and environments, in which small groups, and groups of groups, create shared and principled agreements that establish trust and satisfy individual and group interests. Or, perhaps more poetically, we can foster cooperation within and cooperation without, by restraining selfishness within and without, in the service of human values at all scales.
The World Our Hearts Imagine
Imagine for a moment your ideal world, restrained only by the finite reality of organisms that live and die as part of the natural world.
” (pg. 222);
This book is hard to recommend because it has many archaic ideas from the 1940s and 1950s USA mixed in as well. Still I like how he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work on building understanding about the social world from an engineer’s perspective. A sharp mind at work.
Heath S (1957) “Citadel, Market, and Altar: Emerging Society”
URL: https://archive.org/details/citadelmarket00heatguat
Quotes: from Chapter 20, pages 111-113.
“Science describes things and events in terms of their magnitudes and ratios or relationships. It is thus an abstraction from but still a part of the cosmic reality. It differs from ordinary knowledge in that it is generalized over a wide range. Scientific knowledge is thus realizable forward; it can be projected into particular objects and experiences in ways that realize desired ends and dreams. The science of society is no exception. Its discoveries, its descriptions, are motivated by intimations and apprehensions of the beauty it reveals; its application resolves beauty into use and, where the application is high, creates beauty anew.”
The Jesuits explored many cultures, first contributing to the culture they joined, before sharing their own culture with others – nice!
BiblioL2010 Lowney C (2010) Heroic Leadership: Best Practices From A 450-Year-Old Company That Changed The World.
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Heroic-Leadership-Practices-450-Year-Old-Company/dp/0829421157
About the author Chris Lowney
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lowney
For fiction that was ahead of its time related to robots and AI and generative AI making poems, seeking Truth, etc….
BiblioL1976 Lem S (1976) Cyberiad: Fables from the Cybernetic Age. Author Stanislaw Lem. Translated from Polish by Michael Kandel. Illustrated by Daniel Mroz. Originally published in 1967. Avon.
Quotes: “JCS: My best guess is that in the 1960’s that Stanislaw Lem was inspired by Joseph Weizenbaum (MIT) Eliza program, and or he was a time traveler. I also think Doug Engelbart was a time traveler.
JCS: URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Lem
Lem was the author of the fundamental philosophical work Summa Technologiae, in which he anticipated the creation of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and also developed the ideas of human autoevolution, the creation of artificial worlds, and many others. Lem’s science fiction works explore philosophical themes through speculations on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of communication with and understanding of alien intelligence, despair about human limitations, and humanity’s place in the universe. His essays and philosophical books cover these and many other topics. Translating his works is difficult due to Lem’s elaborate neologisms and idiomatic wordplay.
The Sejm (the lower house of the Polish Parliament) declared 2021 Stanisław Lem Year.[6]
JCS: Avon did romance fiction. As of 2010, Avon is an imprint of HarperCollins. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avon_(publisher)
“;
Some books I like to recommend for people who want to be more optimistic about the future, but find reality a bit shocking at the moment:
BiblioD1998 Deacon TW (1998) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-evolution-Language-Brain/dp/0393317544/
Quotes:
“
“A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts.”―New York Times Book Review
This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man’s newfound access to other people’s thoughts and emotions.
Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain’s development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.
“;
BiblioD2024 Daston L (2022) Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (The Lawrence Stone Lectures).
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Short-History-Lawrence-Lectures/dp/0691156980
Via_Ray_Fisk
Quotes:
“
A panoramic history of rules in the Western world
Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we don’t, yet no culture could do without them. In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived.
Daston uncovers three enduring kinds of rules: the algorithms that calculate and measure, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She vividly illustrates how rules can change―how supple rules stiffen, or vice versa, and how once bothersome regulations become everyday norms. Rules have been devised for almost every imaginable activity and range from meticulous regulations to the laws of nature. Daston probes beneath this variety to investigate when rules work and when they don’t, and why some philosophical problems about rules are as ancient as philosophy itself while others are as modern as calculating machines.
Rules offers a wide-angle view on the history of the constraints that guide us―whether we know it or not.
“;
BiblioS1997 Stauss W, Howe N (1997) The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Via: Scott_Sampson?
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rendezvous/dp/0767900464/
Quotes:
“
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe.
First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history.
William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next.
Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.
“;
BiblioW1999 Wright R (1999) NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonzero:_The_Logic_of_Human_Destiny Quotes: “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny is a 1999 book by Robert Wright, in which the author argues that biological evolution and cultural evolution are shaped and directed first and foremost by “non-zero-sumness” i.e., the prospect of creating new interactions that are not zero-sum.”;
JCS: Related:
GameTheory – Best Interaction & Change Strategy
What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything
URL: https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM
Success Qualities – Nice, Forgive, Retaliatory (Don’t Be A Pushover), Clear
BiblioF2023 Fleming M (2023) Breakthrough: A Growth Revolution. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Growth-Revolution-Martin-Fleming/dp/1637423098 Quotes: “This book examines the economic logic of the significant variation in growth over long periods. What’s necessary for the U.S. and other developed nations to realize stronger growth and more equal incomes? What’s necessary for families to feel vacations, college educations, and retirements are possible? Will artificial intelligence (AI) automate or augment workers’ jobs? Will the 2020-2021 global pandemic be sufficiently disruptive to deliver fundamental transformation? Economic success in the decades ahead will depend on the willingness of households, businesses, and governments to innovate and change ways of living and working. To explore these questions, the 4th Industrial Revolution is a unique frame to assess global economic transformation, providing a point-in-time reference for placing current events in the context of sustained, multi-decade periods of faster and slower growth. Political, social, and economic metamorphoses have accompanied each revolution. This book examines the economic logic of the significant variation in growth over long periods. Climate change and the global warming consequences of fossil-fuel technologies will need to bring about a new energy technology and, if successful, result in renewable energy sources, reducing energy expense. The success of the 4th Industrial Revolution is not assured. While the future is uncertain, history suggests success requires that barriers are addressed, workers and businesses engage in the necessary change, and a positive policy response provides the needed leadership. The book proposes a Growth and Fairness Agenda and a New Social Contract through which stronger economic growth and more equally distributed incomes can be possible. Recognize traditional policy actions may be insufficient to achieve stronger long-term growth.
Promote improved confidence and a positive outlook among small and medium enterprises.
Encourage advances in AI technology while addressing risks and fairness issues.
Support deeper worker engagement between business leaders and workers.
Seek a new social contract among workers, businesses, and governments.”;
BiblioG2019 (2019) Gada K (2019) The ATOM (or Third Millenium Economics)
URL: https://www.amazon.com/ATOM-Second-Time-Upgrade-Economy/dp/1953349501/ Quotes: “In this book, we will explore how the accelerating pace and diffusion of technological change has taken control of an ever-growing fraction of the world economy.
This fraction is being assimilated into a different set of economic fundamentals, such as the rapid and exponential price deflation inherent to technology. The effect of this was insignificant until recently, but is now beginning to create conspicuous distortions in many economic metrics, and is just years from being the dominant force across the entire economy.
In response to technological deflation, the central banks of the world will have to create new money in perpetuity, increasing the stream at an exponentially rising rate much higher than is currently assumed. This now-permanent need for monetary expansion, if embraced, can fund government spending more directly. This in turn creates a very robust, dynamic, and efficient safety net for citizens, while simultaneously reducing and even eliminating most forms of taxation by 2025-30.
Failure to recognize that technological deflation mandates permanent and ever-rising central bank monetary expansion that can and should gradually become the primary source of government spending could result in countries falling behind more enlightened countries in a very short time.
The nature of current worldwide technology is to link various disruptions with each other, consume monetary liquidity to generate deflation, and lower the effective prices of most goods and services over time. Therefore, the entirety of worldwide technology has to be seen as a holistic economic entity, and can be defined as the ‘Accelerating TechnOnomic Medium’, or ‘ATOM’ “;
BiblioB2020 Bregman R (2020) Humankind: A Hopeful History. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Bregman/dp/0316418528/ Quotes: “If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It’s a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest. But what if it isn’t true? International bestseller Rutger Bregman provides new perspective on the past 200,000 years of human history, setting out to prove that we are hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another. In fact this instinct has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the solidarity in the aftermath of the Blitz, the hidden flaws in the Stanford prison experiment to the true story of twin brothers on opposite sides who helped Mandela end apartheid, Bregman shows us that believing in human generosity and collaboration isn’t merely optimistic—it’s realistic. Moreover, it has huge implications for how society functions. When we think the worst of people, it brings out the worst in our politics and economics. But if we believe in the reality of humanity’s kindness and altruism, it will form the foundation for achieving true change in society, a case that Bregman makes convincingly with his signature wit, refreshing frankness, and memorable storytelling.”;
BiblioR2011 Ridley M (2011) The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Optimist-Prosperity-Evolves-P-s/dp/0061452068/ Quotes: “n a bold and provocative interpretation of economic history, Matt Ridley, the New York Times-bestselling author of Genome and The Red Queen, makes the case for an economics of hope, arguing that the benefits of commerce, technology, innovation, and change—what Ridley calls cultural evolution—will inevitably increase human prosperity. Fans of the works of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel), Niall Ferguson (The Ascent of Money), and Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat) will find much to ponder and enjoy in The Rational Optimist. For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before. An astute, refreshing, and revelatory work that covers the entire sweep of human history—from the Stone Age to the Internet—The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.”:
… and for those who want to roll up their sleeves and work hard, I recommend these additional books….
BiblioD2024 Davies D (2024) The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind. Hardcover – 18 April 2024. by Dan Davies (Author).
Via_Ted_Kahn
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Unaccountability-Machine-Dan-Davies/dp/1788169549/
Quote: “
When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.
Management cybernetics was Beer’s science of applying self-regulation in organisational settings, but it was largely ignored – with the result being the political and economic crises that that we see today. With his signature blend of cynicism and journalistic rigour, Davies looks at what’s gone wrong, and what might have been, had the world listened to Stafford Beer when it had the chance.
“;
BiblioT2015 Toyama K (2015) Geek Heresy: Rescuing social change from the cult of technology. By Kentaro Toyama. Perseus Book Group: Public Affairs.
Via_Ted_Selker.
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Geek-Heresy-Rescuing-Social-Technology/dp/161039528X Quotes: “(Pp. 159-160) He [Patrick Awuah] enrolled in UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he focused every class project on the question of how to start the university [Ashei University, Ghana]. In 2002, spurred by a quotation attributed to Goethe – “Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!” … “Ashei” means “beginning” in Fanti, the language of Awuah’s ancestors…”;
BiblioT2014. Taleb NN (2014) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)
Paperback – January 28, 2014. by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)
Via_YouTube
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680
Quotes: “
Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world.
Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish.
In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.
Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear.
Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.
Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it.
Praise for Antifragile
“Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist
“A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek
“;
BiblioH2012 Hoffman PM (2012) Life’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos (by Peter M Hoffmann (Author), Hardcover – October 30, 2012)
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Lifes-Ratchet-Molecular-Machines-Extract/dp/0465022537
Quotes: “
Life is an enduring mystery. Yet, science tells us that living beings are merely sophisticated structures of lifeless molecules. If this view is correct, where do the seemingly purposeful motions of cells and organisms originate? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.
Below the calm, ordered exterior of a living organism lies microscopic chaos, or what Hoffmann calls the molecular storm — specialized molecules immersed in a whirlwind of colliding water molecules. Our cells are filled with molecular machines, which, like tiny ratchets, transform random motion into ordered activity, and create the “purpose” that is the hallmark of life. Tiny electrical motors turn electrical voltage into motion, nanoscale factories custom-build other molecular machines, and mechanical machines twist, untwist, separate and package strands of DNA. The cell is like a city — an unfathomable, complex collection of molecular workers working together to create something greater than themselves.
Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through these sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. We are agglomerations of interacting nanoscale machines more amazing than anything in science fiction. Rather than relying on some mysterious “life force” to drive them — as people believed for centuries — life’s ratchets harness instead the second law of thermodynamics and the disorder of the molecular storm.
Grounded in Hoffmann’s own cutting-edge research, Life’s Ratchet reveals the incredible findings of modern nanotechnology to tell the story of how the noisy world of atoms gives rise to life itself.
“;
BiblioJ2025 Johansen B, Kirshbaum J, Cervantes G (2024) Leaders Make the Future, Third Edition: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI.
Via: Bob_Johansen
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Make-Future-Third-Leadership/dp/B0D66H9BF1/
Hardcover – March 4, 2025
by Bob Johansen (Author), Jeremy Kirshbaum (Author), Gabe Cervantes (Author)
BiblioH2002 Hays G (2002) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: Translation by Geoffrey Hays, with Foreword by Ryan Holiday.
Via_YouTube
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0812968255/
Quotes: “
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Timeless insights into what it takes to lead a meaningful life—still profoundly relevant nearly two thousand years later.
Now featuring a brand-new foreword from Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle Is the Way!”;
===
Thanks, -Jim
—
Jim Spohrer, PhD
Board of Directors, ISSIP (International Society of Service Innovation Professionals)
Board of Directors, ServCollab (“Serving Humanity Through Collaboration”)
Senior Fellow, UIDP (“Strengthening University-Industry Partnerships”)
Retired Industry Executive (Apple, IBM)
Please let’s get better introduced (6 questions)
Ask my AI: https://answersfrom.me/jimtwin
Or via email at JimTwin <jimtwin@agent.answersfrom.me>
Regular mail: Jim Spohrer, ISSIP #431, 3561 Homestead Rd, Santa Clara, CA 95051
spohrer@gmail.com, 1-408-829-3112https://www.linkedin.com/in/spohrer/
*
*
Summary of Meditations (imperfect start) Hays Translation. Red Raven Edition.URL: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0812968255/
(1) Grateful to exist.
“Page 5; Book One: Debts & Lessons; 1. My Grandfather Verus: Character and Self-Control.”
(2) Separated from Truth.
“Page. 95; Book Seven: 63. ‘Against our will, our souls are cut off from truth.’ Truth, yes, justice, self-control, kindness… Important to keep this in mind. It will make you more patient with other people.”
(3) Perception beyond Appearance.
“Page 165; Book Twelve: 18. At all times, look at the thing itself – the thing behind the appearance – and unpack it by analysis: cause, substance, purpose, and the length of time it exists.”
(4) Worlds with minds.
“Page 164; Book Twelve: 13-14. The foolishness of people who are surprised by anything that happens. Like travelers amazed at foreign customs. Fatal necessity, and inescapable order. Or benevolent Providence. Or confusion – random and undirected. If it’s an inescapable necessity, why resist it? If it’s Providence, and admits of being worshipped, then try to be worthy of God’s aid. If it’s confusion and anarchy, then be grateful that on this raging sea you have a mind to guide you. And if the storm should carry you away, let it carry off flesh, breath and all the rest, but not the mind. Which can’t be swept away.”
(5) Epithets for yourself.
“Page 134; Book Ten: 8. Epithets for yourself: Upright, Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Disinterested. Try not to exchange them for others. and if you should forfeit them, set about getting them back. Keep in mind that ‘sanity’ means understanding things – each individual thing – for what they are. And not losing the thread. And ‘cooperation’ means accepting what nature assigns you – accepting it willingly. And ‘disinterest’ means that the intelligence should rise above the movements of the flesh – the rough and the smooth alike. Should rise above fame, above death, and everything like them. If you maintain your claim to these epithets – without caring if others apply them to you or not – you’ll become a new person. [GOES ON LONGER].”
(6) Tranquility, do less.
“Pages 42-43; Book Four: 24. ‘If you seek tranquility, do less.’ Or (more accurately) do what’s essential – what the ‘logos’ of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. What brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’ But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.”
(7) Choose no harm.
“Page 39; Book Four: 7-9. Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harm – and you haven’t been. It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you – inside or out. It was for the best. So Nature had no choice but to do it.”
(8) Prediction of others.
“Page 104; Book Eight: 14. When you have to deal with someone, ask yourself: What does he mean by good and bad? If he thinks x or y about pleasure and pain (and what produces them), about fame and disgrace, about death and life, then it shouldn’t shock you when he does x or y.”
(9) Perception of others.
“Pages 152-154; Book Eleven: 18. i. My relationship to them. [LONGER]. ii. What they’re like [LONGER]. iii. That if they’re right to do this, then you have no right to complain. [LONGER]. iv. That you’ve made enough mistakes yourself. [LONGER]. v. That you don’t know for sure that it ‘is’ a mistake. A lot of things are means to some other end. You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people’s actions with real understanding. vi. When you lose your temper, or even feel irritated: that human life is very short. Before long all of us will be laid out side by side. vii. That it is not what they ‘do’ that bothers us: that’s a problem for their minds, not ours. It’s our own misperceptions. Discard them. Be willing to give up thinking of this as a catastrophe… and your anger is gone. [LONGER]. viii. How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that caused them. ix That kindness is invincible, provided it is sincere – and not ironic or an act. [LONGER]. Keep these nine points in mind, like gifts from the nine Muses, and start becoming a human being. Now and for the rest of your life. And along with not getting angry at others, try not to pander either. Both of them are forms of selfishness; both will do you harm. When you are to lose your temper, remember: There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being – and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners.[LONGER]. … and one more thought, from Apollo: x. That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant – the act of a tyrant.”
(10) Death will come.
“Page 164; Book Twelve: 15. The lamp shines until it is put out, without losing its gleam, and yet in you it all gutters out early – truth, justice, self-control.”
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray to be a strong person.”
– Nadia Comăneci
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Comăneci
“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others.”
– Jimmy Carter
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter
Be grateful for hardship and challenge, it builds your character.
– Roberta Lade Spohrer Belgard, Jim’s Grandmother
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How do I read books?
My style of reading a book is to skim a whole book on the day that I receive it. A typical book is around 250 pages, requires a careful reading of any foreword, authors biography, acknowledgements, and table of contents to think about why am I reading this book, what do I hope to learn (what are my learning goals), what is likely to be most challenging and difficult for me to learn, what is going to be easiest to understand. I also look at endnotes, references, index, and any closing comments, refining what I expect to learn, and what might be new, interesting, and related to my purpose in reading the book. All this can take from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, depending on the amount of material to skim and study. I also make notes if needed, in the margins, and in the back of the books with the date, page, and keywords.
Next, starting at chapter one and going to the last chapter, I look at every page briefly, reading the first sentence of each paragraph, and briefly scanning the page for interesting words, including words I may not know, as well as names of people, places, and things I do not know. Sometimes I will take the time to make a note in the margins, and sometimes a note at the end of the book.
Turning every page of a 250 page book, takes me on average 2-4 seconds per page, so anywhere from 500 to 1000 seconds, or roughly between 10 and 20 minutes.
My first read (skim) of any book takes typically well under an hour, and establishes my learning goals and basic familiarity with the author(s), their reason for writing the book, and my reason for reading it.
My approach to reading books is based on a book my grandmother Roberta Lade Spohrer Belgard gave me when I was in high school, called “How To Read A Book” (Adler MJ, Van Doren C (1972) “How to Read a Book”). My love of books goes back to my earliest childhood, and my parents (and grandmother Roberta) had lots of books. Lots of story books, but also I recall books on drafting (precise drawings), the arts, science, technology, history, biographies of famous people, and more. My parents bought us kids three encyclopedia sets as well – The Book of Knowledge series was my favorite (red and white bindings) and covered most everything including the natural and human made worlds, but there was also two concise sets one a pale blue that had a lot on science (“The Book of Science”), and one a dark blue (Groliers) which had a lot on history, people and places. I recall when my high school guidance counselor (Mr. Arsenault?) called me to his office (out of an advanced biology class (Ms. Jane Kimball), and maybe my math teacher Mr. Gary Tibbets was in that office as well) to tell my about my SAT scores. He then asked where I plan to apply to college. I said maybe the University of Maine at Orono. Then he handed me an application to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and suggested I should apply. As soon as I got home, I ran to the encyclopedias bookcase near the stairs in our den and looked up MIT. I read “top science and technology university in the world” and thought, “that sounds pretty good to me.” I needed a letter of reference from a teacher and a someone from the community. I was afraid to ask for adults outside my family for help, but the instructions said no family members could write the recommendation, so I mustered the courage. Not sure it if was Mr. Tibbets or Ms. Kimball, or both for the teacher, but my mother Arlene’s good friend and neighbor, Joyce Getchell, wrote a short recommendation on a piece of scrap paper in her kitchen – “Jimmy is a good boy. He goes to church. He studies and works hard. He gets good grades in school. He is a Boy Scout. He is working on his Eagle badge. We will miss him a lot when he goes to college.” My student essay was on “Parsimony in Nature.”