Action Figure Daniel

Category: Reading

  • “Bowling Alone” by Robert D Putnam

    • In the new millennium, community organization stopped getting new members
    • Social virtue is best when there is density
    • “Bridging” activities are inclusive, looking outwards, and are good for getting ahead
    • “Bonding” are exclusive, looking inward, and are good for getting by
    • Voting is down all over the US
    • But political interest remains stable
    • Politics is a bigger business than ever, but we shifted focus from neighborhood drives to paid drives
    • All aspects of political participation have declined
    • Solo politics declined slowest
    • “We remain reasonably informed spectators”
    • There are more groups with fewer members
    • Groups have shifted from connecting members with each other to connecting them to a cause
    • Generally, membership by cohort is the same but younger generations participate less
    • For the farmer, an evening social activity might be nice but not so for the office worker
    • Yiddish: Machers are formal socializers, Schmoozers are informal
    • Bowling is the most popular sport, though not league bowling
    • Concert and museum visits are up
    • “Fundraising” is now “Friendraising”
    • Many contribute only when asked
    • Generosity tracks with of sociality, not our economy
    • “Thick trust” is when you trust because of a small community
    • Telecommunications had shifted in person visits to the phone
    • Information needs social context to be useful
    • The Internet tends to enhance existing communities
    • People nearer each other tend to email each other more
    • Homogeneous communities have lower civic involvement
    • Remote workers drive as much as office workers, just more trips to malls
    • “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who walk into a room and turn on the TV and those who walk into a room and turn the TV off.”
    • TV is the only leisure activity that blocks other leisure activities
    • Social networks help stop bad things from happening to children
    • Strong ties are more likely to know and hear the same opportunities as you do, it is the weak ties that are more likely to have something new
    • Is it better to have an open neighborhood where no one has anyone over, or to have racially segregated neighborhoods where families visit each other?

  • “The Hidden History of Monopolies” by Thom Hartmann

    • The constitution was all about fighting monopolies
    • Corporations used to die
    • High tax rates meant businesses spent a lot of their money
    • Natural monopolies are utilities and such
    • “Conservatism” is all about cheap labor
      • No national health care because we want people dependent on their employers
      • Dependent employees can be paid less
      • Minimum wages and unions raise wages over time
      • No contraceptives mean woman are a riskier hire and will settle for less
      • Protestant work ethic lets us blame people for their poverty
      • Fear and bigotry keep us from seeing commonalities
    •  Market concentration lowers wages and raised CEO compensation

  • “Cogs and Monsters” by Diane Coyle

    • Economics has a strong self-fulfilling prophecy component
    • Our fixed preferences are not known to us
    • “The plural of anecdote is not data.”
    • Counterfactuals are important for tests
    • Cooperation requires more compute power than self interest
    • Expertise is a claim to authority over others
    • “‘Unintended’ does not mean ‘unforeseeable’”

  • “Trust Me, I’m Lying” by Ryan Holiday

    • Blogs replaced the old wire services
    • Content filters up as much as it filters down
    • Traffic is money
    • Anger generates traffic but sadness depresses it
    • The original newspapers were editorial papers for [political] parties
    • Package sales (whole papers or albums) let you sell innovative but sub-par things
    • RSS were killed because they allow bypassing click-bait
    • “Generally held ideas are idiocy because they have been able to appeal to everyone”
    • It is really difficult to interpret silence
    • Mentally, we put more emphasis on words read than words heard
    • Outlandish claims are harder for us to dismiss because we fixate on comprehending the oddness of the claim
    • Greek tragedies remind us how quickly tragedy can turn to befall is
    • TV was all about amusement where blogs are about clicks
    • You cannot have the news for free. You can only obscure the cost

  • “Freely Determined” by Kennon M. Sheldon

    • Humans are often scared of free will
    • Reductionistic explanations generally work best when things go wrong
    • TOTE loop: test, operate, test, exit
    • People aware of the motivation behind rewards are apt to find less enjoyment in the work and the rewards
    • Autonomy (ability to make decisions) is different from independence (not caring about how decisions affect others)
    • Autonomy supporting management brings optimal performance
    • Identified motivation is things we want to do because think we should even if we do not want to
    • Interjected motivation is guilt driven
    • We seek validation because we want to believe we are good people
    • Brains tend to stay busy when we are not thinking about much
    • Picking intrinsic goals make us happier
    • Spending time thinking about the benefits of goals before picking them helps us pick better goals