The P2P Reading List (2023 August)
Read the best books first, otherwise you will find you do not have time.—Henry David Thoreau
Think Again by Adam Grant
I have not felt so much joy while reading a book as experiencing how organizational psychologist
eloquently unfolds how a scientist (and also everybody) should think. The author makes the case for humbleness and confidence at the same time—i.e., for strong convictions, loosely held.Through everyday situations, we get to understand how and why we usually fail to revise our opinions. As he puts it:
We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995.
It is a highly thought-provoking book, well summarized by the quote I borrowed from the Tim Ferris Show:
Don't believe everything you think.
Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Alter
Adam Alter helps us understand how breakthroughs are made while also debunking a few myths and disarming traps on the road to great achievement. When you finish reading the bunk, your mental armor against such challenges will feel stronger.
These four points will give you an idea about the main topics:
Goal gradients—I breathe gradient descent in my research, so I can not suppress my smile whenever I read about goal gradients—indicate that when the goal is far away and maybe even amorphous, progress slows down.
The middle can also often feel intimidating: We already expedited lots of effort, but the finish line is nowhere to be seen. A practice I found very insightful is bracketing: breaking down the effort into bite-sized pieces. If there is no middle, you cannot get stuck there.
What might have helped in the beginning can stop working—known as the plateau effect. Just because something worked in the past, it is not guaranteed to work in the future.
The headwind/tailwind theory, developed by Shai Davidai and Tom Gilovich, suggests that people notice obstacles (headwind) easier than support (tailwind)—from cycling, I can only confirm the reference. Tailwind is a fairy tale; headwind is always there—at least it feels so, though you know now how to approach what you think. The struggle of others often has the sound of silence, but it is there.
Of Boys and Men by Richard V. Reeves
Of Boys and Men was a balanced, nuanced, but highly unexpected read. Despite what the title might suggest, the author is not against women. What he highlights is that there are challenges that the welcome changes striving towards equality brought to men. In the author's words:
We can hold two thoughts in our head at once. We can be passionate about women's rights and compassionate toward vulnerable boys and men.
Failure: Why Science is Successful by Stuart Firestein
I always hated failure; I have seen it as the consequence of insufficient preparation. When you are an explorer of ideas, failure becomes your bread and butter, though. You cannot do science with the mindset that every hypothesis of yours will be correct and all the experiments will work—there is probably a reason hypothesis tests need to disprove something called the alternative hypothesis.
I also learned from this book to appreciate the history of science in a new way: showing how a concept evolved and not just providing the formula can show that science is always changing and improving.
Take gravity, for example: Newton worked out the theory, which is very useful in most cases but is wrong since it does not account for relativity.
If you are interested in all the books that piqued my interest, you can also visit my Goodreads profile.