Comments on Greenspan's "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World"

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I recently finished Greenspan’s book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.” Contemplating the differences between Greenspan and Ayn Rand, I recognize now, even though Ayn Rand spells it out clearly but I never grokked it, is that Greenspan writes and thinks about how people actually behave, Rand writes and thinks about how people ought to behave. She writes about the potential for heroic lives, Greenspan writes about market behavior and voting behavior. It is the voting behavior that is less than rational, but needs to be accounted for to generate government policy.

The lesson for me in this is that I have been frustrated most of my life by expecting other people, especially employees and newscasters, to aspire to living heroically. I can be more patient with the people I meet, friends and neighbors and family.

There are just too many quotable lines from this book, here is a sampling.
Quotes:
"This implies that in a free society governed by the rights and responsibilities of its citizens, the vast majority of transactions must be voluntary which, of necessity, presupposes trust in the word of those with whom we do business --- in almost all cases, strangers." Page 256.
"Reputation and trust ... [are] the core requirements of market capitalism." Page 256.
"... government regulation cannot substitute for individual integrity." Page 256.
"... the problem of central planning in a market economy -- the market will always undermine any attempt at control." Page 62
Quote from Reagan, "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." Page 87.
"... U.S. Department of Labor and its predecessor since 1888. ... for those households with a third of the nations's average income ... (their spending exceeds income by 30 percent)." Page 270. {This is an example of keeping up with the Jones, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping.... Greenspan notes that the idea was first described in Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class" }


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Comments on "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feyman" by Jame Gleick

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Could not put it down! Inspiration for aspiring scientists and independent thinkers.

Even the biographical description of his parents arrival in New York was fun reading. Very well written, includes an excellent summary of the history of physics during Feynman's lifetime. Gleick gives short biographies of Feynman's fellow physicists that helps provide greater context for understanding Feynman's work and life.

Several intriguing lines from the hardcover edition:
pg 306 "If a Caltech experimenter told Feynman about a result reached after a complex process of correcting data, Feynman was sure to ask how the experimenter had decided when to stop correcting, and whether that decision had been made before the experimenter could see what the effect it would have on the outcome. It was all too easy to fall into the trap of correcting until the answer looked right. To avoid it required an intimate relationship with the rules of the scientist's game. It also required not just honesty, but a sense that honesty requires exertion."

My comment is that this quote brings to mind Admiral Rickover's statement in one of his early books about about technology, that advanced technology (i.e. nuclear power) requires a greater degree of moral rectitude than earlier technologies. I am sure that most nuclear engineers who get a call from their duty officer in the middle of the night recognize "a sense that honesty requires exertion" to find out what is really happening. Rich Luke, new construction engineer of the USS Honolulu SSN718, explained that this what makes a good engineer, to be able to push for the true answer inspite of personal fatigue and sense of urgency to keep things moving.

pg 325 Gleick reveals his bias with "Scientists still speak unashamedly of reality, even in the quantum era, of objective truth, of a world independent of human construction, and they sometimes seem to be the last members of the intellectual universe to do so. Reality hobbles their imaginations." Glieck documents that Feynman did believe in objective truth, that could be described in many ways.

pg 326 Gleick's discussion of "genius" includes this interesting quote from the literary, artistic mind set: "Would that I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken." -- a quotation attributed to Khakheperresenb, an Egyptian scribe of the Middle Kingdom (circa 2000 B.C.)

pg 353, Feynman teases Russian physicist Ivanenko by asking him what is the integral of e to the minus x squared from minus infinity to plus infinity? Silence. "Ivanenko what is one and one?" {My comment: The integration comes out to square root of pi. I thought this was a pretty good joke, if you know your calculus. I had to look up the answer here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWOGf...}


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Comments on Reading the Novel 1984

1984 by George Orwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What is the Ministry of Truth in 2020?

I re-read this book 51 years after the first reading. The novel "1984" is surprisingly applicable to today's news. The Ministry of Truth, doublethink, unceasing warfare, ...

When I first read it at the age of 14, I had no appreciation for the philosophical, emotional and political descriptions in the book. I read them and missed the impact. What I recalled best was the advice "If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones." (I never found a reason to break the big rules in our society but it was encouraging that I was laying the ground work by keeping the small rules.)

I expected to find a boring read, but it was captivating. I enjoyed the story and the philosophical discussion this time around much more time than I did the first time. When I started this reading of "1984," I was tempted to dismiss the book as dated, dealing only with the impact of Stalin in the USSR. The story is meaningful today. What is truth, reality, history, and economics of warfare? What is the value of words such as crimethink (thought-crimes) and doublethink? The persuasion of the protagonist, Winston Smith, about the subjective nature of reality, almost drew me into belief. It filled some of the gaps in my understanding of the incentives for the existence of philosophical ideas from Plato's theory of forms to the silly ideas of Richard Rorty.

The appendix to 1984, "The Principles of Newspeak," distinguishes need for different levels of objective thought. Objective thought is needed in order to develop better weapons of warfare, or better ways of doing surveillance and brainwashing citizens. Subjective illusionary thought for the majority of the population is sufficient to sustain the society of Oceania in the novel "1984."

In "1984" the party does not educate the mass of the people. "They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have not intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated." The party insures that this is the case.

"DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt."

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