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Title: The Sum of Our Discontent: Why Numbers Make Us Irrational by David Boyle ISBN: 1-58799-167-5 Publisher: Thomson Texere Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (6 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: There's definately an issue in there...But you need to dig
Comment: The author of this book, and from what i gather he's a journalist, has somehow managed to undermine his own effort in this venture.
The fact is that there's surely a big issue to be discussed in investigating the ever-eluding "happiness" in the way numbers dominate our lives and have done so for quite some time.
But while the issue is there and it's waiting for someone to pick it apart and expose it for the big travesty we've made out of it, Boyle (the author) instead delivers a dull, borderline pulseless book, that demands a very dear effort from the reader.
It's a flaw seen in many other books too: a not-so-charismatic author who has grasped the issue he wants to delve into but lacks the talent to lay it out in a way that will keep you reading. What you should be expecting are pages upon pages with platitudes, flashbacks in history with blitz biographies about people who introduced scientific counting, more platitudes, a dry style of writting, but worst of all (and i'd be willing to swallow the rest if it wasn't for that) no solution offered.
David Boyle does make clear, albeit tiresomely, that numbers and counting have only contributed to making us further unhappy and are simply adding to more confusion, added manipulation from politicians and corporations and the lengthening of our illusions as we try to solve problems by measuring and countermeasuring them. He does show that actually a lot of the things we measure are indeed not measurable and he does add that other things that should be -maybe- measured are not.
But that's where the contradiction begins to unravel and there's no saving the ship afterwards. If the solution is measuring "other" things then we'd have some sort of schizzophrenia where we try to solve one problem by replacing it with another of actually similar nature. That doesn't really sound too convincing or promising.
There's several bits of data and trivia included in this book which at points make it worthwhile but in the end most of it is lost amid the pointlessness of the rest.
Ultimately, what you have when you're done is more food for thought which is not actually inspired directly by the book itself but rather indirectly. There's an issue in there somewhere (about this you'll feel certain) but the irony is that "Tyranny in numbers" almost challenges you to write another book yourself and actually propose something. That can't be a good sign, now can it?
Rating: 3
Summary: Great premise, flawed conclusion
Comment: While Boyle dishes up some fascinating mini-biographies, and some solid (if sometimes poorly-organized and repetitive) examples of how, when we measure too much, we measure nothing completely and little of that well, the book falls apart toward the end, as we get to hear about how civilization will be saved if only we ... measure different things than what we're already measuring. The closer this book comes to the present, the more dated it feels.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Counter Perspective
Comment: After 7 years in the actuarial profession and before beginning to pursue my Ph.d in Mathematics, I decided to read this book. After my experience in corporate america, I hoped that a critical evaluation by an expert might resolve some of the conceptual "difficulties" that I encountered while still a productive member of society as measured by GNP and not a net-capital-zero, ivory-tower academic. Anyway, I was not disappointed.
This book starts slowly, but is well-structured. The background provided on Bentham/Malthus/Mills is sometimes tedious and occasionally superfluous, but mostly necessary and builds the foundational context to appreciate fully ideas presented later in the book. I think that the author includes personal details that paint a POSSIBLY unjustified mechanistic, and thus, inhuman, aspect into the personalities discussed and therefore their theory (utilitarianism). But, maybe the emphasis is necessary to accurately capture the personalities involved. Anyway, the author gets an 8 for objectivity. In my opinion, there's gotta be some polemic content for it to be interesting, otherwise you just have a textbook. He strikes a good balance.
The first half of the book discussed above answers the question "Where did all this [stuff] come from?". The latter half of the book concerns itself mainly with "How did it all come about?". Keynes and his ideas in suitable context is developed here and I personally found the content regarding him to be fascinating. He is now a permanent addition to my previously blank list of responses to the "who would you wanna have dinner with?" question. I never realized how distorted and abused his conception has become.
The remainder of the book brings us up to date and I learned a thing or two. Now, I'm going to put the most important part at the end. In order to enjoy this book at all, you have to accept one of the following two hypothesis:
(1) It is government's role to be concerned with the "general welfare" of the populace
or
(2) Government is going to be concerned with same regardless so at least it ought to make some sort of sense granting the false assumption (1). Whatever the heck that means. In other words, suspend reality and try to find some enjoyment in the simplistic and misguided attempts to get around the problems created by that same false assumption.
It was a good read and thought-provoking, I'm not going to spoil it anymore. I'd give it a 4.3 stars if possible, but they have us restrained to integers. Ha-ha-ha!
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Title: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life, First Edition by Nassim Taleb, Nassim Nicholas Taleb ISBN: 1587990717 Publisher: Thomson Texere Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Psychology of Investing by John R. Nofsinger ISBN: 0130930245 Publisher: Pearson Education Pub. Date: 15 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.20 |
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Title: The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz ISBN: 0060005688 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Measure of Reality : Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600 by Alfred W. Crosby ISBN: 0521639905 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 13 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution by Francis Fukuyama ISBN: 0312421710 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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