Loserthink by Scott Adams

 America is awash in debate, but it seems there is very little actual discussion or argument happening. Many talk by each other and simply become more entrenched in their positions, or they adopt more extreme, outrageous or nonsensical views. It does not help that politicians and pundits engage in the same kind of thing and seem to encourage it in others. In addition, television and radio broadcasts are full of it, propagating the noise, perhaps emphasizing one side or the other, but rarely providing useful new facts or analysis.

I see this on social media a lot. I see a lot more people parroting or sharing a juicy tidbit that they seem to think carries a point (the point is not always clear and the facts are sometimes just wrong), but I rarely see someone address and issue with humility, reason or an admission of uncertainty.

Cartoonist Scott Adams noticed it in his social media interactions, too. He attributes some of this to the complexity of the world we live in and the issues we deal with; human beings are not very good and understating complexity. In addition, most people aren’t trained to think productively to produce reasonable solutions. As he put it in his book Loserthink, “Despite evidence to the contrary, we all use our brains. But most of us have never learned to think effectively.”

Loserthink is Adams’ term for unproductive, ineffective ways of thinking. He generously thinks that people are not stupid, they are just using unhelpful, unfruitful patterns of thinking.  You will get nowhere trying to shame people for stupidity, but you might get somewhere if you engage people in seeing how ridiculous is loserthink, and how it produces divisions that generally don’t benefit us (though it might benefit some).

Most of the book is devoted to identifying common types of loserthink an how to think more productively. He draws on ways of thinking from various professions and disciplines in which people are trained in thinking and problem solving: psychologists, artists, historians, engineers, leaders, entrepreneurs and economists.

Adams expresses some opinions about political and social issues that are likely to be controversial to some. Rather than take as evidence that you are right or that Adams is a dunce, take it as challenge to think things through for yourself. Test yourself to see if you might be engaging in loserthink. It might not change your mind, but it is likely to make you more modest about your certainty in some area, more confident in the workability of your solutions in others and generally more persuasive because you have check yourself for loserthink and you can gently help other address theirs.

Scott Adams also wrote

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Histories and Fallacies by Carl R. Trueman

How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

Range by David Epstein

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Adams, Scott. Loserthink: How Untrained Brains are Ruining America. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019.

Unimaginable by Jeremiah H. Johnston

What would the world be like if Christ had never come and the Christian church had never been create? New Testament scholar Jeremiah J. Johnston imagines it would be a bleak place. He describes why he thinks so in Unimaginable.

Johnston contrasts the Christian worldview, and its results, with cultures where non-Christian worldviews were dominant. The first of these is the pre-Christian era, especially Greek and Roman culture in the centuries shortly before and after the ministry of Jesus Christ. The second is the 20^th Century political regimes that opposed Christian mores if not religion altogether: Nazism, Fascism and Communism. Adolf Hitler and Bonito Mussolini imagined a return to a pre-Christian, pagan age of Aryan or Roman dominance. The Communists were opposed to any religion; the state operating on behalf of the workers was the dominant force. These movements in some ways were reversions to the morals that predated Christian influence.

The gods of Greece and Rome were immoral characters who had little concern for humanity. The Caesars, god-kings, were largely selfish and self-aggrandizing. In contrast, the Christian God proclaimed His love for people. He demonstrated his benevolence in Jesus, son of God and king of kings, who lived a humble life of service and sacrifice.

Life was cheap in ancient Greek and Roman culture. For instance, babies who were diseased or deformed, or simply girls, were often abandoned to die. In contrast, Christians believed that human life was inherently valuable.

Women were not considered equal to men in pre-Christian times. In contrast, women were present at the major events in Jesus’ ministry and were often acknowledged in the New Testament for their leadership in the early church.

Women were considered of little worth in the ancient world. In addition, slavery and racism were common in the in the Greek and Roman Empires. The superiority of some people was considered plain, and it was appropriate for them to dominate, control and enslave lesser people. Jesus taught that there was no meaningful difference between races (Jews or Greeks), free men and slaves, or the sexes.

There was not religious freedom in the Roman Empire. The Jews were tolerated because of the antiquity of their religion, but others were required to worship the major Roman gods and to acknowledge the divinity of Caesar. Christians were considered atheists for their refusal to acknowledge Roman gods.

Johnston describes an opening of the door in the late 19^th Century to anti-Christian ideas and morals. Philosophers and scientists of the time such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Friederich Nietzche and Sigmund Freud were committed to a materialistic view of the world. Humans were not special creations; they were simply sophisticate animals that arrived from the same undirected happenstance that brought for every other thing without purpose. Religion and morals were inventions of people, not revelations from a higher authority.

These influencers, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, challenged Christian morals. They opened the door to devaluing human life, devaluing women (Nietche was explicit about his belief that women were inferior to men), justifying racism with science along with subjugation of “lesser” races, and the elimination of religious freedom, or even individual freedom. The likes of Hitler, Mussolini and Josef Stalin put these ideas into practice, leading to impoverishment, oppression, and death for millions of people.

Some would lay a lot of suffering at the feet of Christianity. Johnston argues that Christianity has alleviated a lot of suffering and paganism and atheism have much greater sums of human misery on their accounts.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Maus by Art Spiegelman

The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Johnston, Jeremiah H. Unimaginable: What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2017.

The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman

The United States experienced a major change in energy in the 2000s. Prior to the boom in oil and natural gas production, the nation was concerned  with declining production—oil production peaked in 1970—increasing demand and increasing reliance on foreign oil. New technology, particularly horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have made previously challenging sources of oil and gas economically feasible to access. The result is increased energy supply, lower prices for natural gas, and less reliance on foreign sources.

 The story of this turnaround is not founded on government policies or one of the massive energy companies. These energy resources from shales and other difficult rocks have been made available by players who started out as small time wildcatters and landmen. They took the risk on developing difficult resources in the United States and developing the technologies that made them economically feasible. As politicians wrung their hands and big companies sought greener pasture oversees, these men held onto hope and kept digging until they found solutions.

 Gregory Zuckerman recounts the story of some of these men and the businesses they built in The Frackers. This is a book of business journalism. That is more interesting than it may sound. It is a story with some drama as players face ups and downs that sometimes lead to ruin and sometimes to outrageous wealth. It has had a significant impact on the American economy as well.

 It may be a uniquely American story, too. The United States is one of the very few countries in which individuals own the rights to the minerals, including oil and gas, that are under their land. This meant people could try even when it seemed they were likely to lose, and have little interference in their losses. A few of them lost and lost until they won and won big.

 Zuckerman acknowledges concerns related to fracking. He finds that the environmental concerns have been somewhat overblow, and that it can be done safely if appropriate measure are taken, though that hasn’t always been the case. Appropriate environmental regulation can protect human health and the environmental while continuing to give us access to these energy sources.

 Another concern is that low energy prices may reduce the impetus for developing alternative and renewable energy. This is still the best long-term option. Zuckerman finds some hope in the story of the frackers though. Their belief and persistence resulted in big changes, but it took time. The developers of the next generation energy sources may have their breakthrough, too, in the next couple of decades if they keep at it.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Contents Under Pressure by Sylvia F. Munson

 Zuckerman, Gregory. The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P. Feynman

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a collection of interviews and speeches of physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard P. Feynman. The theme that runs through most of these items is Feynman’s ideas about what science is and how it is practiced.

 To Feynmen, the essence of a proper scientific attitude is doubt (a version of this idea goes back to René Descartes). It is an honest acceptance that you don’t know anything for certain, and you may accept other ideas about what is most likely true about the world in light of new experiences and better measurements. Science is the testing of ideas to see if they conform to reality and the knowledge that accumulates as a result.

 The physicist is critical of some of the social sciences, some parts of psychology and education research. They use experiment and measurement and other forms from science, but they do not produce results in the manner of the physical sciences. He doesn’t suggest the end of research in these areas, but that they tend to present findings as if there is “scientific” certainty when things are actually very uncertain.

 Feynman led an interesting life, and I took particular interest in his experiences related to very important engineering and policy issues in his lifetime. In one of the interviews, Feynman discussed his work on the Manhattan Project and life at Los Alamos. The editor included Feynman’s minority report on the investigation of the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, which resulted in the death of all the astronauts on board.

 Richard Feynman also wrote

Six Easy Pieces

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

 Feynman, Richard P. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Jeffrey Robbins, ed. Cambridge, MA: Helix Books, 1999.

The Boom by Russell Gold

The great expansion of natural gas wells that was brought about by new technologies—directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking)—in the last few decades has meant that a lot more people are physically closer to the energy industry. In 2013, more than 15 million Americans lived within a mile of a fracked well. Journalist Russell Gold has a personal connection to this change in the energy landscape; his parents own property in Pennsylvania that they leased out for natural gas drilling.

In his book, The Boom, Gold explores the history of the oil and gas industry, and the development of key technologies, that led to the present abundance of natural gas. This interesting and long history energy exploration and development has attracted colorful characters.

The natural gas boom has also created opportunities and challenges. For one thing, fracked wells can produce a lot more natural gas and get it from rock formations that were previously considered too impermeable to economically give up the gas they stored. Now we get gas from these rocks and the natural gas supply that once seemed limited now seems enourmous, and prices for natural gas have dropped in response.

In addition, natural gas produces less carbon dioxide and other pollutants than burning of other fuels such as coal. Even though the U.S. has not participated in international carbon-control protocols, the growth of natural gas as a fuel, replacing other energy sources, has made the U.S. one of the few countries to come close to meeting goals for carbon reduction.

Even so, natural gas is a fossil fuel that carries some of the problems of its cousins. For instance, natural gas is mostly methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. Releases of methane reduce some of the gains made by switching from coal or other less clean-burning fuels to gas. Cheap gas also makes alternative energy sources such as solar or wind less economically attractive, which may delay the development of these resources.

Gold seems to balance these issues. Natural gas is a superior fuel to coal from the perspective of air quality and climate change. It is probably also necessary to use natural gas as a bridge to solar and wind as a way to provide stability as these naturally variable energy sources, along with the energy storage needed to make them truly feasible, are improved. Other problems with gas, such as potential threats to water quality, can be mitigated with existing technology, better rules and careful management.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Contents Under Pressure by Sylvia F. Munson

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Gold, Russell. The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Feeding the Fire by Mark E. Eberhart

Mankind is hungry for energy. The United States is a huge consumer of energy, and our lifestyle depends on it. This makes us, and other developed countries, vulnerable. The burning of fossil fuels is leading to a changing climate that could have many negative ramifications. Our dependence on foreign sources of fuel, especially oil, have embroiled us in wars oversees and made us uncomfortable allies with nations that do not share our values.

Chemistry professor Mark E. Eberhart suggests that we need a good energy diet. Unfortunately, after spending a couple of chapters of Feeding the Fire setting up the idea, he ends up having only a little to say about an energy diet in the final chapter of the book.

In between, however, he tells an interesting history of energy from the big bang to our age. He also provides a primer in thermodynamics aimed at an audience that hasn’t studied science or engineering. If the book had purported to be about that, I’d probably be speaking about it in glowing terms. If you’re looking for a book that explains energy and how it works that is written for an audience with little scientific background, this is a good option.

Though most of the book concerns itself with the dispersal of energy through the universe and the development of technology, the energy diet is mainly a matter of policy. The central element of Eberhart’s vision is an “energy-industrial complex” modeled on the way the U.S. military works with industry on the long-term development, delivery and reliability of technology. U.S. energy policy is so disjointed that in practice we have no policy, but with imagination and discipline (and arguably the setting aside of partisanship for matters of national security that transcend it) we could develop a comprehensive policy that gets our efforts moving toward a more secure, efficient and cleaner future. It doesn’t even need to be a perfect policy, just a commitment to take specific actions and set specific standards to make things better over time.

Eberhart has some specific recommendations, especially related to the development of electric vehicles and supporting technolgies. In the 12 years since Feeding the Fire was published, we’ve made some headway on many of them. This is in spite of the fact that we still do not have a comprehensive energy policy.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Eberhart, Mark E. Feeding the Fire: The Lost History and Uncertain Future of Mankind’s Energy Addiction. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.

Stat-Spotting by Joel Best

We are confronted with statistics in the news wherever we turn: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet. It can be hard to sort out what meaning to make of the numbers, especially when there are competing statistics or interpretations.

Sociology professor Joel Best provides advice on recognizing suspicious statistics in Stat-Spotting. This is by no means a technical or mathematical guide to statistics. It is aimed squarely at the layman who is confronted by statistics in the news and from the mouths of politicians or experts.

A good place to start is with a bit of advice that Best puts toward the end of the book (this isn’t inconvenient; it is a short book). If a number seems shocking, unbelievable or far outside of what your own experience might lead you to expect, it is probably worth digging into it some more.

Not every bad statistic is the result of bad faith. By the time a statistic reaches the public, it has been through several hands. It starts with some research, which may be undertaking by a fairly neutral party or by an advocate. In either case, they have a motivation to get attention for their work. Someone has to bring a study to the attention of the media, and they may add a layer of interpretation on the statistics. Finally, reporters, editors and producers are looking for stories that are sufficiently interesting or important to draw an audience.

This is a process that can introduce mistakes, even unintentionally, and bring sensational statistics to the fore. Many of these people don’t know any more about research methods or statistical analysis that you. The math and logic of statistics, especially when it relates to probability, can be counterintuitive, and even professional researchers sometimes don’t have a solid grasp on it. Of course, some of these people are producing statistics with the intent of supporting a particular point of view.

Best points out 32 ways in which the statistics you see may have a problem. These are easy to grasp and don’t involve much if any math. He presents them in simple terms, and in each case provides an example from the news.

There are a lot of demands for our attention and action, and statistics are often cited as part of these appeals. It is helpful to approach these numbers with some skepticism. Stat-Spotting provides accessible tools for testing the reasonableness of the statistics we come across day to day.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough

Best, Joel. Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Statistics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008.

Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan

Statistics provides of us with a power set of tools for describing things in our world and making inferences about them. They can also rely on math and logic that seems counterintuitive and they are subject to other pitfalls. Economist Charles Wheelan provides and accessible introduction into how we can use, misuse and abuse statistics in Naked Statistics.

Data is everywhere. In my life time, the falling prices and increased interconnectivity of computers have massively increased the collection of data. It can be overwhelming. At the same time, my experience as an engineer and government employee have left me frustrated with lack of data on some issue and wonder what inferences I might draw and how much I can rely on them.  Statistics provides us tools for dealing with these issues.

For instance, statistics provides us a way to summarize lots of data with a simple number such as an average (many people are familiar with sports statistics that summarize a performance of a play or team over a game, season or even a whole career). Statistics can help us find trends and estimate how much various factors may be contributing toward those trends. Even in the case where there is little data, statistics can help us evaluate the reliability of your conclusions (statistics can’t prove something definitively, but it can quantify how likely you are to be wrong).

“Statistics cannot prove anything with certainty.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

Though he doesn’t delve too deeply into the mathematics of statistics, he shows that the math is often the easy part. Getting good data, designing experiments, constructing reasonable hypotheses, and avoiding bias present many stumbling blocks that can turn statistics into nonsense.

Not only that, people can take advantage of the weaknesses of statistics to provide persuasive support for wrong conclusions. Not everyone throwing around statistics intends to deceive, but a few do. A few just make mistakes, too. Wheelan describes many of the common mistakes people make while using statistics. This can help people new (or not new to statistics) avoid them. Possibly more important, it can help users of statistics recognize possible problems in how the statistics they use are developed or interpreted.

“Statistics cannot be any smarter than the people who use them.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

This is not a statistics textbook. Wheelan does not delve into the details, but he does provide intuitive explanations of the concepts and simple examples. A student of statistics might find this book helpful in getting over some of the conceptual hurdles that may get in the way of understanding the rest of the material.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Chance by Amir Aczel

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin 

Wheelan, Charles. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.