Review: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't

"You can get better, so do better" is a weird message to take away from a book that is ostensibly about how bad humans are at statistics, but its actually the consquence of a simple tool: Bayesian reasoning. Bayes' formula is an agnostic equation. Imagined into words by a Scottish pastor and put into math by a French atheist, it tells us, "Given what you know, you can be more accurate in the future."

We can, as a society, embrace the Bayesian way of thinking and instead of polarizing ourselves, update our worldviews to take in new evidence and reach consensus quickly about how things are happening.... or maybe we can't. For every bit a pop statistics in Signal and the Noise, there is some psychology 101 and Econ 200 that has to be rehashed: humans are irrational creatures designed for an environment we're not actually living in, and, taken as a whole even individually rational behaviors can turn out to be irrational. Its a quagmire, but not one that Bayesian reasoning doesn't allow us to see our ways out of.

Another big thing that Silver insists on is that we can't be a slave to computers or big data. Eh. Silver seems to be bringing out the same luddite arguments of yesteryear, namely, "They can't do what we can!" which is surely true. Computers and Big Data do, currently, need many hands helping them. But the entire point is to make those helping hands computers, too.

Must read.

Review: Catch-22

The 22nd book in the Catch series is the most hilarious. This book is comparable to the fifth and final part of the Slaughterhouse pentalogy or the four-hundred and fifty first novel in the Fahrenheit series. They are about the evils and insanities of World War 2. They are incredible.

This is the first war novel I can remember reading about the middle-management of war. I'm used to enlistees. The honors programs of my youth are built around All Quiet on the Western Front or the Red Badge of Courage. They're built around a scream at my 14 year old self, "WAR IS BAD STAY IN SCHOOL STUDY AND LEARN OR YOU WILL BE POOR AND JOIN THE MILITARY AND DIE." At least, thats the curriculum. But Catch-22 is not about a teenager, or just-post-teenager. Its about a mid-20s veteran who has "fought and killed", or maybe, "fucked and survived." Its about the captain of a bomber who has to lead men to war, but is being led and controlled by others.

And the statement about these controllers is, "They're either stupid as fuck or sociopathic." This, to me, is mirrored later in the television show, The Office, where the central conflict is mid-tier white color workers (Jim, Pam, etc) fighting against the forces of retardation (Michael) and sociopathy (Jan, Ryan) at higher company levels. Of course, the Office is not asking our heroes to sacrifice themselves for sociopaths. Yossarians superiors are, and the entire crux of the novel is him trying to escape their desire to throw him at the death machine that is war.

Catch-22 is 41 chapters. The first 30 is a sitcom. They're classical comedy. They define comedy. They're the reason I draw comparisons to the Office. And around the last ten chapters, All Quiet On The Western Front appears. The last 10 chapters are brutal, romantic, and perfectly written. Yossarians feelings towards his friends, his lovers, and the world are anguishing. They're poetic. I didn't cry, but if I had someone other than my roommates to annoy, I would have quoted most of these chapters.

It is a good thing this book was not required reading. I do not think I could have been forced to read it because it is, in fact, very big. To get all that humor and all that passion, you must read it slowly and carefully and that's what I ended up doing.