Sunday, April 23, 2017

What If? by Randall Munroe

In 2006, someone sent me a link to a webcomic. Back then we shared links via email and the term webcomic carried the same sense of silly novelty as something like "3D printed shot glass" does today. The comic itself was very unassuming, with three crude stick figures and almost no coloring. The title of the comic in question is simply "Philosophy", and while it does have a certain charm to it, it wouldn't strike anyone as the type of thing that could go the distance. You can find the strip I'm referring to here.

Over ten years later, Xkcd is one of the most famous mediums for popularizing science and Randall Munroe, the mind behind, is a science guru in the mould of Richard Feynman and Bill Nye. In recent years, Munroe has also written a science blog called What If? in addition to his triweekly comics. In it, readers ask absurd questions and Munroe tries his best to answer. The most recent answer (never mind the actual question) starts out: "So you want to give endangered whales powerful electric shocks. Great! I'm happy to help."

What If?, the book version, is a collection of the most popular questions from the first few years of the blog and some excellent new ones. Have you ever wondered what would happen, if you threw a baseball at close to the speed of light? Or if there was a giant portal to space in the Mariana Trench? Chances are you haven't, but that doesn't detract from the supreme readability of Munroe's answers. The book is less intense with the actual calculations than the Internet version, but that also means it won't frighten away students of the humanities.

Xkcd has always had a special place in my heart (and my head presumably). So it's no wonder that I absolutely loved What If?. Munroe has clearly found an audience that adores his humor and wit. To be honest, though, I have no idea how someone would react to it, if they were not familiar with its style. Somehow I feel it would be in everyone's interest to understand science more broadly than just what they teach you in school. Interest in the sciences seems to be declining just as we need it most. Answering frivolous hypothetical questions has never seemed this timely.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is probably one of the best non-fiction books ever written. Not only has it sold millions of copies, but it really deserves to be read that much. If you look at the list of best selling books from the past ten years, Kahneman's work sticks out almost grotesquely from things like The Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey. There is an element of chance involved to almost all fiction best sellers - word-of-mouth is still the best marketing method and readers are not as rational as they like to think. Thinking Fast and Slow on the other hand was a compendium of the most important ideas in modern psychology put in a somewhat readable package. It became a best seller nonetheless.

Michael Lewis looks at the same subject matter, but from a typically Lewisian angle. The Undoing Project is the personal story of Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky and their quest to reform psychology research. It doesn't sound like much of a premise, but as always Lewis is able to create an extremely compelling narrative. Kahneman is an inherently pessimistic intellectual who, as a child, had to hide from the Germans in Nazi occupied France. Tversky is a superstar academic, war hero and socialite. Their paths cross in 1960s Israel and they become one of the most influential duos in academia.

Where Thinking Fast and Slow was strictly about psychology and human decision making, The Undoing Project focuses more on the personalities and lives of the researchers. As I've mentioned previously, I greatly enjoy reading about discoveries from the discoverer's point of view. Researchers don't often make for very entertaining reads, but the depth of Lewis's research ensures that there are always multiple interesting topics to explore. I was surprised to find myself tearing up towards the end; I really didn't expect The Undoing Project to be as soulful as it is. 

Having read The Undoing Project, I was struck by how little we currently take advantage of its insights. High school psychology is (or was, but I'd be surprised if anything had changed) a strange combination of vaguely important historical findings heralded as breakthroughs (Pavlov's dogs, for example) and outright absurd references to theories that have long been dismissed (anything Freud). These are life changing concepts that alter the way we think about ourselves. Why is this not part of the standard curriculum?