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Christopher L'Heureux

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Loved it!

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 07-26-20

Couldn't wait to get back to it! Fantastic and easily acceptable thriller set in the future. Great way to expand your creative mind.

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Entertaining Short!

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 05-15-20

An entertaining sci-fi short story with lots of imagination. Plenty of twists and enough left out to make you wonder. Enjoyed the listen!

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Want depth? This is depth.

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 04-17-20

A fantastic history of Grant's life, I don't think this yarn is for everyone. The casual reader will not find all 48 hours/1000+ pages gipping to the last. That said, it is an incredibly well written and thoughtful book - well researched and organized. It's worth the investment for anyone yearning to know more about the man, the Civil War, or the aftermath. And then there are leadership lessons. From a historical perspective, Chernow strikes at an old question: does the situation make the person, or does the person make the situation. The answer: clearly, it depends but leadership counts. There is plenty of well-researched history found in these pages. The Civil War period reminded me of flip-flopping politicians. Except, sometimes you change your mind once you've learned something. Grant learns a lot in those years. Chernow sheds light on Grant's presidency too, something often regarded as a disaster. Surely there are setbacks, but overall Grant contributes positively to the Office. Finally, the story of the post-Civil War south is heartbreaking. Chernow details the destruction of the south, its reconstruction, and its lapse back into formalized discrimination. I couldn't help but think the Union won the war but lost the peace creating a problem not resolved for another 100 years. What I found most enlightening was the portrait of the man. Grant was an introvert (I think). He showed humility; many thought him uneducated but later in life he recounted a series of obscure campaigns in detail to a dinner guest. He possessed knowledge but didn't flaunt it. Grant's positivism shines throughout his life; he always thought about the upside, even when disappointed. Probably best articulated in Shiloh when Sherman commented on a disastrous first day. Grant replied dead-pan, "Whip 'em tomorrow, though." Grant possessed an immense amount of trust, sometimes to a fault. This led to success in battle and failures elsewhere - particularly with his money. Grant's trust in and loyalty to others made him an easy to hoodwink which happened, with catastrophic effect, several times. Lastly, Grant was a student and he learned. Whether it was to become a captivating speaker or acquire a taste for power, Grant was a dynamic character who adapted over time. I clearly found this book engaging overall. It taught me a few things that I didn't realize or had forgotten about history. It filled some gaps for sure. Well balanced, it also shows a portrait of a leader with the good and the bad. A worthy read.

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Interesting...

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 04-17-20

A great dive into the effect of the worlds BEST energy drink - coffee - though Caffeine is takes a larger look at the compound caffeine. Pollan did some great research to write this. For those coffee drinkers out there, you should fit this little gem in...and learn the up and down sides to your favorite morning drink.

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Great Short Story

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 04-17-20

The performance was one of the best Ive listened to in a while. I listened on a run (two actually) and it was enjoyable. Would recommend for sure!

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Unfamiliar Territory

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 03-07-20

Totally outside my comfort zone - learned a lot and enjoyed the journey. There is much in here that applies to other professions and life in general. Take a look if you have the time.

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What to predict the future? Read this and maybe...

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 03-07-20

Tetlock references auftragstaktik, must I say more? This useful book details what Tetlock learned during the IARPA funded Good Judgment Project where they tracked predictions of about 20k people. The Superforecasters got the predictions right more than the others. More importantly, they learned how to increase success.

Predictions were specific, based on probability, and possessed a confidence rating. The experts were generally wrong because they saw everything related to their expertise. It was the generalists that did better because they tried to get as much information as possible. Experts beamed confidence while generalists were wary. Hedgehog and fox analogy here! Tetlock explains various bias traps and the wisdom of the crowd. The crowd has bits of expert knowledge and its aggregation begits better prediction.

The take-away: break predictions down into smaller problems (reductionist). Use large samples first - a reference class. For example to answer the question, does a family have a pet? Start with the average number of pets the average family owns in the area. Then look at the specific data (# kids in this family) provided to make fine adjustments to the probability.

Overall a great and insightful read...some application here too!

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Changes the way we think about rewards! Must read!

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 03-07-20

A fantastic read about our flawed perception of motivation. Daniel Pink lays out a convincing argument that the old 'carrot & stick' approach to incentives is wrong. While a rewards & punishments approach works for simple tasks, one needs intrinsic motivation based on autonomy, competence, and purpose to accomplish complex and creative tasks. This is because we psychologically want to direct our own lives, be better than what we are; and yearn to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

A must read for anyone who aspires to lead or motivate others and commitment is valued over compliance.

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An explanation of how we got here.

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 03-07-20

Current technology exposes people to massive and ever-increasing amounts of information. Nichols argues that this trove of knowledge paradoxically makes us dumber in his well-researched book. A small bit knowledge fuels human bias giving us a false reason to believe we are experts. The Death of Expertise lays out how we got here.

Nichols, a professor at the US Naval War College, codifies something we see every day on TV talk shows and news channels: everyone is as smart as everyone else. ‘You’re wrong’ is the same as ‘You’re stupid.’ Reasoned arguments convince nobody and how we feel rules the day. Why do we all think we’re experts? We have access to massive amounts of instantaneous information, and we lack the ability to determine if its real or fake. We need to pause and reflect but technology imbibes us to comment without thinking. Our education system gives us an inflated sense of self. Everyone gets a trophy because bad grades aren’t good for business; top grades go to our heads. These things combine in the information space that feeds bias. Antivaxxers are a notable example. Despite many scientific studies to the contrary, the idea that the MMR vaccine leads to autism still exists. No doubt this problem will grow as 5G and AI make the information we look for easier to come by.

This danger in the military is greater. We flippantly talk in terms of mastery and claim ourselves experts in the fundamentals despite changing jobs every two years or less. Our personnel system values breadth of experience and we hardly come close to hitting the 10,000-hour rule on any specific skill. Denying evidence to stay aligned with values and beliefs sounds like fighting the plan and not the enemy. How can I make the facts fit my theory? There are plenty of historical examples; the Chinese intervention in the Korean War readily comes to mind.

Nichols supplies few prescriptions. His stand-out recommendation is to develop the skill of metacognition: understanding one’s own thoughts. Studies show the less one knows about a topic, the more confident they are in their knowledge of the topic. Self-awareness might be the only way to get past this bias. But how?

Be eclectic. Get your information from various sources and perspectives. Read things that you know will piss you off and reflect. Study and be wary of bias. Take time to think. Nourish self-doubt. Question everything, especially your beliefs and cultivate someone to challenge you. This will help you realize that you do not have expert knowledge. How does the quote go? ‘The more I learn, the less I know.’ Lastly, listen to experts. That requires trust because they are not always correct. Experts have a better guess informed by their depth of knowledge.

While nothing in this book was novel, it is something to consider and worth a look to anyone who wants to better understand how we got to where we are.

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A fantastic tale!

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 03-07-20

This is the story of the partnership between Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman who upended rational decision-making theory and tied economics to psychology. Their creative process was fueled by curiosity, not passion. They asked interesting questions about why things were, the way they were. They were not afraid to be wrong; “If you have [an idea] that doesn’t work out, don’t fight hard to save it. Find another.” Most importantly, they used each other to reflect, process, and crystalize their theories.

Lewis is a captivating storyteller who kept me entertained while laying out the enormous amount of work these scholars undertook over a lifetime. Their discovery did not come from a eureka moment but from a curiosity. One of Kahneman’s colleagues always complained that everyone acted like an idiot when confronted by economic matters. That was odd, they thought, because at the time all economic models required a rational thinker. Their investigation found human logic failure was not based on emotion, as thought, but by failures in human cognition.

Kahneman found Israeli fighter pilots tended to perform better after an instructor criticized them or worse after they were praised. The instructors, however, only realized the former. Kahneman discovered this was simply a regression to the mean and retrieved the data to prove it. Punishment and praise had no measurable effect on a pilot’s performance. The big ideas do not stop there. Lewis takes us on a survey of useful thoughts: prospect theory, heuristics, the cocktail party effect, the gambler’s fallacy, the fallacy of small samples, hindsight bias, the hot-hand fallacy, confirmation bias, and the 7 plus/minus 2 rule to name only a few.

My take-away centered on a discussion of human nature. ‘People predict future events by making up stories because we are deterministic. We love a narrative and will accept any explanation if it fits the facts, ignoring what we do not see. We decide based on how we understand the story, not how probable the story is.’ How do we guard against this on the battlefield?

If you want to read Thinking, Fast and Slow, or want to know how instinctive versus deliberative thinking came about, this is a great primer. Lewis describes the history of two critical thinkers and how they were able to keep coming up with ideas by asking the right questions, distilling their ideas through discourse, and finally by testing their assumptions. A history of creativity worth a look.

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