25: More book reviews! ( + reviews of three great speeches)
Rich dad cashflow quadrant; the charisma myth; Bad science; Ending aging
Hi, I am back with more book reviews. Enjoy!
1-Rich Dad cashflow quadrant:
A book about the four different financial paths people pursue in life, where each path leads, how to shift between paths aka quadrants, and what is the optimal quadrant to operate from. Unbeknownst to us, each and everyone of us is operating from one of the four quadrants: E for employee, S for small business owner, B for big business owner, and I for investor. If you are financially independent, then you're most likely a B or an I( the right side of cashflow quadrant). If your worries are caused by money, then you probably chose security over freedom. Security is when you mind others' business; you count on the government or your employer to secure you and your family for life. sacrificing in return a high amount of taxes, and all forms of debt incurred by all the attractive loans from banks. In order to move to the B and I quadrants( so long financial worries) you need to be aware of your fnancial statement: where does your income come from? What are your expenses? Do you have any assets( positive cashflow flowing in in the from of dividends, royalties, rent...etc) What are your liabilities( debt, tax..) The way to the B and I quadrants is to start focusing on acquiring assets that produce constant passive income instead of relying on an addiction called the paycheck at the end of each month. The old advice of working hard and earning a job no longer works; relying on others to insure you live a "secure life" would not make you free. The author identifies 5 types of investors: the savers_ saving money used to make sense but when when money stopped being backed by gold( 1971) money started losing its value because of the printing of large sums of money which engender increasing inflation. Money is basically debt now. Fiat. The other types of investors include gamblers, people who give their money to stockbrokers and financial experts who are actually paid by the hour and through comissions( fake I). The author wants his readers to become level-4 and Level-5 investors, people who take responsibility of their own investments, seek true mentors who made the crossing, and join hands with a team of investors. Kiyosaki thinks that a house is not an asset unless it is producing a passive income and that concentration and spotting good investments is better than diversification. The author suggests we spend time in the B quadrant; build a business and learn how to manage people before moving to the I quadrant. He proposes 5 steps to start off on the financial fast track: write your financial statement, set financial goals, mind your own buisness, know the difference between risk and risky, seek mentors, start doing and making mistakes even if things are not clear yet. Some ideas from the book: - four green houses when the market is down, one big hotel when the market is up. -You don't need money to make money; use other people's money. -Once you have built a system,money starts pouring in. -Be congizant of two accounting books: your debt( liability) is the bank's asset - the name of the game is who is indebted to whom. Good debt:people pay you fro your debt; bad debt, you pay people for your debt. -Buy an old house, fix it up and then rent it Take emotion out of your financial decisions. -Buy a franchise( system that works) and focus on managing people. -Build a system around something you are an expert at. - Investors don't park their money; money should always be jumping from acquiring an asset to acquiring the next. - Saving money in 401k and superannuation saving accounts is bad strategy.
2- The charisma myth
Tell anyone you know what they wish they're natural at and pretty much everyone will wish they were more charismatic. But, what is charisma? Where does it come from? Is it an inborn talent or a learnable skill? Can anyone become charismatic?. The answer, according to this book,is that charisma is a skill, and everyone can acquire it by practicing some tools. What does it mean to be charismatic? People who have charisma project Presence, warmth,and power. You can practice presence by doing a form of meditation where you sit, eyes closed, and focus on one of the following, the sensations of your breathing, the sensations in your toes, or all the sounds that your ear radio happens to be registering. Warmth can be projected by practicing visualization; the other person has angel wings and they mean good for you something something. As for power,you can practice voice fluctuations, and dropping of intonations mid-sentence or at the end. An important thing to understand about charismatic people is their internal states; you need to have an internal state of confidence and all the rest. So here the practice is to manipulate your internal state to match the situation you're in. Geniune smiling is distingushable from a fake smile; non-verbal communication can't hide the internal state. So the practice is to have the mind manipulate the body by destigmatizing situation,neutralizing negative thoughts, and doing the responsibility transfer excerise where you inhale deeply from your abdomen, exhale through your noise,and transfer all the worries and anxieties to a higher being of your choosing. Another very important thing to keep in mind is that charismatic people avoid any physical discomfort; they always choose the right clothes, environment,and work their way around any anxiety-inducing situations. There are various different types of charisma depending on the situation; warmth charisma,authority charisma, visionary charisma... etc Charisma excercices should be practiced in low stakes situations( friends n family) until they become second nature. Charismatic people know that the thoughts arising in the brain are inaccurate, so they practice seeing those hindering thoughts as graffitti on a wall, or they might depersonalize the situation by seeing things from afar. The book contains all sorts of tips on how to deal with difficult people, ace public speaking and how to avoid falling into the dark side of charisma( spoiler alert: include others in your success) I liked the structure of the book; you have a chapter and then a chapter summary,and at the end of the book you have like a summary of a summary of all the chapters and one last section dedicated to the excerises mentioned throughout the book, which I will probably be visiting again amd again.
3- Bad science
Our culture shape us in ways we're not aware of. We collectively follow some implicit guidelines on how to operate; we become familiar with right and wrong, good and bad, without ever questioning the veracity of our beliefs. One word we all associate with good and right is the word Science. This word reassures us when we're worried and guide us through most of the decisions in our life. Now. What is Science, anyways? Is it a cultural phenomenon that is dressed with all sorts of fancy sounding words and far away concepts, reserved for white coats in labs. Are we just to transfer all the faculties of reasoning we have to those lab coat people who hide behind the unassailable wall of "science"? No. If the public can't see behind the wall then probably some "Bad science" is going on there. The author defines bad science( in medicine, mostly) as science with no transparency and no clear methodologies; a science riddled with technical words so as to seems unreacheable to the public. Let's begin with examples of bad science: The author reveals the quackery behind Homeopathy_a form of alternative medicine where you give sick people pills that would otherwise make a healthy person ill_. This form of quackery takes advantage of our cultural heritage and our natural tendencies. These form of pills were no more beneficient than placebo pills. The way you find out the efficacy of a pill is by doing a controlled, study group, where you give some people the placebo,amd the other group the pill, and you compare the results. Not enough. To get rid of the biases, you need to use doible- blinding( the patients don't know which pill they have taken and the doctors adminsterig the frug dont know what they're giving theur patients), second comes the randomization, you want to take a random unrelated group of people amd do the experiment. Third comes the sampling size, the replicability of the study, the independency of the trials. Even if all of that was revealed, flaws might still abound. You can do something called systematic analysis where you collate all the studies on a given subject, do the math, and come up with a better overall result. Doesn't end here. There is also publication bias. How do you detect that? You do the funnel plot, where you collect all the experiements on one subject with small and large sizes and you plot them on the graph, the result should cluster around the right answer, if a point is off the funnel by a large margin, then you gotta check the methodologies behind that off experiment. You should also ask. Who is funding these studies, what is the incentive...etc. the more questions you ask, the more you detect the verasity of the findings. Oher bad science examples include Ear wax candling( is that mushy wax really coming out of the ear or was it in the candle all along?), detox baths( does the brown color of the water represents the toxins in my body or hydrolsis taking its course?), all beauty cremes and potions turn out to have a very limited effect), what about all the brain gym stuff; all the points in the body that allegedly relieves pain, acupuncture..
Reading how bad science is spread as sensible, good science, we see how oblivious we are as a society to what evidence based, transparent science actually is. The author considers all forms of alternative medicine and nutrionists as bad science and misleading to the populace. Nutrioin shouldn't be that complicated. It seems that the old advice is the safest bet: eat your fruits and veggies and excercise. To explain the reasons behind opposing, vaccines, the author brings up Wakefield's infamous paper that stirred a controversy when it was published in the lancet in the UK. That paper argued that MMR vaccines were causing autism, bowel problems and behavioural dysfunctions in children. Turned out that all these anti-vaccines claims were unfounded. Even among academics and science people, Mainstream media has a big influence on the cultural perception of an idea or a medicine; it either promotes it or consigns it to the dustbin of history. This book was quite an eye opener in terms of having a peek into the machinations of big pharma and how billion dollars industry selling science based medicine are actually selling culturally backed products, taking advantage of our tendency to chase miracle cures and quick fixes where none are existent.
4- Ending aging
Aubrey De Grey is on a mission to break the spell that pervaded our culture: the pro-aging trance. Over the millenias, a lot of attempts to reach immortality and prolong lives have failed and it has been percolating through the generations the notion that Death is inevitable and part of life and there is just nothing that can be done about it. We should strive to make the most of the few "meaningful" decades we have on this earth and that is that. The author begs to differ, and he wrote an entire book to rekindle the hope in a future where people live up to the healthy age of 1000 years old. Wat!? The author founded the organization SENS, with the puropse of solving aging and extending the span of healthy lives for a couple of decade in the short tern, and indefinitely in the long term. The author identify 7 causes of aging that engender the accumulaion of damage over the years until the onset of aging diseases. The author argues that the best approach to solving aging would be to take the intermediate approach between Gerontology( Curing the diseases of aging after their occurence) and Geriatrics( preventing the diseases of aging before they happen). The said apprach would consist of curing the accumulated damage just before it transforms into a disease. Now the reason behind choosing this approach is that in order to prevent a disease from happening one needs to understand very complex mechanisms of how damage accumulates and there is just so much that needs be understood on the molecular level to prevent the disease,plus prevention therapies extend life at the best of cases only for a decade or two. So it is a hard endeavour to take and not worth the bang for the buck. Solving the disease after it has happened wouldn't give more than couple of years of extended life and it is not recommended that one messes with the metabolism of the body, not to mention the side effects on healthy cells caused by applying this approach. Okay, let's get this straight. Death of mamallians is caused by the diseases of aging from cancer to heart attacks to dementia and all the rest. What causes the diaeases of aging? It is the accumulated damage over the years; being alive for a long time is apparently bad for your health. At the cellular level,what is happening throughout the breathing you're doing right now is that the mitochondria,an organelle that transforms food into ATP, fuel for the body, is accumulating damage slowly but surely, thanks to the constant supply of oxygen that is facilitating the process. To be sure, the cells have mechanisms of their own to repair this accumulated damage until well into your 30s, but at one point, the damage to the cell catches up with the cell's ability to repair it and it becomes dangerous. One of the products of our metabolism is free radicals, which is deemed one of the contributors of aging. It originates through the mutation of mitochondira. There are a lot of arguments surronding how big of a role the mitochondrial mutation has in aging but let's not dwell on that. Among the 7 causes of aging we hear terms like Glycation( has to do with sugar not working proberly or something), lipofuscin( sparkly stuff which were found to be consumed by novel bacterias liviing in cemetaries. The author talks about extracting cells from these bacteria and injecting it in humans so that lipofuscins are eliminated before death), AGE cross-links; again, repair mechanisms in cellls getting overwhemed by the garbage which becomes increasingly difficult to handle with age. There are also things like stiffening of the tissues which makes it hard for blood to flow into arteries with age, but at the end of the day it all boils down to damage accumulation inside amd outside the cell which is programmed to function properly till the age where the individual has had enough time to reproduce. The author think of the body as a car that can be repaired continuously over time. In the case of humans, we will be able to repair the damage accumulated by aging every couple of decades or so, provided we start with middle aged men( our intermediate approach), apparently the perfect age group to undergo these repairs. As to the methodology behind the repairs, the author mentions therapies conducted with the help of stem cells( cells that can take any shape or form in the body); embryonic stem cell, somatic nuclear transfer cell, gene therapies, drugs, mouse rejuvenation something something_ apparently mouse rejuvenation is a very important milestone to achieve_. The author talks about calorie restricion as a natural method to slow aging,albeit to a limited degree. Also mentioned were various different types of drugs amd vaccines. In order to reach the future of eternal youth, the author suggests that we take care of our health as much as we can through excercice,diet, and all the rest to live enough to take these therapies. Equally important is the use of lobbying amd donating to accelerate the progress of these therapies. Ideally,the author wants therapies to start as soon as 2030 and then every couple decades you go back and do some more therpaies, ad infinitum. I learned a lot from this book,and I think I can now see why talking about progress in longevity is not empty talk but rather based on sound reasoning. But still,I can not but feel doubtful of the success of as big an endeavour as solving aging once and for all.
I leave this book with an immense sense of excitement for a future devoid of suffering and age related diseases and maybe eternal youth? I don't know what is possible anymore.
Three great speeches:
1- Make good art by Neil Geiman
Neil Geiman, author of the popular comic book Sandman and one of my favorites books, the Graveyard book, delivers a letter for graduates on how to maneouver their ways into whatever artistic pursuit they will embark on. Geiman wants artists to realize that they should be making good art whatever situation in life they find themselves in. He talks about how he always thought that someone might knock on his door and expose his made up stories. He goes on. It is all a game of pretense; if you're not a writer, you act as if you were one. If you're not wise, you act as would a wise person. An artist should enjoy the ride and be always advancing towards the "mountain". Saying no is important. Geiman encourages artists to leverage the distribution channels of today, where the work can be easily spread. The author ends by wishing the graduates a life full of fantastic failures and good art.
2- Very good lives by J.K Rowling
J.K Rowling shares her early experience with what she calls epic failure in her 20s, her being as poor as it gets at that time, the struggle with her parents to choose a direction in life; looking back she says: blaming your parents has an expiry date. As soon as you become responsible, the choice becomes yours as to in which direction you are going to steer your ship. Rowling shares moments of her day job at Amnesty international in London when she would read all papers and messages sent there and learn of the atrocities commited over the world. At that time, she was using all the free time she can get to write stories; she thought that writing novel is her calling. Rowling emphasizes the importance of imagination to understand others and the inevitable failures that should be looked at as a part of life well lived. You can not not fail unless you're living cautiously enough and even then, you might as well have never lived. The lesson is to be cognizant of the caprice and vessissitudes of life in order to come at the other side a wiser person. I quite enjoyed the speech which is interspersed with a lot of witty and deep statements.
3- This is water by David Foster Wallace
Two young fish pass by an old fish in the water, the old fish quips: How is the water,boys? the young fish look puzzled and say to each other, what water? David Foster Wallace talks about the real value of education. Liberal arts students expect education in liberal arts to teach them how to think, but is that what college teach? The author brings up another story about a religious man and an atheist man having an argument about their beliefs to hammer home the point that whenever one made his own choice in what to believe in, he stops seeing past his belief; he becomes imprisoned, unaware of the prison he constructed for himself. A person should choose what to think and what to pay attention to. The main point of the speech is that Capital T education is not the certificate you get at the end of a four-year study, but rather it is a lifetime pursuit of choosing not to operate on your default settings. The default setting being you thinking the world should operate according to your desires and your beliefs. When you're waiting in line at a shopping mall, you can think of all the ways the situation is stacked against you(unconscious) or you can think of the opposite of that ( conscious). One needs to always be aware of the water he's in, metaphorically speaking. The willingness to constantly make conscious choices and fight default operation are the keys to a lifetime of education. To make the mind your servant as opposed to your master is what real education is all about, conscious interpretation of the world.
Okay, that is it for today. I will be back, stay tuned.