Thread by @apokerplayer

Getting rid of bunch of my books. Will share random pages that I’ve bookmarked as interesting.

This is from M. Scott Peck’s ‘People Of The Lie’, which is about the nature of “evil”.

Peck’s a bit religious and weird but was good read with some good ideas.

A couple books that long ago influenced my understanding on sex and biology and male/female relationships.

From Cialdini’s book Influence, on how desire to be consistent means writing things down, even privately but especially publicly, makes us more committed to those written things.

This is key factor IMO in why social media is so extreme-view-generating and polarizing.

Book ‘Disinformation’ by a former Romanian spy chief who worked for Russians and defected, describes many disinformation campaigns, including claim that Che Guevara narrative was one of many Russian propaganda campaigns to influence the West.

BTW, ‘Disinformation’ by Pacepa is a great one to recommend to people who claim that the U.S. has done anywhere near the level of shady operations as Russia has (a false equivalency promoted by Russia using disinformation).

From book ‘We Have No Idea’ by @DanielWhiteson and Jorge Cham.

If you are sometimes put off by physicists/astronomers seeming too certain/confident, this is great book that focuses on what we don’t know about the universe, which is a lot.

From book ‘Roll The Bones’, a history of gambling. About early slot machines and poker machines.

From book by @IntelTechniques ‘Open Source Intelligence Techniques.’

Some of this kind of stuff is quickly dated (and they do new editions) but still contains lots of good general concepts for doing online, open source investigations.

Lol this chapter didn’t age well. From Gregg Easterbrook’s Paradox of Choice.

Which was actually pretty good in examining how more choice paradoxically seems to make us less happy. Something I def feel. And which could help explain some of modern ennui.

I liked this snippet in @JamesGleick’s book ‘The Information’ that captured some of the cosmic strangeness we can feel just due to existing.

Noticed I had an old book by Judy Mikovits, which I’d never read. She’s a dangerous nut who recently got conservative attention by saying Covid was a hoax.

Not surprisingly, her first sentence here is all about her persecution.

On GW Bush and cocaine, from Fortunate Son.

Simpler times.

From ‘The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett.’

Everett was creator of Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

From book Mind-wise, on the difficulty of reading others.

From book ‘Spy’, about FBI’s Robert Hanssen’s huge betrayal in giving many secrets to Russia over many years.

On his motivations.

From great book ‘Writing My Wrongs’, about spending a long time in prison and reforming.

Read this as prep for interviewing former convict for the podcast.

From book Stung, the true story that Owning Mahoney was based on.

From essays by Sartre, on personal responsibility.

From book Deadwood: The Golden Years, on the gambling there.

From book Dissecting Pinocchio.

First idea I talked about in Reading Poker Tells, about how people, like animals, have instinct to “hide their treasure”, which explains general instinct to look quickly away and not look back much at strong cards.

From Max Tegmark’s Our Mathematical Universe