Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro

 

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is a book that was on my radar as an effort to read more international authors.

Started: 6/25/2021
Completed: 6/29/2021
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: The New Republic

Review:

This is an odd tale told from the distorted perspective of an artificially intelligent robot.  Not unlike The Handmaid's Tale, there is much more unsaid than said.  The book sort of assumes an awareness of the world that the AI neither has nor seems to pursue.  The use of off-putting phrases like "the mother" or "give privacy" and the use of third person when the AI is talking with individuals sometimes but not others is very distracting.  In addition, viewing the world from the AI perception (which uses interesting approaches for a computer programmer, but I wonder about everyone else)  is highly distorting and takes away from the flow of the story.  Finally, the lack of an overall narrative (this just seems like a series of events from a person's life) to combine all the pieces into a coherent whole might be appropriate for an AI which can't make those kinds of conjectures, but is disorienting to the reader.

Noise, Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein

 

Noise: A flaw in human judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein keeps showing up in my feeds, so I think I need to read it.

Started: 6/20/2021
Completed: 6/25/2021
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended by: Social Media

Review:

It seems like the authors argue that it is best to clear the low-hanging fruit.  Attempting to correct bias is difficult in part because it is hard to identify.  Noise, or basically deviation from the average, however, is relatively straight-forward to identify and there are known ways to minimize noise.  Hence, rather than focusing on bias which is really hard to identify, focus on noise and a side-effect will be that bias (where it can be detected) will be much clearer.

The oft repeated example is shooting at a bull's eye.  If you look at the back of the target, you can see clustered results.  You may not be able to tell if the cluster is around the bull's eye (off by a bias) or not, but you can certainly see whether things are clustered.  The argument is that once you have the clustering complete, then it is easier to detect bias.

The benefits are manifest--ideally if you have no bias, you also want clustered results.  The risk, however, is that you can pull people who are constantly on-target, off-target in order to reduce "noise."  This actually induces bias.  The "reduction to the mean" means that there is an overriding assumption that doing the average thing consistently is better than doing nothing consistently.  This is especially true where it is difficult to determine what the right target is.

So, why not do a noise audit and then try to resolve the noise problem?  We are already working on the more difficult problem of eliminating bias which is a much harder problem, particularly in the presence of noise.  My thinking is as follows:

• Assume that there is a bias (say 3 out of 5 interviewers are white nationalists)
• Work to reduce the noise to the average (this will mean that 2 of the 5 interviewers will need to focus more on white nationalist issues and 3 of the 5 interviewers might have to focus a little less on white nationalist issues)
• Now, we have a cluster where white nationalism is more prevalent in employment
• Bias reduction is implemented and 2 of the 5 interviewers go back to doing what they were doing before, but 3 of the 5 interviewers have to change dramatically

Reducing noise brought no benefit in this contrived example (and actually brought harm, although it wasn't known for sure until the noise had been reduced) and forced 2 of the interviewers to espouse things they felt were wrong.  In the end, the minority position was the correct position and noise reduction moved the group off the correct position.  It is hard to know how often this happens (or if it even does).  It is hard to know how frequently this kind of thing perpetuates bias in the interest of "making things more fair."  I am just not convinced that low-hanging fruit is the best approach in this case.

The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams

 

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is another book about the Oxford English Dictionary.  YAH!

Started: 6/17/2021
Completed: 6/20/2021
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a book about how women and their words were not considered part of the dictionary.  In this sense, the book is excellent.  It truly serves to show how women were not really a part of the Oxford English Dictionary (neither in consideration of the words women use nor in the consideration of how these women were erased from the presence of the Victorian era).  Keeping in mind that the intent of this book was to show women within the scope of the OED, this is an excellent book.

Intellectually, I understand that life-and-death makes drama.  Practically, however, I feel it is a cheat.  The imminent threat of death creates drama by virtue of its finality.  The impending presence of life creates drama by virtue of its opportunity.  OK, I get that.  It is much more difficult to create drama out of regular things without invoking life and death struggles.  This book has a good run at regular things, but spins out on the life and death as though coming to a crescendo.  It is however, a hollow ringing of pots.  The cacophony is great, compelling even, but it is a cheap way to make a lot of noise.  Where is the nuance?  The drama of a maimed hand or of a life as a bondswoman is surely sufficient is it not?

Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

 

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead is a female oriented story talking about daring do.

Started: 6/11/2021
Completed: 6/17/2021
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This book is well written with the sole exception of the repeated use of "as best as she could" which sounds completely wrong to my ear and drew me up short each time I heard it (or a variant of that).  The characters are rich and well developed.  The story is complex and engrossing.  The plots and sub-plots are examined and have good interplay.  The sexual and physical abuse was more than I could take.  It seems like every book has to have severe loss and this book had that as well.  I thought it was going to be an exciting book about the adventures of female pilots.  I also thought it was a historical novel (based on some true story). It was neither.  I cannot recommend it.

A fantastic insight, however was, "One thing I learned is that you don't just love a person, you love a vision of your life with them."  I have had a hard time understanding why people point out that they love someone when that person intentionally hurts them.  What difference does it make if you love them when that person is making your life miserable?  A woman who is beaten does not press charges because she loves her husband.  A man whose wife constantly cheats on him cites his love for her as a reason not to leave.  It made no sense to me.  If, however, abandoning that person also means abandoning the vision of this future life you had with them--well, that is understandable.  For me, that would occur when the victimization started, I think.  That idealized vision of a future life would crumple under the reality.  I can imagine, however, that for some people it would not and the reason those people would cite would be that they do not want to abandon that future life they had envisioned.  Ah, I get it.  Great insight from Shipstead.

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern got onto my list after talking with my niece who pointed out that I might like other books by this author.

Started: 6/7/2021
Completed: 6/11/2021
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: My niece

Words for Which I Sought Help:

exsanguinate -- drain (a person, animal, or organ) of blood

Review:

I do not think it is revealing too much to say that my opinion is that this is the story of Poppet and Bailey.  The story is mostly a series of descriptions.  Using a circus with endless tents each featuring endlessly interesting exhibits, Morgenstern writes almost lyrical descriptions.  These cascading collection of descriptions are threaded on a thin necklace of plot that is ostensibly the heart of the novel.  The reality, however, is that this threaded necklace stippled with remarkable scenery is ostensibly THE heart of the story, but I find Poppet and Bailey much more compelling.  Some might argue that the real story is that of the circus itself, but, like others in the story, I find the circus to be a venue and not a story.  Widget is an interesting character as well and it seems like Widget develops as a child develops--half formed early in the book and developing character and pushing around the edges towards the end.  Well worth the time.

Antitrust, Amy Kobuchar

 

Antitrust: Taking on monopoly power from the gilded age to the digital age by Amy Klobuchar

Started: 6/4/2021
Completed: 6/7/2021
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a boring topic.  You know what makes it more boring?  Hearing about how the west tried to reform trusts, but wasn't successful.  In the 1800s.  A lot.  I do not find it compelling that Klobuchar lived down the street from a robber baron.  It is not interesting to me that William Jennings Bryan ran for president and repeatedly lost on an anti trust platform.  I do not find it compelling that Klobuchar has repeatedly put up the same bill in the Senate and that it has not passed (nor do I need to hear the few sentence summary once let alone several times--put that in the appendix).  The 25 steps that she plans to take are marginally interesting, but to get part way through the list and get another history lesson because the history was not properly covered in the rest of the book was stunning.  I am exhausted listening to this book which seems to largely document failure (with the glaring exception of her effort to get AT&T broken up as lawyer for MCI).

First Principles, Thomas E. Ricks

 

First Principles: What America's founders learned from the Greeks and Romans and how that shaped our country by Thomas E. Ricks sucked me in with just the title.

Started: 6/1/2021
Completed: 6/4/2021
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Written in response to the Trump presidency with hope for the future, this book does a good job at describing how classical concepts were leveraged to create our government.  While I do have the author's disgust for Adams (though I understand it), that sole point excepted, I found this book helpful and revealing.  I had always thought of Washington as Cincinnatus, but he held other aliases as well and this book does an excellent job explaining the whys and wherefores.  Maybe I should have read this book during Trump's reign, perhaps it would have eased some of my concerns.  With norms falling all around, however, it seems much more likely that this book would have been drowned out by the cascading foundations of our government hitting the pavement around me.

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

 

The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis is a book I read in religion class in high school and wanted to revisit.

Started: 6/1/2021
Completed: 6/1/2021
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: Mr. Hart

Review:

My memory of this book from high school was that it was fun and irreverent.  Upon rereading, however, I found it to be neither.  I guess that my sense was born out of comparison to whatever else I was reading at the time (possibly, Pilgrim's Progress or The Scarlet Letter).  This time through, I found it preachy.  Oh, well.