List: Psychology

Cover of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone.

The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

by Steven Sloman · published 2017 · read 2020-01-03

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I finally finished The Knowledge Illusion. The five stars here are given despite the writing: It annoyed me a lot, but the thoughts in the book are important enough that they changed my thinking on some issues, so five stars are appropriate.

Cover of Descartes' Error.

Descartes’ Error

by António R. Damásio · published 1994 · read 2020-04-18

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Didn't hold much new information for me, because its contents have grown so accepted and foundational in the 25 years since publication. Nevertheless it provides a solid fundamental overview in a very readable way, despite also dealing in a bit of technical details.

Cover of Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction.

Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction

by Ian J. Deary · published 2001 · read 2020-05-09

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Good example of science writing that is useful and accessible without dumbing things down beyond reason. I learnt some things and was surprised how much Ian Deary managed to fit into the slim book.

Cover of Talking about Machines.

Talking about Machines

by Julian E. Orr · published 1996 · read 2022-02-17

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This is technical anthropology, and it is thorough and much better than you'd expect from a potentially dry dissertation from 1990, described as an “underground classic among ethnographers of work”. The central thesis of the book is that (technical) knowledge is a socially distributed resource that is transported by way of oral culture and that debugging works by constructing a narrative between technician, customer and machine. More details below, but this is both a central insight, well described and documented, and applicable to most areas of (work) life.

Cover of The Checklist Manifesto.

The Checklist Manifesto

by Atul Gawande · published 2009 · read 2021-10-30

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Checklists good – this message has been spread through all tech conferences for the last several years, so I didn't expect much from this book. It's the slightly more fleshed-out (but also just inflated) version of the original essay. If I hadn't heard all the good conference talks about pilot checklists (for example https://rixx.de/blog/andrew-godwin-you-have-control/), I'd have rated this book higher.

Cover of Running on Empty.

Running on Empty

by Jonice Webb, Christine Musello · published 2012 · read 2021-08-17

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Running on Empty does this thing therapy books do, where it ascribes all your problems to one source, and it describes it problems so broadly that it is very very easy to just go ahead and say "yeah, that's absolutely me!". As you can probably tell, I'm not a fan.

Cover of Turn the Ship Around!.

Turn the Ship Around!

by L. David Marquet · published 2012 · read 2021-03-11

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Anarchic structures are great, particularly at groups under a certain size. I know this, my friends know this – I didn't expect a US submarine captain to know and advocate it. Yet that was the pleasant surprise I got.

Cover of Where Good Ideas Come from.

Where Good Ideas Come from

by Steven Johnson · published 2010 · read 2020-04-11

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

This book has got a couple of good things to say (be playful, be prolific, facilitate accidents and clashes), and tells a bunch of really neat anecdotes of past inventions and big ideas. I don't really think the anecdotes are good arguments for any of the points the book makes, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. As a whole, it's not terribly deep, and for some reason that I can't put my finger on, reading it felt very tedious.

Cover of Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman · published 2011 · read 2018-05-29

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Reproduction crisis hits hard, doesn't it. People who buy too much of Kahneman's book are insufferable.

Cover of Focusing.

Focusing

by Eugene T. Gendlin · published 1978 · read 2019-07-15

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Focusing by Eugene T. Gendlin was my first book I really wanted to give up on this year. I'm always very hesitant to pick up non-fiction books, especially those that touch on self-help or psychology in any way. There's so much misinformation and only mildly informed, untested theory out there, and I'm just not qualified to judge what is good and what isn't. It's frustrating.

Cover of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

by Pete Walker · published 2013 · read 2020-02-16

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

First off: I'm not quite the target group for this book, and this has influenced my rating. I think the book says a lot of true things and reading it will do no harm and may significantly help you if you're in the right place. I think the acknowledgement and descriptions of the specific types of cPTSD and childhood trauma will be helpful for people impacted by this.

Cover of Schadenfreude.

Schadenfreude

by Tiffany Watt Smith · published 2018 · read 2021-01-08

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude” – “Schadenfreude is the best joy” says a German proverb. If you're not on board with this, this book might make you look at the more positive sides of finding joy in other people's misfortune. Or it might bore you to tears with strained examples for Schadenfreude for chapter upon chapter. I know that “This book should have been a blog post” is tired and meh, but in this case I'd say: this book's afterword (which contains the good parts) would suffice as a blog post.

Cover of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

by Jenny Odell · published 2019 · last read 2020-11-09

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

DNF: The writing style was grating for me, and the book opened with such strong tech pessimism ("kids these days don't know how to talk to each other", phrased more nicely) that I disengaged very soon. Later she goes on to say that she only objects to commercial social networks, and that she's sure that decentralised communal ones are perfectly nice, but she had already lost me.