Reviews of the books I've read

This is book 3 of the Imperial Radch trilogy As such, given how much I enjoyed the last two, and was engaged with the universe Leckie created, I continued with this one (and, let's be real, the next one, too).

Much as the previous two, this book has a society commentary aspect wrapped inside the science-fiction part of the world. In particular, this commentary is about power, the use of power, the corrupting influences of power, and the collateral damage of power. Standing up to power, saying the right thing, doing the right thing, it puts one at a complete disadvantage. One needs to have an entire acceptance of one's small part of this universe, to have acceptance of the meaninglessness of everything, and to have acceptance that, well, this is going to hurt, this standing up for one's ideals.

It's an ugly, nasty mess. Most people lose.

Some don't.

Some become the monsters they fight.

I vaguely recall that Susan and Rob didn't like this book as much as the first. If this is the case, and I am not sure it is the case, I would guess the lack of world building is part of the reduced excitement compared to the first book. This book starts two weeks after the last book ended, so the first book is needed to understand what is happening in this book.

This book doesn't nicely wrap up everything in the book, but it does wrap up some parts of the origins and destinations of some characters. The universe created is definitely one that can linger for a good one or two dozen books.

I personally enjoyed this book, both for the science-fiction part and the power play part. Again, recommended.

“Military matters no doubt. And Citizen Raughd. Such a nice, well-bred young person.” Raughd Denche had attempted to kill me, mere days before Captain Hetnys’s untoward behavior. “Surely they’ll have had reasons for what they did, surely that should be taken into account!"
Location 327

The Pigeon Hole Principle: we place people into categories some time during the first part of knowing someone. This placement is dependent on the person, what we know about the person's history, and our history. Once a person is in that category, we forgive what we believe is good about them, and hate what we believe has wrongly happened to them, even if the good and the bad are independent of reality.

Happened in ultimate all the time. "Oh, he had a bad day." No, he wasn't a good player any more. "Wow, she played above herself!" No, she's become a better player.

That, and the bringing to bear of the daily omen casting. I had met quite a few priests in my long life, and found that they were, by and large, like anyone else—some generous, some grasping; some kind, some cruel; some humble, some self-aggrandizing. Most were all of those things, in various proportions, at various times. Like anyone else, as I said. But I had learned to be wary whenever a priest suggested that her personal aims were, in fact, God’s will.
Location 347

“Lieutenant,” I said, “I would hope that you would realize that I have no desire to govern here. I am perfectly happy to let the Athoeki govern themselves.”
Location 478

And so will the Xhais, truth be told, but let them get the idea that any Ychana has somehow ended up with something she doesn’t deserve…”
Location 551

“Sir,” said Tisarwat. “I understand—I think I understand—why you don’t want me to use them, even now. But, sir, she won’t hesitate to use them.”

“That’s a reason to use them ourselves, is it?” I asked.

“It’s an advantage we have, sir! That she won’t know we have! And it’s not like our not using it will spare Station anything. You know she’ll use those accesses herself! We might as well get there first.”

I wanted to tell her that she was thinking exactly like Anaander Mianaai, but it would have hurt her, and besides, she mostly couldn’t help it.

“May I point out, Lieutenant, that I am as I am now precisely because of that sort of thinking?”
Location 1288

“Lieutenant,” I replied, “I cannot possibly describe to you how unpleasant it is to have irreconcilable, conflicting imperatives forcibly implanted in your mind. Anaander has surely been before you—both of her. You think Station wants
Location 1295

“But since you mention it, do you think you can perhaps arrange things so that Station can’t be compelled by anyone? Not Anaander Mianaai, not any of her? Not us?” “What?” Tisarwat stood confused in the scuffed gray corridor on Athoek Station. She genuinely had not understood what I had just said. “Can you close off all the accesses to Station? So that neither Anaander can control it? Or better, can you give Station its own deep accesses and let it make whatever changes it wants to itself, or let it choose who has access and how much?” “Let it…” As it became clear to her what I was suggesting, she began, just slightly, to hyperventilate. “Sir, you’re not seriously suggesting that.” I didn’t reply. “Sir, it’s a station. Millions of lives depend on it.” “I think Station is sensible of that, don’t you?” “But, sir! What if something were to go wrong? No one could get in to fix it.” I considered asking just what she thought would constitute something going wrong, but she continued without pausing. “And what… sir, what if you did that and it decided it wanted to work for her? I don’t think that’s at all unlikely, sir.” “I think,” I replied, downwell, watching Translator Zeiat, now leaning precariously out the window, “that no matter who it allies itself with, its primary concern will be the well-being of its residents.”
Location 1299

“Have you thought about it? I mean, really thought about it. This wouldn’t just change things in Radch space. Sooner or later it will change things everywhere. And I know, sir, that it’s gone all wrong, but the whole idea behind the expansion of the Radch is to protect the Radch itself, it’s about the protection of humanity. What happens when any AI can remake itself? Even the armed ones? What happens when AIs can build new AIs with no restrictions? AIs are already smarter and stronger than humans, what happens when they decide they don’t need humans at all? Or if they decide they only need humans for body parts?”
Location 1338

Will you fight the tyrant with weapons she made, for her own use?” “We are weapons she made for her own use.” “We are. But will you pick up every one of those weapons, and use them against her? What will you accomplish? You will be just like her, and if you succeed you’ll have done no more than change the name of the tyrant. Nothing will be different.” She looked at me, confused and, I thought, distressed. “And what if you don’t pick them up?” she asked, finally. “And you fail? Nothing will be different then, either.” “That’s what Lieutenant Awn thought,” I said. “And she realized too late that she was mistaken.” Tisarwat didn’t
Location 1534

She drew in a shaking breath and then cried, “How can this be happening? How can there be any benefit at all? She tells herself that, you know, that all of it is ultimately for the benefit of humanity, that everyone has their place, their part of the plan, and sometimes some individuals just have to suffer for that greater benefit. But it’s easy to tell yourself that, isn’t it, when you’re never the one on the receiving end. Why does it have to be us?” I didn’t reply. The question was an old one, and she knew its various conventional answers as well as I did.
Location 2071

“As of three minutes ago. And I’m off meds. I told Medic I didn’t need them anymore.” “You realize”—I still kept a bit of attention for Tisarwat, herself cross-legged on her own bed, eyes closed, accessing the relay through Ship—“ that it’s the meds that make you feel like you don’t need meds anymore.”
Location 2164

“This isn’t new,” I said. I didn’t think she heard me, though. Blood was rushing to her face, she wanted to flee, but of course there was nowhere she could go and be away from herself.
Location 2199

“And so what’s the point, sir? What’s the point of talking about training and promotions as though it’s all going to just go on like it always has?” “What’s the point of anything?” “Sir?” She blinked, confused. Taken aback. “In a thousand years, Lieutenant, nothing you care about will matter. Not even to you—you’ll be dead. So will I, and no one alive will care.
Location 2492

“And that thousand years will come, and another and another, to the end of the universe. Think of all the griefs and tragedies, and yes, the triumphs, buried in the past, millions of years of it. Everything for the people who lived them. Nothing now.”
Location 2496

I smiled. “The point is, there is no point. Choose your own.” “We don’t usually get to choose our own, do we?” she asked. “You do, I suppose, but you’re a special case. And everyone on this ship, we’re just going along with yours.”
Location 2499

I said, “It doesn’t have to be a big point. As you say, often it can’t be. Sometimes it’s nothing more than I have to find a way to put one foot in front of the other, or I’ll die here. If we lose this throw, if we lose our lives in the near future, then yes, training and promotions will have been pointless. But who knows? Perhaps the omens will favor us.
Location 2502

“When you’re doing something like this,” I said, “the odds are irrelevant. You don’t need to know the odds. You need to know how to do the thing you’re trying to do. And then you need to do it. What comes next”—I gestured, the tossing of a handful of omens—“ isn’t something you have any control over.”
Location 2508

“It made so much sense.” She sniffled. “It seemed so obviously the right thing, when I thought of it. And now it seems impossible.” “That’s how these things go,” I said. “You already know that. Are you sure you don’t want tea?” “I’m sure,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m on my way to the airlock. And I hate having to pee in my vacuum suit.”
Location 2655

“Don’t be like that, Amaat,” I said. “I’m one soldier. Not even a whole one. What do I weigh, against all of Athoek Station?” And I had been in more desperate straits, and lived. Still, one day—perhaps this one—I would not.
Location 3582

“I’ve survived worse odds,” I told her.

“Someday you won’t,” she said.

“That is true of all of us,” I said.
Location 3641

Entertainments nearly always end with triumph or disaster—happiness achieved, or total, tragic defeat precluding any hope of it. But there is always more after the ending—always the next morning and the next, always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, large as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe, that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Every ending is, from another angle, not really an ending.
Location 3952

I read this book when I was reading How to Fight. Both books were written by Thich Nhat Hanh. Reading the two books concurrently or immediately sequentially was impactful, many of the lessons reinforced, strengthened.

The reconcilliation of the book's title is about restoring good relationships with the small, often powerless person we were as a child, about accepting the past, and about recognizing the present for what it is and not what we imagine or want it to be.

There are aspects of Buddhism that I struggle with, mostly the ones around ignoring recurring thoughts and anxieties when meditating. This book has some of that, but also instructs us to work with the anxieties originating from childhood trauma (of whatever cause, of whatever intensity, of whatever reason, no matter how small).

This is where the healing can begin: accepting the lack of power we had as a child, reminding ourselves we are now adults, processing the past, and moving forward.

I believe this book is worth reading. Unfortunately, the book won't help if the reader isn't open to the ideas, isn't in a place to heal. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. This book was a teacher for me.

The Buddha said that all of us have the seed of fear, but most of us suppress it and keep it locked in the dark. TO help us identify, embrace, and look deeply at hte seeds of fear, he offered us a practice called the Five Remembrances. They are:

1. I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape old age.
2. I am of the nature to have ill-health. I cannot escaple ill-health.
3. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape dying.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I cannot keep anything. I come here empty-handed, and I go empty-handed.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the groun on which I stand.

We practice the Five Rembrances so that the seed of fear can circulate. We must invite it up to be recognized, to be embraced. And then when it goes back down again, it becomes smaller.

There's a small distinction between joy and happiness. Suppose we travel across the desert and run out of water and become very thirsty. Suddenly we see an oasis in front of us. We know that there will be trees and a lake from which we can drink. That awareness brings us joy. We know we will have the opportunity to rest and drink the water, that feeling is called joy. When we arrive at the oasis and we sit in the shade of the trees, kneel down, cup our hands, and drink the water, that is happiness. Joy has something of an element of excitement in it.

When we recognize that our suffering is based on images instead of current reality, then living happily in the present moment becomes possible right away.

Each of us needs a certain amount of suffering in order to grow up, to understand, and to cultivate our compassion, joy, and happiness. Our joy and happiness can only be recognized against the background of suffering.

If we have a tendency to go back to the past and live the painful memories of the past, we have to be aware that we and our inner child are going back to the past to live that experience again, that fear, and that desire. It has become a habit, and we don't want to do that. It doesn't help.

Instead, we talk to the inner child. We invite her to come up, to come out and to make acquaintance with life in the present moment. To stay in the present moment is a practice, it's a training. As long as we're established in the present moment, we don't suffer the trauma of the past. In the present moment we can realize that there are so many wonders, so many positive connections.

Only by living my life, by my actions, by my speech, can I prove to myself that I have a good cause, the cause of peace and reconciliation. When we can do this, then that kind of suffering will not bother us anymore.

Suffering is made of misunderstanding, anger, hatred, ignorance. If we count on others to dissipate these kinds of causes for us, we may have to wait for a long time. We have to go deeper and make use of our concentration and insight to see that people around us suffer because of their way of thinking, their way of acting, their way of speaking. And if we suffer like them, we won't be able to help them. So we have to work it out, to transform our suffering, to bring about our insight and compassion in order to help them later on. With that kind of attitude, that kind of understanding, we don't suffer anymore because we now have insight and compassion.

"The essential thing is that you have not done it, you have not done what people condemn you for doing. You know very well that you have kept your precepts

"So this is our practice. One day, by the way you live your life, by the way you practice, misunderstanding will vanish. Things like this do happen in the world. And if you have understanding and compassion you don't have to suffer. There are groups of people who are jealous, who try to create circumstances that will smear our prestige. Such people must suffer a lot from their jealousy in order to do such a thing. So we have to deal with them with compassion. With your practice, someday you may be able to help them wake up and see that what they've done is not worthy of people on a spiritual path."

Master Linji, the great ninth-century Chinese Zen master and founder of the lineage of Plum Village, was fond of saying "remove the object." The object is the person or situation we're thinking about, the story. So the practice is to remove the object and come back to the body and feelings. Stay with the energy, let go of the thinking. By following the energy back into our body and feelings, we can find the internal knots, embrace them tenderly, let the tension there unwind and release itself, and we can heal. It's a little like learning how to ride a bicycle. You can sit on it, someone can push you a bit, but at a certain point you know you can ride. "I got it, I got it!"

This is book 2 of the Imperial Radch trilogy As such, given how much I enjoyed the last one, and was engaged with the universe Leckie created, I continued with this one (and, let's be real, I'll read the next one, too).

This book starts up a couple weeks after the previous book ended. I like the continuity in the books and the world Leckie created. As with the first book, there is an element of social commentary in the book. The style is reminiscent of Heinlein, actually but a bit more towards the way I think about power and its corrupting power, so perhaps that's why I'm noticing it and paying attention to it in these books.

I love how Leckie weaves the attitudes of privilege into works, but in such a way you know these aren't the "good" people, even if the words you read are words you've heard from your own friends (or own mouth, to be honest).

The plot isn't anything twisty, the universe didn't have any aspects that were new. This book was a continuation of the previous book so much that it could have been a Part 2 of the same book and no one would have blinked (except maybe Leckie, "Write how much in one go? Uh... no." but I'm projecting there).

I personally enjoyed this book, both for the science-fiction part and the power play part. Again, recommended.

When I had first met her, a baby lieutenant of seventeen, she hadn’t thought ships’ AIs had any feelings in particular—not any that mattered. And like many Radchaai she assumed that thought and emotion were two easily separable things.
Location 492

“And over three thousand years she’ll have changed. Everyone does, who isn’t dead. How much can a person change and still be the same?
Location 516

“I gave an order, Medic.” Isolated as we were in gate space, my word was law. It didn’t matter what my orders were, no matter how illegal or unjust. A captain might face prosecution for giving some orders—her crew would without fail be executed for disobeying those same commands. It was a central fact of any Radchaai soldier’s life, though it rarely came to an actual demonstration.
Location 658

"Get some rest. Kalr will bring supper to your quarters. Things will seem better after you’ve eaten and slept.”

“Really?” she asked. Bitter and challenging.

“Well, not necessarily,” I admitted. “But it’s easier to deal with things when you’ve had some rest and some breakfast.”
Location 692

Still that expressionless face. “Water will wear away stone, sir.” It was a proverb. Or half of one. Water will wear away stone, but it won’t cook supper. Everything has its own strengths. Said with enough irony, it could also imply that since the gods surely had a purpose for everyone the person in question must be good for something, but the speaker couldn’t fathom what it might be.
Location 995

To Captain Hetnys, standing beside me, I said, “That story strikes you as plausible, does it?” One ruler for the entire system. They surrendered right away. In my experience, no entire system ever surrendered right away. Parts, maybe. Never the whole. The one exception had been the Garseddai, and that had been a tactic, an attempt at ambush. Failed, of course, and there were no Garseddai anymore, as a result.
Location 1054

Obvious, in retrospect. Obvious before, you’d think. But it’s so easy to just not see the obvious, even long past when it ought to be reasonable.
Location 1332

“Well, as to that,” said Fosyf, “I’d say it’s the educated Samirend who give us the most problems. The field supervisors are nearly all Samirend, Fleet Captain. Generally an intelligent sort. And mostly dependable, but there’s always one or two, and let those one or two get together and convince more, and next thing you know they’ve got the field workers whipped up. Happened about fifteen, twenty years ago. The field workers in five different plantations sat down and refused to pick the tea. Just sat right down! And of course we stopped feeding them, on the grounds they’d refused their assignments. But there’s no point on a planet. Anyone who doesn’t feel like working can live off the land.”

It struck me as likely that living off the land wasn’t so easy as all that. “You brought workers in from elsewhere?”
Location 1428

An example of that privilege thing.

So many questions I could ask. “And the workers’ grievances?”

“Grievances!” Fosyf was indignant. “They had none. No real ones. They live a pleasant enough life, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I’d been assigned to pick tea.”
Location 1436

Imagine this conversation happening in the 1850s in the South in the United States of America, and you'd get similar if not the same words.

“Tourists!” said Raughd. “They want to be robbed. It’s why they go there to begin with. All the wailing and complaining to Security.” She waved a dismissive, blue-gloved hand. “It’s part of the fun. Otherwise they’d take better care.”
Location 1446

Yeeeeeep. Blame the victim.

And if expansion stopped, what to do with all those ships and ancillary soldiers? The officers that commanded them? Keeping them was a drain on resources, to no purpose. Dismantle them, and systems on the periphery of Radch space were vulnerable to attack. Or revolt.
Location 1507

Questions that need to asked about the American Military Complex, tbh.

But I had never noticed that anyone profited from needless spite, and besides I suspected that the entire Undergarden was already in a dire state, as far as ritual uncleanness went.
Location 2010

"To you, of all people. And it’s so easy to just go along. So easy not to see what’s happening. And the longer you don’t see it, the harder it becomes to see it, because then you have to admit that you ignored it all that time. But this is the moment when it’s laid before you, clear and unambiguous."
Location 2164

“You disagree,” Sirix said into my silence. “But isn’t justice the whole reason for civilization?”
Location 2868

I came to see her strangely serene manner as both a sign of just how much she expected to get whatever she wanted, and also an instrument by which she managed to do that, plain persistent saying what she wanted to be true in the expectation that it would eventually become so. It’s a method I’d found worked best for those who are already positioned to mostly get what they want.
Location 3038

“But they could still grow them here,” Tisarwat argued, “and still sell them themselves. So I don’t know what the problem is.”
Location 3054

“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place.
Location 3369

“Do you even know,” she said, and I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was about to cry, “can you even imagine what it’s like to know that nothing you can do will make any difference? That nothing you can do will protect the people you love? That anything you could possibly ever do is less than worthless?”

I could. “And yet you do it anyway.”
Location 3412

“Most esteemed Queter,” I said, “idealist that you are, young as you are, you can have no idea just how easy it is for people to deceive themselves.”
Location 3417

The magistrate turned to Queter, who had stood straight and silent this whole time. “Is this what you wanted, Queter? All this heartache, a family destroyed? For the life of me I don’t understand why you didn’t put your obvious determination and energy into your work so that you could make things better for yourself and your family. Instead, you built up and fed this… this resentment, and now you have…” The magistrate gestured, indicating the room, the situation. “This.”

Very calmly, very deliberately, Queter turned to me. “You were right about the self-deception, Citizen.”
Location 3581

Again, blaming the victims with this one.

And yet, isn't this a similar example for the Ivy League swimmer guy who raped a woman? He destroyed her life, but people were still asking for leniancy for the guy, who received it.

"Citizen?” I replied with my own question. “Where did justice lie, in that entire situation?” Sirix didn’t reply, either angry or at a loss for an answer. Both were difficult questions.

“We speak of it as though it’s a simple thing, a matter of acting properly, as though it’s nothing more than an afternoon tea and the question only who takes the last pastry. So simple. Assign guilt to the guilty.”

“Is it not that simple?” asked Sirix after a few moments of silence.

“There are right actions and wrong actions. And yet, I think that if you had been the magistrate, you would have let Citizen Queter go free.”
Location 3603

“No sympathy for Queter? Raughd acted from malice and injured pride, and would have destroyed more than me if she had succeeded. Queter was faced with an impossible situation. No matter what she did, things would end badly.”

A moment of silence. Then, “All she needed to do was go to the magistrate in the first place.”

I had to think about that for a few moments, to understand why Sirix of all people thought Queter could or should have done that.

“You do realize,” I said finally, “that Citizen Queter would never have gotten within a kilometer of the district magistrate without my having explicitly demanded it. And I beg you to recall what generally happened in the past when Citizen Raughd misbehaved.”

“Still, if she had spoken properly she might have been listened to,” Sirix replied. Queter had been right to expect no help from the district magistrate, I was sure. “She made the choices she made, and there’s no escaping the consequences of that. I doubt very much she’ll get off lightly. But I can’t condemn her. She was willing to sacrifice herself to protect her sister.”
Location 3618

“There’s been some complaining outside the Undergarden the past few days, about residential assignments.” Ostensibly calm, only the barest trace of her feelings in her voice. “There are those who think that it’s not fair the Ychana are going to suddenly have luxury quarters, and so much space, when they don’t deserve it.”

“Such wisdom,” I observed dryly, “to know what everyone deserves.”
Location 3695

“And when you want something,” the governor remarked, her voice sharp, “you say so, and you expect to get it.”

“So do you,” I replied. Serious. Still calm. “It comes with being system governor, doesn’t it? And from where you sit, you can afford to ignore things you don’t think are important. But that view—that list of important things—is very different if you’re sitting somewhere else.”

“A commonplace, Fleet Captain. But some points of view don’t take in as much as others.”

“And how do you know yours isn’t one of them, if you’ll never try looking from somewhere different?” Governor Giarod didn’t answer immediately.
Location 3793

“When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”
Location 3802

“Everyone is potentially one of those people, Governor,” I replied. “It’s best to learn that before you do something you’ll have trouble living with.” Best to learn it, really, before anyone—perhaps dozens of anyones—died to teach it to you. But it was a hard lesson to learn any other way, as I knew from very personal experience.
Location 3822

“Not mad,” I corrected. “When you’ve lost everything that matters to you, it makes perfect sense to run and hide and try to recover.”
Location 4249

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said. “I think Medic has me dosed up. I can tell because I’m not wishing every ten minutes or so that you’d thrown me out the airlock when you found me.”
Location 4270

“But then, people can look very strong on the outside when they’re not, can’t they."
Location 4375

“Mostly. I think. To be honest, Fleet Captain, I feel like… like everything I thought I could depend on has disappeared, like none of it was ever true to begin with and I’ve only just realized it, and now, I don’t know. I mean, I thought I was safe, I thought I knew who everyone was. And I was wrong.”
Location 4380

Despite being on a non-fiction reading kick as of late (no, I don't know why either), this book caught my eye when I was wandering a bookstore (people do this, right? Just wander in bookstores. Right?), so I added it to my hold list at the library and pretty much forgot about it until it dropped into my reading list.

Problem was, when I actually started reading the book, I didn't know why I had added this book to my reading list. Then, when I read the book details, the summary and one-line reviews of the book, I was annoyed that they all commented about the O'Henry style plot twists (which, actually, I adore, but not if I see them coming). Don't tell me about the plot twists, because then I'll be all suspect of everything in the book.

Which is why I was surprised when the first one dropped. I was stunned, and went back to reread the part before and after several times. And, thought, "How clever!" And then the book kept going, and, "Oh. Hello."

I can't say I particularly liked the fundamental motivation of the plot, it struck a lot too close to home for me to feel comfortable, but the tale is told delightfully well and the ending, okay, I'm REALLY glad I didn't skip to the end for this one.

The book is a new-release, which is somewhat odd for me to have read, as I tend to read books 1-2 years old, if not 60 years old or more, but this one is a quick, totally O'Henry twist, entertaining book to read.

It wasn’t difficult to dodge questions once you learned the tricks. When someone asked about your childhood, you told them about the tree house your father built for you, and your black cat that thought he was a dog and would sit up and beg for a treat. If college came up, you focused on the football team’s undefeated season and your part-time job at a campus restaurant, where you once started a small fire while making toast and cleared the dining area. Tell colorful, drawn-out stories that deflect attention from the fact that you aren’t actually sharing anything. Avoid specifics that will separate you from the crowd. Be vague about the year you graduated. Lie, but only when completely necessary.
Page 23

Something about their fearlessness, the way her coworkers exposed their hearts and chased their dreams despite the rejection they continually suffered, spoke to a part of Nellie that had been switched off during her last year in Florida. They were like children in that respect, Nellie realized—they possessed an undaunted optimism. A sense that the world and its possibilities lay open to them.
Page 40

I was happy, I think, but I wonder now if my memory is playing tricks on me. If it is giving me the gift of an illusion. We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.
Page 96

I couldn’t stop thinking about that shoe, or the woman it belonged to. She must have gotten up that morning, gotten dressed, and stepped out of a window into the air. I searched the newspapers the following day, but there was only a tiny mention of the incident. I never knew what had made her commit such a desperate act—if she’d been planning it, or if something inside her had suddenly snapped. I think I’ve figured out the answer, all these years later: It was both.
Page 130

“Lovey, you seem so concerned by what he thinks all the time.”
Page 135

But instead of racing toward my future, I began making plans to run away from my past.
Page 245

In my marriage, there were three truths, three alternate and sometimes competing realities. There was Richard’s truth. There was my truth. And there was the actual truth, which is always the most elusive to recognize. This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-seeing judge, the arbiter of reality.
Page 248

I’d told myself I’d been partly to blame for Richard’s violence.
Page 281

Okay, unlike the last big data book I read, this WAS the big data book I wanted to read. While it does describe the mathematics used in the different ways big-data affects society, it does show how big data, how using small bits of innocent data can reveal surprising truths about who we are and what we really think.

If you start with the assumption that everybody lies on surveys (and this isn't a bad assumption, people mess with surveys all the time, to make themselves look good, to make someone else look bad, to withhold information for ulterior reasons, or really just to f--- with the survey data), then the fundamental data from which theories and beliefs develop is wrong.

But put people in a place where they believe their thoughts are anonymous, truly believe the data they provide will not be traced back to them, then said people become more open and, well, more honest with what they are thinking.

Which is where Stephens-Davidowitz's data research idea came from, to use Google search data as a research source, and where many assumptions about what people are thinking can be debunked.

And the results are fascinating.

Stephens-Davidowitz provides a number of examples of "here's common knowledge, everyone knows this," and shows where, with big data, the "knowledge" is wrong. Either we aren't the same as when the knowledge was first determined, or it was declared as true based on something unknown, or simply accepted as true based on some voice of authority. Regardless of the source, the actual data, the actual numbers, show a different story, and that is the fascinating part.

This book is a good introduction to how powerful big-data can be. It only briefly touches upon how badly big-data warps society, which makes this book a good first book on what big-data can do, and WMD a good follow up on the flip side. Together, they make a good good-side-bad-side story of Big Data™.

I enjoyed this book a lot. I strongly recommend it.

In the previous three elections, the candidate who appeared first in more searches received the most votes. More interesting, the order the candidates were searched was predictive of which way a particular state would go. The order in which candidates are searched also seems to contain information that the polls can miss.
Page 10

But for now it doesn’t matter. Seder is in the prediction business, not the explanation business. And, in the prediction business, you just need to know that something works, not why.
Page 71

Women also like men who express support and sympathy. If a man says, “That’s awesome!” or “That’s really cool,” a woman is significantly more likely to report a connection. Likewise if he uses phrases such as “That’s tough” or “You must be sad.”
Page 82

And as previously noted, a woman is also more likely to report a connection after a date where she talks about herself. Thus it is a great sign, on a first date, if there is substantial discussion about the woman. The woman signals her comfort and probably appreciates that the man is not hogging the conversation.
Page 82

Some of the findings, however, were more interesting. Women use the word “tomorrow” far more often than men do, perhaps because men aren’t so great at thinking ahead.
Page 83

Adding the letter “o” to the word “so” is one of the most feminine linguistic traits. Among the words most disproportionately used by women are “soo,” “sooo,” “soooo,” “sooooo,” and “soooooo.”
Page 83

Maybe it was my childhood exposure to women who weren’t afraid to throw the occasional f-bomb. But I always thought cursing was an equal-opportunity trait. Not so. Among the words used much more frequently by men than women are “fuck,” “shit,” “fucks,” “bullshit,” “fucking,” and “fuckers.”
Page 83

I am a guy. Or as Priyanka says, I was a guy in a previous life. No wait, still am.

Many people, particularly Marxists, have viewed American journalism as controlled by rich people or corporations with the goal of influencing the masses, perhaps to push people toward their political views.

Gentzkow and Shapiro’s paper suggests, however, that this is not the predominant motivation of owners. The owners of the American press, instead, are primarily giving the masses what they want so that the owners can become even richer.
Page 96

These days, a data scientist must not limit herself to a narrow or traditional view of data. These days, photographs of supermarket lines are valuable data. The fullness of supermarket bins is data. The ripeness of apples is data. Photos from outer space are data. The curvature of lips is data. Everything is data! And with all this new data, we can finally see through people’s lies.
Page 104

Men’s top Googled question related to how their body or mind would change as they aged was whether their penis would get smaller.
Page 124

Dying here.

For every search women make about a partner’s phallus, men make roughly 170 searches about their own.
Page 124

More than 40 percent of complaints about a partner’s penis size say that it’s too big.
Page 124

Still cracking up.

In fact, we are all so busy judging our own bodies that there is little energy left over to judge other people’s.
Page 127

There is also probably a connection between two of the big concerns revealed in the sexual searches on Google: lack of sex and an insecurity about one’s sexual attractiveness and performance. Maybe these are related.

Maybe if we worried less about sex, we’d have more of it.
Page 127

Who is more sexually generous, men or women?

Women, duh.
Page 128

And when men do look for tips on how to give oral sex, they are frequently not looking for ways of pleasing another person. Men make as many searches looking for ways to perform oral sex on themselves as they do how to give a woman an orgasm. (This is among my favorite facts in Google search data.)
Page 128

Parents are about twice as likely to ask how to get their daughters to lose weight as they are to ask how to get their sons to do the same.

Just as with giftedness, this gender bias is not grounded in reality. About 28 percent of girls are overweight, while 35 percent of boys are. Even though scales measure more overweight boys than girls, parents see—or worry about—overweight girls much more frequently than overweight boys.

Parents are also one and a half times more likely to ask whether their daughter is beautiful than whether their son is handsome. And they are nearly three times more likely to ask whether their daughter is ugly than whether their son is ugly. (How Google is expected to know whether a child is beautiful or ugly is hard to say.)
Page 136

In general, parents seem more likely to use positive words in questions about sons. They are more apt to ask whether a son is “happy” and less apt to ask whether a son is “depressed.”
Page 136

A recent Southern Poverty Law Center report linked nearly one hundred murders in the past five years to registered Stormfront members.
Page 137

It turns out, some kids make some tragic, and heart-wrenching, searches on Google—such as “my mom beat me” or “my dad hit me.” And these searches present a different—and agonizing—picture of what happened during this time. The number of searches like this shot up during the Great Recession, closely tracking the unemployment rate.

Here’s what I think happened: it was the reporting of child abuse cases that declined, not the child abuse itself. After all, it is estimated that only a small percentage of child abuse cases are reported to authorities anyway. And during a recession, many of the people who tend to report child abuse cases (teachers and police officers, for example) and handle cases (child protective service workers) are more likely to be overworked or out of work.
Page 146

In 2015, in the United States, there were more than 700,000 Google searches looking into self-induced abortions. By comparison, there were some 3.4 million searches for abortion clinics that year.
Page 147

What drives interest in self-induced abortion? The geography and timing of the Google searches point to a likely culprit: when it’s hard to get an official abortion, women look into off-the-books approaches.

Search rates for self-induced abortion were fairly steady from 2004 through 2007. They began to rise in late 2008, coinciding with the financial crisis and the recession that followed. They took a big leap in 2011, jumping 40 percent. The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization, singles out 2011 as the beginning of the country’s recent crackdown on abortion; ninety-two state provisions that restrict access to abortion were enacted.
Page 148

We can’t blindly trust government data. The government may tell us that child abuse or abortion has fallen and politicians may celebrate this achievement. But the results we think we’re seeing may be an artifact of flaws in the methods of data collection. The truth may be different—and, sometimes, far darker.
Page 149

Facebook is digital brag-to-my-friends-about-how-good-my-life-is serum.
Page 152

Not exactly cheery stuff. Often, after I give a talk on my research, people come up to me and say, “Seth, it’s all very interesting. But it’s so depressing.” I can’t pretend there isn’t a darkness in some of this data. If people consistently tell us what they think we want to hear, we will generally be told things that are more comforting than the truth.

Digital truth serum, on average, will show us that the world is worse than we have thought.
Page 158

First, there can be comfort in knowing that you are not alone in your insecurities and embarrassing behavior. It can be nice to know others are insecure about their bodies.
Page 158

In fact, I think Big Data can give a twenty-first-century update to a famous self-help quote: “Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides.”
Page 160

The second benefit of digital truth serum is that it alerts us to people who are suffering.
Page 161

The final—and, I think, most powerful—value in this digital truth serum is indeed its ability to lead us from problems to solutions.
Page 162

When we lecture angry people, the search data implies that their fury can grow. But subtly provoking people’s curiosity, giving new information, and offering new images of the group that is stoking their rage may turn their thoughts in different, more positive directions.
Page 162

Noah finds baseball impossibly boring, and his hatred of the sport has long been a core part of his identity.
Page 165

Huh. Can't say "core" is accurate, but I might understand some part of this.

One hypothesis—and this is speculative—was put forth by David Cutler, one of the authors of the study and one of my advisors. Contagious behavior may be driving some of this. There is a large amount of research showing that habits are contagious. So poor people living near rich people may pick up a lot of their habits.
Page 178

In fact, Chetty’s team found even more evidence that knowledge drove this kind of cheating. When Americans moved from an area where this variety of tax fraud was low to an area where it was high, they learned and adopted the trick. Through time, cheating spread from region to region throughout the United States. Like a virus, cheating on taxes is contagious. Now stop for a moment and think about how revealing this study is. It demonstrated that, when it comes to figuring out who will cheat on their taxes, the key isn’t determining who is honest and who is dishonest. It is determining who knows how to cheat and who doesn’t.
Page 180

The greater the percentage of foreign-born residents in an area, the higher the proportion of children born there who go on to notable success. (Take that, Donald Trump!) If two places have similar urban and college populations, the one with more immigrants will produce more prominent Americans. What explains this? A lot of it seems to be directly attributable to the children of immigrants.
Page 184

For better or worse (okay, clearly worse), there is a huge random component to life. Nobody knows for sure what or who is in charge of the universe.
Page 226

For Ahmed Yilmaz, the son of an insurance agent and teacher in Queens, Stuy was “the high school."

...
He still remembers the day he received the envelope with the results. He missed by two questions. I asked him what it felt like. “What does it feel like,” he responded, “to have your world fall apart when you’re in middle school?”
Page 232

How horrible would this be?

More than a decade later, Yilmaz admits that he sometimes wonders how life would have played out had he gone to Stuy. “Everything would be different,” he says. “Literally, everyone I know would be different.”
Page 232

But these what-ifs seem unanswerable. Life is not a video game. You can’t replay it under different scenarios until you get the results you want.
Page 233

The economists found that prisoners assigned to harsher conditions were more likely to commit additional crimes once they left. The tough prison conditions, rather than deterring them from crime, hardened them and made them more violent once they returned to the outside world.
Page 235

People adapt to their experience, and people who are going to be successful find advantages in any situation. The factors that make you successful are your talent and your drive.
Page 237

This book is called Everybody Lies. By this, I mostly mean that people lie—to friends, to surveys, and to themselves—to make themselves look better. But the world also lies to us by presenting us with faulty, misleading data.
Page 239

Huh. Yuuuuuuuup.

The fundamental problem is that they tested too many things. And if you test enough things, just by random chance, one of them will be statistically significant.
Page 248

We can find patterns in ANYTHING.

This time, IGF2r did not correlate with IQ. Plomin — and this is a sign of a good scientist — retracted his claim.
Page 250

This is huge. I applaud Plomin. How hard it is to admit you're wrong. How nearly impossible it is to admit you're wrong with the world knowning? F'ing hard.

I wish we were all good scientists.

How can you overcome the curse of dimensionality? You have to have some humility about your work and not fall in love with your results. You have to put these results through additional tests.

Social scientists call this an “out-of-sample” test. And the more variables you try, the more humble you have to be. The more variables you try, the tougher the out-of-sample test has to be. It is also crucial to keep track of every test you attempt.
Page 250

But it points to a potential problem with people using data to make decisions. Numbers can be seductive. We can grow fixated with them, and in so doing we can lose sight of more important considerations.
Page 253

Consider the twenty-first-century emphasis on testing in American schools—and judging teachers based on how their students score. While the desire for more objective measures of what happens in classrooms is legitimate, there are many things that go on there that can’t readily be captured in numbers.
Page 253

We can measure how students do on multiple-choice questions. We can’t easily measure critical thinking, curiosity, or personal development.
Page 254

It was easy to measure offense and pitching but not fielding, so some organizations ended up underestimating the importance of defense.
Page 254

You might think — or at least hope — that a polite, openly religious person who gives his word would be among the most likely to pay back a loan. But in fact this is not the case. This type of person, the data shows, is less likely than average to make good on their debt.
Page 258

This fact cracks me up.

Hey, guess what, you can be an honest person without the threat of a omniscient, bearded man watching you.

Go figure.

Phrases such as “lower interest rate” or “after-tax” indicate a certain level of financial sophistication on the borrower’s part, so it’s perhaps not surprising they correlate with someone more likely to pay their loan back. In addition, if he or she talks about positive achievements such as being a college “graduate” and being “debt-free,” he or she is also likely to pay their loans.
Page 259

Generally, if someone tells you he will pay you back, he will not pay you back. The more assertive the promise, the more likely he will break it. If someone writes “I promise I will pay back, so help me God,” he is among the least likely to pay you back.
Page 259

Another word that indicates default is “explain,” meaning if people are trying to explain why they are going to be able to pay back a loan, they likely won’t.
Page 259

In sum, according to these researchers, giving a detailed plan of how he can make his payments and mentioning commitments he has kept in the past are evidence someone will pay back a loan. Making promises and appealing to your mercy is a clear sign someone will go into default.
Page 260

Regardless of the reasons—or what it tells us about human nature that making promises is a sure sign someone will, in actuality, not do something — the scholars found the test was an extremely valuable piece of information in predicting default. Someone who mentions God was 2.2 times more likely to default.
Page 260

They found that Facebook likes are frequently correlated with IQ, extraversion, and conscientiousness. For example, people who like Mozart, thunderstorms, and curly fries on Facebook tend to have higher IQs. People who like Harley-Davidson motorcycles, the country music group Lady Antebellum, or the page “I Love Being a Mom” tend to have lower IQs. Some of these correlations may be due to the curse of dimensionality. If you test enough things, some will randomly correlate. But some interests may legitimately correlate with IQ.
Page 261

First, it must be acknowledged that there is growing evidence that Google searches related to criminal activity do correlate with criminal activity. Christine Ma-Kellams, Flora Or, Ji Hyun Baek, and Ichiro Kawachi have shown that Google searches related to suicide correlate strongly with state-level suicide rates. In addition,
Page 266

If more people are making searches saying they want to do something, more people are going to do that thing.
Page 267

My phone is filled with emails I forgot to respond to, e-vites I never opened, Bumble messages I ignored.
Page 282

I learned about Bumble only a week or so ago. I wish I had not learned about Bumble.

For example, Leonard Cohen once gave his nephew the following advice for wooing women: “Listen well. Then listen some more. And when you think you are done listening, listen some more.” That seems to be roughly similar to what these scientists found.
Page 340

When I joined the Caltech Alumni Book Club, I didn't realize what the theme of the book club would be. After this book and the last one, I can say with a good level of confidence that the theme is "has to do with Caltech." And really, that's expected and probably in the book club description that I didn't read when I joined ("A book club? SQUEEEEE! Join!"). The book club reads more slowly than I read, which is to say, more slowly than the maximum library checkout time, so I've been finishing these books faster than the book club. Not a great thing when I want to be participating in the book club.

Phew. That all said...

This book is, unsurprisingly, about the gravitational wave experiments, the people involved in it from the beginning, the stumbling blocks, the successes, and the failures. It's a great scientific tale that I enjoyed reading about.

That some of it occurred while I was AT Caltech reminds me of just how f---ing oblivious I was when I was at Tech, as well as how oblivious I must still be about my world. I want to believe I'm more aware, and more appeciative, of things around me. NO IDEA IF I AM.

That this book was published before LIGO succeeded is delightful. That LIGO succeeded is even more delighful. I enjoyed this book, enjoyed reading about people who love science as much as I do, and had the courage to pursue that love.

I recommend this book to anyone who has a slight interest in the biographical information about the LIGO project, black holes in particular, or science in general. Fun read.

“I went to MIT for college—I wanted to learn how to do audio engineering well, because that was all I knew. But I very rapidly realized that I didn’t want to become an engineer. I switched to physics, and I don’t know why…. No, I’ll tell you; it was really stupid. The Physics Department had fewer requirements than the others, and I was totally undisciplined—I didn’t want any requirements.”
Page 11

I understand this.

“Anyway, I was totally gaga, crazy in love. I didn’t think of what the consequences of that would be. Of course, the girl went off with somebody else. You can never fall in love — I mean, you’re not allowed to do that. You know how it is. So I came back."
Page 14

"But I would have stayed a graduate student forever, because it was fun. I could go from one experiment to the other, and I never thought about money or any of that stuff, so I did one experiment after the other. Some of them were pretty zany.”
Page 15

The hasty construction of the Palace reflected an unpreparedness the government intended to amend in the wake of World War II. Roughly shaken out of introversion, the country did not have an army of trained scientists and engineers, and this deficit was believed to hamper military research. Under the pressures of the war, incited by that urgency, technologies were constructed as suddenly as the building, if with higher production value.
Page 19

Which is, sadly, HOW THE UNITED STATES IS BECOMING NOW. Both with its anti-immigration policies and with its attack on science and the truth.

This saddens me beyond belief.

In the quirky climate of the Plywood Palace, the notorious academic pressure to publish or perish also abated, so that Rai could adhere to simple principles and high standards.
Page 20

How wonderful would this be!

Rai was bold and practical and effective but not politically ambitious. He pursued experiments out of raw curiosity, indifferent to his career trajectory. He says, “I didn’t even think of the tenure clock. It was not in my consciousness. I was a professor, they had just hired me, and I was going to try to do the most interesting thing I could think of. The hell with it.” His unfettered attitude let him explore and take risks.
Page 21

Love this. I wish everyone who loved the hard sciences could be like this.

With prerogative and talent as cargo, under obligation to a comprehensible universe, he wandered unfamiliar streets on a trip to the Northeast in the hopes that a brisk constitutional could dislodge an answer to the question, “What am I supposed to be doing with all that I have?”
Page 25

Wheeler turned to relativity as he emerged from the nuclear weapons program. He helped to design and to use the plutonium production reactor in 1942 until the end of the war.
Page 27

The Trinity test of the plutonium fission bomb detonated the mortifying equivalent of 20 kilotons of TNT, lighting up an American desert and inspiring Oppenheimer’s memorable translation of the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Page 27

... despite his friendships with the intellectual émigrés, including his close friendship with Albert Einstein, he found the rumors of German atrocities impossible to believe. He didn’t believe them.
Page 28

It is impossible to see what you do not want to see, and harder to believe.

In his autobiography, Wheeler describes his sympathy for the German state, his conviction that German dominance would translate to European stability, his parents’ chastisement, and the gradual ebbing of his sympathy for Germany as the war progressed. He writes frankly about his error in judgment, which he fully accepted, along with his parents’ assessment, as news of atrocities accumulated. He admits, “It is hard now, more than fifty years later, to recapture my frame of mind at that time…. Even when I was doing everything I could to help defeat Germany, I clung to the belief that people are fundamentally decent everywhere…. By the end of the war I knew better. But not until I visited Auschwitz in 1947 was the full horror of German barbarism brought home to me.”
Page 28

I understand this desire to want to believe people are fundamentally decent.

When challenged on the use of the atomic bomb, he would respond as he did in his autobiography: “One cannot escape the conclusion that an atomic bomb program started a year earlier and concluded a year sooner would have spared 15 million lives, my brother Joe’s among them.”
Page 28

He was not entirely against the anticommunist fervor that purged academics from their ivory-tower ranks for crimes of silence either.
Page 29

Kip was among the first generation of physicists bred on relativity. He had the good fortune to mature in a time of significant unsolved astrophysical problems that awaited relativity for their unlocking, and he had the brilliance to make the most of his good fortune.

...

Kip perceived paranoia and ignorance as driving factors in the Cold War arms race. But Wheeler’s controversial involvement in the escalation of the thermonuclear weapons program was an undeniable part of the intellectual context he offered.
Page 33

Ron cultivated the aura of a scientific Mozart — Rai’s analogy — a childlike spirit attached to a wondrous mind that just seemed to emanate astonishing compositions. Everyone around him was forced to play Salieri, unfairly catalogued as a plodding technician in the shadow of Mozart’s genius. Talented scientists felt miscast by Ron in the lesser role. The laboratory was his private Exploratorium.
Page 50

The atmosphere was good in Scotland, a culture he better understood, that he perceived as more open and collaborative. He felt the scientists, even the students, at Caltech were discouraged from collaboration, were unwilling to work together, were more competitive.
Page 53

I ask Kip, “Was he argumentative?”

Kip laughs. “No, because nobody was arguing with him.”

“I sensed some jealousy on his part,” I say.

Kip concedes, “Oh yes, there was a lot of jealousy. That was a real problem.”

I reply, “There was such paranoia and also real complaints all folded together.” Kip agrees. “That’s how these things always are. All tangled together.”
Page 104

He was advised he could get a $ 10 million allowance in a payoff for the libel, but it would take at least five dedicated years that Joe was not prepared to spend in court. “It’s a question of what you want to do with your life,” Joe says.
Page 105

“I simply cannot understand the vehemence and the professional jealousy, and why each guy has to feel that he has to cut off a pound of my flesh. Ah, it’s a waste of effort. I’m in good health. Boltzmann committed suicide with this sort of treatment. But I just, I don’t have suicidal tendencies, I just, ah, keep wondering what the point of it all is.”
Page 106

Joe: "If you do science the principle reason to do it is because you enjoy it and if you don’t enjoy it you shouldn’t do it, and I enjoy it. And I must say I’m enjoying it.”

Kip: “I agree with that philosophy completely.”

Joe: “That’s the best you can do.”
Page 106

“Oh, it’s terrible. Freeman feeling responsible for encouraging him, he writes Joe a letter imploring him to stand down.”

Kip laughs, clearly stunned, and says, “Wow, he must be a very… ah… a very optimistic person.”
Page 107

"... A great man is not afraid to admit publicly that he has made a mistake and has changed his mind. I know you are a man of integrity. You are strong enough to admit that you are wrong. If you do this, your enemies will rejoice but your friends will rejoice even more. You will save yourself as a scientist, and you will find that those whose respect is worth having will respect you for it. ..."
Page 108

“Science is a self-correcting process, but not necessarily in one’s own lifetime,” she tells me rightly.
Page 108

Twenty-three years her senior, he always insisted she do what she wanted and needed to do.
Page 110

These partners are the best partners to have.

“This takes a lot of patience,” I say, not proud of the obviousness of the statement.

“Are you patient?” I ask, undeterred.

“No, and neither are you,” he says.

“You can tell?”

“Yes. You keep finishing my sentences,” he says, not unpleasantly.

I’m chagrined. He waves away any criticism: “It’s okay. It’s good.”
Page 123

“Ron was very difficult to deal with. At the time, I had a lot of respect for Ron, of a different kind. I began to understand Ron better as a scientist. I also found out why he was impossible to deal with: He doesn’t think the way you or I think; he thinks in pictures. And he doesn’t remember what he thought the day before, so you could never make a decision. You could watch his process. He’d go through the same logic about a decision on how big the laser beam should be or how many mirrors there should be—I don’t know, pick anything in the interferometer. And you would discuss this with him, and you would get to the same point, and he would agree that his viewpoint was not right—or maybe he wouldn’t quite agree—and then the conversation would start all over again the next morning, from exactly the same place. And we’d come to the same conclusion. This would go on day after day; you’d never come to a resolution. That was one of the troubles."
Page 124

How frustrating!

Rai had his own ideas about the instrument, about design implementation. But he had to put his own ego aside, not without some personal suffering, to get the thing done. He worked on site selection, or an industry study, tested mirror coatings, built his own laser.

Even now he’ll work wherever on whatever is needed whenever, sweeping away wasps, walking the tunnels, testing systems, building electronics. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard someone say, “We better ask Rai.”
Page 125

Despite the prophetic name, Robbie says of himself, “I am well known as a person who detests any authority.”
Page 129

“No one was more insightful and creative than Robbie, no one better at solving a problem. And no one was better at creating one.”
Page 134

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

—MACHIAVELLI, The Prince (1513)
Page 134

The selection of the sites was going to be announced in the Senate Building at a press conference, and he wanted Robbie there to back him up. Robbie relays the exchange: “And I say, ‘Walter, what did you pick?’ He says, ‘You’ll find out when you get here.’ ”
Page 140

I f---ing HATE this. DO NOT tell me to come see, tell me what the f--- you want me to know. YEARGH.

Maine had invested heavily to support the site selection. Mitchell had fought hard for LIGO, but Maine was also scientifically the better site. Vogt eventually learned that the turn was specifically political. The Republican White House made the decision to punish Mitchell, the Democratic majority leader of the Senate.
Page 140

Asshats.

Robbie’s skunkworks management style was motivated by his archetypal hatred of authority. His contempt for executive supervision often drove him. He would accept an administrative job due to this loathing.

Learning of the alternative to his nomination, he would think, “Not that idiot” and begrudgingly accept the position in order to spare everyone. He says, “Whenever I held office I was always convinced that the office above me was an idiot and that I had the most important job. And as I moved up the ladder I found out there was always someone above me that was an idiot.”

To avoid this recurrent problem, Robbie was determined that there be no one above him, not even the NSF. They were to deliver the funds and stay out of the operation. There would be essentially no bureaucracy and no obligation to justify the rolling decisions the scientists made, to the NSF or to anyone else.

“If an authority wants power they have to persuade me I respect them. If they are bureaucrats, I will simply not respect them, and if I don’t respect them I will not cooperate. I have not cooperated since and it has gotten me in a lot of trouble. But it has given me a personal comfort that that’s what I wanted to live like.” Robbie explains, “Anyone who lived under the Nazis should hate authority.”
Page 144

“Incidentally I have always had a prejudice in favor of women because I felt they were not getting equal rights, and not because I was a white knight or a good person. And the reason is my mother had been running a big industrial operation because she had been the only daughter of a man…. And I admired my mother. My mother was the most beautiful woman in the world and the most able woman in the world…. And she took me to her plants, which I understood…. And I had female professors who were very good so I was prejudiced in favor of smart women.”

“It’s a good prejudice to have,” I congratulate him.
Page 144

I do, too.

Many Germans suffered under the Nazis, he wants me to understand. “Other Germans were not victims like the Jews, but life under the Nazis was indescribable,” although he tries. “At that time the Nazis had a very powerful method of discouraging people from opposing them. When they arrested a man they arrested his wife also.” The orphaned children of political prisoners were placed in cadet schools, then sent to fight. A fourteen-year-old could be charged with an entire troop of child soldiers. A child had “a body that could stop a bullet and that’s all they needed.” The children would have no military training. They had pickaxes and shovels. When the invasion happened in 1944 and the British broke through, the German Army issued bazookas and rifles and would send these “kids” into combat. None of them would survive.

Robbie’s rage and deep-rooted contempt for authority surfaces vividly as he describes the atrocities. “The government had power over its citizens and used it ruthlessly.”
Page 145

“I will not be a celebrity or made a hero by anybody. I want to be anonymous.”
Page 146

Kip has heard this before, the accusation of optimism, which he patiently refutes with references, documents, and published graphs.
Page 149

Love this.

“For the record,” says Kip, “I think the bet hung on the wall continuously except for a few days when I took it down to sign my concession.”
Page 154

Jerry was cross that all of the major projects over the past many decades were vetted by the Decadal Survey, but not LIGO. He was upset, as were others, that money was spent on tunnels and not on graduate students. On this issue Kip protests, “A key point is that LIGO was being funded out of the Physics Division of NSF, not the Astronomy Division. The Astronomy Division was never in the loop in any significant way; it was always Physics.
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Although Kip outgrew the tedious moralizing, the sexism, and the religiosity of his Mormon roots, the suggestion was that he never shed the urge to proselytize for a righteous cause and LIGO was that cause.

Why was LIGO funded despite the staggering cost and the tremendous risk? Because Kip was a very charming and very convincing advocate. He was also very thorough scientifically, clear in his analysis and reviews of the state of the art, and respected for his integrity. Kip could make you believe.
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In the beginning of Vogt’s term as director, Drever says he was not entirely unhappy, although Vogt did make many organizational changes and, unconcealed, did cart around a difficult temperament. The operation overall became more professional, more effective, and substantially funded. At first Drever thought Vogt was “quite okay,” although he was sore that not all of his technical decisions were implemented immediately.

He complained that it was hard for anyone else on the team to fully understand the status of operations at all levels, Vogt so tightly controlled the flow of information — Ron’s impression, not, for instance, Kip’s.
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I struggle mightily in environments where this is acceptable behavior, hoarding information that is needed for everyone to do their jobs well (cough, cough, TWITTER, danm, Arnaud, asshats both of them).

Maybe not with the full force of his rancor, but with enough of it, Vogt began to attack Ron in the weekly group meetings. “Particularly he kept accusing me of not using the scientific method. And this hurt me tremendously.”

Ron attributes the techniques he learned in the United Kingdom to Rutherford’s influence. He cut corners without compromising performance, did many experiments very quickly, skipped extraneous details, and moved very fast. His practices should not be misinterpreted as slipshod.

And there is no doubt that Ron invented an impressive collection of ingenious experimental techniques and designed significant original elements still crucial to the machines today. He protests, defensive, that his methods had put them ahead. He could work twice as fast as traditional groups and, always frugal, for less money.

...

“I would take a step that wasn’t obvious, and it would work. Robbie would say, ‘He guessed!’ Well, I didn’t guess. My intuition was very powerful—it is very powerful… but I found it difficult to explain it.”

Ron continues, “But he became more and more against me, and I didn’t know at the time quite why.”
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Peter Goldreich, professor emeritus at Caltech and Princeton, recounts, “I remember Ron telling me one time, ‘This is awful. This is awful.’ Robbie would be yelling at him. And I’d say, ‘Why don’t you just walk away if he starts yelling at you?’ Ron said, ‘Could I do that?’ And I said, ‘Of course you can do that. You are a professor here.’… I couldn’t believe that Ron was so naïve.”
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Forbidden by Vogt to do so, he presented anyway.
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Yeah. Understand this, too.

Maybe Vogt hoped Drever would just resign, go back to Glasgow, as any person with a more conventional and reactive psychology might. Ron’s unconventional mentality could have made him oddly resistant to ordinary manipulation. Push him unremittingly in one direction and he could still move unpredictably in another. Apparently his primary reaction to the pressure was an impassive bewilderment instead of a spiteful resignation. He lived for the work, for the lab, for the implementation of his inspired ideas. LIGO was centered at Caltech. There was nothing else for him and nowhere else to go.
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“Before Robbie became director, Ron had already alienated most of the members of the LIGO team, and in subsequent years the alienation grew…. Among the factors contributing to the team’s alienation from him were his effort to maintain full and sole control of his group’s research, using other scientists as his assistants and rarely granting any significant responsibility or authority to them.”
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And that’s, I think, fundamentally what finally happened to them. Ron pushed a button that made Robbie feel like a second-rate person, and Robbie couldn’t deal with that.”
Page 167

Aware that his reputation preceded him, in the fifth hour of our conversation Robbie says, part defense, part confession, “The mistakes I made were because of the information I had at the time.”
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Jamie says, “It’s a kind of celebrity.” Part of Rana’s charisma is related to the social power of indifference. He’s not generally indifferent, though. He listens to other people sometimes with uninterest, true, and that could be interpreted, wrongly, as diffuse indifference. He might occasionally remark on someone’s contribution to the conversation, usually with mild derision, his voice so smooth and calm you’re expecting consensus, and then the meaning slowly resolves as mockery.

Part of Rana’s social power lies in his seeming indifference specifically to external validation. He doesn’t need for you to like him, self-esteem wise. I doubt this self-assuredness is humanly possible, but the impression, the illusion created is powerful.
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“All I had to assess was if I thought I could make a difference.”
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In sum total the apartments say, “I don’t plan on being here forever,” even when the resident unexpectedly stays in that noncommittal arrangement for years. Two or four or five, traveling from that base, never quite settling in, never quite committing.
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Or my last five years, one could say.

Scientists are like those levers or knobs or those boulders helpfully screwed into a climbing wall. Like the wall is some cemented material made by mixing knowledge, which is a purely human construct, with reality, which we can only access through the filter of our minds. There’s an important pursuit of objectivity in science and nature and mathematics, but still the only way up the wall is through the individual people, and they come in specifics—the French guy, the German guy, the American girl. So the climb is personal, a truly human endeavor, and the real expedition pixelates into individuals, not Platonic forms. In the end it’s personal, as much as we want to believe it’s objective.
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"It is sad that I’m no longer part of Caltech now…. I’ve had many setbacks but every setback, somehow life compensated me again for it in some way. At the moment I got fired or if I had to step down or… it was very hurtful. It was devastating… but there were always people at the right moment who gave me an assist. Every time there was a change in my life, there was always a human being involved to help me. I was lucky."
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