strongly

Near the beginning of this book, Wright asks his students, "Would you like to be a genius?" Given the school he was teaching at, many of the students raised their hands indicating yes. After the class on genius, most people realize that to be a genius, defined as a world changer not merely smart or have some arbitrarily high IQ, you kinda need to suffer: you're an asshole, or socially incompetent, or mentally off to the point of dysfunction, or some such. So, while actually being a genius might not be a goal worth attempting, some elements and characteristics of genius are worth the effort. Wright tells us those in this book.

What I can appreciate most about this book is the early chapter and direct callout of just how much women have been and are screwed in the areas of publishing, medicine, invention, politics, science, and, well, pretty much anything that isn't birthing babies and catering to the whims of men. Literally, the chapter is "Genius and Gender, the game is rigged." And it is. One can easily see that, "to be sure, the timeless stupidity of ignoring the intellectual potential of half of humanity is deeply embedded in our culture." Wright gives example after example of women screwed over by men. Just how stunningly fucked over Rosalind Franklin was by Watson and Crick and the "discovery" of the DNS helix, a discovery made by and with the research of Franklin, pisses me off stunningly even after reading the book. Like, because Franklin refused to be subservient to a less-gifted man, "Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place."

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Yeah, so, the biggest habit one can adopt to being a genius is clearly "be a guy."

The other habits are a bit easier to do, including the cases when you weren't born with a penis:

We, the Books on Books Book Club members, read this book as the third or fourth book, first for me. It was the first one in the book club that I read. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed this book. I was, however, hit much harder with the dismissal of women's voices, opinions, and experiences portrayed in the book. It continued the trend of reading books that pissed me off, even as I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the subsequent conversation with D about the womens' roles in the book, and the curse of Odysseus for his pride.

Oh, I enjoyed this book so much. I am on a roll with choosing non-fiction books that delight me. I strongly recommend this book for its exploration of various ways different areas of mathematics can help us understand the world around us. This book also delivers a whole bunch of (previously unknown to me) biases, all dealing with math, giving me even more joy.

In a very approachable way giving many examples from the real world and history (none of these "two trains are on tracks going in opposite directions at forty kilometers an hour" problems), the various chapters discuss exponential growth and decay (Chapter 1), sensitivity and specificity specifically in medicine (Chapter 2), how math (statistics, in particular) is used in legal matters (Chapters 3 and 4), different numbering systems (Chapter 5), algorithms in general and how they can apply to one's life (the 37% rule is a very common algorithm used to illustrate how algorithms can make our lives better, see also Algorithms to Live By), and the most relevant topic of 2020: mathematical epidemiology, or the topic of epidemics, pandemics, and the spread of disease.

I mean, discussions of false positives and false negatives, how one can intimidate jurors with numbers, how to interpret stats you read in the news (hint: context matters a LOT), an overview of virus transmission (asshat anti-vaxers not understanding that vaccines don't cause autism, a leaky intestinal system causes autism, but that's another line of research that didn't get earlier funding because Jenny McCarthy decided murdering thousands of children was a better "mother feeling," leaving scientists to debunk her shit first for public health before finding the true cause of autism, but here we are), and ideas that can help people live better lives.

I very much enjoyed this book. It was recommended on the XOXO slack, and worth the recommendation.

The premise is that the multidimensional universe exists, which means resources on one universe instance can be harvested for the prime planet, the first planet to develop the technology to traverse between worlds. The catch in this traversing is that only one instance of a person can exist in a universe. If a traverser, a walker between universes, arrives in a universe where their counterpart is still alive, then both die. Which is to say, the most valuable traversers are those who are alive on the prime Earth, and dead in all the other universes.

The story is told from the point of view of Cara, a traverser who doesn't quite belong on the Prime.

Yes, all sorts of spoilers:

The original Cara went to the narrator Cara's world and died, because duplicates can't exist (see above). Cara, being the survivor that she is, assumed Prime Cara's identity, and travelled back to Prime. So, now we have Cara figuring out what is going one, an uncomfortable longing, a world of comparable riches, new social dynamics to learn even as the universes are quite parallel, and a confrontation to power. The ending is not the typical happy ending, but isn't isn't an unhappy ending, more of a "yeah, that's the right ending."

The book, similar to Dread Nation in its character and voice, is engrossing the whole way through. Recommended. Good science fiction and worth the read.

Because no traverser has ever made a report to enforcement or asked questions, they think they’ve pulled this elaborate ruse on lower-level employees. But really, we just don’t care. A job’s a job, and people edging out other people to make money buying and selling something invisible just sounds like rich-people problems.
Location: 152