This is my introduction to Adler's ideas. They remind me of lots of other things: Camus, Frankl, Joseph Campbell, etc. I think there is a lot of wisdoThis is my introduction to Adler's ideas. They remind me of lots of other things: Camus, Frankl, Joseph Campbell, etc. I think there is a lot of wisdom in here. If you postpone happiness until everything in the world is okay, then you will never be happy. And so I can see the value in using extreme statements to shock people out of dwelling in a painful past that becomes their identity. Like any self-help, this will resonate with some people and help them. However, I'm skeptical about this being a good approach for most people. If this is just wisdom/philosophy it doesn't matter that much. But if this is psychology, then it should have been studied by now after a hundred years, and there should be some evidence to show whether it increases happiness. The dialogue format was clear, but pretty robotic. ...more
If you don't care about diabetes this book may not be for you, but this type of writing is essential and the general point about how medical science gIf you don't care about diabetes this book may not be for you, but this type of writing is essential and the general point about how medical science gets perverted is important for everyone to understand.
Nerd addendum: Taubes has written a whole series of books on sugar vs. fat in the diet. This one is different insofar as it's more about medical treatment of a disease than about population level prevention. So at the end, he gets into an important commentary on evidence-based medicine (EBM).
At the beginning of the EBM movement, the conventional wisdom opposed EBM because it was supposedly too "cookbook." Of course, the expert panel recommendations were cookbook, except their recipes were accepted on the authority of funny hats, or whatever superficial sign you use to tell a professional chef apart from an ordinary cook. Their recipes were not based on whether their dishes were poison or not, let alone if they tasted good or were nutritious. They were based on untested theories about the nature of certain ingredients.
Science is a rational process, but scientists are people and sometimes hold on to unproven dogmas spouted by naked emperors. This is a big problem. As Taubes discusses, the standard approach for dealing with this is to wait for each generation of experts to die. But that condemns millions of people to bad care, over and over.
One solution is for everyone who talks about science (including journalists) to look at Evidence instead of Eminence--in every topic. Very few people do that work. Gary Taubes does do it in his topic so he gets five stars. Trust in science is crashing, in part because the media can't get beyond just interviewing experts instead of looking stuff up. The relevant science about the low-fat diet has been there for decades. It's not that the "science keeps changing back and forth." It's that people fail to look at what the overall weight of the best available evidence shows, or to say "I don't know" when nobody does.
This is a solid episode in the series with a classic locked door scenario. One of the interesting things about Lord Peter is how he loves to solve murThis is a solid episode in the series with a classic locked door scenario. One of the interesting things about Lord Peter is how he loves to solve murder mysteries but the consequence of the murderer being condemned to death sends him back to a sort of WWI shell shock. These stories seem like fluffy confections at first but they are quite complex and sometimes profound. This one was the honeymoon trip, so it delved into marital relations and reminded me of Ann Patchett's lesson from This is the Story of a Happy Marriage : "Does he/she make you a better person? Do you make him/her a better person?" Important advice.
A note on the audio version: The narrator does an admirable job with tones, pronunciations, accents, etc. However, I had more trouble than usual telling characters apart. ...more
I've read a bunch of these Lord Peter Wimsey books, and this is the worst so far. There's a tremendous amount of trivia about a bizarro but boring BriI've read a bunch of these Lord Peter Wimsey books, and this is the worst so far. There's a tremendous amount of trivia about a bizarro but boring British bell-ringing ritual. The whole murder mystery is muddled because no one involved really cares who the murderer is. The final twist is utterly unsatisfying. (view spoiler)[... The bells? Oh big surprise. The whole book is banging you over the head with bells. Why would anyone think it's good to be locked up in a room for hours with nine giant bells clanging? And how does this change culpability anyway? And why doesn't everybody faceslap themselves when Wimsey finally points this out? (hide spoiler)]...more
Loading...
