11 posts tagged with "books"

Walden is a book by noted American essayist & philosopher Henry David Thoreau.  Originally published in 1854, this book is a vivid account of the time that Henry D. Thoreau lived alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond.

I picked up this book a few days back. I am still in the first few pages, but already have some notes which I thought to share.

On Choice

Most men (and women) deliberately chose a common mode of living as they really think that they don't have any choice left.  In this passage, Thoreau reminds us of testing our assumptions and prejudices. We need to re-test the standard way of doing things - and check if it is still the best suited one. On comforts of life

In this passage, Thoreau points that the modern comforts of life are in fact hindrances in mankind reaching a higher state. The wisest men in almost all religions have spent a simple life - something he called as "voluntary poverty" If the wisest men of their time have lived a simple life, does running after material gains really matter?

I recently came across an old AMA by Sridhar Vembu, where he talks about his interests in economics, and how it helps him put things in perspective. In his words:

Economics is a highly  contentious discipline. I will recommend what I personally am drawn to.  This may not agree with the “mainstream” (for example Paul Krugman would  disagree!):

To get started, I would go with this excellent and practical book  (and also free!) – How the Economic Machine Works, by Ray Dalio.

I would get deeper into political and economic philosophy with The Road to Serfdom, which explains why liberty is important.

Then spend time browsing through https://mises.org – there are a lot of books there

Hayek & Dalio are some of my favorite thinkers in economics. I have written a post in past which was summary of one of the chapters from Road to Serfdom.

Why the worst get on top in politics and governance? Why don't intellectuals and more moral candidates succeed? Some thoughts here 👇 https://t.co/1U2nTRaekW — Pranay Prateek (@pranay01) April 5, 2020

Read Mises has been on my list for a long time, but I have not managed to go through the whole text. Here are few of my notes from reading Ludwig von Mises' magnum opus Human Action

“The ultimate goal of human action is always the satisfaction of the acting man's desire”

Human actions are the key to all decisions. Humans take actions to exit from a state of uneasiness, i.e. go from a state of less pleasant state to more pleasant state. How this "happier" state is defined is completely up to them. It could be earning materialistic wealth like money, property, etc. It could be helping other or it could be contributing to see some ideas be brought to fruition.

“For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.”

Austrian Economics puts individual interests at the centre when thinking about economic questions. The insights they come up with with just this minor change is very impressive.

The Dispossesed is a sci-fi novel about an anarchist society formed on the imaginary planet of Anarres. The society has been founded after an anarchist revolution in Urras, which led its government to send the anarchists to an uninhabited Anarres to establish the society of their dreams. The story is told from the point of view of Shevek, who is a physicist in Anarres and visits Urras for furthering his research and collaborating with the scientists there.

The novel is a great exploration of how a society founded in anarchist ideals could actually function. The stark contrast from our established ideas of property, nation-states, marriage, etc. are very interesting and lay bare many assumptions which we make about how a society should be organized.

Below are just some of the ideas which I found quite interesting in the book:

1. The idea of Property​

“Oiie was an ethical man, but his private insecurities, his anxieties as a property owner, made him cling to rigid notions of law and order. ”

“I have something they want,” he said. “An idea. A scientific theory. I came here from Anarres because I thought that here I could do the work and publish it. I didn’t understand that here an idea is a property of the State. I don’t work for a State. I can’t take the money and the things they give me. I want to get out”

Anarres being an anarchist didn't have any idea of property. People lived in syndicates, did the work they were assigned by PDC (Production and Distribution Coordination). Hence, Shevek is appalled by the idea of state owning property. Since there is no idea of property, there is also nothing called money in Anarres.

Interestingly, different countries in today's world have different attitudes to property. Property is one of the central pieces of the American legal system and is considered an unalienable right.

From Property Rights in American History

Americans have long esteemed private property and economic opportunity.

Well before the formation of the United States the colonists enjoyed widespread ownership of land and were increasingly receptive to an emerging free market economy based on private contracts.

While in India, the Right to Property is not a fundamental right. By the 44th Amendment Act of 1978, Right to Property was removed from our Fundamental Rights and was made a Legal Right. It expanded the power of the state to appropriate property for social welfare purposes.

Locke argues that

Individuals can acquire full property rights over moveable and nonmoveable parts of the earth in a state of nature, absent government. Our natural rights include the right legitimately to acquire property, and any government must respect natural rights including rights to property.

It is quite interesting to see that though most of us consider right to property as our unquestionable right, the legal foundations of it are quite intricate and vary from one nation to another.

2. Is centralization inevitable?​

“you can’t have a nervous system without at least a ganglion, and preferably a brain. There had to be a center. The computers that coordinated the administration of things, the division of labor, and the distribution of goods, and the central federatives of most of the work syndicates, were in Abbenay, right from the start. And from the start the Settlers were aware that that unavoidable centralization was a lasting threat, to be countered by lasting vigilance.”

Although Anarres society was envisaged to be a decentralised one, organizations for coordination and communication had been instituted. For example, PDC coordinated all the production and distribution mechanisms. There were also institutes like Central Institute of Sciences which controlled most of research and publication.

The key question this raises is:

Is complete decentralization ever posssible or any decentralised organization will develop centers of authority/influence which will control the independent bodies. Is centralization inevitable and the only way to counter it is with being vigilant about such accumulation of power? But if such centralization of power comes about, will these centres want to lose power to enable decentralization?

3. Is "time" just a manifestation of consciousness?​

“It is only in consciousness, it seems, that we experience time at all. A little baby has no time; he can’t distance himself from the past and understand how it relates to his present, or plan how his present might relate to his future. He does not know time passes; he does not understand death. The unconscious mind of the adult is like that still. In a dream there is no time, and succession is all changed about, and cause and effect are all mixed together. In myth and legend there is no time.”

This is a deep philosophical question on the existence of time - Does time really exist? At least physics doesn't agree with it and time is just considered a perception from our existence in the space-time continuum.

4. The survival of the fittest for a social animal?​

“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!”

“Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical. You see, we have neither prey nor enemy, on Anarres. We have only one another. There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”

The laws of evolution suggest that the strongest survive. Though recent research on biology has suggested that evolution doesn't care about the survival of the individual - but that of the gene pool(more technically, genome). Sapolsky has a great set of lectures on Human Behavioural Biology where he argues how human behaviours and customs have emerged to accomplish this goal.

While I had heard about the idea of Hacker Culture, I recently encountered this curious fact.

In a recent interview, Paul Graham the famous founder of YCombinator, was sharing the fact that his co-founder in his startup, ViaWeb which was later acquired by Yahoo was a convicted felon. His co-founder, Robert Morris, or RTM as he is more commonly known, was the creator of Morris Worm which was one of the first such worms which used the Internet to spread. RTM went on to do great things in life from becoming a prof to being co-founder of YCombinator, again with PaulG.

The floppy disk with the source code of the Morris worm is now kept in the Boston Museum of Science

Source: Morris Worm turns 25

What blew my mind was this: A convicted felon was the founder of a great startup (ViaWeb) and a world-leading incubator (YC). When I think about a felon, I mostly picture a person who is badass, scruffy and generally not a nice guy. But I was so wrong. It just meant that the law of the land was not advanced enough to understand what RTM was doing. It shows that law is a living creature and depends on the societal and technological context in which it operates.

Hackers are generally painted in a negative light and most people think that hackers do shady things by stealing money by sneaking into systems. Very few people see them as pioneers who are pushing the boundaries in their field, figuring out gems which push our society forward.

Paul Graham has a great book, Hackers and Painters, which tries to elucidate the opposite point of view. Hackers are similar to creative people in other domains, its just that they have chosen technology as their playing field.

I delved a bit deeper into this, primarily via two books - Underground by Julian Assange and Suelette Dreyfus and American Kingpin by Nick Bilton.

Underground talks about the stories of early hackers in Australia, USA, the UK of which Mendax(aka Julian Assange) was also part. American Kingpin focuses on the story of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road. I plan to do a detailed review of these books sometime, but that's for another post.

Books: American Kingpin and Underground

So, the hacker scene originated in the 1980s when the BBSs(Bulletin Board Systems) came into the picture. It started with phreakers messing with telephone systems to get free phone calls across the world. This opened a new world for them as they can exchange notes with people across the world and boast about their skills.

The Internet in the initial days was dominated by academic and research institutions. It was designed primarily for research institutions like NASA, universities, etc. to collaborate with each other on their projects. Hackers started getting onto such systems tinkering with the servers and information they had.

What are the primary drives which motivate hackers

• Explore and tinker with systems. Play with a system to figure out what it can or cannot do.
• "Own" a system - Gives a sense of power
• A sense of community - To meet a group of people who think like you. Enjoy the same things when normal society treats you as an outcast and you always get a sense that you don't belong there.
• Irreverence for authority - If something is forbidden by an authority, that makes it more interesting to do it.

But, the majority of the social progress belongs to such outcasts.

I can hear you asking, "Why?"

Well, creating something new needs you to have a streak of irreverence, otherwise you will be bogged down by society's questions and criticism. By default, most people think that nothing new could be done. We are programmed by evolution to conserve energy. (Remember the time when humans were hunter-gatherer and securing food was the prime worry of our ancestors! Those genes haven't yet gone away). It takes a lot more energy to examine why things are how they are and propose a better solution, which is more in sync with the current state of societal and technological progress.

The strange thing is that the way our current society is organized doesn't have anything sacrosanct about it but is just a point in the evolution of the society. It can be changed, and it will be changed

Anarchism​

Wikipedia defines Anarchism as a political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions. Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful.

The state is the ultimate symbol of power. By definition, citizens give up a part of their sovereignty to create a state and agree to follow the legal structure of the state. This ensures that people don't kill each other and live in relative peace.

Anarchists question this fundamental belief that state is good. They argue that though the state was designed to serve its citizens, it becomes an institution of and for itself, and people running it wield unprecedented power. This state becomes the Leviathan.

Anarchism has at roots similar beliefs which power the hacker culture. The irreverence for authority. In that sense, how right are we as a society to paint hacker culture or anarchism as impalatable concepts. Aren't these ethos fundamentally important to take our society forward in the changing technological context?

Some question which I find myself asking:

1. Why India produces no great hackers? Barring a few exceptions (e.g. Yaha worm) we are severely lacking in this field.

It is unfortunate, that as a nation the most famous hacker we have is Ankit Fadia, who is, in reality, a charlatan. Some argue that it is our subservient upbringing and risk-averse training which has led to this. But, then..

1. Why China, even though has similar subservient upbringing, produces lot more hackers? (Political ideology? Nationalistic drive?)

Some people argue that the next world war will be fought in the cyberspace and Zero Day exploits will be used as weapons of mass destruction. If that day really comes to pass, are we prepared to face it?

References​

Underground - Julian Assange & Suelette Dreyfus

Started with BBSs and telephone phreaking, which became more and more advanced with the coming of the Internet.

American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

The core belief of Ross Ulbricht was that it should be individual's choice what they chose to put or not put in their body. He believed in libertarianism and rejected the authority of the state to meddle with drug control.

Citizen Four

Story of NSA Whistleblower - Snowden

Risk - A film by Laura Poitras

Story of Julian Assange - The founder of Wikileaks

Wow! What a story!

These are the words I am mumbling as I finish the last pages of Shoe Dog - A memoir by Nike's founder Phil Knight

Its a compelling story and a salute to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It never occurred to me that a brand which seems to be omni-present now, had such humble beginnings. It was just a "Crazy Idea" in the minds of a young guy in Oregon, USA.

I am sure I will not be able to capture all the beautiful moments in this book, there are too many to list. But here are a few thoughts which captivated me while reading the book.

1. What is "business"?

I thought of the phrase, "It's just business." It's never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.

Is business just about making money? That is one of the questions which Phil visits frequently. At each point he says that, although money is needed for keeping the business alive, it is not why they were doing this. It was a "mission". To create a place where people would "belong". Money is to business, as blood is to human life. Although blood is needed to keep feeding different parts of the body with nutrients, it is not why we live.

Nike went through many crises in terms money. There were times when their cheques bounced, when they couldn't pay off their debts. So money was absolutely crucial for their survival. But money was not why they were doing this.

2. Giving people chance

The way Phil hired people was unique. He didn't look for the degrees or the experience they have. It was always a gut feeling. If he liked the guy, he would hire him. Irrespective of what his degree was, what he was currently doing in life. The key thing which he looked for was a sense of "purpose". Mission. If he thought the guy has that, he will hire him. No questions asked.

3. The search for meaning

Oneness - in some way, shape or form, it's what every person I've ever met has been seeking.

It just amazes me, how Phil goes from mundane practicality to deep philosophy within a few moments.

At the heart of it, whatever we do, is just another step in finding an answer to this search. This perpetual quest. Isn't it?

4. The Why?

I told her that I flat-out didn't want to work for someone else. I wanted to buid something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.

People often ask why someone becomes an entreprenuer. After all, the "risk-reward" calculation never makes sense. I think the above line captures the idea very elegantly.

5. To Young People

I'd tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I'd tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don't know what that means, seek it. If you're following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be nothing you've ever felt.

Wow! Just wow!

If you don't take anything else away from this book, just internalise the above lines.

6. On giving up

And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn't mean stopping. Don't ever stop.

In the startup world, we often hear this oft-quoted sutra of not giving up. And here, the founder of a 100bn dollar company says that it's OK to give up. In fact knowing when to give up is genius.

Those who urge entrepreneurs never to give up are charlatans. Yes, charlatans.

7. Giving back

Phil and Penny Knight donate 100 mn USD every year, and he says that he will continue doing so for the rest of his life.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet also have committed significant amount of money to charity. This makes me wonder - why do all rich people finally end up giving back their wealth to the society? I think this really proves the often quoted fact that they were not in it for the money.

May be after a point, the greater joy which you can buy from money is by giving it back to those who need it more.

8. Mental Whitespace

I spent a fair portion of each day lost in my own thoughts, tumbling down mental wormholes, trying to solve some problem or construct some plan.

To deliberate on big plans and detail out their execution you need mental whitespace to think about them, ponder about the details. Steve Jobs is known for keeping time for planning and thinking about things. Jeff Bezos keeps his schedule light so that he gets ample time to think and manoeuvre big plans.

However, I think keeping time for mental whitespace is becoming more and more difficult in this constantly connected world of ours. You always have an urge to check your mail or twitter notifications. All this constant flow of information decreases our ability to focus and plan for the long term.

How do we prevent this distractedness and focus on more important things?

9. Private person

Phil says that he is an intensely private person. But he managed to go to Japan, set up his company, fight with banks and take his company public. Many people think that entrepreneurship or leading is a thing for extroverts, those who are more comfortable in front of people than in solitude. Phil shows that as long as you believe in your mission, you can scale a company inspite of being intensely private.

This also reminds me of the book Quiet by Susan Cain which talks about the power of introverts.

10. Working part time

Phil started Blue Ribbon Sports (which later became Nike Inc) in 1964, but he started working full time on it only from 1969. Between 1964-68 he worked as a full time employee at PwC as an accountant as Blue Ribbon Sports wasn't earning enough to pay for his salary. He worked on his startup only after work and during weekends. In 1968 he joined Portland State University as an assistant professor as it allowed him more time to work on his startup.

The popular narrative of our times is that, if you want to do a startup, you have to commit full time into it. And here is a man who built a 100 bn dollar brand while having a full time job for the first 5 years of its inception.

11. Competition and being in the moment

People reflectively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that's only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I'd learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now remind myself of the fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pains, your past. You must forget that internal voice screaming, begging, "Not one more step!"

Anybody who has participated in any competition of significance would attest to the fact that the secret of success in a competition is forgetting that you are in a competition. You just have to be present in the moment and act as you would naturally act. If you constantly think about the importance of a competition, it would cloud your thought process and you won't be able to give your best.

This idea is also one of the key ideas in Miyamoto Musahi's The Book of Five Rings. If you have preconceived plans then you would not be able to react swiftly, just be in the moment and act.

12. You can sell it if you believe in it

Before starting Blue Ribbon Sports, Phil toured the world and spent considerable time in Hawaai. In Hawaai, he took a job of selling encyclopaedias and had a horrid time at it. He thought that "selling" is not suited for his private nature. But when he went out for selling shoes imported by his company, he enjoyed it and had great success.

The key thing is belief. If you believe what you are selling is genuinely good for the customer, you would have a great time doing it. Gary Vaynerchuk, who is a renowned entrepreneur and hustler, also tells the same thing. Unless you really, deeply believe that what you are selling is genuinely good for the customer, you won't be good at selling it.

I wonder how many folks in sales today really believe in what they are selling.

I decided to give Carl Jung a try when I was exploring psychology as a way to understand consumer behavior. The popular startup books - Drive, Grit, Habit, Predictably Irrational - limited psychology to product development application. Though I slowly realized that the subject is much deeper. I wanted to try my hand at more classical psychology authors. Freud and Jung emerged as what most people talked about. I had tried reading Freud in my college days and couldn't gather much, so I thought I should give Jung a chance.

The main idea which most people associate with Jung is around the idea of Collective Unconscious and their reflection in dreams. I picked up Man and His Symbols and I am blown away by it - though I have reached only half of it till now, there are lots of new insights.

Some of my key learning:

• The basic idea of God and Religion are embedded deep in our psychology, in the wiring of our primordial brain, and is not just a recent invention. To think that Homo Sapiens arose around 7 million yrs ago in Africa and moved to Eurasia around 100,000 yrs ago - there is a lot embedded in the neural connections of the brain which gives rise to these ideas. May be there is a need for a God for humans to remain sane and continue living in the world.

• The idea of Hero - The idea of Hero which Joseph Campbell elucidates in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces may be is the story which gets itself repeated in every generation of humans. The struggle, the guidance by a mentor and final triumph are themes which repeat throughout the history. May be this is the reason why we tend to hero worship so easily, it has been going on since time immemorial.

• The 'Archetype' - The idea of an archetype is a curious one. Though I am still not quite sure what Jung means by it, it seems to be patterns or themes which are present in human psyche - Angels, Demons, Anima (he feminine part of a man's personality) - these are all themes in our psyche which Jung wants to call out.

• Dreams - Dreams are the windows by which our unconscious tries to communicate with the conscious. The conscious is a new emergent property (like traffic is emergent property from number of vehicles plying on the road. Consciousness can also be thought of in a similar way) and has now superseded the unconscious. It is the rational logical "thinking" part - while unconscious has been driving the human behavior when we were animals. Even study of neuro-biology suggests that there are large parts of the brain which makes the decision, even before the thought comes to our conscious mind. May be this is the instinct or gut which people talk about.

Not surprisingly, Jung lays a lot of emphasis on the understanding of dreams. According to him, the unconscious and the conscious must remain in harmony to maintain a stable life.

I picked up this book on recommendation by Bill Gates for it somewhere in social media. And I must say, I am not disappointed.

Some of the key ideas of the book:

• Eurasia became the cradle of civilization (Fertile Crescent) because it has a long stretch of land lying at the same latitude level - allowing high range of crops and animals to chose from to domesticate. Americas or Africa or Australia didn't have that long stretch - which was connected ecologically and geographically. Being at same latitude implied similar climate and hence ease of distribution.

If I parallel it with startup terminology, distribution was much more important than where the invention was actually made. Because of huge scale available for any innovation in Eurasia, it soon picked up - and reached other lands.

• Another major cause may be the wiping off of large mammals in Americas during the Pleistocene period, which led to unavailability of animals available for domestication in America, leading to slow growth in agriculture (as there was no muscle power of domesticated big mammals) and lack of germs which Native Americans were immune to it. Lack of immunity of Native Americans led to their susceptibility to Eurasian germs which were largely occupied through domesticated animals.

• Food production and settled villages led to development of better technologies, as people can now specialize in particular activities, rather than worrying about food all day long. Thus the major growth in technologies came from better co-operation and financing, rather than individual genius.

This points very starkly the need for teams and leaders who can lead teams to produce results. Though as a society we tend to indulge in hero worship, but the main contribution of leaders/heroes may be to lead teams of great people to achieve extra-ordinary results.

So, EQ is more important than IQ, not only today - but even in historic times. Something similar was pointed out by Alan Kay in his lecture in YC startup school, that point of view contributes to 80 IQ points.

• Human societies have been built on war and struggle. That is what leads to progress. Peace may be periods of stagnation and lack of technological development. Even in recent history, World Wars were times of great technological breakthroughs. Humans innovate best when they are under do - or - die situation. Peaceful innovation may be just a mirage.

So I picked up this book as I was intrigued by the general mayhem going on in the media after Trump election. Many people suggested we are heading for an Orwellian society. I thought I should understand what an Orwellian society looks like.

Some key takeaways -

1. The world projected by George Orwell is a totalitarian oligarchy - similar to Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.

2. A 'Big Brother' is made to be the leader of the party - but nobody ever has met him/seen him. He is created just because it is easier for people to focus/love/hate a person, than a party.

3. What surprised me was the level of sophistication George Orwell had achieved. The goal of Party was not to control material outcomes - but to control thoughts. They have also invented a new language for it, as the language determines what we can think, or at least one theory says so. This was also the main focus of the movie Arrival. The hypothesis which posits this is called Sapir-Wharf Hypothesis

4. The concept of "doublethink" implies to hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time. Interestingly Marc Andreessen says that it is an essential quality of great founders - as they need to be believers of their ideas and be able to convince others to work on it and at the same time be cognizant that it may not work.

5. The main antagonist O'Brien in the novel explains while torturing Winston that reality is only a matter of consciousness. It was a great play on the existing Mind-Body Paradox which questions the nature of reality. Is there a reality which exists apart from our conscience or is it just a projection of our consciousness. As science would tell that, absolute reality (if there is such a thing) is very different from how we perceive it. Human beings are just one of the sensors which perceive reality in a certain way.

6. The people in Oceania (the society portrayed in the novel) are in a state of constant excitement by the results of imaginary war happening. This posits the question - is our current media also similar and politicians just control us and keep us in a state of frenzy by peddling news - which may or may not be true. How can we trust media? Is media just a way to keep us occupied - and prevent us from asking the real tough questions? Is that why China keeps such a tight control on media and information.

7. In the novel past is constantly changed based on the requirement of the Party. OBrien asks - Is past real? How do we know about the past? - Its only through written records and memory. In the novel, there is a grand mechanism of keeping the past 'current' by Ministry of Truth. If we the Party controls the written records and the mind of its subjects - doesn't it control the past also. How do we know that past we know is the truth? Haven't we hear the maxim that 'Winners write the history'?

Overall, a shocking work by George Orwell. Makes you question many things you believe in.

Reading biographies are always a great source of inspiration - esp. if it is one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century. Walter Isaacson is a meticulous writer who keeps you gripped to the story. I have read 2 biographies by him now - Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs - and both are outstanding. Few key takeaways for me from Einstein biographies were:

1. Einstein had tough initial days and people were not willing to give him a permanent job. He had to resort to taking part-time tuition to meet his financial needs. Even though, by this time he had published his now famous 1905 paper on Special Relativity. But this didn't ruffle Einstein and he was happy publishing his papers and working on his equations.

2. Non-Conformity - Einstein had a rebellious trait and always challenged existing beliefs and authorities. It served him well, as he was able to challenge the concept of time when in those times Time was considered sacrosanct, as laid down by Newton.

3. In spite of his intelligence, he had a tough family life and had a difficult time maintaining cordial relations with his 2 wives. Shows his fallibility or human-ness. Even Einstein was not perfect.

4. He laid a lot of emphasis on individual freedom and abhorred any authoritarian regimes. He was a proponent of pacifism. Even though fate would have that, his inspiration led to the formation of the team which eventually discovered atom bomb.

5. He spent a lot of time in his later life trying to disprove quantum mechanics, though there was increasing experimental evidence in its support. Basically, after 1920 he didn't produce anything of significance. In a way, the belief that led him to discover relativity - that Nature is governed by simple, elegant laws - made it very difficult to accept that the world can be better described by probabilities of Quantum Mechanics.

In his own words " God doesn't play dice" - was his ardent belief. He believed that there is an independent "reality" which exists independent of the observer, while quantum mechanics was suggesting that - what is observed is dependent on the observer and there is no "reality" independent of the observer

These are the books I intend to read in January

• Rebooting India by Viral Shah & Nandan Nilekani
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Occasional

• Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris

• Einstein's biography by Walter Isaacson
• Yoga and Kriya by Swami Satyananda Saraswati

Recently Finished

• Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre - 1st December 2016
• Homo Deus - November 2016