The Nonfiction Book Club

[Savy]

Things such as shark attacks, terrorism, stock market crashes etc. We either vastly exaggerate the probability and invest way too much in their countermeasures, such as completely avoiding swimming, starting a massive war on terror, building bunkers in backyards. The other option is to completely neglect them in our risk scenarios, and do nothing about them, such as with market crashes. Maybe not great examples, but I'm sure you get the gist. We are really bad at having a measured approach towards these things.

Ok but then what is a measured approach? Does this ever come up in the book? If it's just saying look at all these things we do badly without any attempt to push at getting better at those things I think the book sounds less interesting.

[CoccoBill]

Ok but then what is a measured approach? Does this ever come up in the book? If it's just saying look at all these things we do badly without any attempt to push at getting better at those things I think the book sounds less interesting.

The actual original book is about 300 pages and it barely touches that. The edition I read also included a notes-section of close to 100 pages written some years after the release, they go a bit deeper, but mainly just with anecdotes. He had a single good idea, noticing that we tend to overlook outlier events and that's pretty serious in the grand scheme of things. He however has no answers to this and the rest of the book is just reiteration.

Gave the book 3/5 stars on goodreads, read if the subject matter tickles your fancy, but overall it's not a great book imo. Oh, I'll need to update the first post. Henceforth, this thread shall be about nonfiction book reviews and discussion like proper book clubs, not just recommendations. Edit: WTH, I can't edit it.