Another month’s roundup (eek). Well, there’s another week to go but as it’s a long weekend I have time to do this.

Work-related first.

The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us by Benjamin Recht. To begin with I thought this would be another book about the embedding of rational optimising decision-making as computers met operations research and economics in the postwar decades. I’ve read a few of those already. It also has a chapter on why RCTs aren’t everything, which I also read recently in Adam Kurcharski’s book Proof, and in re-reading the Deaton and Cartwright paper on this.

The book comes into its own after the early chapters when it moves on to computational pattern recognition, including why adding more data and compute to the process produces a step change in prediction capabilities via neural networks. “There is no theory of why ‘deep neural networks’ – as we now call them – work well on all these different prediction problems,” Recht writes. He adds a few pages later: “Machine learning only makes sense if an engineer doesn’t know how to write the code.” Prediction rests on patterns in data.

The book ends on machine vs human decision-making: “No matter how good human intuition might be, it is evaluated against a metric that is a statistical count.Once someone decides that the metric is what needs to be met and that metric needs to be maximized on average, then the best decision is necessarily statistical. …. If we can measure why humans might be able to outperform machines, then we can build machines to outperform people. On the other hand, if we can’t clealy articulate a set of actions, outcomes, measurements and metrics, then we can’t mechanize problem-solving.” 

So in the end I thought this was a well worthwhile read.

Hayek’s Bastards by Quinn Slobodian is an account of how neoliberals co-opted science, and particularly genetic science, for the extreme right. Today’s offspring of the Mont Pelerin crowd cherry pick from the scientific literature to argue for an ‘essential’ human nature and genetic differences.

How to Win A Trade War by Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown is a funny (yes, really) explanation of trade in theory and practice. It gives advice to the novice negotiator about how to win, or at least cope with, today’s hostile environment for free trade. It’s an excellent intro for students just embarking on trade economics, and for the famous general readers – or possibly airport bookstore readers.

The Achilles Trap by Steve Coll. I htink this counts as work-related, although it was one of the monthly surprises I get thanks to the Daunt’s subscription my dear husband gave me. It’s a very detailed but yet surprising compelling account of the US-Iraq conflict(s). Fascinating to understand how little the Americans and Iraqis understood the other’s decision-making constraints and context.

Non-work

A Year With Gilbert White by Jenny Uglow is a lovely reflection on the nature writer himself, the emergence of nature writing, and the changes happening now in nature.

Common Ground by Rob Cowen is also about nature, this time in the edgelands of modern Harrogate rather than 18th century rural Hampshire. Reflections about change, and rather optimistically change for the better.

We are Movement by Wayne McGregor. This is a sort of how-to book: how to use your body, feel at ease in your body, with wide references to underlying science. I didn’t do all the exercises, and it does verge on woke, but I enjoyed reading it. It was recommended by my friend Mark Fabian, who is an academic expert on well-being.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kamaguchi. Sweet, slight. Rory’s book group chose it so I read it too.

The Heron’s Cry by Anne Cleves – detective fiction comfort read.