Book Tracker
It is quite amazing how far humans can suffer. But I believe not in
isolation. If they had a weak leader. Or if their personalities
didn't mesh well enough to get along. Or if the conditions were
slightly worse. Then they would have likely not made it.
One of the most crucial reasons for their survival then was
Shakleton's cognizance of how his men were feeling, and very
deliberately organizing certain combinations of men in order for
their interaction to not destroy each other. For example, in his
choices of who would stay and who would go as part of his land
crossing of South Georgia, he chose McNeish and Vincent partly
because if they were to be left behind, then they would undermine
the morale of the men with them. He wouldn't make greedy choices to
make his journey the easiest, instead he would choose based on what
would be best even for the people being left behind.
I think it is also worth mentioning that the men showed unbelievable
obedience, and therefore trust, towards Shakleton. For the most part
all orders were followed with little complaining, even when the
conditions were most disagreeable. When I recall the difficult
physical journeys I have taken part of (nothing close to this
though), they were full of complaining throughout, and many chores
simply never got done. I am aware that this aspect of their
experience could have not been in the book, but either way, on
aggregate, it seems that if you let complaining, and more
dangerously lack of discipline in action, take ahold a group, then
they will not be successful. There is a fine line between
comraderie, and a negative shift in mindset that can destroy the
entire group. As a leader it was crucial for Shakleton to not let
this shift happen.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
11/10/25 → 12/24/25
Overall, it is a philosophy towards life that I take out of this. I
think it was his intention to not give too much in the way of precise
methods or rules, but instead impart a general philosophy that is
directionally correct, and I think he accomplished this well. I hope to
be a practictioner of this brand of decision-making.
The core of Taleb's philosophy is centered around the fact that the
world tends to follow fat-tailed distributions. What this means is that
our assumptions of outcomes being fairly predictable and following
linearly returns, are not true. And that instead, improbable outcomes
that are impossible to even know the nature of, are far more likely than
we give credit to. That is not to say that the shape of the distribution
can be known, or even what is included in it (what outcomes are even
possible), but that we must act with a level or humility, knowing that
there is much we don't know.
This manifests as Black Swans. These are large, improbable, events that come
out of nowhere and have an outstanding impact. These can be postivie or negative
(9/11, or Facebook succeeding), and have tremendous impact on the future,
though they're not usually accounted for in standard models.
What this means on a personal level, is to limit your exposure to things that
have a high potential exposure to negative Black Swans--things that appear
"safe" just because they are predictable, but actually have a high cost of
failure in the event of a Black Swan (which, as mentioned, is probably more
likely then people think). And to maximize your exposure to things that have
extremely high upside, yet are inherently unpredictable (ie. startups). As
well as things that have extremely low risk and are highly predictable (ie.
treasuries). Just not medium risk, mostly predictable things, that are actually
much more dangerous than what appears on the surface.
The only problem I have about the ideas in this book is that it seems a
bit nihilistic. Black Swans, both positive and negative, however
unpredictable, always do have a cause. Particularly with positive Black
Swans, people have the ability to will them into existence. The future
was made by people who spawn in positive Black Swans, not people who
wait passively and take advantage of them. But as he says, the forward
process of making these things happen is almost impossible to take any
repeatable lessons from, so it is forgiveable that being a practitioiner
of willing Black Swans into existence is left as an exercise for the
reader.
Rating: 8 / 10
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
11/03/25 → 11/08/25
"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that make's life
interesting."
They say that you always read a book when you most
need to. It's hard to say now, but I think this is especially true here. I
would say this is a book about faith more than anything else. Do you have
faith that what you are doing is moving you towards your goal? If not, perhaps
it is because you don't have a goal; I think most of us fall in this category.
But for the rest, perhaps you just need the nudge to start pursuing your dreams.
Rating: 7 / 10