George Gilder

God what a bad book. It's rambling with no coherent thesis, often borderline incoherent, unless it is something like "Google is going to be killed by Bitcoin and the blockchain BECAUSE PRIVACY". Which makes about as a much sense as saying "TV is going to be killed by Gold BECAUSE INFLATION" - they just don't have much to do with each other.

There are periodically good insights but they never seem to go anywhere, and the book is filled with either assertions that are entirely dubious or show more factually false. For example:

"If your product is free, it is not a product, and you are not in business, even if you can extort money from so-called advertisers to fund it. " - Where to start with this idiocy? Google does indeed have customers that pay them gazillions of dollars - it's just not those of us pushing the search button. They are not extorting advertisers, the advertisers are throwing money at them because it works. This is just stupid.

He then proceeds to attribute the saying "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product" to Tim Cook. I'm sorry, Tim Cook has said something like this but he did not invent this phrase. It's just incorrect.

I'm a technologist - I understand the concepts we're dealing with here, so this isn't based on not understanding the basics, the book is just a rambling mess. I'm probably sympathetic to much of his worldview, I'm sympathetic to his outlook that the big guys aren't good for our privacy, and sympathetic to his indictment of the current higher education situation, but this book doesn't really establish that cryptocurrency and the blockchain are the solution.

If you want to understand bitcoin, save your money and just google some bitcoin 101 web posts. show less

Odd book. I was prepared for a progressive critique of economics of how inequality has risen and perhaps a diatribe on the financialization of the economy. Got the latter but from a conservative perspective. The book lays out a case for human creativity as the engine behind growth, has interesting takes on crypto and chastises Piketty et al. for being doom and gloom. So, the book gets a lot right, but just does not understand that its insights should be balanced with progressive ones as show more well. (My prediction is that left wing economic progressivism will merge with right wing "white working class" populism to kick off the climate change era with new infrastructure, some sane protectionism etc.) show less

George Gilder is an investor, futurist, gold-bug, and conservative dinosaur.

The first fifth of this book is an impressive indictment of the contemporary computing paradigm. Gilder points out that, in the 1930s, mathematicians moved away from a theory of the world that held that, with an infinite amount of information, the future could be determined with infinite precision. Post 1930s, math has embraced the fundamental element of hazard in our universe as a force for creativity and show more non-determinism.

Computing over the past half century, on the other hand, has been driven by a deterministic paradigm indicated by its reliance on the Markov chain. Markov chains, given a certain set of circumstances, predict the statistical likelihood of various outcomes in the immediate future. To better understand the concept, watch the documentary "AlphaGo" about Google DeepMind beating the world's premier go player in 2016. Markov chains are great at helping search algorithms, but are also creating a world where the divergence is smushed out by advertising algorithms, as bemoaned by disillusioned tech bros over the past five years.

At this point in the book, Gilder's narrative arc scatters. His journalism shifts to the blockchain revolution. Having been a blockchain insider for the past three years, I find that Gilder offers a nice synopsis of recent history, but I don't find value-add to his rhetoric during this (dominant) section of the book. Although the crypto ethos generally has an emphasis on personal liberty at odds with the gods of advertising, it is unclear whether or not this disruption will bring down the tech behemoths of our day, or merely be subsumed by them.

The following two quotes illustrate the potency of Gilder's perspectives when it comes to how we've been overselling AI:

"The claim of 'superhuman performance' seems rather over-wrought to me. Outperforming unaided human beings is what machines—from a 3D printer to a plow—are supposed to do. Otherwise we wouldn't build them...Speed of iteration is not the same as intelligence." (page 98)

"The problem is not AI itself, which is an impressive technology with much promise for improving human life. What transforms 'super-AI' from a technology to a religious cult is the assumption that the human mind is essentially a computer, a material machine. That assumption springs from a belief in evolution as a random process that has produced sub-optimal human brains, relatively crude computer "wetware," which in time can be excelled in silicon." (page 99) show less

Темата "Израел" е сложна и нажежава политически, религиозни и морални страсти винаги, когато бива засегната. Светът се разделя на две спрямо Израел и за автора отношението към Израел и евреите като цяло е показател за дълбокото разделение във вижданията за света на тези show more две различни групи хора (и държави).

Именно това показва "Тестът "Израел"": от коя страна на барикадата стои всеки от нас. Защото това разделение е наистина барикада, ако погледнем картата на света съобразно признаването на Израел/Палестина. Разделението между държавите е очевидно и рязко. От едната страна са модерните, развитите държави, демократични и признаващи и спазващи човешките права и пазарната икономика. От другата са диктаторски/теократични дупки, от които даже собственото им население масово бяга.

Определено отявлен и ентусиазиран поддръжник на идеята на еврейската държава и нейните ценности, Джордж Гилдер описва какви са идеите и практиките, на които се дължи икономическият, социален и научен успех на евреите през човешката история, как те са пренесени при създаването на Израел и как отношението към тези идеи и практики (и съответно към Израел, който според автора ги олицетворява) разделя света и човечеството като пропаст.

Яростен защитник на правото на Израел на самоопределение и самозащита с всички налични средства, Гилдер дава и защитава изключително интересни идеи, свързани с теория на игрите (game theory) относно външната политика на Израел спрямо враждебно настроените си съседи, еволюционните предимства на религиозната вяра, довели до развитието и у човека (което е приятно противопоставяне на теорията на Хаидт за груповата й еволюция, с която пък Докинс не е съгласен) и благоприятните последствия за целия регион на Близкия Изток от несъмнената икономическа доминация на Израел в случай на постигане на траен мир там.

Книгата е определено едностранчива, но засяга много интересни идеи, дава много интересни исторически и икономически факти за Израел (особено ако не сте чели Нацията новатор), и ако по една или друга причина стоиш от другата страна на "Тестът "Израел"" може да ти даде храна за размисъл. Защото книгата не защитава Израел - тя защитава самата идея за успех, наука, човешки права, пазарна икономика и демократично управление. show less