2bookspermonth 月读二书书评网

Review of Supremacy Supremacy is about how 2 men – Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Demis Hassabis (DeepMind) – shape the future of AI. AI Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term coined in 1956 at a workshop at Dartmouth College. Language and terminology plays an enormous role in the development of AI, driving interest to sometimes maddening effect. In the beginning, AI focuses on specific tasks and can only be good at one task that it is trained in. AGI Hassabis and Altman both aim to develop AGI (artificial general intelligence). AGI aims to replicate human-level intelligence in a machine, allowing it to think, learn, and understand like a human. Hassabis believed that AGI would unlock the mysteries of science and the divine while Altman saw it as the route to financial abundance for the world. Unintended consequences Each time AI’s capabilities grew, it unleashed an unintended consequence that often caused harm to a minority group. As the data that the researchers feed into the system contain bias, the outcome is also biased. Mission drift As both OpenAI and DeepMind needed money to expand their capacity to create AGI, they accepted the offer from Microsoft and Google respectively. Nonetheless, as both…

Review of Rethinking Investing Rethinking Investing contains all you need to know about investing wisely and setting yourself on the right path to a secure financial future. You will also learn how to avoid the common errors that can ruin any financial plan. I would like to see if I am applying his recommendation in the book. The Important Points The author discusses 9 investment-related issues that can dramatically increase investment success at the beginning of this book. For Malaysians, I think the relevant ones are: 1. Recognise the power of compounding; 2. Start saving as much as possible as early as possible; 3. Use broad-based index funds and exchange-traded funds as the principal investment choice; 4. Avoid pitfalls identified by behavioural economists that regularly cause serious harm to investors’ results and diminish significantly the average individual investor’s return; 5. Minimising costs, fees, and taxes; 6. The concept of total financial portfolio; 7. Adopting a sensible spending rule to smooth year-to-year payouts from your investments, which may reduce or eliminate the traditional “stabilising” role of bonds. Index Investing The author recommends index investing as the primary investment choice and I agree with him. Nonetheless, index investing was not popular at…

Review of Upstream The author wants to convince us that we should move upstream at personal, organizational, national, and international levels. He says that we can and should stop dealing with the symptoms of problems, again and again, and start fixing them instead. I would like to learn to prevent problems. Definition Upstream efforts aim to prevent problems from happening or to systemically reduce the harm caused by those problems while downstream actions react to problems once they have occurred. Downstream efforts are narrow and fast and tangible. Upstream efforts are broader, slower and hazier but they really work when they work which can accomplish massive and long-lasting good. Although upstream solutions are generally more desirable, they are also more complex and ambiguous. 3 barriers to upstream thinking 1. Problem blindness. Problem blindness is best captured in this sentence: “That’s just how it is – so no one questions it”. It can be translated to “I don’t see the problem or the problem is inevitable”. 2. Lack of ownership In essence, this means “that is not mine to fix”. 3. Tunneling It confines us to the short-term, reactive thinking. In the tunnel, the only way is forward. 7 key questions…

Review of Four Thousand Weeks Four thousand weeks attempts to change the thinking about time that do justice to all humans’ real situation: the brevity and shimmering possibilities of our four thousand weeks. It explores a saner way of relating to time and provides a toolbox of practical ideas for doing so. Four Thousand Weeks This is the number of weeks that a human has, assuming he/she lives to be eighty. Each of us might have less or more time, depending on how old we live to. The Time Conundrum Previously, time was just the medium in which life unfolded, the stuff that life was made of. Once “time” and “life” had been separated in most people’s minds, time became a thing that you used. This shift serves as the precondition for all the uniquely modern ways in which we struggle with time today. Once time becomes a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure, whether from external forces or from yourself, to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you have wasted it. Thus, we have inherited and feel pressured to live by a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited…

Review of Funny Story Funny Story is a love story between Daphne Vincent and Miles Nowak. Daphne’s fiancé dumped her for Mile’s girlfriend. The story revolves around the development of love between them after Daphne moved into Mile’s place. Both protagonists have some parental issues that kind of explain their characters. There are some R-rated scenes in this book. Conclusion Overall, the storyline is quite predictable but the author is able to make the story funny at appropriate times, making this book fun to read. I just realised that I have not read a novel for more than a year. Perhaps I should read more fiction starting now. One-sentence summary for Fanatical Prospecting Everyone has baggage but it can be resolved. Quotes Rating Interested in Funny Story? You may get the book from through the links below*. Print from Shopee Malaysia Ebook from Shopee Malaysia *Disclosure: The above links are affiliate links. Thus, I may earn a small commission when you purchase the book through the links.

Review of Fanatical Prospecting Financial Prospecting aims to teach the readers how to be efficient and effective with prospecting. The author acknowledges that prospecting is a hard, gruelling, rejection-dense work. But it is the price you have to pay to earn a high income. The Problem The main reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe, and the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect. The failure to do the little things every day will cripple your efforts to achieve your goals. In sales you are owed nothing! Thus, you need to go out there and make things happen yourself. Do not waste time on trivial things. Understanding what you are worth helps you gain awareness of the cost of focusing on trivial things. 7 Mindsets of Successful Salespeople 1. Optimistic and enthusiastic. 2. Competitive. 3. Confident. 4. Relentless. 5. Thirsty for knowledge. 6. Systematic and efficient. 7. Adaptive and flexible. Interruption is the Main Job in Sales To achieve sustained success in sales career, and to maximise income, you have to interrupt prospects. There is no perfect time to approach a prospect. Cold calling is not that hard; it is the interrupting. Sales representatives…

Review of Pitch Anything With Pitch Anything, the author wants to teach the readers frame control which will help to overcome the challenges in life and career. The Problem There is a fundamental disconnect between the way we pitch anything and the way it is received by our audience. Our most important messages have a surprisingly low chance of getting through because our highly evolved neocortex, which is full of details and abstract concepts, tries to persuade the croc brain, which is afraid of almost everything and needs very simple, clear, direct, and non-threatening ideas, to decide in our favour. Thus, the message should not trigger fear alarms. Make sure it gets recognised as something positive, unexpected, and out of the ordinary – a pleasant novelty. Characteristics of Croc Brain The croc brain (the source of your target’s first reaction to your pitch) is 1. Going to ignore you if possible. 2. Only focusing on the big picture and needs high-contrast and well-differentiated options to choose between. 3. Emotional, in the sense that it will respond emotionally to what it sees and hears, but most of the time that emotional response is fear. 4. Focused on the here and now…

Review of Feel-Good Productivity Feel-Good Productivity is not a productivity system to help the readers get more done at any cost. It is about doing more of what matters to you. It will help you learn more about yourself, what you love and what really motivates you. The author wants to offer a new way of thinking about productivity that you can apply to your own life in your own way. Feel Good Feeling good does not just end with feeling good. It actually changes our patterns of thought and behaviour. This will also lead to greater productivity. The 3 Energisers The author asks us to incorporate play, power and people into our lives. These are the 3 energisers that help us feel good in our work and life, boosting our energy and helping us do more of what matters to us. The author reminds that when it comes to interpersonal dynamics, the truth is often unclear due to the different personal perceptions and circumstances. Although sometimes we have to do tasks that we do not enjoy, we can take control by choosing how we work on it. This could make the tasks more enjoyable. Procrastination The 3 emotional barriers…

Review of Crush Price Objections Crush Price Objections is a book about holding the line on prices and protecting margins for sellers. The author hopes to prepare the readers to handle a price objection than the buyer is to offer it. Sellers’ challenges One fundamental challenge of dealing with price objections is resolving differences in your subjective realities. Since the outcome is strongly tied to expectations, it is a good strategy to have positive expectations. Cutting and contracting is not the way to prosperity. We must expand, leverage, and sell our way to. prosperity. Buyers’ characteristics People make relative-value decisions – weighing what they want to acquire against what they sacrifice to acquire it, thus it is important to understand the context in which they make their buying decisions. Attributes that buyers value over price are quality, service, availability, and knowledgeable salespeople. Dissatisfaction drives change – people change when the pain is greater than the gain. Selling strategies Selling profitably requires changing the way buyers view things by stretching their time horizons from short- to long-term and enlarging the conversation from price to money. These 2 fundamental strategies – stretching the time horizons and enlarging the conversation – link all…

Review of Fluke Fluke tries to reframes our sense of who we are and how our world works. The author aims to dispel some of the damaging myths we pretend are true while exploring 3 facets of human experience that can help us understand ourselves. Storybook version of reality We focus on big, singular changes to expel big event, ignoring the small grains of sand that pile up and create avalanches. It is the storybook version of reality where everything that happens has a cause. To explain how we came to be who we are, we recognise the pivot points that so often were out of our control. But we ignore the invisible pivots, the moments that we will never realise were consequential, the near misses and the near hits that are unknown to us because we have never seen, and will never see, our alternative possible lives. That is why we are prone to inventing and clinging to false explanations in the face of seemingly random misfortune. Humans cannot easily accept randomness as an explanation for why we get cancer or end up in a car accident. Contingency vs convergence Contingency is the stuff happens theory while convergence is…