Hope for Cynics by Jamil Zaki is a relatively straightforward book about cynicism, optimism, and skepticism. It’s also a touching tribute a fellow researcher and friend (Emile) told in anecdotes throughout the book.
It’s important that this book is not bright-siding, and isn’t just hectoring people who are feeling cynical. In part due to a human bias towards negativity (since negative information is more likely to be dangerous or important for self preservation), we naturally tend to overestimate negative outcomes. Part of the prescription is not telling us that we’re wrong, but instead suggests replacing cynicism with skepticism — come up with ways to test your cynical beliefs and see what happens in reality.
The author documents some examples from trials they’ve run, and experiments from their personal life. That negative bias sharpens contrasts – it’s easy to miss the common ground when the microphone only picks up the loudest shouters. The personal data collection – like writing down a prediction of how many conversations with strangers will go well, then going out and striking up conversations with strangers and recording how they went – was a powerful example and all too familiar sense of dread somewhat dispelled.
There’s hope to know that our negative bias will overestimate how many people believe the worst – and if we approach the problem as skeptics gathering data, we’ll often be pleasantly surprised.
Blood over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang was bold. Her main character, Sciona, is very focused. She falls into the realm of extraordinary competence and skill- appropriate for a glass-ceiling breaker- and the narrative doesn’t flinch from giving her some common flaws associated with driven people. A nice twist is that her self deception is the dominant view from the start – but her family and other frequent contacts suggest that there’s some narrator bias and blind spots.
Much like Sciona, it’s easy to get sucked into the details of magic making in the world – particularly given its strong nod to real world programming for structure. It works really well- coding is described without bogging down in the details of code.
The other storyline, Thomil’s, is briefer and intense. It complements Sciona’s story, but is more an accent to her tale than an equal story weight.
The book functions really well on a lot of levels; at its most meta, it’s a story about exploitation and resource extraction. The world feels expansive but constrained, with the magic-tech present but not so grabby that you get lost in the sheen. (A few examples, like the train, are foregrounded, and it’s easy to extrapolate to the other industries and technologies, but those examples are briefly considered until the climax, when implementation is brought to the forefront.)
