Reviewing 'An Absolutely Remarkable Thing'

This is the review nobody asked for and yet which I felt I owed to the book.

This book is a great exercise in thinking complexly. It presents to you a host of issues: all the things you've ever worried about that come with living in 2020.. it's there. Yet there is so much nuance in thinking through each of them.

Like I have mentioned before, he talks both about communities and capitalism so well. His position has probably helped with that. He's seen first hand all of what he thinks about and has good reasons to be concerned. Here are some themes that I absolutely loved - I tried first to talk about them but then I just used a lot of quotes because they're self-explanatory. This is most definitely a spoiler. Is it though? I don't know how much you can make of the book from this but here we go.

THINKING COMPLEXLY

"Our reality isn't about what's real, it's about what we pay attention to" 

It talks about privilege and intersectionality - a woman of colour in one situation is in a position of privilege and thus bears the burden for representation of doing well in spite of being black and yet that is responsible in other situations for bringing in a 'diverse perspective', of being black. It talks about how sometimes we are all hypocritical and we live in this hypocrisy because of convenience (like you might disagree with Amazon policies but you're still going to order off it or go to a climate change meeting in a private jet).

Diverse voices have been highlighted over and over - you know only what your social construct allowed you to know, not what everyone's experience has been. This is especially true as we move on to the automatic machine age. Who is building them and what biases do they have? We will be excluding a lot of perspectives if we aren't mindful.

COVID!

This book feels strangely prescient. Even though this book was written pre-pandemic (a second pass was made in April where a few words/sentences were changed), it's so representative of now. It serves as a good study of what unexpected changes could do to humanity and it seems so surprising that it wasn't built up to be that way (especially because of Covid!).

ATTITUDE TOWARDS MONEY

What happens when you  have to adjust to this 'new normal'? Economics forms a significant part of the answer and I am super glad about that because to me it makes it more real. Here's some of the major money observations in the book:

1) The process of a recession happening and the impact psychological state of people has on it. The size of the pie shrinks because of lower consumer confidence. 

2) In a declining economy, the pressure to raise stock prices led to increased stock buybacks as there is no other way to raise price. Corporate bonds default starts hitting the economy.

 3) People rush to buy gold, it's trustworthy that way. Because it is limited in supply, we place a lot of inherent value on it. (also goes on to say how even that's just an irrational story we tell ourselves but anyway)

4) Introduction of an alternate currency and the repercussions that could have, how it grows and gains prominence if it's for a service you love (like people buying Subway Surfer coins once upon a time for  but 100x bigger)

I could almost hear Hank talking about this, about our relationship with money and why we feel bad about not being productive: Only I could create that value and I wasn't doing it.

TECHNOLOGY/HUMAN PROGRESS/IT'S BYPRODUCTS

The book takes up from the previous one where alien(s) appeared on the Earth suddenly (not a spoiler) and then just disappeared. If you're someone who is drawing parallels to real life, the previous book An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is about the internet and this one is about where we are heading next with it. I I think it was in one of Hank's videos itself but the effect of Carls is basically what happens when humans take one unifying leap forward - it happened first with language and communication and now with the internet.

With the speed of development being what it is, we currently are in a structure where incentives are so skewed and real damage is possible. It's important to be mindful of who has power. To draw distinction between business and society and let not one overshadow the other. Otherwise, we will just be individuals without communities. 

Byproducts - 

Isolation: "Isolation caused by easy alternatives to community and society, and a change in the speed of transfer of information will be too rapid for norms and taboos to prevent it from being used maliciously."

In our society, signs of isolation are already visible. He is trying to point out that we started isolating ourselves to prevent pain and/or damage. And now, we have to distract ourselves from the pain and in fact the irritation that comes from loneliness.

Inequality: Any revolution done having a lot of power should be done mindfully. We always have to be careful about who it excludes especially if it's hailed as the 'next big thing'. Otherwise, the 'next big thing' will increase this inequality. 

So glad that whatever issue was had in this book was also solved by being together and caring for one another (and yes, with online tools).   

ONLINE COMMUNITIES & THEIR POWER

Vlogbrothers have managed to create a diverse large group of people and that had to have led to some questions and doubts along the way - I wonder if they ever felt apprehensive about their power and voice in the same way? To always be careful to steer towards goodness. Their thoughts also on realizing privileges and limitations of fame? It does make it easier to get away with things but it's also paralyzing because of all these hopes pined on you.

The Som (from book 1) stood for the good kind of collaboration made possible by the internet, like Nerdfighteria. This book places weight on the power of your real life community and why it's a different thing altogether. 

Also, who decides what we do with the online social media tools given to us? Their makers? (Reminded me of Zadie Smith's essay mentioning how we all experience Facebook in a certain way -- eg it being blue because Mark Zuckerberg is colourblind). They don't just make tools but also effectively shape how we experience them.

BEING HUMAN

"Your cruelties and mistakes may look damning to you, but that is not what I see. Every human conversation is more elegant and complex than the entire solar system that contains it. You have no idea how marvelous you are..what you will become. That unknown is a diamond in the universe of dirt. Uncertainty. Unpredictability. It is when you turn your emotions into art. It is BTS and the Sistine Chapel and Rumi's poetry and Ross Geller on the stairs yelling, 'Pivot"."

Oh humans! We are so messy and frail and want things that are not good for us and we make so many mistakes. Yet, this is the very best way we know how to be. Because when we are together, we are capable of so so so much. 

"Somehow she made me feel human, and that is, I've learned, one of the very best things to be"

We are a little... faulty? We give weightage and attention to their weirdest things? Even things that won't bring us joy because we collectively assigned a lot of value to them. 

 ...your system does not have good ways of even recognizing the existence of value that is created but not captured.

How attention can be a problem making us want to do things we don't want to really or make people say weird or worse evil things they themselves are too smart to believe. It has skewed incentives and we need to pay heed to it. What is motivating the person to whom we are giving attention? Power, money, fame? How is it making us act? (When Andy had to maintain his brand image and so couldn't do what The Thread did and yet he still wanted to do it for attention. He still wanted validation)

Even when we leave all this behind, figuring ourselves out still happens at our own speeds. Who you are as a person - are you what you think or do or feel? What makes you distinctly you? It'll make you value emotions even when they're particularly difficult. How do we channel our wants, turn them into fuels of our choice? Do we learn to tame and maintain them, ignore them or make them work for us? What do we derive meaning from?

"It is much easier to believe in your intrinsic value if you are getting all these other signals that you have value"

Another concept that I loved thoroughly was the struggle of being original when all it feels like is that we are regurgitating things. It was good to think of it a little more than only a matter of standing on the shoulders of what has come before. We all do come from there but our tweaks also matter. With internet we now also have easier access to those other ideas and their hybrids are new ideas. Internet has combined our consciousnesses in a way?

 "One of the most powerful traits of your system is how ardently you believe in your individuality while simultaneously operating almost entirely as a collective."

The stories we tell ourselves! We want power to make sense, but it  just doesn't. We build up on what we have sure but the way in which these things happen is pretty random and is a matter of luck. April being chosen was so random - it's like the butterfly effect and you don't know which flap causes a storm where.

We always act as if someone is watching us, a story of how life should look like and check against it. Decide which qualities go into a basket, picking the ones that will help us be this ideal person. But assigning value to qualities is also arbitrary, right? These stories by the way are decided by "all of us" just like April was chosen seemingly at random.. but because of the behaviours of all of us.

GREATNESS

Grasping greatness: that it doesn't mean the same for everyone. It might mean doing good to you, to some it might mean doing great and there's a huge distinction between the two.

"The only way to do something amazing is if it's big and flashy and all yours, that obsession with impact is an infection and it's getting worse... the truest strength is shouldering the burden of care. Restraint is far more remarkable than action."

CAPITALISM AND POWER

Sorry, this one is just going to be a bunch of powerful quotes.

Capitalism:

"You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful"

"Focusing on efficiency for the sake of fewer and fewer powerful people would make us more vulnerable to shocks from catastrophes both expected and unexpected."

"Move fast and break things is great for a business, but not for society." 

"But if you really want public opinion to turn against you, come for the economy."  

 Power:

Think of life in non zero sum game modes.

"Powerful people always thought they had the solutions. What they couldn't see was that their power was, itself, the problem."

"Power concentrates naturally, but that concentration is, by itself, a problem."

"The most impactful thing you can do with power is almost always to give it away"

"You also can't stop believing that power organizes itself correctly because your entire understanding of the world is based on that single idea. So, instead, you convince yourself that they're cheating or correupt or lying,"

Other minor themes:

a) The science bits - Carl's evolution runs parallel to human evolution, programmed along Maslow's pyramid of hierarchy. Plus, major Neuralink vibes.

b) Work - Casual sprinkling of impostor syndrome in someone who is so obviously brilliant. It's able to acknowledge the duality of an event being good for professional life but not personal. 

c) Gender roles - Guys not being able to be emotionally comfortable with each other without making it awkward. Thinking of people as conveniences to us until we stop and register they're humans too.

d) Miranda's cool problem solving tool set - A four step process