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forrcaho

forrcaho@bookwyrm.world

Joined 4 months, 1 week ago

I read some books every once in a while.

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forrcaho's books

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2024 Reading Goal

60% complete! forrcaho has read 3 of 5 books.

reviewed Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent

Jeremy Lent: Web of Meaning (2022, New Society Publishers, Limited, New Society Publishers) 4 stars

Definitely worth reading

4 stars

I wanted to read this book after I read some excerpts online, although I was a bit concerned that it might be "new age pablum" ... lofty musings about how everything is all connected that are ultimately inconsequential.

I found a little bit of that, but mostly I found a lucid new synthesis of ideas in a way I hadn't considered before, as well as an introduction to some non-Western philosophical traditions I hadn't yet encountered. Lent is particularly excited by the concept of li in the Neo-Confucian school originating in the Tang Dynasty. (In fact, he has a website called liology.org devoted to this).

I did almost set the book down when I got into Chapter 8, the first chapter of Part 4 ("How Should Live My Life?"). He opens with what seemed to me to be an interminable laundry list of non-Western approaches to health that I had …

Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality (Hardcover, 2024, Penguin Publishing Group) 5 stars

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds …

Not so much about "games" per se, but highly recommended

5 stars

This book is about games in an indirect sense. The only category of games the author spends a serious amount of time discussing directly are war games, which evolved from chess into simulations of actual combat informing real-world decisions.

From there it goes into game theory, the mathematical discipline that engendered, and how that informed global nuclear brinksmanship.

That's just an example of the sort of game-adjacent topics the author touches on. This book covers a lot of ground and gives the reader a lot to think about.

I really enjoyed the book, and while it wasn't quite what the title led me to expect, I'm very glad I read it.

Donella H. Meadows, Diana Wright, Donella H. Meadows: Thinking in Systems (2008, Chelsea Green Pub.) 5 stars

"Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on …

Listened to the audiobook

5 stars

It's been a while, but I definitely think this book was worth my time.

I found this easy to digest in audio format, even though the subject does require thought. The fact that the world is made of interacting systems is something I think a lot of people intuitively understand, but how does this help us understand the world? Thinking In Systems answers this question, step by step.