Manny Rayner

I once read a book of reviews of imaginary books. It was undoubtedly a weird idea but was worthwhile so far as I remember it - very philosophical. I think it was by [a:Stanislaw Lem|7132279|Stanislaw Lem|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66-251a730d696018971ef4a443cdeaae05.jpg].

What I'm about to do seems a lot weirder, though: Review on Goodreads a book of Goodreads reviews (of real books). I should say I was offered a free copy by the author who, according to the foreword thinks I'm "wonderful" despite the fact that our primary mode of interaction is arguing about such nonsense as the Strong Anthropic Principle, Intelligent Design, Mathematical Platonism and the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics where-in I take a robust scientific position and the author has a bad habit of sloping off to a Solipsist position when he's losing... It should also be noted that the author also takes perverse pleasure in quoting negative and insulting portions of people's reviews of his review collections...

So on to the book, which is divided into themed sections. My favourite was "Life on Goodreads" where-in gentle fun is poked at the foibles of Goodreaders; foibles that I would really like to say I'm not guilty of. I'd be lying if I did, though...

Also on display are many reviews that consist of more or less bizarre and fanciful pastiches of the books they purport to review. These can be entertainingly witty but also tend to be incomprehensible if one has not actually read the book in question. All the "Life on Goodreads" reviews are also pretty much useless for conventional purposes i.e. helping people decide if they want to read the book under review. Some reviews are at best tangentially relevant anecdotes about the author's life. Given the popularity of Rayner on Goodreads, it is therefore abundantly clear that this conventional type of review is not the only kind that Goodreaders appreciate.

Why would anyone (pay to) read this book? Well it used to be that they were all available for free on Goodreads so the only answers would be because either 1) you expect to be web-challenged for a time and need to feed your addiction or 2) you are blatantly stupid. The author has, however, now truncated these reviews on the website thus forcing those nutty enough to buy a copy of the book. I think this is known as "Marketing."

Rayner, when he offered me a copy, expressed interest in my views on the "Science" section, which focuses on cosmology/astronomy/fundamental physics and the relationship between science and religion, and suggested I might perceive a pattern. Well I noted two things, neither of which are what I was supposed to, I expect. The first is that Rayner clearly knew more at the end of the section than at the beginning, the reviews being set in chronological order of reading by the reviewer. The second is much more important (and something I had already concluded): Pop science books are almost all rubbish. Expanding on this, I believe the following:

Many of the better ones are in fact history books and don't try to tackle cutting edge science. Most of the best pop science books are written by genuine scientists but this is no guarantee of quality. The average standard of pop science book has deteriorated over time. Most contemporary pop science books show an alarming lack of impartiality, self criticality or even distinction between what is hypothesis and what is theory and what is controvercial and what is not. Many of the authors of them couldn't explain clearly the sum of 1 and 1, let alone cutting edge scientific concepts.

Now, given that I say that Rayner knew more at the end than the beginning how can I be claiming all this? Well, because he has read widely not just one book and has read critically, i.e. noting contradictions, logical flaws, weight of evidence presented and so forth. This is the only way to do it and applies just as much to actual scientists in professional life as to anyone else.

A phenomenon well known to psychologists is that people tend to believe the first thing they hear about a topic, so if you read Dawkins' Selfish Gene you are very likely to believe Dawkins when some-one presents counter arguments. On the other hand if you'd read Eldredge's Re-inventing Darwin you'd be more likely to believe the Gould-Eldredge camp. This is a difficult problem to overcome, as can be seen easily on Goodreads where numerous ill-informed people who've read (only) one book on a subject take it as some kind of Divine Revelation that is Obviously and In-arguably True. How to overcome this problem? Never buy pop science books one at a time; always take the time to find two books with contrasting views and read them back-to-back. That'll help but don't stop there; read widely on the subject, as Rayner has. Make a conscious effort to keep an open mind and find the flaws on both sides of the argument. Put the effort in - it's unavoidable if you want to be respected by others when discussing the subject - whatever it might be - because the above doesn't just apply to one area of science publishing - it applies to every area I've read myself.

Here are two examples of pop science done well; neither is an easy read and one of them is extremely tough going but both show how it should be done, bending over backwards to be fair to opposing views and pointing out all the flaws in their own theories:

[b:The Origin of Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941]
[b:The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe|10638|The Road to Reality A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe|Roger Penrose|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320528862s/10638.jpg|1077395]… (mehr)

Mainly I wish to apologise to the author for my failure to get publishers to take this up. It deserves better, but publishers these days are scaredy cats.

To be fair, so are readers. The publisher and their target customer both want books that have a hashsign on the front cover. The Adventures of Something #8. Ugggh.

Unfortunately the author has decided to turn this into an ebook. Evidently one in ten or so copies of ebooks are bought and the rest are taken without being paid for, let's call that theft. That being the case, I can only hope that nine million copies of it are stolen.… (mehr)

The completely disinterested opinion of the proofreader.

Not.

**********

In case anybody other than me is interested in the production process, a few comments on what you get from Lulu.

I was expecting something rather amateurish that looked like it had been done in somebody's back room. But leaving aside the fact that you can't get section sewn books, which is my strong preference, the finished product is excellent. You never know with perfect bound books, the name belies the facts, sometimes they fall apart instantaneously, sometimes they last 'for ever'. Having looked now at a few samples for proofing purposes, I'd say these will last quite well.

They have printing facilities in the US, the UK, Australia and France, so their shipping charges are local for the major English speaking parts of the world and this means it is quite quick to get copies. Oddly, ordering from Switzerland, the copies came from the US.

It is incredibly convenient, of course, only having to print copies to order. Of the many books I've seen through the production process, only one of mine ended up in my back room and luckily it sold out very quickly. Otherwise it is an expensive investment on the way in and soul-destroying on the way out to do economical print runs.

On the other hand. The per unit print price of a book like this, if a real printer did, say, 1000 copies would be $3. At Lulu, the print price is about $12. That seems like it doesn't leave so much for the author, but don't forget, generally if your book is printed by a real printer, it has had a real publisher and the author will only get about 5% of the retail price of the book as his payment. So even at Lulu the author is still doing better than with a publisher middleman.

I think that there are some fantastic reviewers on goodreads and their work merits publishing. You are all writing about books all the time. If this material doesn't warrant finding its way into book form, I'd like to know why!

… (mehr)

Thoughts while reading this.

p. 3 Well, I've been getting the smallest idea of SLT over the last months, but I mean small. I only just know where the on/off switch is on my computer, so my perspective is of somebody completely ignorant.

The first thing that comes to mind, reading the introduction, is what an incredibly difficult, ambitious thing it is, SLT. I'm sure the authors do not oversell it when they say, p. 2 that if it could fulfill all its aims it would transform human society.

The second thing is that this book was written in 2000 and, as far as I can see, not revised for the 2007 edition. Surely much must have changed. And surely the resources of larger computers make an ongoing difference?

It must be incredibly frustrating to be in fields where one is waiting, waiting, waiting for what is ongoingly inevitable, the increasing power of computers that will permit progress. To have to wait for technology to catch up with ideas. Oh dear.

The next thing I find myself thinking, when the authors discuss the need for accuracy, is the difference between a human translator and a computer. I wonder if an important aspect of intelligent translation is that a human, having made a mistake, may well soon enough recognise and correct it in whatever way might be appropriate.

Can SLT do that? Is this something it would need deep reasoning capability to achieve? Is it possible? It seems to me that however accurate one hopes to make the system, the possibility of being able to recognise mistakes would be a great asset.

Well. Food for thought as I cook dinner. All my technology is up to the task, I'm so lucky.

A couple of days later...

By p. 6 (!) I thought I was on a roll....but suddenly, as you read p. 6, your eyes are disconcertingly drawn to p. 7. They hit you with something that made me get out my garlic necklace, worn as a rule only when reading Manny's Stephanie Meyer reviews. Little did I know it would come in handy for a science text book. So, I put on my garlic necklace and anything else I hope will ward off evil. Dear reader, you are probably already thinking 'oh no, not -' Yes, I'm afraid so. It's a flow chart. My eyes glaze over and I dare say yours too.

Now, my attitude when I picked up this book was to do it properly. The authors wanted me to read a flow chart, I'd damn well read it, if it killed me. Back in a bit.

8 hours, 16 cups of tea and 5 scones later, I have a pain in my stomach. It's this $%#&@ chart. So, I've tried. Honestly I tried. But it is time to move on. And then I discover something that wll make life easier for the rest of you. The flow chart is explained in words. Ladies and gentlemen, I am back in business.




… (mehr)