[Book Reviews] Spies, damn spies, and statistics

[thewronghands]

Comments

[thewronghands]

I like the misadventure stories when they're well told from a third party perspective -- Accidents in North American Mountaineering is split between first person and third person accounts, and I still find that interesting and valuable in the Don't Do This sense. I think I apply different bias filters to first party and third party accounts... they have Venn diagram-like blind spots. Personal bias and not willing to admit to your own mistakes in the outside on one side, lack of visibility into what happened because you weren't there and can't reconstruct it on the other. So, yeah, there's the armchair generaling that often happens with third parties who feel themselves superior/invincible, but to me that's a different filter for the unknown unknowns rather than a lesser mode. I will eyeball his other books when next I come across them in a physical books bookstore, but I'm not running right out to buy absolutely everything else he ever did tomorrow. [grin]

I look forward to hearing your opinion on Signal and the Noise... I can totally see how that's relevant to your work!

[moodyduck]

Because of your interest in the Accidents book and thing-going-wrong-in-the-wilderness in general, I thought you might like the others more than I do. I'm more interested in how people mentally deal with their challenges and how it integrates with their lives, than with the raw events themselves, hence the reduced interest in third party accounts unless they are very well done.

[thewronghands]

[nods] That part is interesting too, I agree. The integrating with their lives particularly, since so many of us don't have life or death in our day jobs.