SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR OUTSIDERS

Except at our job or in our family, we are all outsiders. That implies we are at a distance from most events, and therefore dependent on the words of insiders for much of our view of the world. That view can be distorted either by chance or by intent.  Given that in this democracy we citizens serve as the ultimate check in the system of checks and balances, it is important that we be aware of the methods insiders use to influence our world view, and how we can defend ourselves from them. The book, "Survival Guide for Outsiders: How to protect yourself from politicians, experts, and other insiders," by Teach Peace member Sherman Stein is intended to assist us outsiders in our defense.

It begins with a discussion of how we form our opinions and why we are so vulnerable to those who want to mold those opinions. Then it describes some of the methods the insiders employ, illustrating them by examples drawn from history and current events.

Opinions are important mainly because they are the basis for the choices we make. For this reason, several chapters are devoted to how we make choices, and explore the limits of our wisdom. The book explores whether the use of numbers may make our choices more "rational," concluding that they will not. But our choices involve making predictions. That raises the twin questions, "How well have we predicted in the past?" and "Is there a limit on our ability to forecast the consequence of our actions?"  Oddly, the practice of prediction has only recently been the subject of methodical study.

Given the difficulty of making a rational choice and seeing into the future, we turn to experts. It turns out that there are two types of experts in our society, the professional and the shaman. The competence of the professionals can be easily audited and demonstrated. The shamans are hard to audit, and in fact we may not want to know how competent they are.  The book describes how to identify both types, and devotes a chapter on expert-creep, which is the transformation of a professional into a shaman.

Chapters titled The Dead Fish Principle, Hidden Choice, The GRIMP, and The Action Syndrome provide key insights into the way we perceive, choose, and act.

One feature that makes this book unique is that it is written by an outsider for outsiders, bypassing experts. It doesn't hesitate to intrude into the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, economics, finance, etc., and may offend a variety of specialists.  By profession, the author is a mathematician, but he uses mathematics only to show that it will not bring reason to controversial decisions.

This $14.95 fascinating book is available at Amazon.com.

About the author
Sherman Stein is professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California at Davis. He is the author of How the Other Half Thinks: Adventures in Mathematical Reasoning (McGraw-Hill, 2002), Strength in Numbers: Discovering the Joy and Power of Mathematics in Everyday Life (Wiley, 1999) and Mathematics: The Man-Made Universe (Dover Publications, 1998).

After growing up in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, Stein spent his undergraduate years at Caltech and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He lives in Davis, California, where he enjoys bicycling, walking, painting and, with his wife Hannah, keeping tabs on three children and seven grandchildren.

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