Liars and outliers

enabling the trust that society needs to thrive

366 pages

English language

Published Nov. 6, 2012 by Wiley.

ISBN:
978-1-118-14330-8
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
769545782

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4 stars (14 reviews)

Argues society requires trust in order to function, describes how society creates and maintains that trust through societal pressures, and discusses what happens when those pressures fail.

2 editions

Review of 'Liars and outliers' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Very worth reading for anyone interested in policy and politics.
It seems that trust is in decline as liars can gain high office without even needing to cover up many of their lies, they can say one thing one day and the opposite on another.
This is a very useful book showing how trust is more important than money in building any form of community, from local to global scale. In fact, the value of money is itself founded on our degree of trust in the institutions that stand behind it.

It took me so long to read because somehow it got pushed down my reading stack :)

Review of 'Liars and outliers' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I'm a fan of Bruce Schneier, I've followed his blog for years, and I enjoy his moderate and practical approach to various security issues. So when he offered signed copies of his latest book at a discounted price in exchange for a review, I jumped at the opportunity.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this book. Perhaps because I'm already familiar, and agree, with many of his ideas, I didn't find too many surprising ideas here. Nonetheless, Schneier does a great job of laying out a broad, fairly consistent framework for looking at how people cooperate and, if the title is meant to indicate a theme, "defect" from various forms of pressure meant to induce that cooperation.

From a wide-angle view, the only book-wide criticism I have is with terminology. For example, Schneier uses the word "defect" (and its variants) to indicate someone who goes against a particular type of pressure meant …

Review of 'Liars and outliers' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

It feels slightly disturbing to read this book so soon after Fukuyama's [b:Trust|57980|Trust The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity|Francis Fukuyama|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298428611s/57980.jpg|56475] and even more so the same week that This American Life aired episode 459, What Kind of Country, in which they chronicle disturbing societal breakdowns. Schneier covers trust, tradeoffs, more (and more interesting!) Prisoner's Dilemma discussion than any three books on Game Theory, evolutionary theory, economics, politics, current affairs.

What I found most interesting was his frank discussion of scaling problems: Trust and security models that work at a tribal level do not work at a multinational level. I also appreciate his reinforcement that defection can be good and is necessary for a society to work: the people who helped slaves escape the American South in the nineteenth century were defectors.

Solutions? No clean ones. Just lots of material to think about. Unfortunately, policymakers are probably not …

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Subjects

  • Interpersonal relations
  • Sociology
  • Social stability
  • Social aspects
  • Trust
  • Social interaction
  • Truthfulness and falsehood