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Professor Clayton Christensen applies a pedagogical method that I enjoy: explain some theory, exemplify the theory to solidify the insights, then use this theory to analyze a new situation and discuss the predictions/guidance that the theory yields.

It's strange to attempt to design a life based on business administration theory, and it's somewhat bleak that so often the book invites the reader to think of themselves, their careers and their families as a business to grow and manage. But I have to confess that the lessons are convincing, mostly because those management principles are crystals of common sense.

The advantage of this approach is that business cases are more well documented and more convincing than examining the life of "successful" people, exactly because the success of a business is easier to measure than a human life. I recommend not taking the theories too seriously (there's a lot of literature on motivation theory elsewhere, for instance) but to focus on a few key aspects: some investments need to happen early; certain things should not be outsourced; priorities are defined by resource allocation; culture is defined by decision making;

Overall a good book to re-read once in a while to remind myself to re-balance my life's portfolio.

Steven Pinker absolutely demolishes his imaginary adversaries in a series of long and repetitive discourses against the most inane straw man arguments - obviously preaching to the choir because creationists, ecoterrorists and whatever else radicals he takes for enemies will not be reading this book anyway.

I'm impressed by how despite we agree on most viewpoints the experience of reading this book is completely overshadowed by the confrontational style. Even more surprising that I liked his book on writing (The Sense of Style)! The problem is not dry or repetitive prose, but the absurd positions he's making out of the other side of the debate. It feels like being stuck on a nerd's shower monologue the day after some bully roasted him for being too optimistic.

Very disappointing because there are long sections dedicated to irrelevant positions like people defending that we should go back to living in forests; while important and possibly fruitful discussions about inequality are completed glossed over. "An increase in inequality is not necessarily a bad thing, if the average poor is less poor" is enough to summarize pages upon pages of defending the hill that inequality isn't a big deal. This is so superficial that it's hard to take anything else he writes seriously.

I celebrate any a book focusing on scientific literacy and I congratulate the authors on trying to reach an important audience: people who already (try to) think critically but could use some guidance on methods and pitfalls.

The book style is not for me, though. Like other generic best sellers on the 10's and 20's, it uses a random swear word to refer to things that have proper descriptors used by specialists who are serious about this field. It abuses the elasticity of slang to lump together things that are tangential and makes the book longer than it should. Sometimes I started getting semantic satiation from all the bullshit jokes and metaphors going around.

The very end of the book reminds the reader: the book is about calling out "bullshit", not just identifying it. But the majority of the book feels like a textbook that defines exhaustively all the modern types of "bullshit" through examples. This was a bit disappointing because like any anecdotal exposition, the majority of it is bound to be forgotten very quickly and the reader is left with very little in terms of long term behavioral changes.

If the book is about preparing readers to engage on questionable information, I think the book betrays the promise by investing so much on categorizing and exemplifying and so little in coaching the readers to do that by themselves. But of course if the point was to tell people to rely on fact checking agencies and reverse search images, there would be no book to write.

I do highly recommend the companion website (www.callingbullshit.org/) as an evergreen resource, specially the Tools and Case Studies sections.