News in the Category "Liars and Outliers"
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Read Anything Interesting Lately?
I recently read Bruce Schneier’s latest book, Liars and Outliers.
This is not a how-to book. It won’t make your code more secure. I doubt that it would serve as a manual on human interactions for extraterrestrials. Nor is it likely to improve a bank loan officer’s percentage of good loans, or an eBay buyer’s choice of sellers, or your ability to detect email phishing or a corporation whose accountants have cooked the books. But it might shape your understanding of all that stuff.
Liars & Outliers is a look at how trust works in society, with passing references to neuroscience, economics and game theory. Along with a description of how the negative feedback of societal pressure is supposed to work is an explanation of why it doesn’t work so well on-line and with large corporations…
Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive
In February of this year Bruce Schneier released his latest book, Liars & Outliers—enabling the trust that society needs to thrive. This accessible book does a good job exploring the scientific theory of trust and collaboration and combines a theoretical framework with real-life examples. It does not bring many new insights to people who have followed Schneier’s other work but the theoretical framework is useful and this is a book worth reading.
Mr. Schneier is a well-known computer security specialist. In college I studied from his book Applied Cryptography, a standard work on practical cryptography, and he has a great blog on security. I received a …
Book Review “Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive” by Bruce Schneier
Back on August 15, Bruce Schneier made an offer to sell his latest book (below cost) in exchange for a book review. I took him up on that offer, so here is my review.
Honestly, I was a little disappointed. I had built up a higher expectation for this book than it delivered for me.
I think there are two reasons for this.
- I’m kind of old, and have seen at least one really bad thing – which makes a person go through the thought processes of “WHY?”. In exploring the violation of trust that occurred, I discovered many of the things described in this book. I suppose an advantage of buying this book is that you get the knowledge and …
Security in Perspective: Liars and Outliers
Most of us experience “security” from one of two vantage points: as the threatened or as the threat. The power held over us by those who peddle, prescribe, and implement security can be—let’s just say it can chafe a bit. Bruce Schneier is known for lampooning the wasteful and invasive security measures in our airports, warning of the dangers posed by unchecked surveillance, and blogging about squids. In Liars and Outliers, though, he offers a paradigm that could (should) transform how we view security.
The core idea is that societies require trust to function. Societies exert various kinds of forces—moral, reputational, institutional, and security—on their members to encourage behavior that induces trust and trustworthiness. Most often, security becomes necessary as societies grow too large for the other mechanisms to be effective. So the ultimate goal of security is to increase trust, and it does so not on its own but as a supplement to these other mechanisms…
Liars & Outliers
I’ve been a Bruce Schneier fan for years. I read his blog often enough that I don’t feel the need to read his books. But then he offered a discount on a signed edition of his latest book– with the one stipulation that I write a review of it. So here’s the review.
A lot of brilliant thinkers tend to get stuck in their own perspective. There are plenty of mathematical geniuses who can’t contemplate the implications of their ideas. Plenty of programmers who can’t understand why users don’t recognize the brilliance of their user interfaces. Bruce Schneier isn’t one of them. His rose to fame with …
Obligatorisk Læsning
Jeg har lige lagt Bruce Schneiers “Liars and Outliers” fra mig og det bliver ikke nemt at gøre den retfærdighed i en boganmeldelse.
De fleste af jer har aldrig hørt om Bruce Schneier før, men blandt IT folk er han et idol, hvis bøger om kryptografi er obligatoriske klassikere i branchen.
Denne gang har han skrevet en bog om sikkerhed der ikke handler om computere og faktisk kun halvvejs handler om sikkerhed.
Bogen er i bund og grund en analyse af hvordan mennesker omgås hinanden, hverken mere eller mindre, men det er ikke nogen særlig hjælpsom opsummering, for det dækker alt fra affaldshåndtering over skattelovgivning til computersikkerhed…
De la Confianza
Bruce Schneier, Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive. (Mentirosos y excéntricos. Haciendo posible la confianza que la sociedad necesita para prosperar.) John Wiley & Sons Inc., Indianapolis, USA, 2012. 366 páginas.
Desde que en un giro más o menos calculado a mi retorcida trayectoria profesional (sobre la que prefiero no entrar en este blog) presté más atención a la hirsuta disciplina de la seguridad informática, sigo con interés las opiniones de Bruce Schneier, una eminencia en el área. Me gusta sobre todo su franqueza a la hora de distinguir entre las políticas y medidas que realmente aumentan la seguridad con las que, frecuentemente mucho más costosas, tan sólo son una exhibición de cara a la galería. Un ejemplo notorio, las medidas que las histéricas democracias occidentales infligen a su población con la excusa del terrorismo: desproporcionadas, caras, molestas y muy poco efectivas, consistiendo más bien en un …
Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive
Full disclosure: I’m a pretty big Bruce Schneier fan and I did get this book at a discount for promising to review it. This is me fulfilling my end of the promise.
Schneier is a security guy. Not this kind, more about security in technology. He’ll be the first to point out your security flaws, tell you how terrible your password is, and publicize a companies mishandling of said password. This book is different. It’s a lot less about technology and security and more about the psychology of trust in humans. (Don’t worry, there’s still some TSA bashing on pg. 197)…
To Endow Trust
Liars and Outliers Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive by Bruce Schneier Wiley, Indianapolis, IN, 2012. 382 pp. $24.95, C$27.95. ISBN 9781118143308.
When the extent of the financial crisis came to light in 2008, former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan had to admit to Congress that he had “made a mistake in presuming that the self interest of organizations was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and the equity in the firms”—a mistake that turned out to be very costly, and not only to the American economy. It might be unfair to blame Greenspan for his misperception of the self-interest of organizations. Until very recently, there was no way for someone to objectively and impartially measure the nature of human social behavior. From Aristotle to George W. Bush, decisions have been made based on personal beliefs about how selfishly or cooperatively other people will act…
Liars & Outliers: A Book Review
Anthropology was one of my college majors. I preferred physical to cultural anthropology. The history of primates, as told by fragments of bones or teeth, was more interesting to me than was the glue that held societies together. I preferred learning about Zinjanthropus boisei to reading about the customs of the Yanamami people of the Amazon rainforest or the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari Desert.
I was unenthusiastic about cultural anthropology until I read the monograph, Deciphering a Meal, by the anthropologist Mary Douglas. The article dissected meal rituals and their purposes. She looked at how being invited over for drinks meant something different than sharing leftovers at the kitchen table. There is a lengthy discussion about kosher rituals. The article had a profound effect on my thinking, particularly about human behavior…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.