News in the Category "Liars and Outliers"
Page 4 of 8
Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive
Some years ago, I participated in a meeting of academic members and associates of the then recently-founded Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London (UCL). The aim was to define what exactly was meant by ‘crime science’, a new term challenging conventional criminology. In attendance was one of the originators of the term and the Institute, Professor Ron Clarke of Rutgers.
The consensus definition quickly centered on an interest in the near or proximal causes of criminal events such as opportunities and provocations, rather than traditional concerns with criminality and even more remote societal causes; a readiness to draw on evidence, theory and scientific method; an interest in multidisciplinary applications of other sciences ranging from physics to microbiology; and a practical focus on reducing risks of crime. Then I posed a seemingly straightforward question: surely, to be fully scientific, we need a scientific definition of crime itself? Otherwise, at the heart of crime science is a mushy core of”we all know what crime means…don’t we?”…
You Can’t Trust Airport Security
But don't worry: It has always been easy to cheat, steal or kill, and few people do
Excerpt
When the plumber knocks at your door, why do you let him in? He’s probably bigger and stronger than you. And he has a wrench. He could easily kill you and steal your money and your stuff, which would certainly be a better deal for him than receiving a moderate payment and having to fix your toilet.
But you trust that he won’t; and trust, that mysterious and invaluable substance, is the subject of Bruce Schneier’s ambitious “Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Survive,” which starts with the homely parable of the plumber and builds into a treatise on every aspect of trust, from marital fidelity to transnational terrorism…
Bruce Schneier’s Book: The Internet Has Created ‘the Largest Trust Gap’ in History
'Liars and Outliers' takes swings at NSA, U.S. government, Facebook, Microsoft and others
Technology, often made possible through networks, grants new powers to communicate and learn, to travel, to make decisions of critical importance, to make things, provide services, sell them and buy them. In a modern society, it’s all done against a backdrop of trust not only that the technology is reliable and secure, but that the people involved in every process, whether we meet them face-to-face or not, are trustworthy. That trust is largely created by societal pressures—ranging from codes of moral behavior and laws, plus worries about reputation, for example…
Book Reviews: Liars and Outliers
I want to tell you that this book is amazing and I loved every moment of it. It’s smart, I agree with most of what he says, and I very much appreciate Bruce Schneier’s candidness when he’s making statements more on gut instinct and doesn’t yet have full scientific work to back it up, or the work he has isn’t actually very convincing. He could have written a compelling book without those admissions (and many authors of pop non-fiction do exactly that) but I found his insights much more interesting when he acknowledges where they’re more speculation than anything else. The anecdotes, stories and analogies are interesting and work with the ideas contained therein, and the applications to social structures and laws and whatnot were clear and convincing…
Geeky Books to Get You through the Summer
Excerpt
“Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive,” by Bruce Schneier
Internationally renowned security expert Bruce Schneier delves into the world of trust, bringing together “ideas from across the social and biological sciences to explain how society induces trust … how trust works and fails in social settings, communities, organizations, countries and the world.”
Liars and Outliers
I’m not going to lie, I struggled with this book a little at the beginning. Not because it isn’t well written (it is). And not because the subject matter wasn’t relevant or fascinating (it was). I struggled because Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers was completely new territory for me. This is a book about societal pressures; about what makes us obey the law (or break it), stay monogamous (or cheat on our spouses) and lie on our taxes.
Liars and Outliers really is a fascinating book, it’s just that there was – for me – a steep learning curve to the concepts. And so, in true Actionable fashion, I’m going to attempt to distill some of the fundamentals… in two pages or less. Here we go…
Bruce Schneier Lyfter Blicken I Ny Bok
Tomas Gilså har läst ”Liars & Outliers” – en utmärkt grundkurs i mänskligt beteende utifrån ett säkerhetsperspektiv.
Bruce Schneier, it-säkerhetsbranschens husgud, har lyft blicken än en gång. Efter att ha börjat med ”Applied Cryptography” 1994 och fortsatt med böcker om allmän it-säkerhet, informationssäkerhet och praktisk säkerhet är han idag framme vid sin trettonde bok, ”Liars & Outliers”. Med den tar han steget upp på samhällsnivå.
”Liars & Outliers” förklarar säkerhet som en funktion av tillit, dess fördelar och tilkortakommanden. Förklaringarna bygger på såväl beteendevetenskap och sociologi som historia och juridik…
Liars and Outliers Book Review
I read this book thanks to a wonderful suggestion from one of my regular readers. Liars and Outliers is a book written by Bruce Schneier, a security expert who also has an excellent blog Schneier on Security.
Overall, I found Liars and Outliers to be a fun read about how to analyze trust. I found the book particularly interesting because Schneier refers to many game theory models. I highly recommend the book to anyone that wants to see how game theory models can be applied to thinking about the area of security.
The book was a pleasant read, and I finished it in a couple of weeks, reading a couple of chapters each night. While Schneier’s book is philosophical and full of ideas, numerous real-world examples and well-organized writing make the book a pleasurable read…
Book Review: Liars and Outliers, by Bruce Schneier
Today’s book review is Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive, by Bruce Schneier.
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security guru (he even has his own internet meme). He started out as an expert on cryptography, but he now has much wider security interests.
Liars and Outliers is a book that at its core is about trust. What is the optimum level of trust for a society, and how do we make it work for us? How do complex changes in the way our society works change that trust and the trade-offs between cooperating with the group interest and defecting from it?…
Schneier’s Outliers: A Book Review
Bruce Schneier and I have satisfied a market need of journalists for a number of years; namely relatively informed people willing to go on the record with opposing views about the efficacy of TSA activities. My recent Wall Street Journal piece has led some to wonder how far apart Bruce and I are on TSA security issues. We generally agree on principles and strategy but diverge on issues that are influenced by operational or intelligence considerations, about which Bruce would have no reason to be aware. Bruce might say that I hide behind the secrecy shield and I might wish to retort that just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean it is stupid. But enough, there is more to security than checkpoints…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.