Sources of Power

What Hacker News says

1. tikhonjJul 2024
   "a flash of inspiration connecting internalized concepts"

   Well, okay, but rote memorization is neither necessary nor sufficient to internalize concepts.

   One of the reasons people make fun of the author's approach to creativity is that systematic memorization fundamentally can't teach taste—so the systematic approach reeks of awkward, try-hard, low-brow, tasteless art.

   More broadly, memorization doesn't help much with any sort of tacit knowledge, not just taste. I just figure taste is especially important in creative endeavors. That's definitely the case for programming! Memorization in programming gives us architecture astronauts and design-pattern soup rather than elegant code.

   For what it's worth, I do think that it is useful and important to have a good mental model of what expertise is and how you can develop it. Memorization might be a component of this, but it's going to be a small component at most. I expect that realistic practice with fast feedback and expert mentorship matters far more. (If you're curious, I found the book Sources of Power by Gary Klein gave me a good way to think about how expertise works.)

   At the same time, memorization has a real cost: it takes time and it's frightfully dull. For me, at least, trying to memorize something without context is not just ineffective but also totally kills any intrinsic motivation I have for whatever I'm learning. Sometimes a bit of memorization is unavoidable, but I've found that to be relatively rare. Otherwise, my time is generally better spent on some sort of practice in context.

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2. Tangurena2Nov 2023
   25% of the world's crude oil was shipped out of the Gulf at that time. The Iran-Iraq war had caused the prices of crude to skyrocket as many insurance companies refused to cover any shipping in the region. So the US felt compelled to protect the exports of crude oil from "friendly" nations. While continuing to blockade Iranian imports/exports.

   For more details on the political situation at that time, I recommend reading The Persian Puzzle by Pollack.

   https://www.amazon.com/Persian-Puzzle-Conflict-Between-Ameri...

   Additionally, to help explain how messed up the shoot-down was, Sources of Power by Klein.

   https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-20th-Anniversary-Decisi...

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3. dredmorbiusAug 2022
   The transformational force of oil, and the quantities involved, were indeed staggering.

   I'd like to add: I don't share Yergin's sympathies and enthusiasm for the oil industry or petroleum itself. Despite that, his book really is a treasure, and is among the better histories of energy out there.

   I'd include the more broadly-scoped works by Vaclav Smil (Energy and Civilization <https://www.worldcat.org/title/959698256> and Energy in World History <https://www.worldcat.org/title/30398523>) and Manfred Weissenbacher (Sources of Power <https://www.worldcat.org/title/416715097>).

   Wiessenbacher in particular emphasizes the political and military implications of energy regimes.

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4. kthejoker2Jan 2022
   Sources of Power by Gary Klein is an absolutely fascinating book for leaders, and covers this topic in depth: how experts use intuition and how they work to articulate and distribute that to others to build up similar expertise.

   Just two of the interesting observations...

   Experts conduct better pre-mortems - that is, given scenarios where eventually something failed, they are able to more accurately predict which parts of the scenario contributed to the failure.

   And experts are "two steps ahead" in troubleshooting - which makes it (paradoxically) harder to convince others their direction is correct.

   Anyway, great book on the topic, essential reading in my mind.

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5. shadowsun7Sep 2021
   I would recommend the series first — AE assumes familiarity with the recognition primed decision making model (or RPD) which I cover in the series.

   If you want to read books to prepare yourself, read:

   - Sources of Power by Gary Klein

   - Power of Intuition by Gary Klein

   Before AE.

   And then be prepared to download LOTS of papers to read concurrently while reading the book. AE is not written for the layperson.

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6. kthejoker2Dec 2019
   I can't recommend Gary Klein's Sources of Power enough, it is stuffed with awesome mental models, real life parables, research findings, and one quotable passage after another on expert decisionmaking.

   From the book, things experts do more/better/faster/etc than novices.

   * Identify patterns faster and successfully predict future events more often.

   * Recognize anomalies - especially negative anomalies i.e. something didn't happen that should - quickly and take appropriate actions.

   * Identify leverage points within their architecture to solve new problems and deliver new features faster and with less effort.

   * Make finer discriminations of events and data, at a level of detail novices don't consider.

   * Understand the tradeoffs and consequences of an option.

   * (I like this one) Recognize expertise in others and defer as many decisions as possible to that expertise.

   * Their ability to "context switch" when describing a situation to other experts vs novices vs non-particpants.

   And one that's not explicitly from the book but is contained in its wisdom:

   * Skate where the puck is going, not where it is.

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