YoungForest's blog

Recommended by Charlie Munger in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Behavior is far from being controlled by our biological characteristics; our biological characteristics are often controlled by our behavior. It is hard for me to believe this is only because we unconsciously gave them some “social norms”.

Douban link: A Little History of the World It really is worthy of being a children’s book. Although my historical knowledge reserve is fairly decent, my English is only average. Even so, I was still able to read the English edition smoothly. The original should be in German. I am not sure whether t

Douban link The prelude to a golden age is decline, and its ending is also decline Imperial power is like a malignant tumor, one of the most expansionary things in the world. It does not allow independent people or independent affairs to exist. The exclusive nature of autocratic power drives it to

Douban link A few days ago I read The Hungry Golden Age: The Gains and Losses of the Qianlong Era and found it extremely satisfying. It reminded me that I still had The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty: A Restudy of the Opium War, which I downloaded to my Kindle last year. So I naturally continued

Douban link I had previously read Antifragile and was amazed; it absolutely lived up to its reputation. But this final book in the Incerto series, Skin in the Game, feels less full of new knowledge and less surprising. Many times I read it in a muddled state. Perhaps the author had exhausted his ta

Douban link to the Taiwan translation Hard money: a high stock-to-flow ratio. Bitcoin satisfies this extremely well, and is instead a deflationary currency. Acceptance / liquidity. The failure of the Hunt brothers’ silver speculation in the late 1970s has been repeatedly mentioned in several book

Douban link to the Taiwan translation When it first came out, I tried reading the original English edition. I found it too hard. As a scientist, Fei-Fei Li’s diction and sentence structures are too ornate and complex. Perhaps because she is a 1.5-generation immigrant with painful memories of langua

Reposted from my blog Previous year-end reviews: * 2024 Year-End Review * 2023 Year-End Review * 2022 Year-End Review * 2021 Year-End Review * 2020 Year-End Review * 2019 Year-End Review * 2019 Mid-Year Review (Birthday Thoughts) * 2018 Year-End Review * 2017 New Year Outlook Milestone

Be sure to read the English edition or the Taiwanese translation; those who know, know. Although China is a classic case of a historically failed state and of a country where extractive institutions produced short-lived growth, the book actually does not spend that much space on it. But as a Chinese

The first 30% is especially interesting. Because it is ancient, full of stories and legend, and has relatively few figures, the economics is also easy for modern people to understand. After entering the post-Keynesian era, it becomes much harder. There are many figures, many schools, and many disagr