Author: edwinsetiadi

“Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The surprising science behind why everything you know about success is (mostly) wrong” by Eric Barker

This is the 1st book I’ve ever pre-ordered. I am a regular reader of the blog Barking Up The Wrong Tree, and I once thought would it be cool if Eric Barker can make a book out of these gems? And my God he did, and it did not disappoints one bit.

Like Dale Carnegie, Eric Barker uses so many stories, book references and great quotations to make his points across. There are stories such as how a poor boy in Mexico can become a world class neuro surgeon, how a clinically crazy person can win the enduring Race Across America, or how can an illiterate person in a horrible time and place and without proper education can conquer more land in 25 years than the Romans ever did in 400 years. There are also eye opening stories of how trust is completely lost in a Moldovan culture, how crimes create street gangs (and not the other way around) for protection, and how surprisingly civilised and organised pirates were.

The author then back them up with numerous scientific findings to validate the points he is making, just like the approach of Daniel Kahneman. For example, there are scientific explanations on why some people never quit, why people have depression, and why people commit suicide. Moreover, there are explanations on why high achievers can sometimes have anxiety problem or even depression, why the number ones in high school (the valedictorians) so rarely become the number ones in real life, why beautiful people normally becomes more successful, why nice guys finish first and last (and not in the middle), and why high achievers are rarely active in their social media accounts.

Along the way we’ll learn so many amusing facts, such as how an IQ of 120 does not make much difference than 180, 2 and a half to 4 hours after we wake up is when our brains is at its sharpest, how Hedonic Adaptation explains why after a brief change everything change back to baseline (e.g. on diet and clean behaviour), how viagra started out as a medicine for angina that had a serendipitous “side effect”, that the US once had an (almost official) emperor, Emperor Norton I.

And we’ll also gain some great wisdom like “sometimes an ugly duckling can be a swan if it finds the right pond” or “life is noisy and complex, and we don’t have perfect information about others and their motives. Writing people off can be due to just lack of clarity”, or “things aren’t as scary when we have our hands on the wheels.”

All of these wealth of information are then knitted nicely to become the central theme of the book: to discover the core determinants of success, through considering both sides of the argument with extreme stories and scientific facts.

In each individual chapters the book then provide concluding analysis, such as the importance of quiting something that is not good for you to make room and time for something good for you, the scientific explanation on luck as a function of choice, the disadvantages dreaming will cause on your wellbeing, effort and reality, the best predictor of our child’s emotional well-being is whether they knew their family history, the importance of sleep and self-compassion, and many more.

The author also gives us so many practical tools for us to work out the determinant factors for succcess, on our own unique way, such as Shawn Anchor’s “twenty second rule”, Cal Newport’s “shutdown ritual”, how to skillfully and sincerely use our network, figuring out whether we’re filtered or unfiltered leader, the importance of setting a parameter in a negotiation, and the findings of Robert Epstein research on how to reduce stress, among many others.

All in all, this book is the most complete analysis for its subject, using unorthodox approach and very amusing wide range of information that makes it very fun to read. What Freakonomics did for economics, Why Do Men Have Nipples? did for medicine, and Moonwalking With Einstein did with memory, Barking Up the Wrong Tree does it brilliantly with exploring the keys for success in the real world. I couldn’t recommend it more.

“Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim civilization from the past” by Firas Alkhateeb

This is the clearest book I’ve ever read so far on the history of Islam. It is focused, it has a clear timeline, and it is very concise, with no distracting facts that are irrelevant with the narrative. It is detailed enough, but without being complicated.

As a result, we can easily follow the development of Islam since its birth in the 600s until now 1400 years later, spanning territory from Muslim Spain to the Middle East and Africa to India and South East Asia, complete with all the ideological debates, the spiritual struggles, and all the many political frictions and conquerings.

Indeed, it is a perfect book to understand the complete picture, before proceeding to other books with more in-depth topics such as the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim Heroes, the Muslim Empires, Islam and Science, the interpretations of Al Quran, the validity of Hadiths, the theological debates between the Fiqh, Islamic fundamentalism and its terrorists, and so much more.

By the time I finish reading this book I have this great sense of clarity of what Islam is about, and why the many different beliefs, sects, organisations or customs – from the liberals to the moderates to the conservatives – behave the way they do, something that no other book on Islam have managed to summarise so far.

“On Tyranny: Twenty lessons from the twentieth century” by Timothy Snyder

Every once in a while there’s a thin book appears before us that has an incredible wealth of information delivered in a concised manner, such as The Art of War, Book of Five Rings, The Richest Man in Babylon, even Who Moved My Cheese and One Minute Manager. This is one of those books.

This is a very straight forward book, written by a profesor of history from Yale who has written numerous books on the subject. It is as if Tim Snyder compiles the very essence of his books into 1 big summary.

The content of the book is exactly what the cover says it is: 20 chapters that consist of 20 lessons from the 20th century, which covers World War 1, World War 2 and the Cold War, with great emphasis placed on what Hitler and Stalin did.

These lessons then being compared with the current affairs of the 21st century, and show that they all have a striking resemblance. For example, what Hitler did with the Reichstag, Putin also did with Chechnya, and I might add George W Bush did with 9/11 and Erdogan did with the attempted coup on 2016. Whether they’re the mastermind behind it or not is besides the point, what’s important is what they did after as a reaction.

Indeed, the theories in the book can give us a much bigger understanding on the world we live in now, and all of that enlightments I can read it in less than half a day, on a busy day. Highly recommended!

George Bernard Shaw once said the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Mandela was an unreasonable man when he challenged the status quo’s Apartheid system, and he was sentenced to 27 years in jail for it. Gandhi and Sukarno both refused to accept the normal situation of their day, both respectively tried to get rid of a colonial ruler, and as a backlash both were sent to prison numerous times.

Ahok is also an unreasonable man, who tries to make many positive changes in a bleak and very corrupted environment.

The fact that he had 70% approval ratings just months ago from the work he has done, but sentenced to 2 years in prison for blasphemy today, is a true testament on how strong (and effective) the corrupted power behind the black campaigns is.

Regardless of all the possible theories or political strategies behind this move, the simple fact remains: what little faith I had in the Indonesian justice system before, it’s all gone now.

Further readings:

The Guardian view on blasphemy in Indonesia: exploiting religion for political purposes [The Guardian / Editorial]

Watchdog warns of ‘frightening’ future for Indonesia after Ahok case [Asian Correspondence]

Harus diakui, hakim bekerja dibawah tekanan gelombang massa [Kompas / Fabian Januarius Kuwado]

Ahok’s satisfied non-voters: an anatomy [New Mandala / Marcus Mietzner and Burhanuddin Muhtadi]

Anti-Ahok protests: why were Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah sidelined? [The University of Melbourne / Ahmad Syarif Syechbubakr]

A sad reality: radical Islamic groups are the new kingmakers of Indonesian politics [The New York Times / Eka Kurniawan]

Cerita Ibnu Muljam, sangat pas utk menggambarkan para oknum yg dibayar utk menangin pilkada DKI [NU Kita]

Anies Sandi menggunakan Mesjid untuk kalahkan Ahok Djarot? [BBC Indonesia]

The Fall of Ahok and Indonesia’s Future [The Diplomat / Nithin Coca]

The rise of intolerance: Indonesia has been mercifully resistant to extremism—until now [The Economist]

It’s not who won the election, but HOW they won it [Time / Yenni Kwok]

Trump’s Indonesian allies in bed with ISIS-backed militia seeking to oust elected president [The Intercept / Allan Nairn]

Selamat untuk Anies Sandi atas kemenangan nya. I sincerely wish you both the best di dalam mengemban tugas baru, demi maju nya kota kita semua.

Terima kasih Ahok, untuk 5 tahun yang singkat tapi sangat bermanfaat: 2 tahun wakil gubernur dan 3 tahun gubernur.

Terima kasih untuk berbagai infrastruktur baru yang penting kayak flyover Kampung Melayu-Tanah Abang, Flyover Tendean-Cileduk, pembangunan Simpang Semanggi, dan yang paling penting, MRT.

Terima kasih untuk puluhan ruang hijau terbuka seperti taman Jagakarsa, taman Sunter, taman Zodia, taman Tanjung 2, taman PPA, dan yang paling drastis taman waduk Ria Rio.

Terima kasih udah nutup tempat2 prostitusi, transaksi narkoba, perdagangan manusia kayak Stadium, Kalijodo dan Diskotik Milles, tapi nggak nutup Alexis (pesan titipan dari temen).

Terima kasih udah bikin Jakarta jauh berkurang banjir nya, penghuni2 ilegal di batang kali dikasih rumah tinggal susun yang manusiawi, dan rakyat menengah kebawah dibayarin semua dari sakit sampe sekolah dan di subsidi untuk kuliah.

Terima kasih untuk team oranye nya yang ngeruk kali2, melancarkan kembali gorong2, bersihin sampah yang bergunung2. Terima kasih untuk team warna-warni lainnya yang mengerjakan banyak fungsi penting masyarakat.

Terima kasih udah memajukan Masjid Jakarta Islamic Centre untuk etalase keilmuan keislaman dan wisata religi. Terima kasih udah membangun Masjid Fatahilah di Balai Kota, Masjid al-Hijrah di rusun Marunda, Masjid Al-Muhajirin di Rusun Pesakih dan yang paling penting Masjid Agung Jakarta seluas 2 hektar di Daan Mogot yang umat muslim Jakarta bisa banggakan.

Terima kasih udah memberi bantuan 15-75 juta rupiah untuk 118 musholla, mesjid dan Majelis Taklim (SK GUB Nomor 2589 Tahun 2015). Dan untuk 125 lagi mendapat bantuan 15-100 juta pada tahun depan nya (SK GUB Nomor 308 Tahun 2016).

Terima kasih udah mengumrohkan 30 orang penjaga Masjid/Mushola (Marbot) dan Makam (kuncen) pada tahun 2014, 40 orang pada tahun 2015, 50 orang pada tahun 2016 dan 100 orang pada tahun ini.

And last but not least, terima kasih udah beresin birokrasi yang ribet, udah meluruskan yang bengkok2 dan mengurangkan drastis benalu2 anggaran.

Thank you so much, we truly don’t deserve you.

Just in case you missed it: Trump gave the order to his national security team, to fire those 59 missiles at Syria’s airbase, just before meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping. Trump then sat through dinner with Xi as the strike was under way.

Now that’s cold blooded, because China is an Assad backer. Hence, is this action a provocation by trump or a leverage for Trump in his meeting with Xi?

Trump may be justified for condeming the chemical attack conducted by Assad on [rebel opposition] civilians, but he didn’t say jack shit when Israel (US proxy in the Middle East) did the same thing on the civilians in Gaza. So this “retaliation” is never about moral reasons.

So what is it about then? Whatever is going on in Trump’s head, in the first few weeks of his presidency he reduces State Dept budget, cuts foreign aid, closes borders and uses the fund allocations to expand his military. So take a wild guess on what Trump will eventually do in his presidency.

6 people are reportedly killed, the strike didn’t get through approval by congress first, not to mention that it violates international law. And with Assad’s Syrian government acting as the proxy for Russia in the Middle East, US directly striking Syria is equivalent to Russia directly striking Israel. And as you can guess, Putin is now pissed.

*Grabs popcorn

Tamasya Al Maidah: 1.3 juta “umat” dateng ke 13000 TPS di Jakarta di hari pilkada, jadi 100 orang di tiap TPS untuk “mengawal” agar orang2 “bebas memilih.” https://m.detik.com/news/berita/d-3474763/tamasya-al-maidah-jadi-digelar-diselenggarakan-di-seluruh-tps-dki

Segitu nggak pede nya kah sama kemampuan sendiri, sampe black campaign bawa-bawa agama dan suku aja udah nggak cukup, dan sekarang harus nerror?

I’m not going to be subtle, because I’m pissed, agama gua yang suci disalah gunakan untuk tujuan yang busuk: ngejatuhin lawan politik. You know exactly what I’m talking about: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/15/jakarta-election-challenger-anies-accused-of-courting-islamic-vote-amid-religious-divide

Just in case masih ada yang ragu kalo tim sukses nya Anies ada dibalik semua ini apa nggak, tau siapa sebenernya ketua panitia Tamasya Al Maidah ustadz Ansufri ID Sambo? None other than guru agama nya Prabowo http://www.gerilyapolitik.com/terbongkar-ketua-panitia-tamasya-al-maidah-adalah-guru-agama-prabowo/

Premanisme dan Islam emang beda tipis di kamus mereka. Sekarang siapa yang penista agama? How can any thinking Muslim be okay with this.

Further reference:

Ketua Panitia Tamasya Al-Maidah ustaz [sic] Ansufri ID Sambo dilaporkan ke Bawaslu DKI Jakarta https://m.detik.com/news/berita/d-3475347/panitia-tamasya-al-maidah-dilaporkan-ke-bawaslu-dki

He says that music and dancing are haram, he says girls shouldn’t be sent to school, that it is not necessarily a bad thing to beat your wife.

He says that those performing sex outside marriage should be stoned to death, homosexuals should be killed, and he advocates chopping off hands as a punishment for stealing.

He supports wiping out other Islamic sects other than Sunni, and believes that other religion shouldn’t be allowed to build their house of worship in an Islamic country. He never condemns Osama Bin Laden, in fact he says that suicide attacks advised by clerics in not a bad thing.

These controversial comments made him banned from entering UK, Canada and Malaysia. ISIS use his “wisdom” to justify slaughtering minority Islamic sects, while the suicide bomber in Dhaka last year directly quote him as an inspiration.

So why do they embrace Zakir Naik here in Indonesia, and why do the govt let this Salafi ideologue preach to thousands of people?

But yet, when reading about what he said in Bekasi over the weekend, it’s actually mild. People who loves him often said that he’s smart and can provide a light on comparative work on different religions, that his work tries to straighten up the wrong image of Islam after 9/11.

So which one is it then, is he a radical or a smart tolerant? Both examples are out there in the media in almost equal measure. Am I missing something here?

Donald Trump has just signed an executive order today, to undo Obama-era rules aimed at tackling global warming. With the US as the 2nd largest polluter in the world after China, this action means the 2 degree Celsius warming cap would likely to be breached, and would have direct negative impacts towards our planet.

2 degree Celsius rise is the benchmark set by the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in 2009, and again in Paris Climate Change Conference on early December 2015, where the participating nations pledged to keep global warming (since the Industrial Age) under 2 degree Celsius, which already almost an impossible task to begin with.

Record breaking warming keep on occurring every month in the past 2 years, which includes the strongest El Niño in decades. According to the Met Office the record breaking El Niño confirmed that the world has already “reached the halfway point towards the arbitrary “threshold” of a 2 degree Celsius increase on pre-industrial levels judged to be potentially dangerous for climate change.”

The Met Office then elaborate, “[while] scientists estimate that around 2900 gigatons (a gigaton is 1 billion metric ton) of CO2 can be emitted into the atmosphere before the 2 degree Celsius threshold is likely to be breached, industrialised nations have already about 2000 gigatons which means that the world has used about two thirds of its 2 degree Celsius “budget” of fossil fuels.”

Furthermore, in 2011 a think tank in London called Carbon Tracker Initiative conducted a research which found that the oil, gas and coal reserves that are claimed by all fossil fuel companies represent 2,795 gigatons of carbon, which is 5 times the maximum size of carbon that can be burned between 2011 and 2049 (around 565 gigatons) in order for us to keep warming below 2 degree Celsius.

The problem is, those reserves represent roughly $27 trillion in value, more than 10 times the annual GDP of the United Kingdom, and to keep warming under 2 degree Celsius approximately 80% of that reserves should remain grounded and become useless assets in these fossil fuel companies’ book, and there’s no way that they will comply without a fight. The Obama-era rules were the attempt to curb the activities to extract fossil fuels, while the executive order signed by Trump, conversely, largely based on the quest for profit from these fossil fuels.

While we’re entering the possibility of breaching the 2 degree cap, a report by the World Bank warns that as things stand, if we don’t make any changes in the way the world operates (i.e. like the fossil fuel production), by the end of this century “we’re on track [even] for a 4 degree Celsius warmer world marked by heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life threatening sea level rise.” The report also cautioned that “there is also no certainty that [our] adaptation to a 4 degree Celsius [warming] world is possible.”

As an illustration, while 2 degree Celsius warming could drown Pacific nations and the likes of Maldives, 4 degree Celsius warming would drown big cities like London and Dublin, cities that have huge river in the middle of it.

In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein pointed out that currently the temperature have specifically increased by 0.8 degree Celsius, but this is already enough to create several alarming impacts, I may add, such as the El Niño and melting ice in West Antarctica, which could raise seas by 3 metres and cause a $43 trillion calamity, as scientists predict most of the ice will be gone in 2050.

Meanwhile, even at the current levels climate change can throw 100 million people into poverty, and can wipe out 50 years of global health gains. Scientists also concluded that currently [in this 0.8 degree warming world] the earth has already exceeded 4 out of the 9 limits for hospitable life, with many species labelled “the walking dead“, including the world’s oceans that are facing the biggest coral die-off in history, and perhaps most importantly, humans.

Nevertheless, scientists have also found that there’s indeed a direct link between the increase of CO2 level and the increase in thermal radiation heating earth’s surface. Proofing that human activities really caused accelerated global warming, and thus we can also curb it. Hence the 2 degree Celsius pledge in the climate summit theoretically still possible to be obtained.

But as of today this optimism dies off in the hand of Donald Trump, without him fully understands what he has done. We can visibly see the destruction global warming have made so far with only 0.8 degree warming, and thanks to Trump the 2 degree cap would likely to be breached, taking us towards the doomsday scenario of a 4 degree warming described by the World Bank.

One day humanity might look back at this moment as the beginning of the end in our battle to save the planet. What a dangerous human being this powerful idiot is.

Note: the majority of the facts and arguments I presented here have been posted before in 100 things I learned and did in 2015 no 63-68.

I hesitated for 2 days to post this pic, because I’m not that close with her, and the only 1 time I met her after graduating high school was 6 years ago, on a less-than-an-hour lunch.

But yet I’m pretty bumped out that she’s gone, without knowing why. And then I realise something just now.

Everyone have 24 hours a day, from jobless and homeless people to presidents and billionaires. We don’t have time but we make time, time to do what’s required, and time left to do what’s important for us. And as we grow older, our priorities change and grow with us. Some become busy with their small family, some travel the world, some got caught up at work, and most of us got new friends and colleagues along the way.

The death of an old friend is a cruel reminder, of the time we have half-wasted being busy doing these grown up stuff.

And now I actually regret not making more time to spend with someone I never really knew.

R.I.P. Agnes.