Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom.In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power, of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility."An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real."-- Brain/Mind Bulletin

    The term “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by issues of aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science, creating a new understanding of energy use and metabolism: West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal’s circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient—and lives 25% longer. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism's body. West's work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work's applicability to cities. Cities, too, are constellations of networks and laws of scalability relate with eerie precision to them. For every doubling in a city's size, the city needs 15% less road, electrical wire, and gas stations to support the same population. More amazingly, for every doubling in size, cities produce 15% more patents and more wealth, as well as 15% more crime and disease. This broad pattern lays the groundwork for a new science of cities. Recently, West has applied his revolutionary work on cities and biological life to the business world. This investigation has led to powerful insights into why some companies thrive while others fail. The implications of these discoveries are far-reaching, and are just beginning to be explored. Scale is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways. Through the brilliant mind of Geoffrey West, we can envision how cities, companies and biological life alike are dancing to the same simple, powerful tune, however diverse and unrelated they are to each other.From the Hardcover edition.

    In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a soldier mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe--and shoot down those we don't.But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a scout mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what's actually true.In The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world--which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.

    Benefit from 20 years of investing and trading experience Limit your chances of trading ruin by learning from someone with more than 20 years in the stock market and who used these very strategies to go from zero to multiple six figures in his investment accounts. Steve will teach you how to start from the ground up and build a sizeable account, even if you're starting from zero. It's never too late to start investing in your future! Not sure where to start? Maybe you aren't sure how the stock market works, or if you should fully invest in your company's 401K, and what's a ROTH, anyway?? Steve will answer this and so much more in this easy to understand and implement guide to investing. A strong investing foundation This book will give you a strong foundation to begin your investing journey. Easy to understand explanations of complex topics Detailed, real life examples Learn what to go all in on, and what to avoid like the plague Buy now and build your future financial security This book is a must read for anyone wanting to secure their future. If you're fifty or younger, Social Security is not a 'sure thing'. Make your own wealth and secure your own retirement by implementing the steps in this book.You can find Our eCourses at New Trader U, and you can follow Steve on Twitter: @sjosephburns

    At the age of twenty-two, he was a hero—the recipient of the Navy Cross, the second-highest honor a U.S. Marine can receive, for extraordinary heroism under fire in the Iraq War. Hard Corps tells the story of his incredible transformation and of his experiences on the front lines of the War on Terror.Writing with passion and candor, Martinez brings us back to his gang days, detailing experiences that make him “shudder in shame” to remember. And he recalls the moment that changed everything for him, when he spotted a barrel-chested U.S. Marine Corps recruiter at his high school. Immediately, he saw an opportunity to alter the course of his aimless life. Martinez takes us with him through the grueling ordeal of Marine boot camp and the even-more-punishing training at the School of Infantry to show just how warriors are made. He reveals how he and his fellow grunts prepared tirelessly for battle, seeing combat not as a burden but as a privilege, the ultimate baptism by fire.For Martinez, that baptism came in Iraq. In Hard Corps, he unfolds a warrior’s tale as riveting, harrowing, and immediate as any ever written. He takes us onto the narrow, treacherous streets of Baghdad, where enemy fire rains down from all directions; alongside his Marine squad as they patrol through the most dangerous war zone imaginable; and into a brutal terrorist ambush that calls upon reserves of ferocity and courage none of the Marines could ever be certain they possessed and that proves the value of every moment of their torturous training. Martinez also recounts stunning reminders of why we fight: the Iraqi man he met whose tongue had been chopped off for speaking out against Saddam Hussein’s regime, the ghastly evidence of human experimentation that Martinez’s squad discovered at an abandoned Iraqi military barracks, and the horrifying mass graves the Marines unearthed in the Iraqi desert.Hard Corps gives us a visceral sense of what it means to know that you are ready to die for your brother Marines and that they would do the same for you. It tells us how it feels when words like duty, honor, and country are not an empty slogan. And, ultimately, it captures the traditions and ooh-rah spirit of the U.S. Marine Corps and the valor of all the Marines, sailors, soldiers,From the Hardcover edition.

    Mandelbrot, one of the century's most influential mathematicians, is world-famous for making mathematical sense of a fact everybody knows but that geometers from Euclid on down had never assimilated: Clouds are not round, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not smooth. To these classic lines we can now add another example: Markets are not the safe bet your broker may claim. In his first book for a general audience, Mandelbrot, with co-author Richard L. Hudson, shows how the dominant way of thinking about the behavior of markets-a set of mathematical assumptions a century old and still learned by every MBA and financier in the world-simply does not work. As he did for the physical world in his classic The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandelbrot here uses fractal geometry to propose a new, more accurate way of describing market behavior. The complex gyrations of IBM's stock price and the dollar-euro exchange rate can now be reduced to straightforward formulae that yield a far better model of how risky they are. With his fractal tools, Mandelbrot has gotten to the bottom of how financial markets really work, and in doing so, he describes the volatile, dangerous (and strangely beautiful) properties that financial experts have never before accounted for. The result is no less than the foundation for a new science of finance.

    Real rationality, of the sort studied by psychologists, social scientists, and mathematicians. The kind of rationality where you make good decisions, even when it's hard; where you reason well, even in the face of massive uncertainty; where you recognize and make full use of your fuzzy intuitions and emotions, rather than trying to discard them. In "Rationality: From AI to Zombies," Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes. These eye-opening accounts of how the mind works (and how, all too often, it doesn't!) are then put to the test through some genuinely difficult puzzles: computer scientists' debates about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), physicists' debates about the relationship between the quantum and classical worlds, philosophers' debates about the metaphysics of zombies and the nature of morality, and many more. In the process, "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" delves into the human significance of correct reasoning more deeply than you'll find in any conventional textbook on cognitive science or philosophy of mind. A decision theorist and researcher at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Yudkowsky published earlier drafts of his writings to the websites Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong. "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" compiles six volumes of Yudkowsky's essays into a single electronic tome. Collectively, these sequences of linked essays serve as a rich and lively introduction to the science—and the art—of human rationality.

    We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won’t provide that; experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out. History doesn’t repeat itself and even genetics won’t tell you everything you want to know. Ineradicable uncertainty is now a fact of life. In complex environments, efficiency is a hazard not a help; being robust is the better, safer option. Drawing on a wide array of people and places, Margaret Heffernan looks at long-term projects developed over generations that could never have been planned the way that they have been run. Experiments, led by individuals and nations, discover new possibilities and options. Radical exercises in forging new futures with wildly diverse participants allow everyone to create outcomes together that none could do alone. Existential crises reveal the vital social component in resilience. Death is certain, but how we approach it impacts the future of those we leave behind. And preparedness – doing everything today that you might need for tomorrow – provides the antidote to passivity and prediction. Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this refreshing book challenges us to resist the false promises of technology and efficiency and instead to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.

    It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.Smil takes readers from bacterial invasions through animal metabolisms to megacities and the global economy. He begins with organisms whose mature sizes range from microscopic to enormous, looking at disease-causing microbes, the cultivation of staple crops, and human growth from infancy to adulthood. He examines the growth of energy conversions and man-made objects that enable economic activities—developments that have been essential to civilization. Finally, he looks at growth in complex systems, beginning with the growth of human populations and proceeding to the growth of cities. He considers the challenges of tracing the growth of empires and civilizations, explaining that we can chart the growth of organisms across individual and evolutionary time, but that the progress of societies and economies, not so linear, encompasses both decline and renewal. The trajectory of modern civilization, driven by competing imperatives of material growth and biospheric limits, Smil tells us, remains uncertain.

    His abrupt style and zero-tolerance policy on nonsense have become the highlights of every series. But what is he like in real business?Single-Minded reveals the story of Claude's varied career and the turbulent years that shaped him. From being told at school that he would never amount to anything to his current status as a boardroom heavyweight both on-screen and off it, success has never come easy. Claude's complex, fascinating work has taken him into many different industries and countries, encompassing retail start-ups; knife-edge company rescue missions; the bruising rough-and-tumble of Premier League football; facing down French trade unions; taking on Texan oil barons in multi-million-dollar deals; and, in the private sphere, conquering life-threatening illness.Told with characteristic candour and disarming modesty, Single-Minded is an unflinching account of a remarkable career in the spotlight.

    *U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Lauded by Fortune 500 and international business leaders around the world, the Executive Edition takes the best elements of networkers from a wide array of businesses and industries, is combined with 40 years of the authors' professional networking experience from a hiring perspective, and culminates in a concise, efficient, and highly productive networking model. Chock full of real-world scenarios, short stories, meeting examples, and dozens of tips and observations from hiring authorities and recruiting experts, The 20-Minute Networking Meeting - Executive Edition shares the wisdom of senior executives who have been in transition (looking for work), and the perspectives of those who are most asked to network. Constructed to clarify and simplify networking for job-search, the Executive Edition also contains fully written networking stories that demonstrate the entire 20MNM model in action, ending with a complete set of "readiness worksheets" that guide the reader through actual networking preparation. An end-to-end lesson on job search networking, The 20-Minute Networking Meeting - Executive Edition is founded on the premises of gratitude, positivity, and reciprocity, and has found great success in the hands of executives, career coaches, outplacement firms, college graduates, and sales professionals around the globe.Also from Career Innovations Press:The 20-Minute Networking Meeting - Graduate EditionandThe 20-Minute Networking Meeting - Professional Edition

    Persuasively written by author, investment strategist, and geopolitical analyst Marko Papic, the book applies a novel framework for making sense of the cacophony of geopolitical risks with the eye towards generating investment-relevant insights.Geopolitical Alpha posits that investors should ignore the media-hyped narratives, insights from smoke-filled rooms, and most of their political consultants and, instead, focus exclusively on the measurable, material constraints facing policymakers. In the tug-of-war between policymaker preferences and their constraints, the latter always win out in the end. Papic uses a wealth of examples from the past decade to illustrate how one can use his constraint-framework to generate Geopolitical Alpha. In the process, the book discusses:What paradigm shifts will drive investment returns over the next decade Why investment and corporate professionals can no longer treat geopolitics as an exogenous risk How to ignore the media and focus on what drives market narratives that generate returns Perfect for investors, C-suite executives, and investment professionals, Geopolitical Alpha belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the intersection of geopolitics, economics, and finance.

    And just as important as it is to choose the right major, choose the right career, and choose the right spouse, no consideration is given as to choosing THE RIGHT PLACE to live in this vast and great country. And where you live arguably determines much more in your life. Who you meet. Your job opportunities. Your career success. Who you fall in love with. Even your health and happiness. But every year millions of Americans let their current familiar environment determine where they live, thus condemning them to mediocre opportunities, mediocre hobbies, mediocre people, and a mediocre life. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU! Become a "Reconnaissance Man" instead!"Reconnaissance Man" is the young (and old) person's guide to the United States. It explains how to explore this great and vast country to find out where you should go to school, where you will make the most money, where you will be happiest, and ultimately where you belong. Don't live in frozen wastelands like Minnesota. Don't live in socialist hell holes like California or New York. Find your American utopia NOW and not when you're 65, about to retire and about to die. Life's too short to be living in Ohio, so become the classical American "Reconnaissance Man" today! Buy and read "Reconnaissance Man!"

    They want more. But no matter what they do, those sales remain elusive. Worse, the publishing environment is getting harder every year, crushing their dreams day by day.But somehow, some authors succeed. How do they do it? Is there a secret? Is it blind luck? Do they all have teams of ghostwriters behind them churning out novels while one person claims the glory?It’s none of those things. It’s a combination of hard work and correct knowledge.This book gives you that knowledge. You’ll learn things like: How professional marketers write blurbs How to decode Amazon webpages for clues to buyer behavior Why great books sink into oblivion and ordinary books sell How to go beyond accepted practice and find best practice This book gives you the knowledge to sell, and to sell at a high scale. Much of it will surprise you, even if you’re a veteran of indie publishing.You’ll never look at publishing the same way again. Are you ready to unleash your author career?

    As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper's, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America's culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us--political, social, religious--Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we're doomed to be divided, but because the people involved simply aren't thinking.Most of us don't want to think, Jacobs writes. Thinking is trouble. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits, and it can complicate our relationships with like-minded friends. Finally, thinking is slow, and that's a problem when our habits of consuming information (mostly online) leave us lost in the spin cycle of social media, partisan bickering, and confirmation bias.In this smart, endlessly entertaining book, Jacobs diagnoses the many forces that act on us to prevent thinking--forces that have only worsened in the age of Twitter, "alternative facts," and information overload--and he also dispels the many myths we hold about what it means to think well. (For example: It's impossible to "think for yourself.")Drawing on sources as far-flung as novelist Marilynne Robinson, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, and Christian theologian C.S. Lewis, Jacobs digs into the nuts and bolts of the cognitive process, offering hope that each of us can reclaim our mental lives from the impediments that plague us all. Because if we can learn to think together, maybe we can learn to live together, too.