Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive

author: Bruce Schneier
name: Wayne
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/18
date added: 2020/08/22
shelves: non-fiction-computer
review:
How much security do you need to be safe? To keep your data safe? What is an acceptable cost or response? 'Liars and Outliers' by Bruce Schneier is an excellent book on the subject of security that approaches it from a different angle than most. While many books discuss the subject from a technical systems approach, this one uses a sociological and philosophical approach.

The book begins with a discussion of trust and the systems needed to underlie it. We need to trust many things in a given day: cars, prescription drugs, people we buy lunch from, etc. The book then works it's way into a game theory model called The Prisoner's Dilemma in which the concepts of societal pressure and defecting are introduced. Further game theory models are introduced to reinforce the subject, and many models are presented showing how societal pressures can differ for individuals, groups, and countries based on different scenarios like cheating on taxes or distributing harmful. Different societal pressures work for differing group sizes, and proper reactions and typical overreactions are discussed.

A very interesting book from a learned and brilliant writer on the subject. I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come.



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