Some good stuff, but the writing and editing left something to be desired. Not a long book, but could have been half the size and still conveyed the same info - especially if you got rid of the repetitive charts. ( )

Really informative look at the what helps members of society act rationally and allows society to function. Schneier explains many of the commons models of trust that exist at different layers of society and provides examples of each. I would have preferred to have the examples be a little more in depth and most of them were covered at a very high level. I guess that would make this a good jumping off point to other books which go in depth on any of the failures mentioned in the book. Overall I really enjoyed the book it was a very easy read and I recommend it. ( )

I'm a fan of Bruce Schneier, I've followed his blog for years, and I enjoy his moderate and practical approach to various security issues. So when he offered signed copies of his latest book at a discounted price in exchange for a review, I jumped at the opportunity.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this book. Perhaps because I'm already familiar, and agree, with many of his ideas, I didn't find too many surprising ideas here. Nonetheless, Schneier does a great job of laying out a broad, fairly consistent framework for looking at how people cooperate and, if the title is meant to indicate a theme, "defect" from various forms of pressure meant to induce that cooperation.

From a wide-angle view, the only book-wide criticism I have is with terminology. For example, Schneier uses the word "defect" (and its variants) to indicate someone who goes against a particular type of pressure meant to induce cooperation. In this taxonomy, both airplane hijackers and people who hid their Jewish neighbors from Nazi soldiers are considered "defectors." I don't think it's a major detraction from the ideas he presents, but in a few cases it requires a moment to suss out how the actor is defecting. Schneier even makes a few comments about the oddity of the terminology, such as in Chapter 14 where he writes, "The police...implement societal pressures against a broad array of competing norms. (Okay, I admit it. That's an odd way to describe arresting people who commit crimes against people and propety.)" That said, Schneier is certainly no [a:James Carse|54828|James P. Carse|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66-e07624dc012f2cce49c7d9aa6500c6c0.jpg], whose propensity to redefine terms is distracting at best.

Actually, not to contradict the paragraph above, where I think Schneier excels is in his ability to simplify concepts and demonstrate their applicability without stripping away too much of their complexity. He shows common links across a broad range of topics — from interpersonal interactions to business transactions to governmental regulation to the spread of religious ideas. He examines each of these by look at each idea from a host of angles, relying on everything from the evolution, psychology, economics, game theory and, of course, his own background as a security expert.

It's relatively quick read (I read it in three sittings), and certainly worth taking the time for anyone who spends any time thinking critically about how and why people choose whether to cooperate. ( )

The chapters of this book progresses nicely through various levels of organizational complexity and the various pressures that cause people to either cooperate or defect. From the way that he builds his thesis, it shows that his background in security gives him a perspective that most of us have not through through to the extent detailed in this book.

Some statements that caught my interest:

The human brain has a neocortex that four times the size of its nearest evolutionary relative. 80% of our brain is neocortex, compared to 50% in our nearest existing relative and 10% to 40% in non-primate mammals. (Page 23)

The main human group size is 150. This is the Dunbar number: the number of people with whom we can have explicit and personal encounters, who's history we can remember, and with whom we can experience some level of intimacy. (Page 24)

"Actually, Dunbar proposed several natural human group sizes that increased by a factor of approximately 3 ... The smallest, 3 to 5 is a clique, the number of people from whom you would seek help in times of severe emotional distress the 12 to 20 person group is the sympathy group: people with whom you have a particularly close relationship. After that, 30 to 50 is the typical size of hunter gatherer overnight camps, generally drawn from a single pool of 150 people. The 500-person group is the megaband, and the 1500 person group is the tribe;" (Page 46)

tragedy of the commons, and was first described by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1968. (Page 55)

What I got out of this book:

The larger the group size, the more pressures are needed to encourage conformity (trust) and discourage defection (lying, cheating,...).
Moral pressure works at the personal, local and small levels.
Reputational pressure works at the local, small, and medium levels.
Institutional pressure works at the large to very large levels.
Security pressure works from local through very large levels.
But All of these are more or less weak at the global level.

There will always be defectors. We can't eliminate them totally, only get them to a tolerable level. Getting the pressures right is something that societies are continually adjusting.
( )

Sort of interesting book, but with some significant problems. First of all the book is a very academic study of trust in relationship to society. And while the author attempts to make it occasionally entertaining, it mostly ends up as dry as your average text book. Second, the author attempts to make a case for rational "goodness" without really making his case. Finally and maybe most troubling, there is nothing actionable in this book. This book makes a case that trust is both necessary and pretty much automatic in any sort of functional society. Yeah for us and yeah for trust, but maybe just write a short paper the next time. ( )