Journal

The world that emerges from these considerations is a rarefied one. A world in which, rather than independent entities with definite properties, there are entities that have properties and characteristics only with regard to others, and only when they interact. A stone does not have a position in itself: it only has a position in relation to another stone with which it collides. The sky does not in itself have any color: it has color with respect to my eyes when they look at it. A star does not shine in the sky as an autonomous entity: it is a node in the network of interactions that forms the galaxy in which it resides.

What a strange book! I thought it started strong, giving a broad historical overview of quantum mechanics and the state of quanta in present times. This part—the first half—was fine. It was light on detail, but this was expected of a popular science book meant to sell.

The second half got a little too philosophical for me. Perhaps this was mostly an expectations-setting problem—I just wasn’t ready for the transition and wanted to learn more about the theory!

Like an ostrich with its head in the sand, we humans have repeatedly assumed that all we could see was all that existed, hubristically imagining ourselves at the center of everything.

This book was a good broad intro to various modern cosmological ideas mixed with the author’s personal experiences and philosophical takes. For a broad overview, the book was excellent.

The middle section was most compelling. In this section, the author described four types of parallel universes which could possibly exist based upon what we currently know. These are thought-provoking possibilities and fun to imagine. These four types are described below:

• Type 1 — In an infinite space, there are many very similar copies of us somewhere, very far away. Small variations in state lead to a wide variety of different results in these other spaces.
• Type 2 — Our inflation bubble is just one of many. In other inflation bubbles some fundamental constants might be slightly or vastly different than in ours. Some are habitable. Some are not.
• Type 3 — This one is related to quantum mechanics and waveform collapse. Every time a quantum decision is determined, the universe splits. What appears to us as quantum randomness is one branch on that path.
• Type 4 — Our reality is a mathematical structure, one of many. Some are habitable, some are not. I truly like the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that Tegmark presents and defends as a possibility as part of this.

As an aside, one of my favorite out-of-context quotes from the book is below—

To the bird, reality is the geometry of the pasta.

Am I Japanese? Or am I American? This became the defining question I ruminated over daily. From my earliest memories, I had been both. I grew up playing hopscotch and jacks, learning kendo and ikebana. I studied U.S. history at school and Japanese on Saturday. For breakfast I ate scrambled eggs and mochi. Dinner could include fried chicken and sushi. I always felt that I was Japanese-American and I belonged in America, that I was part of the group. Before December 7, 1941, it never occurred to me that I was not.

Looking Like the Enemy is a meaningful historical memoir outlining the author’s experience during the interment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

It’s a poignant story—and a valuable read. It’s important to remember the injustices that this group faced and the impact it had on the rest of their lives. I was amazed at how strong and stoic Mary’s family was during these years, I can only imagine how tough it was.

To be honest, I am not a memoir person and that is what holds me back from rating this higher. But for anyone who has a preference for first-person storytelling and wishes to learn more about how the US treated its Japanese population during WWII, I highly recommend this book.

If you act on the assumption that things can change, well, maybe they will. Okay, the only rational choice, given those alternatives, is to forget the pessimism.

Three stars for the Q&A format which was ultimately tedious; four or more stars for the ideas contained within.

Overall the word for this book is breadth. The four-hundred page book covers almost as many distinct topics as there are pages. As such, this book is a great introduction to many of these ideas and valuable as a thought-provoking starting place.

The Q&A format gets tedious because of the repetitious structure and rapid rate of new topics within the book. Ultimately, no matter how well edited the book is, the conversational nature leads to a scatter-brained result.

I ended up skimming much of the last 30% of the book due to the tedium. In fact, I suspect a strategy of seeking out small bits of content within—and pertaining to subjects one cares about—is a way to enjoy this book a bit more. I will consider revisiting it in this way over the years.

I have my money on vacuum decay, personally.

Overall, this was a fun read—oscillating between things I couldn’t hope to understand and fun quips that bring the whole book back down to earth.

The book rambled a bit; it felt a bit like how a professor rambles between one subject and the next. Don’t get me wrong, this is a positive in my opinion.

Learning about cosmology really helps to put everything in perspective. It’s good to remind oneself that nothing really matters in the end. We’re insignificant in the vastness of the universe!