Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers was the most profound book experience I have had in 50 years' reading.
In the final chapter, it took me a half hour to read each page, because it was tying together threads from the whole rest of the book. Each sentence called out themes from widely separated chapters.
I had always wondered how systems as elaborate as the human body could work at all. This book made it clear that, for any vital process, you have at least three and often more separate systems for each function, and they all suppress one another, so that if one is interrupted, it stops suppressing the others and they step up. But, each system is also doing more than one thing, so you never get just one effect. It's a massive Rube-Goldberg / Heath-Robinson contraption tuned over million of years for a sort of statistical robustness, at the extreme expense to simplicity.
To be an endocrinologist, you need to be several times smarter and more careful and diligent than any other medical specialty.
Another endocrinologist worthy of close attention is Robert Lustig. He has excellent lectures on youtube that, if you pay the close attention he deserves, will lead you to make radical changes in your daily habits.
Nobody is really responsible for their behavior, their success or their misfortune.
This changes quite a lot about justice. There is no such thing as a just punishment. Criminals should be viewed more like we view a broken car. If someone can't be "fixed", then it is reasonable to seperate them from society. But it should be done as humanely as possible. They are not "evil".
Similarly, anyone that becomes successful should be viewed the same as a lottery winner: Just lucky. Bacause money has marginal utility for individual, redistribution of wealth becomes an optimizing game to maximize the average well beeing.
There is a good Two Minute Papers that explores somthing like that:
In the final chapter, it took me a half hour to read each page, because it was tying together threads from the whole rest of the book. Each sentence called out themes from widely separated chapters.
I had always wondered how systems as elaborate as the human body could work at all. This book made it clear that, for any vital process, you have at least three and often more separate systems for each function, and they all suppress one another, so that if one is interrupted, it stops suppressing the others and they step up. But, each system is also doing more than one thing, so you never get just one effect. It's a massive Rube-Goldberg / Heath-Robinson contraption tuned over million of years for a sort of statistical robustness, at the extreme expense to simplicity.
To be an endocrinologist, you need to be several times smarter and more careful and diligent than any other medical specialty.
Another endocrinologist worthy of close attention is Robert Lustig. He has excellent lectures on youtube that, if you pay the close attention he deserves, will lead you to make radical changes in your daily habits.