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Good, but irritating at times. Compelling enough to flow and be thought-provoking despite being inconsistent and incomplete in its conceptual techno-future (replete with annoying jargon). Also some rather grating characters; didn't feel particularly attached to most of the principal actors nor their relationship struggles. Not sure if I like the author's writing style (particularly idiomatically) based on this book.

Decent as a contemporary action thriller with a terrorist plot but ultimately disappointing. Rather mediocre and easy-reading for Stephenson, lacking the depth and thoughtful themes that helped set apart his early techno thrillers like Snowcrash or Diamond Age. The "techno" part of this techno-thriller is barely more than a gimmick, dropping away to an afterthought as the story devolves into long action sequences.

Slowly returning to the mostly unexplained T'rain plot. Have to say I don't think Stephenson has the best understanding of MMO games though. Mostly it's fine, but occasionally he drops in things that strike me as far too complex, either in the game's underlying technology or in online social organization (e.g. a 3000 strong army of players), relative to the contemporary setting (squaring off against WoW).

Part 2 starts a little more than halfway through

Still in action-suspense mode storytelling

Very long continuous focus on Xiamen scenario and the characters there, jumping around their concurrent timelines spanning only 3 days in plot time. Hasn't returned to Richard or T'rain game themes since the lengthy action scenes began.

Built up slowly, but getting going now. Themes are emerging, not just character exposition and plot progression

Chapter 9 discusses Flynn Effect (rising IQs)

Section on the quantified self

Zaigarnik (sp?) effect explains memory and unfinished tasks

Inspiring and full of hope despite recounting nothing but instance after instance of (now) deplorable cruelty and wastefully destructive conflict. An analytical book to pierce the nebulous moralistic clouds of opinion and give root to an optimism not grounded in faith but fact.

Re misplaced nostalgia, reminds me of Midnight in Paris

The five developments that Pinker singles out as most important in his conclusion are 1)The Leviathan 2) Gentle Commerce 3) Feminization 4) The Expanding Circle (Empathy) 5) The Escalator of Reason

The Escalator of Reason takes you up to the View from Nowhere

Final chapter is going through a game theory Pacifist's Game to illustrate how each of five developments have made the world more peaceful.

Reason is the better archangel of our nature, allowing us to make judicious use of the other angels of empathy, self-control, and moral systems. "Reason is up to these demands because it is an open-ended combinatorial system, an engine for generating an unlimited number of new ideas."

Intelligence yields Classical Liberalism. "Smarter people are more liberal." "...the causal arrow goes from intelligence to classical liberalism."

Abstract reasoning parallels moral reasoning for reasons related to perspective-taking, and thus the scientific thinking that has spurred increase in intelligence has concurrently spurred expansion of morality.

People are getting signifanctly smarter over a matter of decades in abstract reasoning skills (The Flynn Effect), leading to average IQs rising about 3 points per decade since at least 1950. Critically the increase in abstract reasoning ability is environmentally induced because of paradigms like scientific thinking.

Each of the 4 Relational Models that underlie morality comes with a reasoning style, can be matched to a mathematical scale and ;cognitive intuitions. Communality is all-or-none (nominal scale); intuitive bio. Authority is linear dominance hierarchy (ordinal); intuitive physics. Eq Matching is comparison w/out proportioning (interval); concrete reckoning. Ratio-Legal is proportional; non-intuitive symbolic math.