After many false starts over the years, I started from scratch and finished a first draft detailing what I’ve learned over the years almost 3 years ago. I let it sit for a long time, but after picking it up again about 18 months ago, I’ve made it through a full reorganization and revision and have something that more resembles a book.
Along the way there were a few long detours into researching probability (focusing on Jaynes’ big book and) Polya’s two part treatise on plausible reasoning) and the neuroscience of perception and valence. So it’s about 75,000 words. A sizable book, but one that’s not really commercially viable in today’s competitive publishing world.
Why would it be tough to get published? Two reasons really. One is that I’m not known in academia, philosophy or as a public intellectual. This little corner of the web is visited occasionally and I’ve never built an audience eager to spend a ton of money on a book. Given the investment a publisher makes in preparing for print and distribution, it’s not a reasonable business proposition. Second, the subject of decision making is a very crowded area in the publishing space. For the most part, Economists have flooded the zone with their discussions of “irrationality” and “bias”. So books on choice and rationality abound, even if they don’t really help us much since most of our decisions are made outside of awareness and can’t be adjusted to avoid our built in biases.
It’s good to have this big project behind me and begin to think about next steps. As I’ve written recently, I’m look at options and but I think there’ll be more effort here as part of the path forward.
