Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive - Liars and Outliers

I recently had the opportunity to a get a signed copy Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers from a Special Offer on his blog.

I have been reading his blog for a while but had never shelled out the cash to buy one of his books. I really enjoy his writing style, everything he says is backed up by references, of the 368 pages in the book 250 are the main content and the other 118 are Notes, References and Index.

This book is a thoroughly entertaining read and has made me rethink the way I look at society and security. In the book it says "Prisoner's Dilemmas are common, and once you're primed to notice them, you'll start seeing them everywhere"[1]. I think the same goes for almost all the social dilemmas in this book. I now see a new way of looking at problems and solutions.

Based on my experience from this book I am now going to go an buy other Schneier titles.

Would I recommend this to a friend? I already have, in fact I've recommended it to friends, family, colleagues and members of my local Linux User Group. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in security, psychology, or just expanding your mind and learning something new.
[1] Page 54.

This book draws from a wide range of academic disciplines to explain the mechanisms of trust and how it scales from small, intimate groups to complex global societies. Bruce Schneier does an excellent job explaining how moral, reputational, and institutional pressures combine with security systems to allow trust to function, and how some degree of defection from societal norms is both necessary and sometimes desirable.

Given the subject matter, I expected the book to be somewhat dry. However, I was pleasantly surprised that it was a very engaging and pleasant book to read. Through his use of clear explanations and plenty of real-word examples, Schneier distills complex topics and makes them easy to digest. That's not to say that the book lacks substance; almost one third of the book is devoted to notes and references. Anyone wanting to study any of the covered topics in more detail will find plenty of resources to do so.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to achieve a greater understanding of how trust works (and sometimes fails) in the world today.

"Liars and Outliers" continues Mr. Schneier's path from the deeply technical content of "Applied Cryptography" to the higher levels of "Secrets and Lies" and "Beyond Fear". While my non-technical mother may have a hard time understanding the content of his earlier books, she'll have no issues in "Liars."

In Liars, Mr. Schneier covers trust systems throughout history from personal trust between two individuals to institutionalized trusts that allow modern businesses to operate. He melds psychology, sociology and security near seamlessly, and uses various real-world cases to ensure the reader understands his intentions. He can get verbose on certain topics, but this ensures that readers who are unfamiliar with his previous books understand the point he's trying to make.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who works with people on a large scale or designs large scale systems. It'll provide a perspective on the underlying trust mechanisms required for society to function as well as a deeper understanding on basic human intentions regarding those who may not follow a societal norm.

I have never reviewed a book before but here's my attempt:

I really didn't quite understand what I was supposed to take from the book after reading the title. Generally, I would think liars as 'bad' people and outliers to be some statistical anomaly. However, after reading the book, I understand that
the liars and outliers referred to the people who 'defect' from societal norms for various reasons. The reasons can range from competing interests that an individual must satisfy to plain self-interest (greed). In addition, in order to prevent the defection (which makes the defector an outlier i guessed), there are multiple systems which try to make defection less appealing. The book goes through all these ideas and more in greater detail. I don't often read books, but I found this book to be a very interesting read. I found the various real-world examples throughout the book to be extremely helpful in understanding the ideas presented.

The book effectively theorizes that almost all real life activities are an expression of "trust" or "security". Adam Smith would claim all real life activities as an effort to further economic interest. Richard Dawkins would make them an evolution thing. Some pope might believe in the religious meanings and some Plato in moral. All these might be valid even if narrow perspectives from particular vantage points, except that trust/security is exceptionally uninteresting, ridiculously narrow and often too obvious.

For most part, the book ends up sub-dividing trust/security features into numerous categories. At every point, dozens of real life interactions are used to make mostly obvious points about these newly defined categories. Nothing wrong with all this, except that the purpose of any frame-work is never made clear. As a result, a lot appear like creation of ever more explanations for fairly straightforward arguments, and without any real purpose.

There are good discussions when the author imports the concepts from the game theory and uses them to explain externalities, tragedies of common and similar real life dilemmas. While all these are also given the "trust" twist and perspectives, they are separate social issues and add to one's learning.

As a long-time reader of Schneier's Crypto-Gram newsletter I could hardly wait to get my hands on this book. For two hundred and forty pages however, my reaction could be summed up as "Okay, that's plain enough but so what?" After that much prose that reads like a Master's dissertation, I was relieved that he finally cut to the chase in the final four pages.

While there's really no use complaining about what might have been, if Schneier had started the book with its ultimate chapter and developed a thesis from there, incorporating perhaps half of the supporting data he used and expanding on the the idea to what might be, indeed, what /must/ be, it would have been truly great. As it stands, there is a painful amount of meticulously developed, yet painfully obvious, data troweled on to support a thesis that deserved better.

If you're not already familiar with issues surrounding individual privacy, government intrusiveness, and games theory, I suppose this stands to be an excellent primmer. If the reader is already even peripherally familiar with the subject, I'd suggest having your library order the dead-tree version and, when it arrives, take it to the nearest vacant carrel and carefully read the final chapter. That way you'll take away the meat of the book without laying out all the extra money and, best of all, it'll be there for dozens of others to benefit from.

Schneier demonstrates how society needs trust to function, but trust needs support systems to help it scale to fit our modern society. He explains how that all works, how it can be improved, and more. I have written a much longer review at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/143661/writing/reviews/liars-and-outliers.html.

In short, I would recommend the book to everyone.

This is one of Bruce Schneier's books that is NOT about information security. It went back up a few levels about how humans interact, why we trust or how we form trust, and how our assumptions of who to trust can fail us if we don't conscientiously analyze these assumptions.

In Liars and Outliers, Schneier lays out a framework for understanding trust and the various pressures that work to enable it. The book is an overview of the roles that morality, society, and security play in a trusting society and some of the ways that these will inevitably fail. Liars and Outliers is broad, rather than deep, but I was able to establish a good mental foundation for understanding trust (and failures of trust) within a group. I'd recommend this to anyone, technical or non-technical, with an interest in how trust works and how it is critical to civilized society.

I'm a big fan of Schneier's books, so I was excited when he was coming out with another one. I wasn't exactly clear on what the book was about when I first picked it up (based solely on the title), but in typical fashion, the opening paragraphs quickly orient the reader to the basic premise - what compels us to trust others in society? That is, why don't we check to verify the food we buy at the grocery store isn't poisoned? Or that a letter in the mail isn't actually a letter bomb?

My biggest complaint (notice I'm giving 4 stars, so it's not that big a complaint) is that the early-middle part of the book is slow. The explanations are good, but not great, with complex topics being covered with too much prose in one section, and not quite enough concrete examples in another (for which Schneier is so well-known). Once he moves out of models of trust and the basics of societal pressures, the book picks back up to a normal pace for one of his books, and is again delightful. Finally, he ties it all in to security and technology, as one would hope/expect.

It's a good book, and despite being a little slow at parts, I finished the book in pretty short order, but it doesn't quite live up to my high expectations for Schneier's style. I would still recommend it to anyone with an interest in security or sociology.

This book was a joy to read. I enjoyed the way that Schneier showed security and trust from a societal prospective. It both opened my eyes to new ways of thinking about the world and codified a framework around this view. At points within the book, it left me thinking of society in a somewhat depressed manner but by the end, it was actually very uplifting.

I have since found myself viewing things from the perspective described in the book, much in the same way that Schneier's other books have done.

I highly recommend the book to anyway interested in security or sociology.

Bruce is the #1 thought leader in security in my mind. This book contains really solid conclusions drawn upon a wealth of experience and wisdom. If you like the subject matter, it's worth a read. I personally need a little more storytelling to stay engaged. If Bruce could reduce the number of small anecdotes (sometimes just 1 sentence) and instead focus on a handful of engaging stories to use as illustrative examples (a la Malcom Gladwell, just not quite so much), that would really improve the experience for me.

The first half of this book talks about how societies and trust evolved, and introduces us to the Hawk-Dove Game, the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Commons etc. Most of the ideas will be familiar to readers of The Red Queen, and to people familiar with basic game theory. The second half has examples from recent politics and from the economy. But instead of an insightful, detailed discussion, the book reads more like a (well-referenced) collection of anecdotes and studies.

I'm a Bruce Schneier fan. I read his blog regularly and I think he's one of the smartest and most forward thinking security experts working today. I bought this book without even looking.

Perhaps I should have. It wasn't what I expected and because of that, I was let down and disappointed. Which reflects in my low rating. It's certainly a well written book and well researched and makes very good points. Too bad it wasn't very interesting to me.

Schneier normally writes about security, and his blog is pretty much only about security. He talks a lot about how we fail dramatically at security, using irrational emotional responses rooted in our evolutionary past to respond to statistically unlikely threats today. I find this extremely interesting, as I think our overreaction to things like 9/11 have caused us a great loss of time, money, and freedom. I also think that it's actually made us less safe by focusing on events and attacks that will probably never happen and exposing us to attacks that always do. For instance, many of us choose to drive today, either out of fear of terrorism or the hassle of dealing with the TSA. This is a much more dangerous mode of travel, and as a result, the increased traffic load has killed more people each year than died on 9/11.

But that's not what this book is about. It's about trust. It's about how we evolved trust and how society uses rules to enforce it. It talks about why we can allow a plumber in our home and reasonably know that even though he's a stranger, he's not going to rob us. It talks about how he can take money from us (or a check) and know that it's not counterfeit and that the bank or the government will honor the valuation of it. A little different focus than I expected, and unfortunately, I never engaged with the book. I don't know if it's because I ultimately found the information presented to be dry and boring or if I just kept expecting the Bruce Schneier I know and love from his blog to eventually show up. I finished the book, but I didn't enjoy it.

That's really a shame. I feel the book deserves more than three stars. You might really enjoy it. There's nothing I can say that's wrong with the book because it is expertly crafted, holds very deep and insightful information, and yet is very easy to understand. That's very difficult, and I even gave the book an extra star just because I don't underestimate how difficult it is to write a very technical and complex book in language that just about anyone can understand. Few authors can achieve that. However, this is my review, not someone else's. The fact is, I just didn't enjoy the book and I won't be re-reading it. For that reason alone, I really can't give it more than three stars. I'm very sorry Bruce. If I ever cross paths with you, I hope you won't hold it against me.

I should have read Beyond Fear, honestly, as that appears to be the book I thought I was reading.

Bruce Schneier and the pressures that we face everyday is truly a book anyone can enjoy. Whether you are looking for soft reading or insights into classic problem solving, Schneier delivers on this book. While most of the things in his book deal with everyday life, most of the concepts discussed are never thought about analytically like he does in this book.

If you would like to know how societies work, this is your book. :)

Mr. Schneier is well known for presenting complex subjects in easy to understand terms, and his latest book does a great job of untangling and explaining the concepts of trust, compliance, and security. The book details why healthy systems need parasites to thrive and evolve, including society. This was a very enjoyable book to read and I made a lot of notes as I went through it.

Bruce goes through a lot of information and it's easy to see that the book could have been twice the length. The text runs the first two thirds of the book and the final third is end notes and reference. This final section is an invaluable source for follow up on the issues raised in the body of the volume. Overall - Highly recommended!

Bruce Schneier lives in a very different world. His specialty has long been IT security, and he has drilled so deep, no one can compare. This book is about trust and security, using history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and especially philosophy, to trace their development and deployment. He not only divines the if, but the how and when that people, and their societies, confer trust. He slices and dices his topic in every conceivable way. It is a fascinating process to watch.

And yet, it doesn't always ring true. Schneier spends many pages extolling the virtues of society and how an optimal mix of co-operative elements keeps the liars, cheaters and criminals in check. There are whole chapters on societal, moral and reputational pressures. But we have only to look to our own reality to see it isn't so.

At the corporate level, for example, individual companies do not always work to keep the bad seeds out. Entire industries are crooked, criminal affairs that exist purely to suck the lifeblood out of their customers. There isn't a bank in the United States that we can take pride in. They don't talk about customer loyalty; they plot lock-in. They are universally loathed and despised, and they continue to treat their customers worse and worse, to reinforce it. Airlines should be prosecuted for the obvious collusion in the bizarre fee structures, penalties and restrictions they all magically decided to impose on the public a few years back. Health insurers have one overriding goal - to deny health services to their customers and let them fight to get reimbursed. There isn't one of them anyone loves. If they all disappeared tomorrow, no one would mourn for the good old days.

There isn't one participant in any of these entire industries that we trust. There isn't one participant in these industries who take your side or come to your defense. We don't trust them to do what they say, we don't trust them to be honest and forthright, and we don't trust them with our personal data. We don't trust entire sectors of the economy. We have zero faith in any of them. And that goes for every level of government, too, whether it's $100,000 in pork to a brother-in-law, to selling the entire state to gas frackers. The NYPD is seen as an army of occupation. Congress rates well below used car salesmen in confidence and trust.

That's not how Schneier describes it. So by page 100 I was looking at Liars and Outliers differently.

Meanwhile, the book races through internet security and the false confidence everyone has in posting personal photos and messages. Schneier rightly points out there can be too much security, and cutting our trillion dollar security expenditure in half will not double our risk for terrorism. We are not safer for that level of spending, he says, and spending ten times as much will not make us ten times safer.

Another excellent chapter, Institutions, uses the TSA as model of conflicting needs and perceptions to describe how this one agency performs its mandate. Schneier was was on the plaintiffs' bench when TSA, reacting to the underwear bomber, suddenly and massively deployed full body scanners, which among other faults, could not detect an underwear bomb. Pointless security, at huge expense. A poster child for this book.

In conclusion Schneier point out comprehensively that we constantly look in the wrong place, overreact to squeaky wheels and ignore the smaller problems that can have greater impact. Doesn't matter that more Americans die from exposure to peanuts than to terrorists that we spend trillions on terrorists and nothing on allergies.

The prognosis is for more of the same; it's the nature of the beast, unfortunately. Schneier lays out the parameters for making it work better. But we all know, plus ca change.....

I enjoyed Liars & Outliers. It helped me to understand the dynamics behind my day job, software security. Too often people get bogged down in the technical details of crypto-enforced security, or are only willing to consider one side of a trade-off.

An interesting examination of the many situations where competing factors lead to a shifting equilibrium between cooperators and defectors. The many tables were not the most compelling part of the book.

The book is an engaging way to look at trust-a concept that we take for granted but that permeates all aspects of our lives. I will never look at my neighbors the same way again, whether they be across the street or around the globe.

Now that I've read Liars and Outliers, I want to go back and get some of Schneier's previous works. This guy has a rare gift for merging philosophy, science and common sense. He's really funny too.

Bruce Schneier's latest book, Liars and Outliers, is a solid evaluation of trust in society. He pulls from a wide variety of sources to provide an understanding of trust and security that will greatly benefit a wide variety of audiences.

"This book should be read by anyone in a leadership role, whether they're in the corporate or political sphere. And for anyone at C-level within a corporation or the equivalent level in government, this book is a must read.

Schneier's observations, such as how employing a security guard can increase the rate of shoplifting and how taxing garbage/waste can lower the rate of recycling, demonstrate that more complex thought needs to go into decisions on structures and policies." reviewed further on NakedSecurity

This is a review of the audio book. While I enjoy Bruce's work, this particular book and the reading of it did not meet my standards. When reading a technical, non-fiction book, we do not expect a reader with a drawl that makes the book seems to take forever and feel like a folk-story. Please, authors, understand accent, pace, vocals make a huge difference and need to be matched with the material read! The book itself talks ad-nauseam about societal issues which are very obvious but he doesn't discuss much in the way of solutions. Very disappointed.

Economics, politics, history, philosophy, psychology, biology, and technology all converge and play roles in defining trust, and thus security. Expertly sourced, very well-written, and generally accessible to anyone interested in the core topic.

Just finished it...mmmmmm....not sure. Bruce totally turned into a philosopher and the book is a bit too meandering to my taste. Many times I felt like one can say the same thing with less rigor and with half the page count. In any case, I'd say it was worth reading.

I started reading this book hoping to get deeper insight about this non-trivial topic. I don't know what kept me up to two thirds of the book, because, while it is very detailed about research, and gives a lot of examples for any trivial claim, and it presents the same idea in multiple representations, the discussion itself is not as deep as I hoped.
After reading Yuval Harary's book (was not translated to English. Can be translated to something like: "A brief history of the human kind") which has a chapter or so devoted to the development of trust, I hoped that Schneier's book will elaborate further on this, but this book holds less insight than the single chapter or so from Harary's book, even though it is by far more detailed in examples and research evidences.
By "this book" I mean that first two thirds of it. I do not intend to read the last third.

After reading the first few chapters, I realized he was not including government in the liars list, in fact I felt he didn't wish to include government at all. Trust is vitally important so why didn't he discuss people's lack of trust in their government? Currently it appears that many Americans are risk averse and fearful of much in their lives. We hear phrases like Stranger Danger- children now afraid of their shadows. The news media keeps a barrage of horrible events - with government seeing WMD behind every sand dune. The PC attitude against profiling takes away a good tool in alerting one to verify.

One should trust - but verify - there should be a reason to trust.

I don't think this book helps a rational mind. Two chapters was enough.

This is a book I really wanted to read. I follow Mr. Scheneier's blog, and I really enjoy the articles he posts, and the entries he writes. When he offered the book on a discount, signed by him even, I jumped on the opportunity. My only repayment was that I posted a review of the book.

I really wanted to post a positive review, but I can't. I couldn't finish the book. I couldn't really get started either. Maybe it's got a dry beginning and it picks up, but I wasn't able to make it.

I really wanted to read the information in here, but it felt too dry, it didn't have the same feeling as the articles on his blog. Perhaps it's a different target audience, and a different subject matter.

Bruce Schneier is a very smart man, and his insight into security, both electronic and physical, is very well thought through and intelligent. Unfortunately, his book isn't something I could read.

I read this with great anticipation however was greatly disappointed. He attempts to draw together multiple academic disciplines without real consistency and precision. The end result is rambling and more of a list of references than a clear theory or a new approach.

Overall, too esoteric and detailed for me. Schneier makes clear that society's ability to function becomes problematic when you can't trust everyone - a very good point. However, he doesn't get at the biggest problem with trust today - how lies and distortions have come to dominate governance, on both sides.

Liberals almost invariably misrepresent eg. the value of spending more money on education and business regulation, while conservatives do the same whenever eg. making the case for more military spending, lower taxes and government regulation. 'Think-tanks' are no better - especially those funded by conservatives (eg. American Enterprise Institute, Cato, Heritage, Hoover). Similarly, citizens cannot rely on drug companies to accurately describe the value of their new offerings, the oil industry to reliably describe its environmental impact - especially BP, etc. (Schneier does address problems involving corporate dishonesty - however, readers who hadn't already recognized the depth of dishonesty problems in corporate America are beyond any help this book could provide.)

Partly the preceding simply reflect perversions encouraged by the 'need' to retain power, partly because data analysis has become very complicated and statistical, partly because muck-raking and fact-free ideology are much easier to engage in.

Bottom-Line: Schneier's book addresses a major issue, but fails to address the most significant contributors to lying in America.