Quiet

My recent leisure reading is Susan Cain's Quiet.

This is supposed to be a book on psychology for layman and the idea is simple. It discusses the difference between extrovert and introvert people, how the modern society favors the former and squeezes out the latter, and the value of preserving and cultivating introverts to become successful people. Being an introvert herself, Cain certainly emphasizes throughout the book on the value and positive side of her kind of people. I find it difficult to object her argument as I am nothing less than a typical introvert by Cain's definition.

However, I must say any one-dimensional classification of human behaviour is risky and over-simplified. Not everyone who are not extroverts are introverts. Not everyone who do not make friend with us are our enemies. Not everyone who turn away from the crowd could work efficiently alone - they may be playing on-line games.

PS. A considerable length of this book is used to describe physiological experiments that aim to determine the biological difference between introverts and extroverts. Since there is something called alternative medicine, I suppose these experiments should be classified as alternative science; they are probably analyzed by alternative statistics, and should be interpreted by alternative logic.