Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?

Quantum Computing Since Democritus, by Scott Aaronson. It covers an astounding amount of stuff -- including complexity theory, the nature of randomness and information, and quantum information theory -- into less than 400 pages.

"Technical subjects" is too broad to get started. But if you are serious about wanting a high signal to noise ratio, you want textbooks and monographs. Landau and Lifshitz' series on theoretical physics; Knuth's Art of Computer Programming; that kind of thing.

How to Solve It, by Polya.

Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology by Alfred North Whitehead

I think if you're really looking to get a sense of how the world works, the best stuff to read are journalistic accounts and histories. Just pick a subject your interested in, do a bit of googling on well regarded accounts of that subject, than go to town.

The reason I think these are more valuable than the pop psychology/business airport books is they don't operate under the pretense that the world's great truths can be boiled down to 240 pages. Rather, learning about people's experiences and stories on there own terms helps you develop a much more nuanced worldview.

For example, I'm reading The Battle Cry of Freedom, an overview of the Civil War, and it's astounding how much more insight a book about something 150 years ago offers into today's society than just about any of the Gladwell genre stuff.