“The Mind Illuminated” by Culadasa (John Yates). Completely changed my life.
Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
11–20 of 88 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#12Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
BTW, there is another music-related "EGB" that Hoffy missed!
The keys G, B and Eb (separated from each other by a major third) used in John Coltrane's "Giant Steps". Major-third-spaced tonality changes, particularly masked by ii-V-I cadences, became known as Coltrane Changes.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#13The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson [1]
A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk [2]
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin [3]
We Real Cool by bell hooks [4]
[1] >The moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you.
[2] >Birth is not merely that which divides women from men: it also divides women from themselves, so that a woman's understanding of what it is to exist is profoundly changed. Another person has existed in her, and after their birth the live within the jurisdiction of her consciousness. When she is with them she is not herself; when she is without them she is not herself; and so it is as difficult to leave your children as it is to stay with them. To discover this is to feel that your life has become irretrievably mired in conflict, or caught in some mythic snare in which you will perpetually, vainly struggle.
[3] >The terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.
[4] >Showing aggression is the simplest way to assert patriarchal manhood. Men of all classes know this. As a consequence, all men living in a culture of violence must demonstrate at some point in their lives that they are capable of being violent.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#14Metamagical Themas from Douglas R. Hofstadter. I even have both a soft and a hard cover copy on my shelf. This book opened my mind on a lot of subjects big time.
Same for G.E.B.
I have it too, of course. It's a very similar book, but with different examples and thought experiments. I'm sure it would have been my choice if I had read them in the opposite order.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#15The Disappearance of the Universe, by Gary Renard.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#16The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood.
a book by science history writer James Gleick. The guy who wrote « chaos ».
It’s not about « computer », but rather the inevitable march toward our now ( with computers )
Each chapter break down a particular advance, or area of science that was changed by information theory ( before information theory was a thing )
Some titbits :
until the telegraph, the second faster way to carry meaning was putting a bunch of guys on horses.
The fastest was using drums over a river. — Talking about telegraph, the French had something innovative going on just a few years before it’s invention. Based on tower relay and a elaborate flag code.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#17Probably reading GEB and The Illuminatus! trilogy at the same time, switching from one to the other when my brain couldn’t handle any more of what I was currently reading.
Something about the combo helped me disconnect from the religion I had been raised in, and helped me see that there are many ways to view the world and life.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#18“The Mind Illuminated” by Culadasa (John Yates). Completely changed my life.
In what ways? I'm in the third stage and there are many good changes. But are the next stages "more of the same" or are they qualitatively different?
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#19For this year, mine was Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
TL;DR - the book explains how humans are predictably irrational and how seeming cognitive ease in decisioning is simply laziness in action since the brain will substitute a tough decision for a similar but easy one! It has made me reflect upon why I think the way I do, helped me to remove most bias from my actions, and also has a great suggestion that you should ask others to check you if you sound stupid, which is not great for your ego but is necessary nonetheless.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?
#20The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
on the origin of memes...