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Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

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Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#111

Post by Balgair »

Findeton wrote: post #104

Me thinking: please don't say the Bible, please don't say the Bible! The Bible. Because when I was young and I tried reading it I realized that even though millions and millions of perfectly functioning adults believe in something, it might be absolutely wrong or based on basically nothing.

I'll leave The Bible out of the discussion, but echo the point made.

As one human race, we can all come together, try very hard, regardless of class or race or creed or sex, in earnest support of one another, and can collectively make terrible decisions like Daylight Savings Time.

Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#112

Post by MithrilTuxedo »

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Back in college I had that spinning around in my head along with a computer science foundations course (automata, computability, complexity, Turing completeness) and a bunch of AI/AL light reading that was already rather dated. Kitzmiller v. Dover was being covered all over Slashdot and here I was looking at all these examples from the 80s of complex emergent behaviour evolving from simple rules applied to randomness and then simulated over time in computers.

Something clicked in my head and everything made as much sense as it needed to. Life, the Universe, everything. I started to think of the sciences as being just a continuum of studies that describe behaviour at increasingly higher levels of abstraction: math -> physics -> chemistry -> biology -> psychology -> sociology.

Computers made life without specific reason or meaning demonstrable. Camus made life without specific reason or meaning acceptable.

Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#113

Post by brudgers »

Bhagavad Gītā [0]

Miami's airport, Autumn 1983, a shave head Krishna pushes a copy into my hand on the concourse. Says he wants me to have it. Then asks for money. Here's a five. Most people give twenty. Still have the book. Still cheap.

Began my intellectual interest in religion. I've come to think of religion as just another way of explaining the world alongside storytelling and science.

[0] : as it is (abridged edition)

Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#114

Post by kstenerud »

Can't leave it at one book, because there are four which all tie into a whole:

1. The Book of Five Rings (how to manage yourself)

2. The Art of War (how to manage your campaign)

3. The Prince (how to manage your domain)

4. Proverbs (the wisdom of generations of people in positions of power)

Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#115

Post by tylerc230 »

randcraw wrote: post #21

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. While it's also a tale of travel and self-exploration (the rediscovery of identity after a nervous breakdown and shock therapy), mostly the book is about thinking. I was a different person after identifying with the narrator who also lived in the mind, and asked questions about basic concepts like 'quality', or qualia of events, objects, roles, and the sub…

This book blew my mind when I first read it in highschool. I've had a few pivotal experiences in my life which have shaped who I am and how I think. Reading this book was one of them.

Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#117

Post by mywittyname »

swah wrote: post #92
mywittyname wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally revisit this book every few years as a refresher. Every time I do, I end up making close, life-long friends by applying the techniques in this book. I'd say this is a must read for just about anyone.

The book actually tells you to read it 3 times ;)

The fact that I have read this book three times and don't remember this fact is a testament to the importance of this statement.

Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#118

Post by mattnewton »

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Blew my mind out the back of my head in high school. Changed the way I looked at the world. Made evolution make some sense, and to some degree, paired with the extended phenotype, helped society make more sense. So much of altruism, racism, and tribalism have roots in game theory of you accept the hypothesis of the gene as the unit of natural selection.

But, perhaps more importantly it taught me by example how to make a good argument that can be rooted in multiple deep disciplines but accessible to the masses.

Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?

#120

Post by pklausler »

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. It describes biology from the perspective of the gene as the unit of natural selection, rather than the organism or the species, and demonstrates the power of that perspective to explain much about the natural world. But then, the author generalizes the concept of a gene to that of the replicator, which is any kind of pattern that influences its environment to produce copies of the pattern. (As an example, the author invents the concept of a meme, being a unit of culture that uses brains to spread itself across a culture.) This (the replicator) is the mind-blowing concept that I'm still thinking about 35 years after I first read this marvelous little book. Organisms and people and species and cultures are ephemeral side-effects of mindlessly self-replicating patterns. You'll never look at the world the same way after reading this one!
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