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Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

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Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#131

Post by eej71 »

WJW wrote: post #112
lkurusa wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a book I buy for every person for their first birthday after I met them. It is the book that has had the most profound impact on me thus far.

Is there some mind bending revelation in the second half? I read the first half and have not mustered the will to read the rest of it. It just seems so... "obvious" for lack of a better word. Maybe I've had too much psychology lectures or something, but nothing in the first half was remotely new to me.

I'm with you. I tried to get into that book - but felt it was a lot of verbiage and new phrases to describe things that already had terms. I gave up about a 1/3 the way through.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#132

Post by tryauuum »

sova wrote: post #130

Anathem by Neal Stephenson features a bifurcated world where a scholar-monk-class of mathematicians lives in walled-off areas that mingle with the rest of the world only on fixed dates. Some every year, some every ten years, and others only every 100 years. There is a lot more to it, but I don't want to give anything away.

Anathem features an awesome world, but I wouldn't call the book mind-bending.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#133

Post by zedr »

fit2rule wrote: post #84
zedr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "God" may not be a "he" sitting "on a cloud", but may indeed just be the New Question beyond every Old Answer. Excuse my frankness. That's not a fact. That's unfalsifiable woo-woo.

Yeah, well maybe God is the sum total of everything, including your much-despised woo woo .. which, in my opinion, is the opposite of the kinds of totalitarian schools of thought that threaten our cultures, time and again. Without the woo and whimsy and make-believe, what have we got left in our cultures? If we kill religion we may as well kill theatre and literature and all the other things which require this unmeas…

Do you believe one cannot appreciate Michelangelo, Shakespeare, or Dostoevsky without believing in a supernatural being?

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#134

Post by fit2rule »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #92
fit2rule wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get that impression at all. What I walked away from was a feeling of dire unease at the popularity of Dawkins' opinion that human beings are machines that can be broken and manipulated by their environment, and that social scientists can exploit this fact to their own ends, in industry, culture and war. It may be 'true' inasmuch as the fact that applying his theories give predictable results, but even the mo…

Just because someone writes a long analysis of camera work, color correction and sound recording in Shawshank Redemption, doesn't mean that they don't believe that there are emotional and philosophical aspects to the movie also. Just that the object of that work was a particular kind of analysis.

In this case, it is dangerous since a lot of the moral fibre that prevents Dawkins from calling for an all-out eradication of any human being that has the "belief in God" gene, simply won't be there for future generations' benefit.

And that is why I find his crusade against religions he despises so dangerous. Culture devolves unless it is replenished with enlightenment - Dawkins takes no responsibility for that, since the typical means of its occurring (religious faith) is abhorrent to him.

People too easily forget that organised atheism is responsible for the massacre of millions of people, too.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#135

Post by nixtaken »

My Adorable Apotheosis: Don't Look Back, Pussycat. Kill! Kill! by Kirsten Hacker.

In keeping with the preposterous title, it uses sci-fi tropes to illuminate the ways in which the modern scientific community is heading in a preposterous direction.

It is sort of like the Princess Bride of sci-fi.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#139

Post by scottlocklin »

fit2rule wrote: post #23
GlennS wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have missed the point? It's not about genes for selfishness.

I didn't get that impression at all. What I walked away from was a feeling of dire unease at the popularity of Dawkins' opinion that human beings are machines that can be broken and manipulated by their environment, and that social scientists can exploit this fact to their own ends, in industry, culture and war. It may be 'true' inasmuch as the fact that applying his theories give predictable results, but even the mo…

Read the philosopher of science David Stove's "Darwinian fairytales." You'll realize that Dawkins book is

1) Not orthodox science in any sense of the word, nor really philosophy of science (though it is a popularization of the work of people like William Hamilton)

2) Philosophically bonkers; it's essentially medieval demonology repackaged where the demons are called "genes."

3) Not written by an actual scientist.

It's also a hilarious takedown, as are most of David Stove's essays and books. I liked Dawkin's fairytale when I first read it, for the same reason I liked death metal music and fedora tier atheism arguments on usenet. But it's horse shit. FWIIW another nail in its coffin; Dawkin's ideology originates in part from a guy named George Price: have a look at part 3 of the Adam Curtis documentary "all watched over by machines of loving grace" for more on what became of him.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#140

Post by a_bonobo »

Social philosophy/psychology, or cultural anthropology, is mind-bending to me.

Erich Fromm's The Sane Society - on how society impacts people's mental health, and how to build towards a sane society

Fromm's The Art Of Loving - an analysis of different kinds of loves, trying to dispel pop culture's lies about love, and love is actually hard work

Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death - on how not our fear, but our complete denial of death existing leads to the weirdest outcomes in our society

Then there's political stuff -

Orwell's Essays, any large-ish collection. I find Orwell to be a much, much better non-fiction writer than fiction writer. Extremely insightful into political processes.

Robert Caro's books, perhaps the first The Years Of Lyndon B Johnson. Can't get better insights into how power works on a local and not-so-local level.

Popper's Open Society and its enemies, hard to summarise - a defense of Western society in light of the then-ongoing WW2. You probably saw the paradox of tolerance a few times pop up, that's from that book, among a ton of other stuff.

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