By far :
Things hidden since the foundation of the world - René Girard
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/337517.Things_Hidden_Sin...
Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
161–170 of 254 posts
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#162Debt, the first 5,000 Years (David Graeber) - Learned that most of history has been communist (eg. hunter gatherer societies), shops of the past were run on credit (eg. tally sticks), money/capitalism tended to emerge with the rise of the state, taxing to feed soldiers for war, and that the drive to pay off one's debt fueled a lot of the cruelty of mankind (eg. Hernan Cortez, Casimir). 21 Things they don't tell you a…
> money/capitalism tended to emerge with the rise of the state, taxing to feed soldiers for war There is actually a musical about the way that the US federal government and financial system were founded in order to be able to provide capital for warfighting.
1776?
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#163HC Verma concepts of physics
Haha is this for JEE?
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#164Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy was the best sci-fi I've read. Then there are a lot of other types, e.g Porter mgmt theories.
Agreed. The dynamics between general and emperor in determining the safety of Foundation from the Empire at the end of book 2 part 1 is something I think about often.
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#165One book more than any other: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Why? Darwin opens up the door of Deep Time when he explained his discovery. An appreciation of the immensity of time happens to be linked to explanations of how and why things are. Wolfe also deals with Deep Time but in the context of society. What Gene Wolfe does is he creates books where you need to read between the lines, you need to create hypot…
This is an amazing set of books (it's four volumes). Possibly, what I appreciate about it most is that he doesn't describe anything, like so many other SF authors do. You just have to figure it out ("read between the lines" is a good way to describe it).
The other astounding thing is how incredibly bad all the rest of Wolfe's work is. Really, it's night and day.
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#166Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#167- The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark
- Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started "The Ascent of Money" and was very happy with the first half or so - then I set it aside for a few years and worked for a hedge fund. When I picked the book up again I couldn't stand how basic, boring, and mistaken the second half was. I wish I could follow your example and suggest a better book :)
enlighten us - what did you learn?
fair question, but I don't recall the specifics that disappointed me. It's totally possible that the first half of the book was just much better than the second, and it wasn't anything about my thinking that was responsible. it wasn't a controlled experiment :)
ok - paged through the book a bit again and the main thing is that the early stuff was totally new to me (18th century Dutch bonds!) - and the latter is a well-researched rogue's gallery of recent, well-known failures (Enron, Japan's lost decade(s), the recent financial crisis (the book was published in 2008) ). Overall there is a focus on failure and a bunch of editorializing that didn't impress me on the recent stuff and casts doubt on the objectivity of the more distant historical parts.
edit: uh - i didn't answer your question. i learned that, holy-crap, it's hard to attribute cause to effect and very very easy to fool yourself. The market is not efficient - but it's usually close enough that correcting doesn't pay that much.
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#169The Republic - Plato - why societies form the way they do
Either/Or - Kierkegaard - as a father of Existentialism his views on society helped put things in perspective for me
It's All About Time - John Furey - surprised I don't see this mentioned more - how people organise their thinking based on a time-based motivational model https://www.amazon.com/Its-All-About-Time-Companies
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you liked the righteous mind you'd similarly enjoy "The Dictators Handbook" by Bruce Burna De Mesquita - he explores how rulers looking to maintain power are all driven by similar incentives, and similarly provided a clear framework for analyzing political or business strategy.
Thank you for the suggestion, the premise sounds really interesting. I've just added it to my queue.
This CGPGrey video is a decent summary of parts of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs