Ask HN: Which book/essay changed your life?

"The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are." by Alan Watts. It started a ride along a thread that lasted me 20 years.

There were a few milestone books, the kind that had such an outsized impact they spring to mind almost immediately:

1. The Goal/ E. Goldratt. I read this first when I was a teenager, and kept returning to it (and some of its sequels) again and again. Adopting a systems thinking mindset. When analysing problems looking for the bottleneck, then figuring out how to elevate that constraint.

2. Topics in Algebra/ I. N. Herstein. During the first summer at Uni I decided to read this book cover to cover and solve every single problem in it. Which I did. Sadly, twenty years on, my algebra game is poor. But that summer, of abiding in algebra, was a really spiritual experience. And it's left a mark.

3. The Orchid Thief/Susan Orlean. By my early twenties it was clear to me I enjoy non-fiction more than fiction. But I enjoyed it for the intellectual experience, it would never leave me rattled the way fiction can leave you. And then I read this book and my mind was blown. I was outraged that people in the world can write like that, and that I am not one of those people.

4. Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama/D. Goleman. I randomly picked up this book, it was lying around at this place I was staying at. This was my first intro to Buddhist analytical analysis and I came out of it a different person. Not a better one, sadly, but for sure one more determined to learn more, and to bring these principles into my own life. It's been a journey since, but that's where it started.

5. On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant/D. Graeber. It's kind of funny that this essay, which was tongue-in-cheek and deliberately provocative, would end up being like a real thing. But by the time I read it (and later, the full book) I was really questioning what was wrong with me that made everything feel so...meaningless. In his lingo, I had shit jobs and I had bullshit jobs, and I was really struggling to see how I can productively manage decades to come of work if these are the only two choices. But airing this problem in this way also helped me, eventually, walk down a path I was more comfortable with. It took a long time, but I finally like the path I'm treading.

6. Not an essay, a film. Searching for Sugar Man/ M. Bendjelloul. I don't even know where to start on this one. I mean, the story's pretty radical as non-fiction goes (see above), but there were moments in and around it, where it's like someone comes and slaps you in the face to wake up. And then the meta aspect, of the director's own sad story. I spent A LOT of time thinking about this film.

That was written in a time when slowly reducing emissions seemed a plausible approach. Given that we've pumped way more carbon into the sky since it was written, with no deceleration, and the climate is already undulating dangerously, most of these proposals are outdated. If we want a livable planet we need to phase out carbon immediately. The IPCC said that shooting for 2030 would only give us a 2/3 chance of staying near 1.5°C of heating.

"On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines" - By the guy that started Palm. It is from 2004, and probably deeply flawed in a lot of ways, but I read it at the right time and it "clicked." I think about it often.

The GNU Manifesto, at age 18.

I had just encountered the internet for the first time, after coding every day for 6-7 years with the help of a few books and magazines, but having no idea there was a large electronic community out there. Nobody told me about the internet!

Then I found the GNU Manifesto as I was exploring GNU Emacs, and it changed my life.

I know it sounds strange now, 30 years later, but that was the first time I was really exposed to the idea of putting in significant work to help other people, backed by a persuasive argument. Doing something not just to learn, but to give away and design for other people's benefit. The way it was put in the GNU Manifesto felt empowering and inspiring.

It's informed how I've treated people for decades since.

(My thinking has evolved a lot since, and there have been other inspiring books, but that was a significant and memorable shift.)