Gödel, Escher, Bach
Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#22Le Petit Prince. It is a deceptively simple book I was required to read at school as a child. Each time I revisit it, I understand deeper layers about human nature and life itself.
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#23The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman
It’s a collection of his essays but the one quote that stuck out to me is:
I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize-I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding things out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it - those are the real things, the honors are unreal to me.
It really got me to get over external validation and doing things for the sake of discovery and learning.
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#24Sapiens
I wish I’d read it 20 years earlier.
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#25Atlas Shrugged. Downvote at will, but I’ll die on this hill. It has some issues, sure, but it should be mandatory reading.
I enjoyed it when I was a kid, but one of the ways my thinking has evolved is away from the concepts central to this book. (Though I’ll never leave the concept that makers make the world and we should have no patience for people who contribute only a markup, though to be clear I classify Wall Street in that camp)
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#26Le Petit Prince. It is a deceptively simple book I was required to read at school as a child. Each time I revisit it, I understand deeper layers about human nature and life itself.
Hi Dad.
I'm sorry, I still haven't read it. But I did get a beautiful pop-up book version.
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#27Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Gave me new perspectives about railroad safety and proper behaviors around trains.
Dumb Ways to Die (not a book) did that for me. Was the book enjoyable otherwise?
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#28Watership Down by Richard Adams
Is it that good? I quite liked The Plague Dogs. He writes with a nice flowery style.
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#29Selfish Gene, of course. There is no self. We are but pre-programmed propagation vectors.
It’s just a nice looking model author made up. One of many possible.
Re: Ask HN: What's a book that fundamentally altered your mental models
#30If just one book can rewire your thinking, I feel very sorry for you :)
Virtually every book that survived the test of time has some gem worth finding.
For example the bible is a perfect source of ethical and moral ideas and problems, whether you’re agnostic or not.
Any decent university level course of general physics is a perfect source to learn not only the universe but how would you approach the process itself of learning and exploring it.