Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which Taleb's book should I read first?
Not the black swan, but anything else is a fine intro. Antifragile or Fooled by randomness but work
Thanks.
Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
291–300 of 341 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#292Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#293Seven habits of highly effective people.
In there I quit learn a lot about how to manage my time, prioritize my to do list
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#294How to win friends and influence people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen... I have to keep reminded myself to apply the rules, but very sound advice.
Seconded. After reading this my poor B- social skills, immediately jumped to a B+. Not a pancea, but a great book to help you think about/observe how others think/feel and how that will in turn affect you.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#295There are many, but one is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I read it as a child, and it was the first time I thought about logical thinking. Here is the section: “Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obv…
Lewis was instrumental in helping me understand that faith can be based on a foundation of logic and reason versus pure emotion and my guess is he helped many others struggling in that same area.
Lewis' argument isn't sound; if Jesus indeed claimed divinity, that sole conviction could be a delusion, without rendering all of his other statements delusional.
This kind of reasoning is typical of apologists in my experience; it sounds right, but it doesn't hold up to scrunity.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#2961984. I read this when I was around 13. It profoundly changed how I view the government and technology. It gave me a strong respect for what a government can do, and how our reality is not just our naked perception, but it is what others want us to perceive.
I was just watching a nice documentary on George Orwell, https://youtu.be/s6txpumkY5I.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#297The Gospel of John. A palpable sense of mystery is maintained from start to finish, but it arguably does better than any other book in the Bible at giving a deep look into the person of Jesus as he was seen and believed in by the early church. Additionally, there is a subtle sense of humor as the gospel author clearly enjoyed language and word plays and describes multiple misunderstandings that occur because of the a…
Logos! "In the beginning was the word" can be understood information theoretically. It's almost as though John is telling us that information or knowledge is ontologically primary, rather than matter. And it is "the word", not "the DWORD" ;)
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#298"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…
Never read Selfish Gene, but I loved Blind Watchmaker on publication in the 80s. Wonderfully clear explication of quite subtle concepts.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#299"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter, which I read when I was 17. I was just getting into serious programming (I would learn C later that year). I had only an inkling about things like recursion, had little appreciation for music outside of Pink Floyd, and lacked any kind of spiritual philosophy that didn't end in simple atheism or nonsense that I stole from science fiction paperbacks. GEB got me wondering abo…
First read this thirty years ago. It's a long read, but it's the gentlest explication of Godel that I've read, so well worth it. I only realised recently that the sub title "Eternal Golden Braid" is an acronym anagram of the main title "Godel, Escher, Bach". EGB, GEB...
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#300Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb He puts into words concepts of life so close to us yet so foreign sounding that makes us rethink everything in our lives. When you ask people "What is the opposite of fragile", they usually answer robust, which Taleb proves to be incorrect by introducing a new concept, the Antifragilty. It entangles so many things in economic, academic, science, finances and other systems with seve…
Which Taleb's book should I read first?
Fooled by Randomness, IMHO. Black Swan is an expansion of Fooled. Aphorisms is a vanity project. Haven't read Anti Frangile. Fooled by Randomness has lots of good analysis of survivorship bias, trend following and other mistaken pattern matching strategies that are hard wired into us, and blind us to the true nature of events.