Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence by David Benatar . The best argument I've read as to what it means for a human being to be brought into existence, why it does that person more harm than good, and why we should consider the question. While people generally find the idea distasteful, especially if being or becoming a parent is a primary focus of their life, I have yet to see any well-reasoned refutation to his argument that isn't addressed in the book. The only problem is it can leave you with a somewhat constant feeling of "well, what now?".
Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#292So little sci-fi here. I was influenced a lot by Lukyanenko and his Wonderful Future series of short stories about the post-UBI world.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#293The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. The gene is the unit of replication, and this affects every process in this universe.
Seconded. I actually read "The Blind Watchmaker" first and that had just as big an impact on me. As someone else said, no going back after reading it. It also gave me the confidence to realise I was actually an atheist, not an apologetic agnostic!
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#294* The Selfish Gene - our bodies are vessels for DNA as they travel through time. Also colony insects and birds are fascinating.
* Thinking Fast and Slow - study after study shows that we exhibit so, so many cognitive biases, as our minds take shortcuts. there are some things you can do to recognize and mitigate these biases.
Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#295"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Not an easy read, but it deeply changed the way I think about incentive structures and the law of unintended consequences. It's a tough pill to swallow for people (like myself) who cling to utopian ideas, but the older I get the more I realize we must live in the world as it exists, with human nature as it really is. Dreaming of a better world is counter-productive if one does not…
+1. Thanks. My local library has a copy on hold for me now :-)
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#296The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. The gene is the unit of replication, and this affects every process in this universe.
Note, of course, that he was wrong about the gene being the unit of selection. Selection happens at an organismal level. As we've come to understand the interconnectedness of the genome, this has become even more clear. Dawkins' ideas generated a lot of debate among evolutionary biologists in the 1980s, but have largely fallen out of favor. They're just too simplistic to reflect reality.
This is news to me. I didn't realise Dawkins' theory had been so thoroughly refuted. What's the evidence for this?
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#29780000hours
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#298* The Selfish Gene - our bodies are vessels for DNA as they travel through time. Also colony insects and birds are fascinating.
* Thinking Fast and Slow - study after study shows that we exhibit so, so many cognitive biases, as our minds take shortcuts. there are some things you can do to recognize and mitigate these biases.
* Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#299Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The lesson on the surface is that you need to practice/work to become good at anything, but the deeper message for me was that everything is basically preordained. People are acting based on what's logical to them, which is the sum of their experiences. Since we can't control what happens to us, we aren't really in control of what we do either. I mean, the future is still wide open, but looking back, everything happens for a reason, and those reasons are pretty much out of our control. I'm not entirely certain that was the message Gladwell was trying to portray, but that's how I've viewed life ever since I read that book.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#300I always viewed reading a book as collecting a soul. If you fully grok a book, you grok the authors thoughts. Being able to put yourself in another persons mindset is crucial. Speaking of "groking", Stranger in a Strange Land , Time Enough for Love and The Fountain Head have probably had the most impact on my mindset. Each book is rather different, but in general the idea of all three is > You have to be in life for…
Welp. And this is why I think Ann Rand was deeply evil and The Fountain Head was a horrible work of propaganda. It's not okay to be greedy, nor is it okay to be selfish. And these ideas are responsible for much of the harm in the world. It is okay to know what you need and advocate for your needs, to take care of yourself. But that is not being greedy or selfish. And to do it effectively means you have to be able to…
What word would you use to denote the concept "to know what you need and advocate for your needs, to take care of yourself"?
What is the difference between "need" and "want" and why is that difference important?