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Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#31

Post by sideshowb »

imakwana wrote: post #7

1975 ACM Turing Award Lecture on "Computer Science as an empirical inquiry: Symbols and Search" by Herbert Simon & Alan Newell (inventors of list processing). https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/simon_1031467.cfm Herbert Simon later went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions on "Bounded Rationality" in decision making. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1978/sim...

On the non fiction front one that comes to mind is

The economics anti textbook (hill and myatt).

Though this was 12 years ago, public discussion of economics has progressed a little bit since, so it may not have quite the same paradigm busting feeling it did for me back then, but it's still pretty good.

Other mind expanding non fiction...

Feynman lectures (all 3 volumes)

Design patterns (don't hate me lol. Obviously less revelatory if you've already absorbed the knowledge by other means. And for flip's sake don't overdo them! )

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#32

Post by grafelic »

sideshowb wrote: post #28
grafelic wrote: post #26

"The Illuminatus! Triology" by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

Interesting, I went into this expecting a lot and it really missed the mark for me. Maybe I was too old?

Perhaps, read it when I was 15 years younger and haven't reread it. "Set and setting" is more important than age in some sense, age is more important than "set and setting" in some sense, and "set and setting" and age is equally important in some sense.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#33

Post by abdullahkhalids »

dopidopHN wrote: post #16

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. a book by science history writer James Gleick. The guy who wrote « chaos ». It’s not about « computer », but rather the inevitable march toward our now ( with computers ) Each chapter break down a particular advance, or area of science that was changed by information theory ( before information theory was a thing ) Some titbits : until the telegraph, the second faster wa…

I taught a freshmen course with some readings from this book. It was quite an interesting experience.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#34

Post by frontman1988 »

Ashtavakra Gita(Ancient hindu philosophy poem) : It really opened a new dimension of thinking for me. It's main message of identifying yourself as the witness consciousness is quite trippy and the sanskrit used is quite powerful. It plays around with the concepts of soul , karma and concept of non-duality in quite radical ways. I found it quite an empowering way of going about life, one can only imagine how it must have felt for the original author/s who discovered it as an "insight" on the reality of life. Such people nowadays would be called delusional though.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#35

Post by fm2606 »

_What Should I Do With My Life_ by Po Bronson

There are a lot of stories of people who hate their jobs and make a switch.

One was a lawyer who became a truck driver. A doctor who became a programmer (iirc ... I do remember she was in tears because she didn't want to disappoint their family not sure if she wanted to be a programmer or not).

This book gave me the courage to leave engineering field and become a firefighter paramedic. 1st best career decision I made at the time

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#36

Post by [deleted] »

stirfish wrote: post #13

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson [1] A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk [2] The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin [3] We Real Cool by bell hooks [4] [1] >The moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you. [2] >Birth is not merely that which divides women from men: it also divides women from themselves, so that a woman's understanding of what it is to exist is profoundly changed…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#37

Post by stevenhuang »

Leslie Kean's UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.

Reading this started my deep dive into the rabbit hole of high strangeness phenomena.

Can't say one way or another if it's all just bunk or not, but at least it's entertaining.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind expanding book(s) you have read till date?

#40

Post by hypertele-Xii »

My own diary.

It's like debugging a server log of your mind.

Note that I quickly deviated from any expected norms of "dear diary, today _____ happened and it made me feel ______", and instead simply decided to write, whatever cames to my mind, every day, no matter how nonsensical. Most of it is pointless and cringe, but there's some brilliant opinions, descriptions of values, and even poetry in there.

A diary is, after all, literally an expansion of your mind into the physical realm.

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