"Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain. This book made me think about my own thinking and social behavior patterns.
Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
321–330 of 341 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
> when I was young and I tried reading it I realized that even though millions and millions of perfectly functioning adults believe in something, it might be absolutely wrong or based on basically nothing. Even as a confident Christian, there are many people who profess to be Christians but who have a very different understanding of what that means than I. To me, being a Christian is about having faith in Christ's di…
Hi LyndsySimon, I read your post in another topic where you said that you were loosing weight by eating a ketonic diet. Got curious, followed your profile and arrived here, just to tell you two things. One that I can see that you're thinking different, and I congratulate you for this, as it's not easy to do so. Second, that regarding religions you can perhaps take a step ahead, too. God is universal. Religions are ma…
Superman is also universal, as a concept. God may well be just a concept, not a reality.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#323Meditations, originally written by Marcus Aurelius, but translated many times over. More as an introduction to stoicism; choosing the translation that works best for you is ideal. Hays and Hicks translations are most often recommended but if you can peek inside the book to see what language resonates the best with you. Stoicism helped me build the ability to care about the things in my power to change, and not stress…
This book has had a great impact on me. My favorite quote (Dover Thrift edition) "To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a speck of semen tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end your journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it and thanking…
It is also my favorite quote, very happy to see I am not the only one with which it resonates pretty well.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the greatest part about GEB is he'll talk about a topic (that sometimes went over my head) for a chapter and then revisit that same topic in a more approachable way using a dialog between Achilles and a tortoise. Some of those dialogs were some of my most entertaining reads ever.
I must be broken, because everybody seems to think these are the best parts of the book, and I couldn't stand them. I just wanted to get on with it! I was quite young last I read it. Perhaps it's time to see if I still feel that way.
You are not alone. I've tried to read the book three times in the last twenty years and I always stop reading in one of those Achilles and tortoise sections. I find them utterly silly and boring and always feel like I'm missing the deeper message. I never had a problem understanding the non-story parts though. I don't dare skip the stories though because I'm afraid to miss out on some incredible insight.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#325"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…
But please continue by reading more rigorous work on evolution, or you run the risk of being badly misinformed. I suggest, at a minimum, a decent textbook. Here I'd recommend Douglas Futuyma's Evolution . Follow this up with some key works in the field, such as Gould's early critique of naive adaptationism, The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme . Also consi…
Obsolete stuff. I groaned as I examined this - Gould, really? This is old noise, that I resented raising mere dust in University decades ago. Thankfully a lot of these old distractrations have been swept aside, since. Do read up on the Gould controversies before citing him. If you knew of them already, it would have been kinder to others to note them.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is misinformative in the selfish gene?
It greatly oversimplifies a complex process, ignoring modern developments in the field of evolutionary biology (including the entirety of population genetics), and makes many unfounded assumptions. The Spandrels paper I referenced above explains in detail, and is a good starting point: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/205/1161/581 Here's a more modern critique, which I posted here a few weeks ago: http:…
This is NOT modern - it's well out of date. And more of the discredited Gould.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#327"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. While it's also a tale of travel and self-exploration (the rediscovery of identity after a nervous breakdown and shock therapy), mostly the book is about thinking. I was a different person after identifying with the narrator who also lived in the mind, and asked questions about basic concepts like 'quality', or qualia of events, objects, roles, and the sub…
Do grab the CBC Ideas interview with Pirsig, as a podcast. Actually, this excerpts that original Ideas interview: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-motorcycle-is-yourself-1.2...
Terrible philosophical reasoning, yet plenty of relevance, and an interesting person, no question.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#328Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein There were many other books that influenced me, but the concept of a "Fair Witness" stuck with me - specifically, the idea that one should be aware of what is known versus what is inferred. > Fair Witnesses are prohibited from drawing conclusions about what they observe. As a demonstration, Harshaw asks Anne to describe the color of a house in the distance. She responds, "I…
But why not go further with some radical solpsism: 1. Why assume it is a house at all and not a facade? 2. Why assume that your eyes are not defective as to color? 3. Why assume your memory of the word "color" and "white" are correct? 4. Why assume that you heard the question properly? 5. How do you know the meanings of words haven't changed since you learned them many years ago?
Hume actually goes farther than this list, and Heinlein is riffing on David Hume, and an old sheep joke. As for 5 I'm old enough to know that's actually a problem.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the utilitarianism has also stuck with me, and I lean that way on a lot of philosophical/ethical questions. I didn't really realize it until a few years ago while dating someone relatively well-known in utilitarian/rationality circles and had some eye-opening conversations with her and her friends about rights and the like (lots of things I'd never really thought through to their logical conclusions led to a so…
Check out A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Best challenge to Utilitarian thinking I know of. (E.g. slavery is wrong not because bad outweighs good, but rather because it is inherently wrong when seen from the perspective of the original position)
It's not uninteresting but it's a fast "argument" that really just dresses up George Moore's Intuitionism IMHO, which itself remains in disrespect. Google it, don't buy the book. It has many followers not because it's a great argument (assuming it qualifies as that) but because there simply aren't better arguments for Moore's side of the debate.
I am biased though, I've met the man and we really didn't like one another, our values were far too opposed when we met. From my brief exposure, in life he seemed to be a mandarin who played the academic system expertly for his own benefit, with a public persona crafted to help with that. His private and public opinions could diverge to a staggering degree, but at least he did sometimes share some of his private opinions with youngsters, even if he wouldn't own them in any other context. A conscious hypocrite, I give him that.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#330How 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.
I must admit, I've always found the title off-putting as it sounds very much like it is a manual written by Machiavelli. OTOH, both my kids are on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum and there are several auties that recommend it as really useful in helping them with inter-personal interaction. So there you go.
Some of it - John D. Rockefeller throwing dimes to kids for the good PR, for example, is Machiavellian in the bad sense. But much of it is trying to persuade people that even if they were purely selfish, they'd still benefit from being less utterly self-absorbed, and demonstrating that.