Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Picketty
Both dramatically formed by world view.
Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
341–350 of 747 posts
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#342Nassim Taleb's books (Black swan, Antifragile, Fooled by Randomnesss) Thinking Fast and Slow The Organized Mind The Vital Question by Nick Lane. The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
I thought Black Swan was fairly meaningless. It started to raise some interesting ideas about the effect of "black swan" events but then failed to give any insight into dealing with or preparing for those effects beyond vague generalities. I did learn how Taleb likes lifting weights and refuses to run for a bus though. From what I've heard his other books are similar.
I like Taleb but I feel most of the ideas from his books can be written in 10 pages. Although to be fair that's true for most modern non-fiction books.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, cute, but does it mean anything? Of course the wind moved the flag. Are they all ignorant of physics? No of course not. Its some metaphysical plug about relationships or something. One of those 'one hand clapping' things. I guess the point is to get you to stop overanalyzing. Which I'm doing. But no, I didn't get my mind blown by monks in semantic circles. I guess I'm not ready to be enlightened.
Lots of those stories come off as more wanky and esoteric than they're supposed to. That one... maybe not, but most are supposed to be approached with a lot more context than a Westerner with little exposure to Buddhism (and especially the history of and other stories about the monks involved in the stories) is likely to have, going in cold. They're not supposed to be nearly as confusing as they can seem (or, at leas…
That sounds a lot like a post-facto apologist slant. Sure you can 'explain them' but everybody hears them where their mind is at now. And for most folks, especially junior monks just starting out, they might sound wanky too.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#344"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous. What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not contin…
'Very far off to left field' side note: The human brain is still active during unconsciousness.
EEG traces of the brain show this. When you are awake, drowsy, asleep, or under anesthesia, the patterns of your brain waves are very different [0,1]. But, the brain is not 'paused', it's just firing differently than when you are awake or drowsy.
So, the 'pattern' is not just 3-D, it's 4-D. You need time as well. You'd need to transport the 'trace' over vast distances, scales, and times.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3288763/ Figure 1, in particular
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#345- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#346"To Mock a Mockingbird" by Raymond Smullyan. From Wikipedia: > To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing Adventure in Combinatory Logic (1985, ISBN 0-19-280142-2) is a book by the mathematician and logician Raymond Smullyan. It contains many nontrivial recreational puzzles of the sort for which Smullyan is well known. It is also a gentle and humorous introduction to combinatory logic and the…
Apart from playing twice, I can't think of a statement that could exclude you from choosing arbitrarily between A and B, since within the conceit of the problem there is no way to exclude B with a mere statement.
You probably need to come up with a statement that’s true, but is made false by the act of getting B.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#347Highly recommended for everyone: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahenman. If you have difficulty interacting with people 1. How to win friends and influence people (Easy read) 2. Seven habits of highly effective people (Harder read) To learn how to write well: On writing well To understand how large products are made: Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT
I have a conflicting relationship with "How to Win Friends and Influence People," and maybe some of you may relate to this. Disclaimer: I only read a small, initial part of the book, and I'll explain the reasons behind this. For one, I liked the initial parts of it; for example, remembering first names is a nice and very attentive thing to do, and in general people appreciate it when I can remember their first name a…
I think the book is very polarizing. You either read it as “compassionate” or as “manipulative”.
For me, I’ve often been teased for missing certain “obvious” gestures my whole life. But I’m not bad with people.
Since I’m naturally an optimist and compassionate, I read it as the former category. It was helpful for me to help identify what behaviors I already do that I should reinforce to help strengthen my relationships with other people.
I find a lot of self-help books are (sort of) “common sense” already, but that by reinforcing certain “nodes” in my brain’s “knowledge graph” I’m better able to reason about the knowledge later.
Put another way, if I’m interested enough to read a book about making friends, by reviewing information about “successful patterns” to makes friends I’m better able to reason about _how I can make friends_. It isn’t manipulative to start a conversation in a coffee shop with somebody! (Unless I’m “manipulating” somebody by asking for their contact info..?)
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#348Surprised not to see Liu Cixin mentioned yet?
The Three-Body Problem & The Dark Forest.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#349Ishmael by Daniel Quinn Just a short conversation between a man and an ape that explains the unsustainable path our society has taken.
I'm so glad to see someone recommend this.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#350Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?
- "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil is a good one.
- "Immersion" by Abbie Gascho Landis
- "Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube" by Blair Braverman
- "Sleeping Naked is Green" by Vanessa Farquharson
- "There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather" by Linda Akeson McGurk