511–520 of 539 posts
Three Novels - Samuel Beckett The Upanishads - Eknath Easwaran translation Season in Hell - Arthur Rimbaud Modern Man in Search of a Soul - Carl Jung Abandoned Fragments - Franz Kafka Philosophical Grammar - Ludwig Wittgenstein The Gay Science - Friedrich Nietzsche Hapworth 16, 1924 - JD Salinger The Dream Machine - M. Mitchell Waldrop
And I would add Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
I know it's trite to say it, but in my early 20s reading Atlas Shrugged helped me regain my bearings. And, no, it did not turn me into Peter Thiel.
It also helped me a lot. It taught me the ethics of rational self interest. It helps me to this day when I discuss my salary for example. Also, relationships work better when you know what you want, you have to give your partner the chance to do something for you every now and then, that works best when you have personality. I struggled with this. To be able to say I love you one must first be able to say I. For me t…
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2fue-FqIIP-C26vR2uAxV-J0...
Walden - Thoreau Meditations - Aurelius Simply existing can be exhilarating.
- A Conferedancy of Dunces, Peter O'Toole: tragic, hilarious and absurd
- Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb: this was my first exposure to a lot of biases and other interesting phenomena
- The Design of Everything Things: eye-opener!
Harry Potter, Tolkien, Dune and a lot of other sci-fi has also affected me, although I find it hard to point out one in particular. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein stands out a bit.
Atomic habits. Last year I had just came back from 3 days in Hospital for extremely high blood pressure. I took up walking as a daily workout and listened to Atomic Habits audiobook. It provided me enough motivation to continue and build a new habit which has not become a part of my daily routine. I am healthier and in a much better space mentally as well.
Atomic habits. Last year I had just came back from 3 days in Hospital for extremely high blood pressure. I took up walking as a daily workout and listened to Atomic Habits audiobook. It provided me enough motivation to continue and build a new habit which has not become a part of my daily routine. I am healthier and in a much better space mentally as well.
I’ve not read Atomic habits, but keep hearing it recommended. If it is appropriate for me to ask, how do you distinguish the motivation derived from the book and that from 3 days in hospital with extremely high blood pressure? I live with a fear of hypertension because of genetics. My diet and exercise (what I can control) is at front of mind and so far so good, but my high level of motivation is driven by knowing wh…
Atomic habits. Last year I had just came back from 3 days in Hospital for extremely high blood pressure. I took up walking as a daily workout and listened to Atomic Habits audiobook. It provided me enough motivation to continue and build a new habit which has not become a part of my daily routine. I am healthier and in a much better space mentally as well.
what was your bp readings if i may ask?
Cellular Automata Machines: A New Environment for Modeling Published April 1987 by MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262200608. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cellular-automata-machines http://books.google.com/books?id=HBlJzrBKUTEC&printsec=front... http://www.researchgate.net/publication/44522568_Cellular_au... https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...
I'm curious, how did the book change your life? What kind of problems did the authors model using their approach? I'm new to the topic, thanks for any input.
But by "life" I don't mean just the cellular automata rule "life"! Not to be all depressing like Marvin the Paranoid Android, but I happen to think "life" is overrated. ;) There are so many billions of other extremely interesting cellular automata rules besides "life" too, so don't stop once you get bored with life! ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAA67a2-Klk
For example, it's kind of like how the world wide web works: "Link Globally, Interact Locally":
https://donhopkins.medium.com/scriptx-and-the-world-wide-web...
It's also very useful for understanding other massively distributed locally interacting parallel systems, epidemiology, economics, morphogenesis (reaction-diffusion systems, like how a fertilized egg divides and specializes into an organism), GPU programming and optimization, neural networks and machine learning, information and chaos theory, and physics itself.
I've discussed the book and the code I wrote based on it with Norm Margolus, one of the authors, and he mentioned that he really likes rules that are based on simulating physics, and also thinks reversible cellular automata rules are extremely important (and energy efficient in a big way, in how they relate to physics and thermodynamics).
The book has interesting sections about physical simulations like spin glasses (Ising Spin model of the magnetic state of atoms of solid matter), and reversible billiard ball simulations (like deterministic reversible "smoke and mirrors" with clouds of moving particles bouncing off of pinball bumpers and each other).
Spin Glass:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_glass
>In condensed matter physics, a spin glass is a magnetic state characterized by randomness, besides cooperative behavior in freezing of spins at a temperature called 'freezing temperature' Tf. Magnetic spins are, roughly speaking, the orientation of the north and south magnetic poles in three-dimensional space. In ferromagnetic solids, component atoms' magnetic spins all align in the same direction. Spin glass when contrasted with a ferromagnet is defined as "disordered" magnetic state in which spins are aligned randomly or not with a regular pattern and the couplings too are random.
Billiard Ball Computer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiard-ball_computer
>A billiard-ball computer, a type of conservative logic circuit, is an idealized model of a reversible mechanical computer based on Newtonian dynamics, proposed in 1982 by Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli. Instead of using electronic signals like a conventional computer, it relies on the motion of spherical billiard balls in a friction-free environment made of buffers against which the balls bounce perfectly. It was devised to investigate the relation between computation and reversible processes in physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_cellular_automaton
>A reversible cellular automaton is a cellular automaton in which every configuration has a unique predecessor. That is, it is a regular grid of cells, each containing a state drawn from a finite set of states, with a rule for updating all cells simultaneously based on the states of their neighbors, such that the previous state of any cell before an update can be determined uniquely from the updated states of all the cells. The time-reversed dynamics of a reversible cellular automaton can always be described by another cellular automaton rule, possibly on a much larger neighborhood.
>[...] Reversible cellular automata form a natural model of reversible computing, a technology that could lead to ultra-low-power computing devices. Quantum cellular automata, one way of performing computations using the principles of quantum mechanics, are often required to be reversible. Additionally, many problems in physical modeling, such as the motion of particles in an ideal gas or the Ising model of alignment of magnetic charges, are naturally reversible and can be simulated by reversible cellular automata.
Also I've frequently written on HN about Dave Ackley's great work on Robust-First Computing and the Moveable Feast Machine, which I think is brilliant, and quite important in the extremely long term (which is coming sooner than we think).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22304110
- The Dune books. The depth of everything in it awes me. Every time I re-read them, I find some nuance I missed from the last reading. The way it portrays politics, religion, and basically the entangled web of life in general blew my mind when I first read it, and still does. - Bio of a Space Tyrant series by Piers Anthony. I'm not sure I can put into words how it has impacted me, though, but it has. I guess it's mor…
I loved Heinlein, but he's not very PC/Woke and it's probably quite dated now. Also very few people in the UK were into it, compared to America. My friends dad introduced both of us, he had stacks of sci fi from second hand shops. He was also the first person I knew who had an IBM compatible PC, as he wanted to "be an author".
Although, even I, fanatic that I am, would have a really hard time trying to explain his Sixth Column.
But I'd like to imagine that he would have continued to become more socially progressive over the years, and would probably be loudly advocating for even more progressive ideals today, if he were alive today.