Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

news.ycombinator.com

521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#521

OK, it might be a bit embarrassing to post this, but I'm going to say Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up." Not so much for the tidying part (though I did find that extremely helpful), but the whole idea of only keeping things in your life that "spark joy" (not an exact translation by the way - "spark excitement" or "spark meaning" are other ways I like to think about it) has had a profound impact on…

This book helped me too. I used to hoard all kinds of stuff and find clever ways to store it because it might be useful some day, if I could ever find it at the right time. Eventually I started intentionally buying duplicates of things I needed so there would always be one on hand. I'd especially be reluctant to get rid of stuff that didn't take up a lot of space. I didn't realize how much it added up. Sometimes getting rid of even very small things can make storage much smaller and more manageable. I know where everything is now, and it saves a lot of time! I moved to a tiny apartment and got rid of most of my things and now I'm just nice and cozy with the stuff I actually want.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#522
All the books below have shaped my thought process to a significant degree. I started reading late but I'm fortunate enough to have stumbled upon these gems.

"Debt: The First 5000 Years": This is truly a magnum opus. Until I read this I had taken money, economy, market etc., for granted. And I had held onto the widely accepted, but naive, view that economic systems somehow grew out of barter systems. The range of topics discussed, and the way author shows how seemingly independent concepts are intertwined, is truly astonishing. I'm on my 2nd read.

"Thinking, Fast and Slow": This book made me truly appreciate the value of psychology. I didn't even know the existence of a vast domain called behavioral science until I read this book. Now I'm deliberately conscious about the decisions I take and retrace my thought process multiple times just to make sure that I haven't fallen pray to some of the cognitive biases.

"The Tell-Tale Brain": While I did know that human brain is a unique organ this book opened my eyes to its layered complexities. For instance, how "seeing" is not a single step but a multi step process. From image formation, to identifying the object, to evoking emotional response.

"QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter": The book with the highest signal to noise ratio. I finally understood what science is about, a way to model nature and to keep refining it to fit the observation. There are no true/false theories/models only those that explain nature's behavior better or worse. Nature is agnostic to all our theories and models. She's just the way she is. For details read about double slit experiment.

"How the World Works": This one along with "Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order" has greatly shaped my mental model about the workings of contemporary world. I now understand why does military gets all the funding, why do powerful governments tend to keep its subject under perpetual fear, why is it that the cost of education has been sky-rocketing.

"The Hanging of Afzal Guru and the Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament": A glimpse into the working of Indian justice system.

"Broken Republic": This is by far the most accurate description about current affairs in India. How India is being hollowed out and how its most vulnerable section is the one fighting against it.

"Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life": I'm currently reading it (20% through) and it has already made a big impact. The meaning of information is deep and subtle and pervades not just human being but the life itself.

"The Order of Time": The book that well and truly shook the foundation that I had taken for granted for my entire life. That space and time aren't something absolute and are personal has had a profound impact on me.

"The Upanisads": A truly remarkable work of human mind. Just to think about some of the concepts uplifts my mood.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#524
So this is technically to language, but as someone who writes on top of codes it gave me so much to think about I feel it still counts. Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison. The way he explores using senses, how to build metaphors, how to construct things gave me new ways to look at a lot of different things. I reread the book pretty regularly and glean something new every time.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#525
post #7

One book that changed me was reading Master and Margarita in Russian for the first time. It was the first book I started reading I could not put down until the end. Gained a lot of appreciation for literature at that time. The other book that I enjoyed and changed me was ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ by Alan Watts. I was a fan of Alan Watts works through his lectures already and it was wonderful to hear his ideas in wri…

There's a rather modern and new German translation which has been turned into an audio play by Bayerischer Rundfunk. I adore that! They have cast an Austrian as Fagott, with a wonderful Viennese dialect.

No idea whether Fagott has some linguistic extravagance in the original, but it works really well on this Master of Ceremonies.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#528

"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…

The problem with just accepting how the world really is, is that it pushes many people into a state of stagnation, never really pushing the status quo. If you refuse to accept the society you live in today, then you have more incentive to change it tomorrow.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#529
Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation" [1]. This book basically shaped my views on science, philosophy, art, literature, religion, music, politics and architecture, in a very profound way. The first volume is incredibly accessible, highly entertaining and deeply original.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_Will_and_Represen...

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#530
post #258

I read through the bible every year and each time it shapes my thinking. For example, I was reading Exodus this morning about how we should care for the foreigner. I imagine several thousand years ago this was pretty radical. It also seems very relevant today.

I second that. For a book that's the foundation of our entire Western Civilization it's amazing that so few read it these days. No wonder our civilization is breaking down. Not to mention how mythologies in so many cultures have embedded remnants of its first book, Genesis. Also the inspiration of countless masterpieces of literature like the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (1989), mentioned at th…

> For a book that's the foundation of our entire Western Civilization

That might be putting it a bit strongly. "western civilization" derives from ancient greek society, which wasn't christian, but contained many concepts that are considered foundational to our society (such as democracy).

Post reply on HN