561–570 of 1001 posts
I would add Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman. It too follows the thread of incentives, but also more interesting aspects of human psychology like memory, and the 2 parts of the brain. Understanding how the 2 parts of the brain are often at odds with other, has vastly changed the way I think and helped me realize times I'm susceptible to bias and misunderstanding.
Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Rus…
One of the strangest things about that text is that very few of the folks I've talked to about it seem to feel that the issue with the pigs at the end is that there is a farmer. That is to say, I very rarely find anyone who will agree that the book is anti-capitalist at teh same time that it's opposed to Stalinism. I see the book continually taken happily anti-communist text. But the text is certainly not _just_ abou…
The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. The gene is the unit of replication, and this affects every process in this universe.
Yeah, that was a biggie for me, until I read "Darwinian Fairytales" by David Stove. Everyone who has read Dawkins needs to have a look at this. A philosopher has a look at what Dawkins actually says and realizes it is basically medieval demonology dressed up in pseudoscientific verbiage.
So, for now, my considered view is that Dawkins has many interesting insightful things to say, while his critics are often attacking straw men.
Although it sounds like a self help book, it’s actually a fascinating interpretation and explanation of the Tao de Ching which was written 2500 years ago by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.
It really helped me understand the wisdom of that text, which without the accompanying interpretation by Dyer is a bit like reading Shakespeare without the notes.
I think about this book almost every day, and it truly did change my life. highly recommended.
* Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
* The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
* Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
* Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz
* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
* Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
* The Culture novels by Ian M. Banks
* Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
* Not a book, but Gene Roddenberry's vision in Star Trek shaped who I want to be and the world in which I prefer to live.
Although, I would say that it's hard to choose because just about everything I read changes me in some way. Here I've tried to stick to the ones that changed me for the better, rather than sending me off on an amusing if useless rabbit trail, e.g. Real Magic by Isaac Bonewitz, Illusions by Richard Bach, The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson, H.P. Lovecraft's works.