631–640 of 980 posts
"The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life." Not because I remember anything about it, or believe anything it espouses, or even like it all that much, but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace. If someone I don't know too well asks me what my favorite book is, I say Atlas Shrugged. If they react inappropriately, I'll be cordial and treat them with respect,…
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I just have to say, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" shook me for a really, really long time afterwards. I'm not saying it's a bad book, it's quite thought provoking, but I took about 99 points of psychic damage from it.
Why is that?
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So, you will lie about your favourite book to socially engineer people? That would be the end of any friendship even if your favourite books are actually good reads. Why would I want to be friends with someone who will lie to qualify me? I don’t put up with that amongst mobile device salespeople and that’s a small investment.
This is fine. People don't have to be friends, you know? And it's ok not to be friends with everyone. I just know what types of people I like to hang out with - and they're typically people patient enough to put up with my dumb ass.
Your friends deserve better.
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Have you considered that someone who hears Atlas Shrugged is your favourite book might react similarly? I'd be polite, but note you down as either an immature thinker or someone who likes to provoke. With a little more prodding, possibly also one of those people who has to be right about everything, and this is their hill. I guess I'm on passive radar and you are on active.
I have considered it. I generally don't like people who fly off the handle immediately. I really like your radar analogy
Or better example:
Person 1: I like Atlas Shrugged (secretly don't but use it as a test when meeting people)
Person 2: Amazing, I also like Atlas Shrugged (secretly don't, but don't want to argue with another Atlas Shrugged fan boy, so just nod head and agree, and just looking how to end conversation and move on).
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Wonderful, wonderful book. One of my favorites. It's old, but the beginning especially is just a non-stop adventure. It always drags a bit for me after the first third, but picks up again and continues to be great throughout.
>> It's old, but the beginning especially is just a non-stop adventure. It always drags a bit for me after the first third, but picks up again and continues to be great throughout. Yeah, as much as I love Count Monte Christo as a story, being it a movie ( https://youtu.be/qesn8pV9yu8?si=ssccZfQGf9F1fCk3 ), series ( https://youtu.be/bF1Z7irZLdY?si=oDF0OnB-1NWVfwZq ) or anime ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gankutsuou:…
These threads often end up, with everyone trying to prove they are literary scholars. I prefer junky fantasy books. I'm really too old and cynical to give a damn what y'all think of me. I probably liked David Edding's Belgariad series, along with the Mallorean series, the most. I reread them, regularly, and go through all ten books, in a couple of weeks. They are an easy read. Also, Glen Cook's Black Company books ar…
https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2020/05/it-has-been-reveale...
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"Books are not oranges." As an aside, what do you mean by this? I would have an even harder time giving and answer to the best orange I've eaten. The Hobbit. My brother read it to me when I was just starting to read. When he was done I asked him to read it again. he said no and I learned to read in earnest. I was often shooed out of the adult section of the library. I have read lots of books by now.
The best orange has a structure of a peak ripe grapefruit. Peel doesn’t stick, micro-columns separate easily and burst with juice. If grapefruits were orange-flavored, I’d eat them all day.
It's a damn shame we haven't figured out how to coerce citrus like we do tomatoes.
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C'mon. This is HN. People are trying to posture and prove all kinds of things. Of course folks have different tastes (I'm the redneck engineer, in my family. Most of my other siblings think James Joyce is da thang , but they are also into posturing). But it also intimidates folks into not sharing some really good stuff.
> People are trying to posture and prove all kinds of things. I would hope that it’s a mixture of personalities posting here, rather than a subset of people who are following some personal agenda. This crowd is hopefully mature enough to avoid this type of behavior.
It's not just a shared interest community. YC isn't a benevolent organization, and many of the folks, hereabouts, have some pretty serious cred (and money/power). Lots of folks want to get on their good side, and may think that frontin' is the best way.
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I find a good follow up question is oh? what do you think he's all about? And if they start talking about master/slave morality or the ubermensch, then change the subject and move on,
That's interesting because the Genealogy of Morality was his greatest contribution as far as I can tell. Is there something in particular that feels most egregious about master/slave morality or do you have some reading attempting to reject the ideas?
GoM is an interesting work on his ideas about the historical evolution of social norms and the psychological motivations behind them in many cases; in either it or TGS he says that a really comprehensive work on the evolution of norms throughout human history and different societies in different conditions would be invaluable, and that his work is only sort of a first step on an enormous undertaking. Unfortunately, we never much took it up. Maybe that's inevitable, since Nietzsche in a rare normative moment says the exception should not become the rule; we don't want a lot of people to not take their norms so seriously they reflexively reject serious consideration of their contingent character. If they do, you don't have much of a society.
It's certainly very hard for people to seriously think about these problems. Plenty of very smart people take thinkers like Rawls seriously, where Nietzsche's work clearly shows it to be without any serious foundation. You could of course still make a claim for moral realism, but it requires the acceptance of ideas the same people are usually allergic to.
But even more than that, Nietzsche is full of really incredible ideas and insights worded in clever ways. TGS is brilliant. When someone talks about these subjects I usually gather they didn’t really engage. Those topics are what come up in almost all secondary sources where they are treated superficially or often, like Russell, almost maliciously wrong.