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

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

#671

Post by Zanni »

3minus1 wrote: post #298

* The Selfish Gene - our bodies are vessels for DNA as they travel through time. Also colony insects and birds are fascinating. * Thinking Fast and Slow - study after study shows that we exhibit so, so many cognitive biases, as our minds take shortcuts. there are some things you can do to recognize and mitigate these biases. * Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective…

The Blind Watchmaker, also by Dawkins, is the book that really undermined the necessity of a Creator to explain the complexity of life.

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

#672

Post by jjcc »

superpermutat0r wrote: post #229

Antifragile: How to live in a world we don't understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I realized that my bad relationships are mostly the result of my lack of skin in the game. That indifference is not an advantage but that it is paralyzing. That I have to feel to be able to risk and do something. In addition to applying the concept of antifragility to many external things. It has motivated me to start a business and to…

Nassim is really a great thinker. His latest book "Skin in the game" probably is underestimated by the public. It's relevant to quite a lot of current events happening that have a huge impact on modern society.

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

#673

Post by personlurking »

Balgair wrote: post #113
LyndsySimon wrote: post #47

Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Bottom line: judge your success in life by how well you make your decisions, not by your outcome. You have full control of your decisions, and often no control at all over their results.

A similar line of thinking is Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. A good discussion on the book can be found here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-make-better-d... Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0735216355/ref=tmm_h...

The idea of "Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts" reminds me of this TED Talk:

"If you ever struggle to make decisions, here's a talk for you. Cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths shows how we can apply the logic of computers to untangle tricky human problems, sharing three practical strategies for making better decisions -- on everything from finding a home to choosing which restaurant to go to tonight."

https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_griffiths_3_ways_to_make_bette...

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

#674

Post by danieltrembath »

pmdulaney wrote: post #221
robotron wrote: post #25

Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance This helped me understand the duality of the logical/mechanical and the creative/artistic. Then merging the two.

I read it 45 years ago and liked it. But the only thing that sticks in my memory -- and it is enough, I suppose -- is the author helping his friend fix his motorcycle with a piece of shim made on the spot from a Coke can.

Same. Almost every time I see a can the phrase 'best shim stock in the world' jumps into my brain!

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

#675

Post by personlurking »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #47

Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Bottom line: judge your success in life by how well you make your decisions, not by your outcome. You have full control of your decisions, and often no control at all over their results.

Is an outcome not the other side of the decision-making coin? I understand that the outcome should not carry all the weight, but it surely often carries a lot of the weight of a particular decision. That is, how does one get good at making decisions? By seeing positive results flow from them.

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

#676

Post by jtr1 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #308

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…

I don't think this is embarrassing at all. After the initial purge, I couldn't believe how much it changed my purchasing habits. I now have a very simple rubric that prevents me from buying things I don't need. Tidying Up reads as a sort of mild self-help manual but it conceals a powerful anti-consumerist undertow (speaking as an American, anyway)

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

#678

Post by misiti3780 »

robotron wrote: post #25

Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance This helped me understand the duality of the logical/mechanical and the creative/artistic. Then merging the two.

im sorry i love these threads and all the people contributing but this book is overrated. Please explain to me what is so great and life changing about this book.

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

#679

Post by jackconnor »

superpermutat0r wrote: post #229

Antifragile: How to live in a world we don't understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I realized that my bad relationships are mostly the result of my lack of skin in the game. That indifference is not an advantage but that it is paralyzing. That I have to feel to be able to risk and do something. In addition to applying the concept of antifragility to many external things. It has motivated me to start a business and to…

This book was incredible, I did not know this powerful concept of "systems that get stronger through use" existed before reading this book.

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

#680

Post by kregasaurusrex »

Surprised not to have seen it elsewhere, but I remember telling my mom that we began studying astronomy in grade school (5th or 6th?) and she gave me Cosmos by Carl Sagan. I didn't know there was a TV series for it at the time, where reading it truly blew my mind that there were other galaxies and stellar objects beyond the Milky Way, and how happenstance humanity's origin story began. It also provided a great foundation for understanding what future missions would explore: finding habitibility zones outside of the earth, probes zooming to the edges of our galaxy, radio telescopes designed to listen for signals from far away, and space telescopes expanding our map of the cosmos just to name a few.
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