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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?

#721

Post by jostmey »

scott_s wrote: post #457
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 Selfish Gene" was a revelation to me. I read it during college, as a break from my math, CS and physics classes. It felt like having an evolutionary biology course on the side.

I was going to put down "The Selfish Gene" myself. I remember picking it up in high school and hating the first few pages. I read the first chapter in college, and I didn't get what all the fuss was about. After college, I picked up the book, and was blown away! In retrospect, my younger self wasn't ready for it

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

#722

Post by Roelven »

A book I keep coming back to (re-read every two years or so) and recommend others is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

It has shaped my thinking on 'what is good' or 'what does quality' mean. As an engineer it is easy to appreciate the author slowly going insane about the details he keeps coming back to, and as a human it is invaluable to have an understanding yourself of when something is 'good'.

Highly recommended.

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

#723

Post by juliend2 »

"Start with Why", by Simon Sinek.

Everything from leadership to how your mission needs to speak to people's reptilian brain first, because that's how people ultimately make their decisions.

It helped me think about the deep motivations that should drive me to build a successful company. Apart from making money. And all the benefits that comes with thinking from Why, to How and then to What.

It was an eye-opener for me. And it's full of real-world stories to really make you understand his points.

I highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Simon Sinek himself, on Audible.

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

#724

Post by tokyodude »

mabbo wrote: post #500
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…

My wife started watching that Marie Kondo TV show. I came to realize that there are few possessions I own that I would really be upset about losing. "Only keep it if it sparks joy"? Yeah, just burn the house down, I'm fine.

My experience is kind of opposite. I decide one day to discard everything I own and live out of a suitcase for a while (had plenty of savings so was not living poor).

I had bookshelves full of books I never read, architecture books, art books, children's books, clothing I never wore, toys and figures I didn't play with, stuffed animals, framed posters, and entire household of stuff.

5 years later I miss some of that stuff. For lack of a better word I think it was part of my identity. Of course not all of it but lots of little things, even if I didn't use them they served as anchors for memories. Even if the only anchor was when I bought them that would remind me of other things that happened around the time I acquired the item etc..

I'm still mixed on if it was the right thing to do.

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

#725

Post by barry-cotter »

a_bonobo wrote: post #652
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…

>* Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing. The Penguin History of Europe series is great for this, especially The Pursuit Of Glory , which details the time when states switched from being based on their king, to states being based on a 'unified set of people', i.e., an imagined community. There's a…

> Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.

The Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Magyars, Mongols and many, many others would disagree. And the Khmer, Mon, Viet and Tai.

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/03/26/communities-only-e...

> Overall it is worth reading Imagined Communities because of its purported cultural significance. But much of it is so garbled and unclear I’m not sure what people are taking from it, aside from the proposition that the modern nation-state was invented in the last few centuries due to modernity. In the end the book is kind of a long tautology.

Azar Gat’s Nations is a far superior book.

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

#726

Post by homosaphien1 »

Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by Dr Sarno litreally gave me my life back. Suffered back pain which I thought was from sitting and coding for 11 years. I had no idea emotions can have an impact on physical pain. real excruciating pain that went away almost 3/4th of the way through the book. this sounds so sales pitchy but mind body connection is real I think how now we wonder how doctors in 1950s said smoking tobacco isn't bad for you, we will wonder in future on how doctors denied the mind body connection.

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

#728

Post by [deleted] »

suyash wrote: post #716
ndiscussion wrote: post #30

The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. The gene is the unit of replication, and this affects every process in this universe.

What's the big deal and why are so many people raving about this book? Can someone summarize the key points in a paragraph or two?

[deleted]

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

#729

Post by robin_reala »

robin_reala wrote: post #131
jcranberry wrote: post #67

The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Dostoevsky. At the time I didn't realize that it changed me, but looking back on it, the perspectives I learned from it fundamentally how I viewed and understood other people.

It’s so good. I just finished reading the Constance Garnett translation and it’s just gripping all the way through. Well, I guess apart from Zossima’s life story in the middle, but that definitely has its place. The Gutenberg HTML of it is definitely a labour of love and extremely high quality: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-h/28054-h.html . I converted it to a nicely formatted epub for Standard Ebooks a…

Can’t edit the original comment, but Karamazov went through review at SE and is now available at https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/the-brot...
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