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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?

#931

Post by Jill_the_Pill »

marvindanig wrote: post #428
scrumper wrote: post #162

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…

Totally, I agree! Even though George Orwell is more known for 1984 but his work truly shines with the Animal Farm. It is a children's book fwiw but every aspect of it is meant for the grown-ups. Outstanding! Luckily if you're in Australia, you can read this book for free because it is public domain there. [1] https://bubblin.io/cover/animal-farm-by-george-orwell (iPad-book) [2] http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/010001…

Thanks for the link. It was fun reading it again for the first time in 30 years!

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

#932

Post by baselined »

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl changed how I viewed most of the world, especially as a counselor. Learning how experiences change how a person views the world and its impact on their life.

Reading about how he experienced time in a concentration camp with endless hope to be reunited with his wife kept him going and surviving each day hungry, cold, and doing his best to take care of the ill. He learned the positive impact of hope and when individuals lost it, they quickly fell ill or died. It gave me perspective and to challenge my way of thinking in addition to helping clients learn there are multiple ways to interpret anything.

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

#933

Post by misiti3780 »

_urga wrote: post #915
misiti3780 wrote: post #684

1. All of Nassim Taleb's Books - They changed the way I thought about tail probabilities and risk taking + bar bell strategies in general 2. Thinking Fast and Slow - made me think about all of the biases that my mind has that I dont even realize 3. The organized mind - This book gave me a lot of ideas about how I can change my life to live with less distractions and maybe do thinks more efficently 4. The Vital Questi…

Bart Ehrman is not the most conservative scholar. He's also been known by peers to have two faces, depending on who he's dealing with, whether his audience is academic or pop. Bruce Metzger is a far more reliable (and recognized) guide, regardless of religious inclination. At worst, you will have a more balanced perspective after reading Metzger, and at best you will see where Ehrman has let you down. "Over 100s of y…

I'll check him out. Im not sure what your definition of mainstream scholars is but most evangelical christians i speak with in the US don't doubt the accuracy - and they compose a large group of people.

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

#934

Post by Shorel »

iamjk wrote: post #717
putzdown wrote: post #615

Maybe trite, but the Bible. For a mind-blowing experience, read Matthew chapters 5–7, and have in mind that the topic is: “what it means for a person to be righteous, or good.” The analysis of the role of moral rules, the place of worry and anxiety in driving us to short-sighted compromise, the tension between “secret” good-doing versus good-doing for public recognition, are all potent, helpful, and life-changing.

Props to you, putzdown, for bringing this up. The Bible is an often overlooked trove of wisdom

>The Bible is an often overlooked trove of wisdom

For a book used by millions of people as the only source of wisdom for over a dozen centuries, I can hardly disagree more about the 'overlooked' part.

I am not commenting about its actual merits, as it has some merits and some beautiful verses. But it is just a book among many. It should stop being the only book many people read.

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

#936

Post by jammygit »

I read a book about personality types (Myer's Briggs) and wanted to learn more, which led me to Carl Jung as a teenager. This opened up the whole world of classical books to me and I somehow ended up mixed up with the ancient Greeks (Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, some stoics, some skeptics) on a daily basis for over a decade after that. I didn't agree with much of it, but it turned my world upside down and gave me some amazing thinking tools.

Then Nietzsche did the same years later - he truly can't be appreciated until you've spent 5-10 years reading philosophy searching for 'truth' and being frustrated.

Finally, engineering school really twisted things again and made me confront the difficulty of maintaining fundamental skepticism in the face of reliable scientific law (or even the occasional deterministic program).

Its been quite the trip

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

#937

Post by sridca »

_jgdh wrote: post #592

* Factfulness and Thinking Fast And Slow. The latter helped me internalise that my thinking, like most humans, is biased. Even being aware of those biases doesn’t always help. We need to go above and beyond to overcome our biases. Factfulness goes into detail about what those biases are and how they lead to a distorted world view. Rather than taking the easy way out by blaming journalists/politicians/rich people, he…

What would you recommend for a general history of India especially around British invasion? School textbooks are obviously biased.

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

#938

Post by dkatri »

Happy by Derren Brown altered the way that I choose to approach a lot of things in life. It's essentially an intro to stoicism. Something I had never really read about before.

It was really an attitude change for me, and realising that I can only control what I can. I can't control people's reactions to that. It set me off on a bit more reading into stoicism.

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

#939

Post by sridca »

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…

Reading The Selfish Gene convinced me to give up on the ideal of arranged marriage (which I was instilled with from birth), and marriage in general.

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

#940

Post by _jgdh »

sridca wrote: post #937
_jgdh wrote: post #592

* Factfulness and Thinking Fast And Slow. The latter helped me internalise that my thinking, like most humans, is biased. Even being aware of those biases doesn’t always help. We need to go above and beyond to overcome our biases. Factfulness goes into detail about what those biases are and how they lead to a distorted world view. Rather than taking the easy way out by blaming journalists/politicians/rich people, he…

What would you recommend for a general history of India especially around British invasion? School textbooks are obviously biased.

I've only read a couple of history books about India, one by William Dalrymple and the other by Ramachandra Guha. I'd highly recommend both of them. In case you want to know about the last decades of the freedom struggle, Gandhi After India is probably what you're looking for.
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