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Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

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Re: Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

#184

Post by Yizahi »

an0malous wrote: post #9
Insanity wrote: post #5

The fact that Mein Kampf was mentioned so often in 2025 is saying something about the political climate lol.. Nice website though, I like it.

I think 1984 is more of a sign of the times, and not just mentioned in the context of banned book threads

It would be even higher if we would add any string with "orwell" in it, since in 99% cases it's about the same idea and in the same context.

Re: Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

#185

Post by Yizahi »

silexia wrote: post #99
babblingfish wrote: post #10

Neat. I'm seeing a lot of overlap with books mentioned on r/reddit. I didn't realize, until know, how demographically similar hacker news and reddit are.

HN used to be a site for entrepreneurs to share ideas and work on things. Now the far left Reddit crowd has crashed it and anyone who has a successful business is just "lucky" and anyone who has earned wealth should have it stolen at gunpoint by the government to redistribute to those who don't produce anything.

If you seriously call HN "far left" you may try looking at Vox, Parler and Truth for the "centrist moderate" crowd :)

Re: Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

#187

Post by threethirtytwo »

47282847 wrote: post #174
threethirtytwo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Le Guin is expressing is a beautiful idea, but it is a false beauty. It feels like truth because it aligns with how narrative engages the human mind, not because it accurately explains what stories are or why they exist. The sense that fiction reveals destiny, inner depth, or essential humanity is an illusion created by evolved cognitive machinery, not evidence of genuine insight. From an evolutionary and cognit…

> Emotions are not learned through narrative. They are innate regulatory systems shaped by natural selection. Emotions are deeply shaped by culture. Infants need emotional mirroring, co-regulation, and guidance in how to deal with and “develop” emotions. In some cultures, emotions exist not isolated in individuals but only in relationships (never “I am angry”, but “there is anger between us”). In Asian cultures, you…

I should clarify a mistake in how I phrased this earlier. Emotions are shaped by both innate biology and environment. Early mirroring, co regulation, and social interaction are essential for normal emotional development. That evidence is well established. Where I disagree is the leap from that fact to the claim that narrative is a crucial or primary mechanism of emotional formation.

Emotional regulation and differentiation emerge long before narrative competence. Infants acquire affective patterns through direct interaction and embodied feedback, not stories or symbolic self models. Cultural differences reflect how emotions are framed and expressed, not that narrative creates them. Narrative comes later as a descriptive layer that organizes experience, but it is downstream of emotion, not its cause.

Re: Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

#188

Post by parkersweb »

yboris wrote: post #87

I once commented on HN how my favorite Sci Fi novel is Accelerando and the author, Charles Stross, replied to it suggesting I try his The Rapture of the Nerds he co-wrote with Cory Doctorow; I loved it when I read it too. I love HN - it's basically the only website I visit these days (aside checking mail, watching YouTube, and gardening my GitHub repositories).

Amazon lists it as book 3 of 3 in a series - do you need to have read the first two?

Re: Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

#189

Post by timerol »

I was surprised to see "An Abundance of Katherines", given that it's not John Green's newest or most highly regarded work. I looked into the comments to see why it was being discussed, but it seems to be a classification error - all of the comments are discussing "Abundance", the political nonfiction book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. That one makes more sense on the list, given that it was released this March
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