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YC's Winter Reading List

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#101

Post by AnimalMuppet »

metaphorm wrote: post #80
GavinMcG wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a list made up of individuals' recommendations. This is like saying "The credibility of the United States took a plunge when your nutty aunt went on another one of her rants."

ok, but I think it's a valid opinion to express extreme aversion for Thomas Friedman.

Arguing that the whole list is less credible because Friedman's on it? I mean, it's fine if you want to maintain your own epistemic closure, but expecting everyone else to agree?

And even you should read him, if for no other reason to be sure you understand what you're disagreeing with. Then, once you can actually state his position in a way that he would recognize as accurate, then disagree as much as you please.

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#103

Post by dragonwriter »

aggie wrote: post #100
redthrowaway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Didn't both of those publications vigorously oppose Trump? Yes. >The "conservative intellectual" niche may be the most politically irrelevant group in the country. Trump won the Presidency, not the Movement. The rest of the GOP, though shell-shocked, has not suddenly ditched conservatism and embraced Trumpism. The vast majority of the GOP members of the House and Senate, and those in state governments, are conservat…

The problem I have with the GOP's obstructionism was not that it was checking power, but that it was purely political. They obstructed policies that had been supporting by conservatives in the past, just because they didn't want Obama to be seen as having succeeded with anything. That is not what the checks and balances were designed for.

> but that it was purely political.

Any governing action is entirely political; I think your problem is that it was entirely partisan.

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#104

Post by CalChris »

protomyth wrote: post #90
CalChris wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't engage the content of the book. You just said you didn't like it because liberals did. That's content free. The phrase that comes to mind is epistemic closure . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic_closure You will only accept a description of your reality from inside of your reality. Contrast that with the author who actually moved to Louisiana and lived there to find out what they think. Advantage t…

> You didn't engage the content of the book. You just said you didn't like it because liberals did. That's content free. No, I think its a poor choice when you are trying to tell the story of a people so that you can gain an understanding of them and they don't like or agree with the book, but their opposite number does and sees it as a revelation. Living among the natives to write a book is an old ploy that has been…

Again, that's not engagement. That's judgment and whether you live 'there' matters not a whit.

BTW before you can cite confirmation bias you have to engage the material. She did. You didn't.

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#105

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #98
redthrowaway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Didn't both of those publications vigorously oppose Trump? Yes. >The "conservative intellectual" niche may be the most politically irrelevant group in the country. Trump won the Presidency, not the Movement. The rest of the GOP, though shell-shocked, has not suddenly ditched conservatism and embraced Trumpism. The vast majority of the GOP members of the House and Senate, and those in state governments, are conservat…

No, you'll hear more cries of "obstruction!". They'll be on Trump's Twitter feed. If current trends continue, the media will feel that each one is news, and will write an article about each one. My hope is that Trump Twitter fatigue sets in very early.

[deleted]

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#106

Post by Finbarr »

ArlenBales wrote: post #49

One genre that is always missing from HNer's and YC's recommendations is Fantasy. It feels like most people here read books to acquire knowledge and philosophy to apply to real life. Most fantasy books are read for entertainment and imagination. There's no hidden message to parse and put toward your next start-up project. That doesn't mean Fantasy books are a waste of time though if they're engrossing and entertainin…

We actually had a few fantasy books on our Summer Reading List: https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-summer-reading/

Thanks for the recommendations!

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#107

Post by redthrowaway »

aggie wrote: post #100
redthrowaway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Didn't both of those publications vigorously oppose Trump? Yes. >The "conservative intellectual" niche may be the most politically irrelevant group in the country. Trump won the Presidency, not the Movement. The rest of the GOP, though shell-shocked, has not suddenly ditched conservatism and embraced Trumpism. The vast majority of the GOP members of the House and Senate, and those in state governments, are conservat…

The problem I have with the GOP's obstructionism was not that it was checking power, but that it was purely political. They obstructed policies that had been supporting by conservatives in the past, just because they didn't want Obama to be seen as having succeeded with anything. That is not what the checks and balances were designed for.

A lot of conservatives saw it as their duty to stand athwart Obama's agenda and yell, "Stop!"

And quite frankly, they succeeded. I think you're unfairly discounting how much of that was ideologically driven, rather than the result of simple partisanship.

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#108

Post by baraah »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #102

This is interesting, I just went to one of the book's Amazon page and this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/O6x8eNQ.jpg It's almost like a horizontal scroll version of this blog post. I guess it's the small sample size.

The same thing can be seen for Bill Gates' books of 2016 that was posted here recently.

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#109

Post by ChuckMcM »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #102

This is interesting, I just went to one of the book's Amazon page and this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/O6x8eNQ.jpg It's almost like a horizontal scroll version of this blog post. I guess it's the small sample size.

Actually it is the large sample size. Book lists tend to do this when read by a lot of people, especially if they pull their cover art from Amazon. There was a hack whereby a person used AWS resources to generate this sort of effect on demand. The result was, as expected of such a prank, books on conservative theology having "also viewed" lists which were primarily erotica. Amazon "fixed" this by ignoring item views from addresses within it's own IP space but apparently it still works for lookups from a bunch of IPs.

Re: YC's Winter Reading List

#110

Post by ashark »

ArlenBales wrote: post #49

One genre that is always missing from HNer's and YC's recommendations is Fantasy. It feels like most people here read books to acquire knowledge and philosophy to apply to real life. Most fantasy books are read for entertainment and imagination. There's no hidden message to parse and put toward your next start-up project. That doesn't mean Fantasy books are a waste of time though if they're engrossing and entertainin…

The Lies of Locke Lamora is easily the best-written fantasy novel I've read—save perhaps The Hobbit, but that's fairly unlike modern adult fantasy. It's sad that thorough competence at storytelling is a rare quality in genre fic but, well, here we are.

Book two he gets a little too nuts with sailing junk and wow that plot device at the end is awfully familiar, but it's still got some nice world building. Three's back to form (though I'd favor the first one, slightly).

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