How to win friends and influence people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen... I have to keep reminded myself to apply the rules, but very sound advice.
If you need a book for that, I'd say you're in trouble
Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
221–230 of 341 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#222The Hard SF Renaissance
So many of the stories in this collection impacted me heavily or changed my thinking. Some of the ones I felt stood out:
"Understand" - Ted Chiang
"Reasons to be Cheerful" - Greg Egan
"Bicycle Repairman" - Bruce Sterling
"The Good Rat" - Allen Steele
"Beggars in Spain" - Nancy Kress
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#223There are many, but one is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I read it as a child, and it was the first time I thought about logical thinking. Here is the section: “Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obv…
This looks kind of like logic if you squint, but is actually a logical fallacy. This issues is of course there are of course more than 3 options. If she had been deceived intentionally than none of the given three examples apply. Further, it assumes you can verify that she was 'telling lies' or 'insane' as an abstract property of her which is another mistake. That said, I can see why someone might find it a useful in…
Eh? If she was deceived (intentional or not) she is in fact telling the truth, since to her it is real.
There aren't more than three option present, but you're more correct that you may not have enough information to deduct which option is a proper representation of the true fact.
There's no real issue with the logic, outside of arguing that making a conclusive decision here is perhaps premature. That's situational though.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#224"The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness" by Todd Rose.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#225Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. I knew the United States was complicit in some nefarious things, both domestic and abroad, but wow, that book really blew my hair back.
That is the same feeling I got from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I was a bit less proud of being an American after that read.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#226"Jacques le Fataliste" by Denis Diderot.
I found that this book illustrates perfectly well the underlying way that I, as a materialist and scientific man, perceive the world around me. It also illustrates the contradiction and idiosyncrasies of this way of thinking.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#227"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter, which I read when I was 17. I was just getting into serious programming (I would learn C later that year). I had only an inkling about things like recursion, had little appreciation for music outside of Pink Floyd, and lacked any kind of spiritual philosophy that didn't end in simple atheism or nonsense that I stole from science fiction paperbacks. GEB got me wondering abo…
I think GEB holds up almost 40 years later - it's very much steeped in GOFAI[1] optimism, but the substance of the book, the intersection between math and art, its silliness and approachability, its pure fun, is absolutely as important now as when published.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_artificial_intelligen... i.e. AI that isn't machine learning
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#228"Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson. This is the book that tied together lot of things that I was wondering about previously and it opened up few doors into new mazes of research that I'm still trying to traverse. Also, started reading books that he suggested: http://www.rawilson.com/bookstore.html#rec Edit: Added Wilson's suggested reading list
I was thinking of mentioning Wilson and Shea's Illuminatus!. It touches on a lot of the same themes in Prometheus Rising but via fiction; it's full of not-so-subtly-disguised lectures and parables on How Brains (Fail To) Work. And a bunch of cheerful sexism but what're you gonna do, it's from the sixties.
And then there are the appendices, which eventually pointed me towards... yeah. "New mazes of research" is a good way to put it for the HN audience.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#229I've got a tie between two books: 1) Design of Everyday Things by Dan Norman This book ruined my life. I highly recommend it. Every engineer, manager and designer should read this. Maybe every human. I think of this book every time I try to pull a push door, every time I reach the bottom floor of a stairwell and notice the design that might save my life one day, and every time I try to struggle to operate a televisio…
Both are great books. Influence helps me a lot to deal with my 3 year old. Should be on the parenting section on bookstores. I also like The Soul of a New Machine, The Prince, The Art of War and On Human Nature.
> Influence helps me a lot to deal with my 3 year old.
I'd been teetering on the fence with this book for about a year, but I think you just sold me on it (haha!)
Any idea whether it's worth an extra ~$7 for the (I gather) textbookified version of Influence subtitled "Science and Practice", 5th edition, versus the Revised Edition of the more mass-market "The Psychology of Persuasion"?
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#230"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. While it's also a tale of travel and self-exploration (the rediscovery of identity after a nervous breakdown and shock therapy), mostly the book is about thinking. I was a different person after identifying with the narrator who also lived in the mind, and asked questions about basic concepts like 'quality', or qualia of events, objects, roles, and the sub…
Yeah, I read the book years ago but wasn't mature enough to appreciate the its value. But as I've gained in years and as my children have grown older I've thought a lot about quality and its significance. I'll be revisiting the book in the near future.
I wonder if The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander would be similarly interesting. It's not trying to be a novel, but explores similar concepts.