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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?

#641

Post by GavinMcG »

saberience wrote: post #635
MikeCapone wrote: post #211

So many, and I wish I could write a long paragraph on each, but I'm unfortunately short on time. I'm posting any in case just one person who hasn't heard of those checks them out and gets value: -Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hosfstadter) -The Mindbody Prescription (John E. Sarno, completely cured my long-term crippling RSI that kept me from using computers and was ruining my life) -Feeling Good (Dr. Burns, cognitive…

The 5 Love Languages is not supported by any scientific research, basically, it's a load of bollocks. It's just the latest self help book to be in vogue.

Does it make scientific claims? It can be a useful mental model even if it's not neurologically based - and seems to be, to many people.

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

#642

Post by ereyes01 »

For me it was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. It made me see how human conflict is a part of our nature that I needed to know better, and perhaps embrace a little at times. The book of course is about how to win in ancient warfare, but it explained this in universal terms that get to the heart of how humans engage in any sort of conflict. I've then gone on to read other great books, but this began a major evolution in my thought process about many things.

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

#643

Post by 3minus1 »

mvexel wrote: post #415
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…

I came here to recommend Thinking Fast and Slow. I'm not surprised that it was mentioned a few times already. I am about to head into my third read of it. If I had to pick one concept from this book that had the most impact on my decisions and the way I look at other people's decisions, it would have to be loss aversion / prospect theory.

Yes, the loss aversion graph is amazing!

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

#644

Post by matt_j »

"The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916" by Alistair Horne

Details the battle of Verdun (France v Germany), one of the longest and bloodiest battles of WW1 with around 700000 dead, more than 1 man killed every minute for 10 months. A slaughter of men by machinery. I've read a bunch of books about the great wars and they are all affecting, some of them deeply, but this one showed me in stark relief the mindless brutality and utter futility of war. People talk of wars as necessary, of actions as heroic. It's sad that a civilized species, capable of high reasoning, can still resort to base violence so easily. It wasn't very long ago, and there's been a lot of violence since, some of it on comparable scales. We don't learn much.

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

#647

Post by claudiawerner »

nathias wrote: post #462

Plato - Meno, Symposium, Parmenides, Gorgias, Protagoras Plotinus -Enneads Markus Aurelius - Meditations Descartes - On method Descartes - Meditations Spinoza - On the improvement of Understanding Leibniz - Monadology Leibniz - Grace Voltaire - Candid Diderot - D'Alembert's Dream Kant - How to orient oneself in thinking Kant - Critique of Pure Reason Kant - Critique of Judgment Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel -…

It's a shame Marx and Nietzche didn't make your list :)

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

#648

Post by tim333 »

The Moral Animal had a big influence on me. "a 1994 book by Robert Wright, in which the author explores many aspects of everyday life through evolutionary biology" (wikipedia).

I'm not sure it's the best now but it was my introduction to it at the time.

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

#650

Post by viburnum »

freedomben wrote: post #152

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Not an easy read, but it deeply changed the way I think about incentive structures and the law of unintended consequences. It's a tough pill to swallow for people (like myself) who cling to utopian ideas, but the older I get the more I realize we must live in the world as it exists, with human nature as it really is. Dreaming of a better world is counter-productive if one does not…

Free-market books like this actually just narrow your vision to a handful of economic problems that favors the plutocracy. Don't be a sucker.
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