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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?

#781
One book that changed my perception about things is "Commentaries on Living by J. Krishnamurti". I used to have pretty rigid belief about things and ways of living. This book really helped me identify and break down the walls I had built for myself that prevented me from growing.

Link: https://krishnamurti-teachings.info/book/commentaries-on-liv...

Archived page: http://archive.is/mp9W6

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

#783

* 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…

>* Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing. The Penguin History of Europe series is great for this, especially The Pursuit Of Glory , which details the time when states switched from being based on their king, to states being based on a 'unified set of people', i.e., an imagined community. There's a…

Can you also suggest some book on the languages of Europe that were forgotten because of emergence of nation states?

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

#789
"Extreme Ownership" - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin : This is an amazing book which will make you stop complaining no matter what. It's all on you to make it better. Such an amazing book which changed my perspective on external world dependencies. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848190-extreme-ownersh...

"Tools of Titans" - Tim Ferriss : This book can be seen a summary of 15 most popular non-fiction books. There are a lot of guests in this book with a diverse back ground. There is wide wisdom you can pick on every page of this book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31823677-tools-of-titans

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

#790

"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…

Although Sowell writes very convincingly and brings logical arguments at first sight, most of his statements on the free market are based on intuition rather than data. He consistently uses a handful of examples (minimum wage, housing market) and extrapolates those to other areas in the economy without substantiation. Always assuming a fully efficient market (which it is not, see different bubbles in past few decades), rational actors (i.e. ignoring human emotion and/or marketing effects that effect consumer spending) and full price elasticity of all goods/services/labor.

It's an interesting read, but be (very) skeptical. The world and economics is a bit more complex than the picture he portrays.

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