851–860 of 1001 posts
As a book lover, and a very frustrated one at that (for I never seem to have time to read all the books I would love to have already read), I've found Pierre Bayard's How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read both inspiring and liberating. The title sounds it's appealing to some kind of self-help shenanigans on how to fake your knowledge on books, but in truth is a very coherent metaliterary theory that delves into me…
Antifragile by N N Taleb. Additionally also the black swan by the same author. All said and done I feel like it's made me look at and evaluate a lot more possibilities at all important junctions in my life (if not all junctions). It's helped me channelise my mind better to understand signals I care about in an otherwise extremely noisy world. It's also made me a stronger individual being able to do more for people an…
The Lindy effect: The strongest systems are usually the ones that have been around the longest. Accordingly, there should be a healthy distrust for any recent invention or practice.
The world is too complex to understand: Complex systems are mostly not designed, but exist and thrive by virtue of natural selection. This includes human societies. Even leaders and managers of these systems do not understand why they work. In particular you can't predict the outcome of tampering with complex systems, and you should avoid doing it in a wholesale centralized way.
Stress makes antifragile systems stronger: In particular a certain amount of stress, challenge, and variation is necessary for a person to remain strong.
Extreme tails: Fragile and antifragile systems often have payouts where a single event dominates the outcome. As an individual, there are two takeaways. There are only a couple of opportunities in life that count. They will only count if you maintain the optionality to take advantage of them. A single tragedy can ruin you. You have to look out for it constantly, even if everything has been pretty rosy up until now.
I distinctly remember reading and re-reading the chapter telling the tale of the Grand Inquisitor. Only after two or three readings of the whole novel I began to grasp Dostoevsky's answer to the Inquisitor's objections, which are not stated plainly in the text but are instead suggested by the way the narrative unfolds.
I have read many other books by Dostoevsky (my other favorites are "The Devils" and "The Idiot"), but "The Brothers Karamazov" is still my favorite.
It's written by someone who lives violence on an everyday basis, and his insights are amazing. Particularly for people who rarely experience violence, but when they do it will be catastrophic.
I think about "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell a lot directly. Over time I've appreciated it as a way to both motivate me to work towards success, and also to cope with feeling not successful enough. The fact reflecting on that book is helpful for both sides of that coin is part of its staying power for me, I think.
"The State" by Franz Oppenheimer was also impactful. It was the first kind of political theory that really gripped me. The idea that the State was something to analyze and scrutinize in the way that he did was exhilarating. Touched a nerve that resulted in significantly more questioning of authority and critical thinking about power, generally.
"why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby" made a difference, too. The book itself is great and it helped me to learn Ruby, and it also introduced me to _why. His work made me view programming as not just a craft, like building a chair, but also as an art form, like writing a book. It can be a way to express yourself and be creative, and programmers can, indeed, be creative, too!
"Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky really changed how I see the media and everything related to the media. Like many "radicals" (it's the same for libertarians), he has great observations about the way things are, but umconvincing ideas for solutions. Oh well.
He's one of the few public intellectuals with the humility to step away from saying "do this", and constantly speak to the power of "countless small deeds of unknown people" in creating a better society.
I was in my first couple years of military service when I read that. I can't really say how it changed my outlook on life, other than the fact that I liked how realistic the writing was, in regards to how children can adapt to an extreme situation (and how quickly naivety and innocence can be lost).
Lead me to read other books by Orson. I like many of them.
Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Rus…
>>I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Russian Revolution. You have to only look at the management hierarchy in your company. Pigs in the Animal Farm novel eat apples. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those ap…
Sorry, but i dont believe this is an accurate analogy. The reason is that otherwise they might leave for another opportunity. No-one is telling workers what the pigs are saying in AF.
Also appealing to children