101–110 of 434 posts
2010 - Outliers, Malcom Gladwell 2011 - In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan 2012 - Born to Run, Christopher McDougall 2013 - Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss 2014 - Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon 2015 - Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins 2016 - Black Swan, Nicolas Taleb 2017 - Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman, Richard Feynman 2018 - The Prophet, Khalil Gibran 2019 - Three Body Problem (series), Liu Cixin These…
Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina, because it made me a better father; Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, because it taught me of the importance of something that I’d occasionally dismiss as a nuisance; Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC by Pete Egoscue, because it completely changed the way I understood posture, pain, and how repetition influences my body; and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, because it…
Re: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, this critique of the book is worth a read: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
> I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for all the time and effort involved in debunking Matthew Walker’s book. As someone who works with individuals with insomnia on a daily basis, I know from firsthand experience the harm that Walker’s book is causing.
> I have many stories of people who slept well on less than eight hours of sleep, read Walker’s book, tried to get more sleep and this led to more time awake, frustration, worry, sleep-related anxiety, and insomnia. …
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there is no logical consistency to the attributes used to define each grouping. They're just a hodgepodge of loosely related (at best) ideas. So a lot of people simply don't fit in either category. For example: I am absolutely pro-choice on the abortion issue. I am also rabidly pro-gun on the second amendment issue. So do I fall into the "left" bucket or the "right" bucket? The answer is "neither".
You sound rather liberal , in the literal sense.
I'm also a little more radical than most people, and if I have to pick a label for myself, I'm more likely to choose "voluntaryist", "anarcho-capitalist", or "libertarian".
Fooled by Randomness. i picked it up from my friend's dad's bookshelf in 2010/2011 by pure chance. Best decision ever.
Bhagavad Gita for me, both, personally and professionally https://www.ancient.eu/Bhagavad_Gita/
The Bhagavad Gita is a tremendously beautiful and profound work, and it's a tragedy that it (and the whole Mahabarata , really, of which the Gita is only a small part) are not more widely read in the West. However, I see its core messages as deeply problematic. The entire work is a justification of violence, obedience, and traditional social roles. It's simply amazing to me that Gandhi, the most famous advocate of no…
The Bhagavad Gita is a subset of the Mahabarata epic, albeit the most famous one, so the preceding story was that peaceful negotiations were not possible even though that was the route preferred. The idea is that if two sides are willing to negotiate peacefully, that is the option that should be taken. But if one side insists on war, action (karma) and inaction (akarma) are two sides of the same coin - inaction is not avoiding doing something, it is a form of action ("He who seeth inaction in action and action in inaction, he is wise among men; he is a Yogi and performer of all actions"). In fact, Ghandi actually wrote a letter to Hitler initially asking him "peacefully" to stop WW2. This was followed up with a less peaceful letter [0]. It would seem he was happy for violent war against Nazis because they were evil and it was against injustice. (Naturally, this leads to discussions on what one would consider evil but the idea is not to be the first to attack and provoke). The ending of the epic is wasteland of emptiness caused by the war - both as a symbol of the waste of war but also as an idea that everything and nothing exists at all times; whether you chose action or inaction is on you, time destroys all regardless.
Ghandi (and I guess Oppenheimer [1] to a degree but not sure) seemed to take the concept of Dharma (duty) to strengthen his resolve and he accepted what he considered his Dharma to keep going through the difficult times. The other aspect is that Arjuna did not choose the war but his previous actions (karma) have led him to be where he is. Just like what is said nowadays about how your past makes you who you are today. Sometimes the battle is unavoidable given past actions.
Sorry, probably too long a response :D but I genuinely had the same thought as you when I first started reading about it but then did some further reading. There's so much to dissect, from all sides, which is why I think it's one of the greatest philosophical works written.
Interestingly enough, if you watch the first Matrix with the Bhagavad Gita in mind, you'll notice a lot of parallels in the hidden meaning of the Gita and Hindu philosophy about what we consider 'real' and how life is an illusory. So much so that the Matrix Revolutions soundtrack during the end fight is a famous Sanskrit mantra from the Upanishads
asato ma sad gamaya
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrtyor mamrtam gamaya
(From delusion lead me to truth
From darkness lead me to light
From death lead me to immortality) [2]
Imagine Neo is Arjun.... there is no spoon ;)
[0] https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/when-mahatma-g...
2. The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek
3. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell
4. An American Life by Ronald Reagan
5. The Rust Programming Language by Steve Kablink
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there is no logical consistency to the attributes used to define each grouping. They're just a hodgepodge of loosely related (at best) ideas. So a lot of people simply don't fit in either category. For example: I am absolutely pro-choice on the abortion issue. I am also rabidly pro-gun on the second amendment issue. So do I fall into the "left" bucket or the "right" bucket? The answer is "neither".
but can't you define your grouping by the disapproval for other group. eg: You are a red group if disapprove blue group. Even in your own example you can fall into either group by selecting what you care about the most and giving up others. Group where others in the group have made similar compromises. Otherwise how can you possibly form a group, there is no one else is the world that has the precisely the same prefe…
Sure, you could do that, and people do. The point though, is that it makes these terms mostly useless for actually describing anything. Let's say I chose to define myself as "right" because I care more about the second amendment than abortion. You see me self-identify as "right" and then conclude that I oppose abortion, support tight border control, want a legal system defined by Judeo-Christian ethics, etc. But all of those conclusions would actually be wrong. And the same kind of construction could be applied to what would happen in the other case.
That said, of course there are some people who just happen to fit exactly into the bucket of "right" or "left" as defined by colloquial usage. But I still find that the terms are mostly useless because they lack any kind of logical consistency and because so few people actually have that "exact fit". But, that's just me.
1. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg 2. The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek 3. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell 4. An American Life by Ronald Reagan 5. The Rust Programming Language by Steve Kablink
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
Thinking: Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Education of Millionaires: Everything You Won't Learn in College About How to Be Successful by Michael Ellsberg
I'm almost sure it was slightly over a decade ago, but I'll go ahead and throw in a mention of The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank. I consider it one of the most influential books I've read, period.
Also, in terms of fiction, I'd add
Permutation City by Greg Egan, and the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov (that one's cheating a little as that was a re-read, but they are still very good).