381–390 of 434 posts
Finally got around to reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. It was on my list for the past like, twenty years, and after reading it I really wish I would have read it back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes
I read a lot of fanfiction in the last years. On the downside the writing is less polished. On the upside it is free and non-mainstream. I was influenced by Eliezer Yudkowsky and his take on rationality. His fanfiction "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" serves as a nice introduction. http://www.hpmor.com/ Worm by John McCrae is an epic superhero/villain story. Consider it Game of Thrones in the superhero g…
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
Interested in why you consider liberal fascism one of the best books of the decade - it left me very disappointed. He had me going with how Wilson and FDR were fascists, but then he got to recent history, and used the same arguments to make the case that Clinton was a fascist. I lived through Clinton - that’s when I realized that Goldberg was telling one side of the story - it was the usual partisan BS. Such a shame…
I'm not seeing it mentioned here, also a good resource: https://hackernewsbooks.com/
Thank you for this. Really intriguing how they do it: "All links to Amazon, Safaribooks and O'Reilly get extracted once a week from Hacker News posts. We then rank the links based on how often they are mentioned and the karma of the user on Hacker News. So books mentioned several times by different people having high karma tend to rise to the top." [0] [0] https://hackernewsbooks.com/about
The author even shared the formula used to calculate those rankings
The Black Swan by Taleb and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman are two books that pretty much completely changed how I view the world, and have made me much happier as a direct result.
I can't wait to read/listen to black swan
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Thanks for the suggestion. Adding 'Shogun' to my reading list
If you are adding Shogun then surely you also must add Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. A sprawling epic loosely based on history, with real historical people as characters
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Interested in why you consider liberal fascism one of the best books of the decade - it left me very disappointed. He had me going with how Wilson and FDR were fascists, but then he got to recent history, and used the same arguments to make the case that Clinton was a fascist. I lived through Clinton - that’s when I realized that Goldberg was telling one side of the story - it was the usual partisan BS. Such a shame…
It was tongue-and-cheek knock at Rust people and their fascism / totalitarianism
Sorry.
The Count of Monte Cristo - This is one breathtaking epic. I have been putting off reading this novel for quite some time and occasionally see this name popping up in HN too, but never gave a serious thought for giving it a go. Was I wrong! This is an epic in its true sense, and you will feel a sense of amazement as you progress through the novel. I'm quite a reader, and I have not experienced such amazement when rea…
Completely agree for the Count of Monte Cristo, but wanted to add that I had a similar experience more recently with Shogun (James Clavell) which I found equally inescapably immersive.
The sword buried in earthquake and the samurai-wife subplots come to mind even all these years later.
Still, it was riveting compared to the shaggy dog that was Tai-Pan, the only book I've had the distinction of hurling at the wall in disgust at its non-conclusion.
Never Split the Difference - some very practical negotiation strategies.
Mini Habits by Stephen Guise - short book but awesome method. I am still doing the one pushup habit since last March.
How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck by Steve Stockman - I wanted to improve my video production for my programming course for kids. I am still learning but this book has been a huge help.
The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking by Barbara Minto - huge help with improving my written communication at my job.
The Coaching Habit by Michael Stanier - short book but huge help when your transitioning to managing people.
Made to Stick by Dan Heath - was a huge help in planning how I would teach elementary students last month about programming.
The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch - aside from application of Pareto principle, I took away the idea that books provide the best bang for your buck for knowledge density.
The 4 Hour Work Week - great inspiration to start your own thing.
The $100 Startup - like the 4HWW but with more details.
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> I read the Bible out of curiosity and ended up joining a church, so that's pretty consequential. Is there a bigger story here? I'm not the type that would find reading the Bible appealing but I can say without a shadow of doubt that if I would, it would not awaken any latent desires for religion.
I've read 3 different versions of the bible and it converted me from an agnostic to an atheist. I think GP may have been predisposed to religion (or at least to the social aspects of joining a church) as the bible, as interesting as it is, is only as interesting as any other selected and vetted collection of philosophy and story telling. Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam also have very interesting texts worth rea…
I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive, but treating them as if they are, I'm curious why. I would presume your definitions, based on this, that:
* agnostic = "I don't know if there is anything" * atheist = "I do know that there is nothing"
I have mostly met agnostic atheists, being "I don't know if there is anything, but I believe there's nothing", whereas it seems you are a gnostic atheist.
I'm curious because I somewhat took an opposite path in my life - reading Godel's Incompleteness Theorem exposed myself to the idea that I can't ever know what's out there, so it lead me to agnosticism.