Looking at the "Best Sellers Rank" of some famous website in order to figure out if some of my ideas are actually forgotten or not... This helped discarding some books (like "Roadside Picnic" or "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub"). While not absolutely unknown, I would still suggest: "The Rediscovery of Man" by Cordwainer Smith.
Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
331–340 of 399 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also sounds a bit like real life parody to me. How to find out employee morale? Well, you need to hire some statistical experts, who model everything and than give you an estimate and if they got the callibration right, the result might be even close to reality. Definitely easier than the other solution. Like talk to your employees once in a while and have a culture where they are not afraid to speak up if somethi…
The morale thing was just an example to help illustrate the principle...
I know. And my point was, that you can take the statistic too far, especially when dealing with humans. And this is happening in my opinion since a while. Even Stalin said: "the death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of millions just statistic." And by his actions, they were just statistic to him.
Humans are more than a number ... but when you are at a desk remote and only have numbers, than you are disconnected and it is much easier to make inhuman decisions as you are dealing with numbers and not humans anymore.
So that being said, yes, having the numbers additional that signal a decline in morale for example, is probably not a bad thing to have. If this does not replace actual human contact, because human moral also drops, when they not feel treated as humans anymore and just as numbers.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#333The Journey to the West - Wu Cheng'en Abridged English translation: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100237.Monkey In its book form this story is basically unknown in the English-speaking world despite being considered one of four literary classics in Asia. And the 70s TV show that was based on this story was very faithful to the source material, particularly the humour.
70s shows? I had not heard of them. I did know that Dragon Ball is loosely based on it.
Actually 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West_(1986_TV_s...
And a more recent (2010) remake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Cheng%27en_and_Journey_to_t...
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#334Ammi: Letter to a democratic mother.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3183562-ammi
I read this back in 2009 and remember it as a really interesting and important book especially with the troubling political climate in India over the last decade.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO it doesn't matter much who the author of a book was and what other things did he do if you can extract useful information from the book. What if Charles Ponzi himself would have personally invented a (real) cure for cancer or something before he died? Would we dismiss it just because he was a professional charlatan? I believe we would rather rest it to actually find out whether it works or doesn't.
> What if Charles Ponzi himself would have personally invented a (real) cure for cancer or something before he died? This is a pretty strained argument. The much more likely scenario would have been Ponzi claiming that he had invented a cure for cancer and, given his history of gross fraudulent behaviour, would rightfully be ignored as a sensational claim being made by a known huckster.
It seems to me that ignoring the claim would be irrational unless checking it is not extremely hard. The fact a claim is made by a known huckster affects our perception but says nothing about whether it is true or false. Outside purely theoretical exercises in logic, there are no liars who are guaranteed to lie in every single claim they make.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#336Not sure if these books are unknown or fallen out of favor, but I've never spoken to anyone else who's read them without me passing them on first:
Travels - Michael Crichton - a number of useful life lessons I'm only just catching up on
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travels-Vintage-Departures-Michael-...
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ragged-Trousered-Philanthropists-Wo...
Ishmael https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ishmael-Novel-Book-1-ebook/dp/B000S...
Another thought, Robert Heinlein doesn't seem well known in the UK these days but I think he might be better thought of in the UK although may be considered dated and sexist. I often see him quoted on here.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#337Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J.E. Gordon. As an engineering student I found the insights and examples in this book by an aeronautical engineer helped me greatly in really understanding structures. Much better than the dry academical treatises and obscure equations of the university course I undertook. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in understanding structures.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#338"Light and Color in the Outdoors" by Marcel Minnaert. The book goes into the physics of a lot of outdoor phenomena; you will be amazed at the things you never noticed or thought about before reading it. "The History and Social Influence of the Potato" is a pretty good time. "Politics of Qat: The Role of a Drug in Ruling Yemen" may sound way too niche, but it's fascinating as a study of transportation in a drug econom…
Politics of Qat is almost impossible to find. Any suggestions on how to get a copy? On the Amazon website of my region it only shows one edition available for around $1000
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#339'The Extended Organism' by J Scott Turner I've posted this repeatedly to these lists, but no one else is as enthused by it. From the GoodReads page: "Can the structures that animals build--from the humble burrows of earthworms to towering termite mounds to the Great Barrier Reef--be said to live? However counterintuitive the idea might first seem, physiological ecologist Scott Turner demonstrates in this book that ma…
I can see how this idea may seem novel to people who never thought about it on their own or seen it in many other places, but the isomorphism between carbon based life and its higher level ecosystem is not new. It also blurs the line between life and systems that aren't alive... but you have to realize that "life" is just a loaded word that mostly describes carbon based nano-machines. The vagueness of the word "life"…
"The vagueness of the word "life" produces an illusion of the concept being "interesting" when it is actually we ourselves who made up the word."
We make up all words and yet don't seem to find every word interesting.
"which is basically just little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures."
I'm sure a lot of us would disagree with you downplaying how interesting most people find that topic. A lot . of things can pretty much be described as "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures".
If someone were to ask me "What's a computer?" I could technically respond with "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures" lol
Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see how this idea may seem novel to people who never thought about it on their own or seen it in many other places, but the isomorphism between carbon based life and its higher level ecosystem is not new. It also blurs the line between life and systems that aren't alive... but you have to realize that "life" is just a loaded word that mostly describes carbon based nano-machines. The vagueness of the word "life"…
"The vagueness of the word "life" produces an illusion of the concept being "interesting" when it is actually we ourselves who made up the word." We make up all words and yet don't seem to find every word interesting. "which is basically just little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures." I'm sure a lot of us would disagree with you downplaying how interesting most peo…
>We make up all words and yet don't seem to find every word interesting.
This is because many words are made up with a concrete meaning. Many made up words with vague meanings inject a sort of false interest into things. "Spirituality" for example.
>If someone were to ask me "What's a computer?" I could technically respond with "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures" lol
I am not downplaying interest in the study of biology. I am downplaying the fact that you can call an ant colony or the planet earth a living organism. There is no real interest here as it is just a word.
The main difference between a computer and "life" is self replication and natural selection. The added feature of evolution and self replication promotes additional interest and it is not because of vague wording. The delineation between a computer and "life" is utterly clear in this case.
Where it may become unclear is if one day we create machines that self replicate. This may promote philosophical questions like "What is life?" My point is that, the philosophical question is just contemplating a linguistic phenomenon and is a pointless and delusional endeavor.