Anything by E Michael Jones
Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
251–260 of 747 posts
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#252"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig takes you deep into the philosophy on what is 'quality'. Once you see it you can't unsee it. A powerful excerpt from the book: 'So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows natura…
How would that work in a programming environment, to not separate one self from the surroundings?
A lot of decisions are based on choosing one of two actions. You can think of them as doors. "Do I pick Door A or Door B?"
Sometimes you know that Door A is by far the "right" choice, but maybe it's the harder one. Taking a minute to drop your ego may make the choice easier. "Yeah, A is hard now, but B will bring much more pain later."
It may help to frame you decisions based on the hypothetical "1000x programmer". You acknowledge that this programmer is the absolute best. Every choice they make is literary a life or death decision, so they always make the right choice. What would they do in this situation? They would write that unit test!
Other times you don't know which one is the "right" choice. In those cases it actually doesn't matter, does it? Worrying about what may happen if you choose "wrong" will not change what's on either side of the doors.
Choose one and get on to the next set of doors. If you weren't happy with the outcome don't beat yourself up over it, instead use what you learned to better inform your future decisions.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#253"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous. What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not contin…
I think I remember reading another sci-fi book or short story that posited the classic "teleporter problem" but the device functioned by making a copy of the individual and then destroying the original, similar to The Prestige I suppose. Part of the plot centered around the original escaping that fate and then fighting for their continued existence. I think it poses a very strong argument against a copy of consciousness being a continuation since it makes no sense that there is continuity between copy and original only if the original is immediately destroyed, it just means that the copy is the only remaining instance.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#254Anything by Hermann Hesse. Not mind bending. No Twists. No roller coasters. Just a calm conversation with the author and yourself. And yet, it had a profound impact on me. One poem I revisit every once in a while: https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=119749 If you understand German, I do believe it needs to be read in its original tongue. The translations I found thus far were not entirely convincing.
Absolutely +1 to this. Although my German is terrible enough that I did have to read the English translations. I would add, in my opinion, start with Steppenwolf and then read Siddhartha. It blows my absolute mind that these books were written a hundred years ago. They're still so relevant to life. It's really, genuinely astounding.
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Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#255After reading "The Machine that Changed the World," by Womack, Jones, and Roos, all product management paradigms besides Just-In-Time seem irredeemably sub-optimal, almost provably so. The book is about the Toyota Production System, and how Toyota's product management paradigm of JIT alone caused Toyota to become the largest car manufacturer in the world over Ford, GM and all the entrenched American mass producers.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#256Some of my faves in this vein: Stranger In A Strange Land Solaris The Fall Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Seveneves (a bit silly but definitely fun and will set you to thinking)
I adore Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , but for Philip K Dick at his most mind-bending, I’d instead go for Valis
I love Valis and it's probably his most mind bending, but I wouldn't recommend starting there. That book works best when you've already been exposed to his bizarre mind-bending style, and also understand a bit of the context of Dick himself (since Valis is semi-autobiographical).
My recommendations are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly. And then reading a bit about Dick's life -- in particular, his experience with the "pink light", and his belief in the real life instantiation of VALIS. After that, the book Valis will make a lot more sense, but also be even more mind bending.
Dick likely suffered from some sort of undiagnosed mental illness. But having the discussion end there sort of discounts the core themes of his books -- mainly, the recognition of the paper-thin nature of reality, and the impossible task of ever knowing with a certainty the true state of things.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely +1 to this. Although my German is terrible enough that I did have to read the English translations. I would add, in my opinion, start with Steppenwolf and then read Siddhartha. It blows my absolute mind that these books were written a hundred years ago. They're still so relevant to life. It's really, genuinely astounding.
> It blows my absolute mind that these books were written a hundred years ago. The more you read history, and the actual written words or written speeches of intellectuals and politicians, you'll continue to be amazed. Much of their language is poetic, and their prose seems more coherent than today's, but that's probably because they wrote a lot more letters to one another.
Also anything not memorable has been lost. There's a selection bias.
Why are so many old houses built so well? It's not just because craftsmanship was better. It's because the ones not built so well didn't get old. (I owned a house built in 1884 for a few years. Most of it was excellent craftsmanship. Some ... not so much. Previous owners had been lucky the dining room floor had never been stressed too much.)
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#258House of Leaves is a great novel. Will feel like a completely fresh take on narrative form. Infinite Jest is also great, if you haven't read it. It gets a lot of bad press mostly due to being fetishized by a particular type of insufferable person. The book has its flaws, but is a great piece of writing and (depending how old you are, where you are in life, etc) may offer a different lens. Also, the writing is excelle…
I didn't finish Infinite Jest. I found it kind of insufferable. I really don't want to detract from anyone who found it enjoyable; it's surely a monumental work. But personally it felt incredibly depressing and that made it hard to read.
The dialogues made it feel like experiencing isolation and disconnection from other people; the characters talk to each other, but don't listen or care for anyone but themselves or the ones/things they deify.
The thing is, I think that was kind of the point of the book (at least as far as I read). But I couldn't handle it. That, on top of the many paragraphs of needlessly esoteric language he peppers in, made me feel like I was reading a book written for someone else.
Should I go back and finish the book? What makes it compelling to others?
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#259"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig takes you deep into the philosophy on what is 'quality'. Once you see it you can't unsee it. A powerful excerpt from the book: 'So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows natura…
Despite all the praise it got, I really struggled with that book. I hated it so much that I had to check if I didn't pick the wrong book by accident. I found that it's a very polarising book. It's life-changing for some, and garbage for others. There were a few insightful passages, but most of the book was pretentious rambling. It was difficult to understand what the author was even trying to say, with his head so fa…
> It's life-changing for some, and garbage for others.
I feel this way about Catcher in the Rye. My English teacher recommended it to me obviously on the basis that I was an angsty teenager that would identify with Holden Caulfield. But what a pile of crap it is. I still want back the hours I wasted on reading that stupid boring book.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#260Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius