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It gives you an alternative perspective on art, school, charity, politics (including office politics), religion, and, well, yourself. This book will likely make you revise at least some of your beliefs.
Highly recommended for everyone: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahenman. If you have difficulty interacting with people 1. How to win friends and influence people (Easy read) 2. Seven habits of highly effective people (Harder read) To learn how to write well: On writing well To understand how large products are made: Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT
"Thinking, Fast and Slow" was pretty underwhelming to me given the hype. There's much better stuff out there if you're interested in cognitive biases, behavior, etc.
It's a guide to meditation, without the religious parts.
Nassim Taleb's books (Black swan, Antifragile, Fooled by Randomnesss) Thinking Fast and Slow The Organized Mind The Vital Question by Nick Lane. The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
I thought Black Swan was fairly meaningless. It started to raise some interesting ideas about the effect of "black swan" events but then failed to give any insight into dealing with or preparing for those effects beyond vague generalities. I did learn how Taleb likes lifting weights and refuses to run for a bus though. From what I've heard his other books are similar.
that is exactly what Antifagile, the book he wrote after does
Basically a unified theory of consciousness. 100% must read.
* (Theory) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
A bit long winded but it really changes the way you think about the voice in your head, about consciousness in general. Pairs well with Surfing Uncertainty
* (Self Help) Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Really wakes you up to the domination language that rules our interactions and provides an alternative framework. Its even great if you don't plan on implementing NVC, just to understand what non nonviolent langue is. Pairs well with Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness for understanding how language formed our minds and our societies.
* (Theory) The Force of Nonviolence Judith Butler Wakes you up to the highly dominant and persistent narrative of violence. Provides frameworks for something else. If this doesnt blow your mind im not sure what will.
* (Theory)Staying with the Trouble by Donna J. Haraway The name says it all. Ways to stop trying to wipe the slate clean, to start from scratch, but instead to "stay with the trouble" and make new things WITH. Wakes your mind up to disrupting in whole new ways.
* (Theory) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein Another book that helps you see the world through different eyes, or even if I dare, to see the world more clearly. Pairs nicely with the unnecessarily long winded "Fall" by Neal Stephenson for understand a post truth world, specifically the idea of "Edit Streams"
* (Scifi )The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton This one game me a framework for science and spirituality to coincide
* (Scifi ) Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Questions everything, blows your mind on multiple levels.
* (Self Help) She Comes First by Ian Kerner Wakes you up to the massive comfort imbalance in sex between genders and provides simple ways to help fix it (for heterosexual)
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I thought Black Swan was fairly meaningless. It started to raise some interesting ideas about the effect of "black swan" events but then failed to give any insight into dealing with or preparing for those effects beyond vague generalities. I did learn how Taleb likes lifting weights and refuses to run for a bus though. From what I've heard his other books are similar.
Yep. Better to read Asimov's foundation trilogy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series
why is this series so much better than Taleb's books?
"To Mock a Mockingbird" by Raymond Smullyan. From Wikipedia: > To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing Adventure in Combinatory Logic (1985, ISBN 0-19-280142-2) is a book by the mathematician and logician Raymond Smullyan. It contains many nontrivial recreational puzzles of the sort for which Smullyan is well known. It is also a gentle and humorous introduction to combinatory logic and the…
Apart from playing twice, I can't think of a statement that could exclude you from choosing arbitrarily between A and B, since within the conceit of the problem there is no way to exclude B with a mere statement.
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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…
I had a similar experience. Reading secondary literature gave me some context about Pirsig's own mental illness and his struggles overcoming his son's death, but in the end I was still disappointed. Edit: Also, it's not about motorcycles at all. If you are interested in motorcycle travel, read Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels instead.
Better books on motorcycling are "Long Way Round" by McGregor and Boorman or anything by Peter Egan.
Pirsig's ZatAoMM is my all-time favorite book, though I didn't finish it at first reading. The trick before reading it is not to put the book into a cubbyhole of personal preexisting expectations. It's not a travel book. It's a personal journey of discovery that just happens to be on a motorcycle. Essentially, Pirsig's bike trip is a metaphor to revisit his fragmented past and forgotten identity through the lens of a curious mind. It's a personal quest to know who he is (and was) and what in life has value that lasts.
For me, the book was transcendent.
"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…
'Very far off to left field' side note: The human brain is still active during unconsciousness. EEG traces of the brain show this. When you are awake, drowsy, asleep, or under anesthesia, the patterns of your brain waves are very different [0,1]. But, the brain is not 'paused', it's just firing differently than when you are awake or drowsy. So, the 'pattern' is not just 3-D, it's 4-D. You need time as well. You'd nee…