Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#721

Post by 52-6F-62 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

growlist wrote: post #628

52-6F-62 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird recommendation. I think you might have viewed it differently as a bit of a retrospective or perspective piece. I can't possibly so how the teacher thought suggesting that book to an angsty teen to be a good idea. That's the time kids need to have their world opened, not their angst re-affirmed. Very strange.

Thing is I was already reading some pretty bleak stuff at the time, e.g. Brave New World and 1984, and as you can probably imagine the trials of a mopey teenager didn't really impress much when put up against poor Winston and Room 101 etc.

Haha fair enough

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#722

Post by dawg- » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

9214 wrote: post #620

9214 wrote: post #98

• "Laws of Form" by George Spencer-Brown, a little book that describes how to bootstrap the Universe from nothing. Louis Kauffman [1] has a lot of papers/writeups on it, from knot theory to quantum physics. If you ever wanted to make a pancake truly from scratch, this is a place to start. • "The Unconscious as Infinite Sets" by Ignacio Matte Blanco. Reformulates Freud in logico-mathematical terms and establishes a fo…

Retroactively, I would also add "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari to this list, except that I haven't yet read the actual thing, but only dipped my toes into related studies, like e.g. "The Allure of Machinic Life" by John Johnston that traces the history of cybernetics, A-Life and AI fields and adds a Deleuzian spin on top. This is the only case in my life where I wanted to adopt author's philosophy and le…

https://libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf

Books like that, I think there is a lot of value in just diving in and seeing what happens. I would highly recommend it.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#723

Post by crazcarl » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

qznc wrote: post #477

javajosh wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For this statement I will receive prize A or C.

"False, there is the possibility of me awarding you prize B. So here's prize C"

The answer is false and evaluation is true until the prize is actually given. Then the answer becomes true and the evaluation false.

I wonder if the question could be reworded somehow to say that the prize being awarded and the statement being evaluated true/false will happen at the same instant without taking the fun out of it.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#724

Post by stockavuryah » Thu, May 14, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

9214 wrote: post #620

9214 wrote: post #98

• "Laws of Form" by George Spencer-Brown, a little book that describes how to bootstrap the Universe from nothing. Louis Kauffman [1] has a lot of papers/writeups on it, from knot theory to quantum physics. If you ever wanted to make a pancake truly from scratch, this is a place to start. • "The Unconscious as Infinite Sets" by Ignacio Matte Blanco. Reformulates Freud in logico-mathematical terms and establishes a fo…

Retroactively, I would also add "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari to this list, except that I haven't yet read the actual thing, but only dipped my toes into related studies, like e.g. "The Allure of Machinic Life" by John Johnston that traces the history of cybernetics, A-Life and AI fields and adds a Deleuzian spin on top. This is the only case in my life where I wanted to adopt author's philosophy and le…

In general everyone should read or listen to Deleuze. Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 are mind-bending.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#725

Post by aerovistae » Thu, May 14, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

sova wrote: post #130

Anathem by Neal Stephenson features a bifurcated world where a scholar-monk-class of mathematicians lives in walled-off areas that mingle with the rest of the world only on fixed dates. Some every year, some every ten years, and others only every 100 years. There is a lot more to it, but I don't want to give anything away.

Snow Crash by the same author changed my thinking. The idea of an ideology as a conceptual virus really transformed my thinking towards religion. I was already an atheist, but it really made me see it in a new light-- the way religion can consume people's minds and seems to spread from one to another like a sickness.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#726

Post by aerovistae » Thu, May 14, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

Design of Everyday Things. All about how we design the things we interact with, and how the design of something can influence your ability to understand it or use it, down to the most basic things like doors and handles.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#727

Post by hackeryogi » Fri, May 15, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

Thank you for starting such an interesting thread. Going through all the comments a few days after the question was asked is very rewarding ! So many books marked as 'to read' :)

My contribution: If you're not familiar with Quantum Physics, do check out 'Through Two doors at once'. There were numerous instances while reading the book that I had to just put it down and think deeply - mostly philosophical thoughts around what we are and how magical nature is. The subject matter is very very approachable - even to someone like me who hasn't read a physics book in like a decade.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38527619-through-two-doo...

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#728

Post by 9214 » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

dawg- wrote: post #722

9214 wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retroactively, I would also add "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari to this list, except that I haven't yet read the actual thing, but only dipped my toes into related studies, like e.g. "The Allure of Machinic Life" by John Johnston that traces the history of cybernetics, A-Life and AI fields and adds a Deleuzian spin on top. This is the only case in my life where I wanted to adopt author's philosophy and le…

https://libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf Books like that, I think there is a lot of value in just diving in and seeing what happens. I would highly recommend it.

I think that's the main idea behind the book's rhizomatic structure, as authors put it.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#729

Post by jeffreyrogers » Fri, May 15, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

stutonk wrote: post #673

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book was really interesting, and ultimately made me decide meditation wasn't worth it for me. (I'm not saying it isn't worth it for others, just that the outcome of meditation that he describes doesn't seem like something I want).

Just out of curiosity, what was the purported outcome/why wasn't it worth it?

Basically he describes the process as one of continually looping through various mental stages as one progresses in their meditative practice. Many of these mental stages look like psychotic episodes to me and I worry that getting into the practice would preclude me from accomplishing other things that are more important to me.

Here is a decent overview of the book that goes into more detail: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-...

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#730

Post by nikofeyn » Fri, May 15, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

9214 wrote: post #98

• "Laws of Form" by George Spencer-Brown, a little book that describes how to bootstrap the Universe from nothing. Louis Kauffman [1] has a lot of papers/writeups on it, from knot theory to quantum physics. If you ever wanted to make a pancake truly from scratch, this is a place to start. • "The Unconscious as Infinite Sets" by Ignacio Matte Blanco. Reformulates Freud in logico-mathematical terms and establishes a fo…

these all sound interesting but the first result of laws of form on amazon shows an edition that claims the first ever proof of the riemann hypothesis, so now i am suspicious because that is obviously a falsehood. it's possible that someone has posthumously edited the original, but either way it shows that the book attracts cranks. any thoughts on this?

i see now that wikipedia states that spencer-brown claimed applications of his approach to big conjectures that never panned out, so now i am extra dubious. it makes sense now why people would go off and try that out.