Books I loved reading this year • Hacker News Board

billfruit wrote: post #121

munificent wrote: post #102

I haven't even finished it yet, but my favorite book of 2021 is certain to be Rutger Bregman's Humankind . If you are feeling cynical about your species thanks to climate change, COVID, etc. it may be exactly what you need.

Have anyone read the recently released 'Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity' by David Graeber and David Wengrow. The articles I read about was thinking it was superlative.

I’m 30% in.

I had very high expectations from the book because of Graeber (the Debt book fame).

I’m happy to report that it’s surpassed it. It’s not an easy read, need to take it slowly. But what an incredible achievement. That book, if I may say so, is a celebration of ordinary humans. Can’t recommend it enough.

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#143

Post by jnsaff2 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:22 AM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #121

munificent wrote: post #102

I haven't even finished it yet, but my favorite book of 2021 is certain to be Rutger Bregman's Humankind . If you are feeling cynical about your species thanks to climate change, COVID, etc. it may be exactly what you need.

Have anyone read the recently released 'Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity' by David Graeber and David Wengrow. The articles I read about was thinking it was superlative.

I read it a few weeks ago. It is very good and highly recommended. I feel this opened my eyes quite a bit in the following ways:

- history is not a linear progression and narrative, sometimes things happen in leaps and also can go "backward"

- farming was something that was dabbled in for a millenia before fully committing to it

- the idea of "egalitarianism" is quite vague and can be understood in many ways

- ideas about egalitarianism moved from native americans to the french .. not they other way around

- lots of very interesting stories about how our ancestors were not stupid

- lots of questions about how archeology has been interpreted and how a lot of the evidence does not support the mainstream narrative

- gives examples of societies where "leadership/politics" was actively avoided

- has a nice background on different ingredients of statehood and how they manifested in history

I have a feeling this might be the seminal book for having a fresh analysis and reassessment of lot of what is called "prehistory".

Very highly recommended from my side. I will re-read it a few times probably and gift it to a few friends.

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#144

Post by vidyesh » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #87

TickCount wrote: post #23

Is Bill Gates still programming nowadays? He seems to have completely abandoned it. Which seems a little sad, because if he really liked doing it you'd expect him to at least work on a utility app or something in his spare time.

Time is an extremely precious commodity. It seems somewhat arbitrary to assume that if you like something, you automatically do it in your spare time. It's fairly easy to like more things than you could possibly have time to pursue :)

I remember reading somewhere,

  When you have no money, time is your friend 
  when you have money, you buy back your time.

So certainly, he has delegated tasks to prioritize and do things he really wants.

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#145

Post by BlasDeLezo » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:54 AM UTC

He forgot to mention "Divorce for Dummies"

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#146

Post by throwaw909 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

tomgp wrote: post #71

joconde wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assign me a $140B net worth and I can do the same :)

Doesn't that video seem odd though? I don't understand what's going on here, it's just surreal. Like if I was a multi-billionaire would I hire a film production crew including a bunch of extras and Christmas themed set to tell the world about 5 (already high profile and best selling) books? Is this just marketing for Bill? To what end? I guess everyone has to have a hobby.

> Doesn't that video seem odd though?

I say yes. In fact: I'd say entire Bill Gates persona and his media portrayal is a bit odd.

> Is this just marketing for Bill?

I'd say so. From my point of view is shocking how the public (and tech world) did a 180 turn on Gates' public image. Some twenty years ago he was hated in the tech world. There are even Paul Graham's essays about how Microsoft "stopped being dangerous" around 2005 (ie. few years after Gates stepping down from CEO position).

You know those memes around Zuckerberg being a lizard person? This is how I remember Gates 20 years ago (except there weren't really memes occasionally someone would email you some funny pictures or a flash app).

> To what end?

I guess he didn't like people seeing him as Dr. No? Paul Allen described him as a "ruthless schemer". During his tenure as CEO he turned Microsoft into this scary giant that will crush any competition.

My personal conspiracy theory is that he enjoys having power - power over market, power over people - and now uses his foundation to exert this power. However, this wouldn't work given his old reputation as an Evil Technocrat, so he also spends a million here and there for things that will make him look good. Why not spend a billion here and there if you still have 140 of those left? So, probably one of his PR guys figured out that his annual book list blogpost are popular in the tech niche and wants to reach wider audience. To go deeper into conspiracy thinking, I'd say that this list is carefully tailored to affirm his image as genius-nerd-philantropist (sci-fi) and extend power of his foundation.

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#147

Post by nefitty » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 11:52 AM UTC

TaupeRanger wrote: post #89

criddell wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well regarded is the Numenta software regarded in the AI community?

Not well. They have almost literally nothing to show for over a decade of work.

Coincidentally, their own links to their research paper section results in an error https://numenta.com/neuroscience-research/research-publicati...

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#148

Post by HiroshiSan » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 11:53 AM UTC

I’m surprised to see Klara and The Sun on the list. Though I enjoyed the character of Klara, the book itself felt like a huge letdown and don’t see how it makes it on anyones top 5 list.

Would love to hear others thoughts on it?

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#149

Post by CrazyStat » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

chestertn wrote: post #117

CrazyStat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A general-purpose DNA editing tool is still basic research by most standards. The Nobel Prizes are awarded for conferring the greatest benefit to humankind. Showing how to use CRISPR as a genome editing tool (Doudna and Charpentier) confers much more benefit to humankind than "just" characterizing CRISPR (Mojica). I don't mean to trivialize Mojica's work, but at the end of the day if not for the later work of Doudna…

> I don't mean to trivialize Mojica's work, but at the end of the day if not for the later work of Doudna and Charpentier, Mojica's work on CRISPR would be unknown and irrelevant to 99.9999% of the world population. And if Mojica had not discover CRISPR... Anyways. Here's an article if you are interested: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nobel-crispr The point here is that if Mojica (or Šikšnys) instead of p…

> And if Mojica had not discover CRISPR...

And if Janssen had not invented the microscope... clearly all Nobel prizes in medicine and physiology should go to a Dutch guy who died 400 years ago.

Mojica made a contribution. Doudna and Charpentier made a contribution which clearly conferred greater benefit on humankind. Šikšnys made a contribution but got scooped, which sucks but that's how science goes sometimes.

It has nothing to do with university support and it's not a predicament. The prize as awarded accurately reflects the relative impact of each step forward.

Re: Books I loved reading this year

#150

Post by LadyinMT » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

thih9 wrote: post #90

LadyinMT wrote: post #82

I'm reading a novel with my PIM (partner in mischief) titled The Mandibles, by Lionel Shriver. I was thinking that the novel may have been written recently because so much of it reminds me of our current economic & political situation, but I was very surprised to learn it was originally written in 2016! It's eerie how much the author has gotten right!

> PIM (partner in mischief) What do you mean? I haven't seen that expression anywhere and google wasn't helpful.

The others pretty much got it right. I'm almost 50 and at this age, feel strange calling my partner my "boyfriend". So, I came up with the term Partner in Mischief because we have lots of mischievous adventures together!