111–120 of 515 posts
The Selfish Gene --- It finally gave me all the answers my teachers could not. An amazing book
TSG and the other two books (The Extended Phenotype & The Blind Watchmaker) in the series are the most influential books I've yet read on evolution.
C++ Crash Course: A Fast-Paced Introduction [1]
[0]. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-... [1]. https://www.amazon.com/C-Crash-Course-Josh-Lospinoso/dp/1593...
The standard textbook in the field, but well organized, well presented, complete enough to feel that the material is covered but not so deep in the weeds as to be intimidating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not GP, but I have a similar experience. The Tao Te Ching presents a kind of supreme entity which is the unity underpinning all things. It questions dichotomy and difference and scarcity and control, as these things are only possible in a world of differentiated objects. We can’t always be present to this Unity because sometimes we need to eat a sandwich. But the book is a nice reminder—“hey, we all come from the sam…
Yes yes but this is a longer version of what I inferred from parent post. God is Love is The Force is 42, etc. Instead of asking "What attracts you to this idea?", I want to ask: "What made you think it was true?"
(The story is that Lao Tzu (which just means "wise old man") was leaving the city never to return and a gate guard stopped him and begged him to leave behind some written wisdom. The result is the Tao Te Ching.)
For example:
Every victory is a funeral for kin.
Or again, the passage on leaders:
With the best kind of leader
When the work is finished
The people all say
"We did it ourselves."
And the whole book is like that. Chapter after chapter, the most intense wisdom condensed into the most evocative and inspiring verse.
- - - -
In re: thinking it's true, Like I said above, it's not describing propositions that may or may not be true, like a philosophy or a religion. There's no story in it to believe or disbelieve. There is nothing like "God is Love" or "The Force is 42". There is no "Sky Daddy" in it. It's almost like a manual in Logic, like something Smullyan would write. E.g. "The Tao that can be talked about is not the real Tao." is straight outta Gödel, eh?
It's strange how Grant Sanderson's (aka 3Blue1Brown [1]) name hasn't come up so far. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown
Pretty much everyone I know who claims that 3blue1brown's video helped them understand a topic... doesn't really understand that topic at all.
3blue1brown's video can be fun for topics you already know, providing a bit of new perspective, but I sometimes wonder whether giving people the feeling of understanding without the actual understanding does more harm than good in the long run.
really helped me conceptualize some portions of simpler math i struggled with. if someone had shown me this at a younger age i'm confident i would have had a very different relationship with math.
- Feynmans Lectures (Physics) - The Selfish Gene (Evolution) - 3blue1brown (Maths) - Primer (Evolution simulations) [ https://www.youtube.com/c/PrimerLearning ] - W2AEW's Back to the Basics electronics tutorials [ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkd_RnSvfYAjSHPGBvA-K... ] - Jonathan Clayden's Organic Chemistry (I hate orgchem. This is one of the few books I can stand.) - Many more I can't recall now.
What it taught me is that effective organizations invest heavily in training newcomers how to do their jobs / processes. I see this everywhere; when I walk into a business and something's "just off," it's almost always because management is dropping the ball on training newcomers how to do their jobs.
In my specific case, I was having trouble getting good bug reports, and my teammates were struggling with poorly written tickets. I had to take the time to explain what the process was for handing off work from QA to developers. Things moved much more smoothly after that. (IE, I had to explain that all tickets needed steps to reproduce, except in very specific circumstances.)
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...