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Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#211

Post by jessermeyer »

leephillips wrote: post #202
jessermeyer wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematicians I personally know well are stoutly religious. They describe the world of number and form and structure with the same kind of language the clergy describe God, and so there is some sense in which these are felt as aspects of the same thing. I also know a number of engineers who are deeply religious, perhaps encouraged by recognizing "design" in nature, seemingly requiring a designer. In my conversations…

I always found Donald Knuth’s professed Christianity somewhat curious. Then I watched a small bit of his interview with Lex Fridman, and happened to catch the part where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer. So, OK.

Knuth had serious doubts in his college days, but ultimately decided it was "OK to believe in something unprovable." Which to me speaks to his humility.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#212

Post by angrygoat »

I've always been interested in history, and the History 5 podcasts from UC Berkeley really took my interest to the next level. There are a number of versions; the original platform is long gone, but luckily archive.org has it. A few faculty have taught it but I've found the versions by Thomas W. Laqueur the most helpful.

https://archive.org/details/ucberkeley_webcast_itunesu_91921...

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#213

Post by JackFr »

leephillips wrote: post #202
jessermeyer wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematicians I personally know well are stoutly religious. They describe the world of number and form and structure with the same kind of language the clergy describe God, and so there is some sense in which these are felt as aspects of the same thing. I also know a number of engineers who are deeply religious, perhaps encouraged by recognizing "design" in nature, seemingly requiring a designer. In my conversations…

I always found Donald Knuth’s professed Christianity somewhat curious. Then I watched a small bit of his interview with Lex Fridman, and happened to catch the part where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer. So, OK.

> where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer.

I cringe at phrases like that. It's empty theologically and technologically. It represents a complete inability in imagining what God could be, and a naive, childish pride in our little creations, these computers. While in his internal driven world view it might make sense, to me it has no more or less truth than "maybe God is a big steam engine"

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#214

Post by codenlearn »

fiatjaf wrote: post #170

This post made me understand React: https://blog.vjeux.com/2013/javascript/react-performance.htm... And this one made me understand JSX: https://blog.vjeux.com/2013/javascript/react-coffeescript.ht...

I needed this, thank you for posting this.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#215

Post by sifar »

carapace wrote: post #115
mrkeen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

For me the fascinating thing about the Tao Te Ching is that it's not a work of philosophy, it's more like Cliff's Notes for the self-evident structure of the Universe. (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…

Precisely. Also all the other works (philosphy/religion) have elaborate contraptions to describe what it/God/ is. TTC is the only one that starts out with it cannot be told.

No go live it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#216

Post by keepquestioning »

olalonde wrote: post #139

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Helped me gain a more intuitive understanding of economics. On a side note, the man is a machine. He's been writing close to a book a year since the age of 80 (he's 92 now).

I started to read this book but it seems to be full of political bile. How does it compare to Economics in One Lesson?

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#218

Post by Shorel »

peterhadlaw wrote: post #152
xutopia wrote: post #97

I know this is a little out of left field but I couldn't understand why anyone was Atheist until I read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan... quickly followed by The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Those two books together crystallized in me what it could mean to have a world view absent of supernatural forces.

Being somewhat skeptic myself in my younger years and coming closer to God through my relationship with my girlfriend (who isn't even a believer herself)... I just recently came up with a hypothesis why so many Math and CS people were famously Atheist. I grew closer to God through just observing the natural world, and my natural relationship (affection, friendship, etc.). My hypothesis is that so many of these (incre…

And here I am thinking the exact opposite. I think that religion comes from the experience of man made reality, and it is very limited precisely because of that.

The mandate of 'controlling the creation'. The parent-child relationship with the deity. The excessive focus on sexual and parental relationships between humans. All these are human activities, and religion seems to care too much about humans and too little about the rest of the species living on the planet.

Reality is different from religion. It is indifferent to us. Any meaning is just some myth in our heads to try and explain it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#219

Post by leephillips »

JackFr wrote: post #213
leephillips wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found Donald Knuth’s professed Christianity somewhat curious. Then I watched a small bit of his interview with Lex Fridman, and happened to catch the part where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer. So, OK.

> where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer. I cringe at phrases like that. It's empty theologically and technologically. It represents a complete inability in imagining what God could be, and a naive, childish pride in our little creations, these computers. While in his internal driven world view it might make sense, to me it has no more or less truth than "maybe God is a big steam engine"

Please don’t judge DEK based on my hasty summary; check out the interview for the context. My only point was that the Christianity in the head of someone like Knuth is probably a bit more fluid and creative than whatever’s in the heads of the people who come to your door on Sunday morning to save your soul.
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