It's a bit of an overhyped "must-read" math/compsci book, but Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid was great for both enlightening me as well as utterly confusing me ;)
Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
231–240 of 248 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#232jed mckenna - Spiritual Enlightenment, the Damnedest Thing
do spiritual autolysis for few thousand hours, then profit
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#233I highly recommend studying the Critical Reasoning material associated with the GMAT. The Powerscore workbook was quite valuable.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#234I would look for books that either: 1. Increase context on problems being solved 2. Improve tactics/strategies/systemic understanding 3. Improve physical health/mental health If you want to think better, I think physical health and mental health will have the highest return by far. Thinking is kind of like driving. Imagine driving a car where some parts are broken (mental health problem) or a really uncomfortable sea…
I am not able to spend enough time on solving problems and my mind wanders away. What books/resources do you suggest to improve this?
Into The Magic Shop.
The Power of Now.
The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#235Interesting fact is I noticed that not many book titles are repeating in this thread. This means there is no single book that can change your thinking, I think one have to find it on their own. Most of the time the best book for you is the one that you don't know will be the best book. You just figure it out months or years later.
You are halfway to become a Zen master already. For the other half, I sense you just need to find the right book.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all the exercises is key). I tried this, but got stuck on the first exercise that had you prove some mathematical thing. I concluded that I was too stupid for the book.
You may want to check out the book Concrete Abstractions, I found it helped me with the maths I was lacking for SICP.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all the exercises is key). I tried this, but got stuck on the first exercise that had you prove some mathematical thing. I concluded that I was too stupid for the book.
>I concluded that I was too stupid for the book. Never assume anything like this. You just need different approaches to study different subjects. Here is an approach which works for me which you might also find useful. There is too much out there to Study and Time is limited so the first thing to do is to Skim, Pick out the main Ideas/Concepts, Figure out their relevance to you and only after that revisit the Topics…
You're probably right, but when you get stuck on one of the first exercises in the first chapter, it's pretty disheartening.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I concluded that I was too stupid for the book. Never assume anything like this. You just need different approaches to study different subjects. Here is an approach which works for me which you might also find useful. There is too much out there to Study and Time is limited so the first thing to do is to Skim, Pick out the main Ideas/Concepts, Figure out their relevance to you and only after that revisit the Topics…
You're probably right, but when you get stuck on one of the first exercises in the first chapter, it's pretty disheartening.
Here is a secret which you might find reassuring :-) Most people (including myself) don't do exercises. Merely doing exercises is overrated. What one needs to do is Read a book, follow closely any worked out examples and try and get at the essence of things; Everything else is secondary.
For example when i first read SICP years ago, i was working on Protocol State Machines and was stuck (at work) on how to design a verification framework for the same which our clients needed to satisfy themselves that our implementation worked correctly as the official specifications laid out. SICP gave me enough knowledge to understand the problem and the enthusiasm to design a simple DSL to solve the same. Thus by reading it and without doing a single exercise (nor learning Scheme well) i had a huge ROI on my Time invested in reading that book.
So have confidence in yourself, and read anything and everything that you find interesting without beating up yourself over not doing it "properly". The point is to get exposed to new concepts/ideas and gain new perspectives/insights on already known knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#239This one, although I don't think I can explain how it resulted in better thinking/problem solving. It just did.
https://www.amazon.com/Archetypes-Collective-Unconscious-Col...
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
#240Various books on military science/history/geopolitics like Understanding Modern Warfare and Strategy (Lawrence Freedman), and books on Philosophy such as recently I'm reading books by Alvin Plantinga.
I find that reading books from those genres makes me question things more, which I find is a good exercise towards becoming a better thinker and learning how to piece ideas from different areas together.
For software, has got to be "Web Scalability for Startup Engineers" because it gave me a sweeping tour of most of today's software development, and various books on compiler development as building compilers taught me how to decompose things into smaller chunks.