211–220 of 532 posts
Thanks to some extended vacations I finally got around to read "Masters of Doom" - which I got as Christmas gift. And I loved it - despite the topic (few young guys eating pizza and staring at screens) it reads like Clive Cusslers book. It's a great study of team dynamics and have some insides into what it takes to be the greatest at something (getting from Commandor Keen to Doom 3 costed Carmack almost 10 years of h…
Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss, on negotiation tactics. Much better than "Getting to Yes". The Genius of The Few by Christian and Barbara Joy O'Brien, an alternative take for garden of eden and Anunnaki compared to Sitchin Built To Sell by John Warrillow, on how to build a business you can exit with a profit. I read 30+ books in the last and this year so there are others but three is enough for this list.
In a similar vein, although it's been a while since I read it, I'd strongly recommend J G Ballard's semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun - especially the earlier sections set in pre and post invasion Shanghai are also very evocative.
Thanks to some extended vacations I finally got around to read "Masters of Doom" - which I got as Christmas gift. And I loved it - despite the topic (few young guys eating pizza and staring at screens) it reads like Clive Cusslers book. It's a great study of team dynamics and have some insides into what it takes to be the greatest at something (getting from Commandor Keen to Doom 3 costed Carmack almost 10 years of h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would try the original book on people pleasing: "No more Mr. Nice Guy" by Dr. Robert Glover. The title may sound lousy but is a very logical book. The author is a PhD in his 60s and he coined the concept. You can start by listening some podcasts where he was a guest. He's genuine and a great communicator. Definitely underrated.
Huh, I searched and his brand seems to be about talking to the "nice guys" who are all like "Why do women always pick jocks and not the nice guys like me?" Which is not a stereotype that I associate with compulsive people-pleasing, exactly... Compulsive self-pitying and limerence, more like.
Really makes me want to buy a boat or something :^D
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey%E2%80%93Maturin_series
The book is very old, first published in 1999, but I did not know about it till my colleague brought it to work recently. The following stories are very interesting and read as detective novel: 1) how Enigma worked and how it's code was cracked; 2) how Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered, which appeared to be very common to Coptic language[2]; 3) how Linear B writing decoded[3], which appeared to be ancient Greek.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Code_Book [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_language [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B
The Code Book by Simon Singh[1]. The book is very old, first published in 1999, but I did not know about it till my colleague brought it to work recently. The following stories are very interesting and read as detective novel: 1) how Enigma worked and how it's code was cracked; 2) how Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered, which appeared to be very common to Coptic language[2]; 3) how Linear B writing decoded[3], whic…
It’s been probably a year since I read The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich, but the ideas in there have really stuck in my head. The WEIRD acronym stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The thesis is that the Christian Church inadvertently created modern society by prohibiting polygamy and cousin marriage. The topic of polygamy is what’s really stuck in my head. Polygamy is…
>Polygamy is a more natural state for civilized human societies than we think it is I really don't think it is, but I also disagree with using the word "natural" in a way to argue its merit.
In my youth, I used to engage and try to retort about how brutal violence is also a more natural state. But now I just commiserate on HN.
What’s funny is that I do think that “natural law” is useful for reasoning problems in that equilibrium and natural forced impact on lives (eg, leverage gravity don’t fight it unnecessarily) and they frequently the invocation of nature isn’t accurate or isn’t particularly important. In that just because something occurs in nature doesn’t really mean much. And I don’t think there’s really any evidence that polygamy is a “natural state” only that some cultures practiced it and some didn’t. Even in the animal kingdom there’s polygamy and pair mating so it’s not even true that it is some expression of a natural law.
It's a strange, beautiful book tracing parallels between Christian theology and transhumanism.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/567075/god-human-an...