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Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

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Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#411

Post by bazmattaz »

haswell wrote: post #290

Why we sleep . This book motivated me to change my sleep habits after decades of being a night owl. I’m starting to love early mornings, and I feel so much better. This was a hard change. How to do nothing . About resisting the attention economy and reorienting one’s relationship with technology and the environment. A very thought provoking and timely read, especially while I’m on sabbatical. Flow . Explores the psyc…

Matt walker appeared on the Huberman Lab podcast and it’s definitely worth a lid if you like the book.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#412

Post by slothtrop »

impendia wrote: post #326
haswell wrote: post #290

Why we sleep . This book motivated me to change my sleep habits after decades of being a night owl. I’m starting to love early mornings, and I feel so much better. This was a hard change. How to do nothing . About resisting the attention economy and reorienting one’s relationship with technology and the environment. A very thought provoking and timely read, especially while I’m on sabbatical. Flow . Explores the psyc…

Caveat: I would not recommend Why We Sleep for anyone suffering from insomnia. When I was dealing with sleep issues I tried reading it, hoping I'd learn something useful. But the book just kept hammering home how badly it screws you if you're not getting enough sleep. As I was trying all the recommended steps (good sleep hygiene, CBT, exercise, did an overnight sleep study, etc.) with only modest results, this basica…

> this basically just fueled my anxiety

As per CBT, you fuel your own anxiety. This book is not empowered the ability to fuel people's anxiety. It is more easily exacerbated when we are sleep deprived, but ultimately you have to address it as just about any abrasive information then can equally kick off insomnia.

I think the book did lean too heavily on proselytizing that insufficient sleep is not healthy, and not heavily enough on advice, but it was mostly decent. One thing Huberman mentions in his podcast that is typically understated is the impact of sunlight (get some in the morning/day, limit blue light at night). In the main, though, being solid with the head game and limiting total time in bed to 8h strengthen sleep pressure / adenosine will do most of the work. But conditioning is such that it can take time to recover in a sustainable way.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#413

Post by slothtrop »

alexilliamson wrote: post #399
haswell wrote: post #290

Why we sleep . This book motivated me to change my sleep habits after decades of being a night owl. I’m starting to love early mornings, and I feel so much better. This was a hard change. How to do nothing . About resisting the attention economy and reorienting one’s relationship with technology and the environment. A very thought provoking and timely read, especially while I’m on sabbatical. Flow . Explores the psyc…

There is some good content in the book, but beware that Matthew Walker is a bit of an intellectual fraudster https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/03/24/why-we-sle...

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sbcmACvB6DqYXYidL/counter-th...

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#414

Post by lanfeust6 »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #309
haswell wrote: post #290

Why we sleep . This book motivated me to change my sleep habits after decades of being a night owl. I’m starting to love early mornings, and I feel so much better. This was a hard change. How to do nothing . About resisting the attention economy and reorienting one’s relationship with technology and the environment. A very thought provoking and timely read, especially while I’m on sabbatical. Flow . Explores the psyc…

Obligatory critique about Why We Sleep, in case you haven't seen it. https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

obligatory counter https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sbcmACvB6DqYXYidL/counter-th...

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#415

Post by bazmattaz »

ruslan wrote: post #217

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…

Oh my I read this book as a young adult and it blew my mind. Got my interested in cryptography and such. Great book

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#416

Post by HaZeust »

Thinking in Systems.

I think teaching individuals to think in cause/effect, correlations, and chronological order is very important - but I think there's a missing fourth branch of deductive reasoning that we haven't taught en masse: Mereological.

Mereology is a disciplinary and philosophical perspective that implies that everything in the world is a set of parts and wholes; with every entity being both a part OF something, and a whole OF something else.

I think if more people thought of things and systems in part-whole relations, they'd get a more intimate understanding of what things are, how they work, their flaws, and how they can fix them - sometimes with other parts and wholes :)

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#417

Post by jlokier »

loxias wrote: post #158

"This is how you lose the time war". It's by two authors. Light read. I bought it because it was inexpensive and I the title was a "me-shaped" hook. :) I chuckled after a few pages, after about 1/3rd I couldn't put it down, or read it fast enough. Challenging, as it started to rain during my walk to work (as evidenced by the dozen wrinkly pages towards the end). The next day as I read, I was pacing around my apartmen…

Upvoted just because your way of writing about joy is infectious!

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#418

Post by WalterBright »

doodlebugging wrote: post #336
WalterBright wrote: post #5

"Empire of the Summer Moon" https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful... This would make an epic miniseries!

I agree that it would make a fantastic miniseries. If you read books about Native American history, Texas tribes and their interactions with Anglo settlers, northern plains tribes I can recommend a few titles. Frontier Blood - Jo Ella Powell Exley : Tells the history of the Parker family clan. Their small fort in central Texas was raided by Comanches in 1836 and one of the children kidnapped was Cynthia Ann Parker wh…

Thank you for these pointers!

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#419

Post by WalterBright »

doodlebugging wrote: post #336
WalterBright wrote: post #5

"Empire of the Summer Moon" https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful... This would make an epic miniseries!

I agree that it would make a fantastic miniseries. If you read books about Native American history, Texas tribes and their interactions with Anglo settlers, northern plains tribes I can recommend a few titles. Frontier Blood - Jo Ella Powell Exley : Tells the history of the Parker family clan. Their small fort in central Texas was raided by Comanches in 1836 and one of the children kidnapped was Cynthia Ann Parker wh…

> I agree that it would make a fantastic miniseries.

History is so full of fantastic stories, it's pathetic that Hollywood keeps cranking out miniseries with the same plot:

There was a mysterious murder in a small town. Detective DoesntFitIn investigates and finds the town is full of secrets! Can he solve the murder before the bodies pile up?

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#420

Post by ilaksh »

nineplay wrote: post #404

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality which I approached doubtfully and have been enjoying the heck out of it. It's not some cutesy juvenile fanfic, it's about a alt-universe Harry Potter who grows up in a healthy family surrounded by books of science. He goes into the wizarding world with a heavy dose of skepticism and a mind well trained in the scientific method. The author is a AI researcher. https://hpmor.c…

If that's the Yudkowsky book it reminds me that Hotz and Yudkowsky just did an interesting debate about AI on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/6yQEA18C-XI
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