Live data from Hacker News

Seven books I keep close because I love them

blog.plover.com

111–120 of 205 posts

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#111
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the best time of year to read it?

When you're trying to fall asleep but there is too much noise in your head, I suppose :) Actually, Redwall and other slightly-mature anthropomorphic stories are also surprisingly good for that. But if I had to pick a time of year, then I'd say winter, under the blankets or by a fire.

I bought Redwall for my kids a few years ago, and was stopped by three different people while walking from the back of the store to the checkout who commented on how good the books are!

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#112
> I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness for the way that medieval Christianity strangled the human spirit for so long.

As I understand it, particularly for the bizarre natural sciences stuff, a lot of this is actually _Aristotle's_ fault, not Christianity's.

Adding the Pseudodoxia Epidemica to my list of things to read if I ever have infinite time.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#115

> I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness for the way that medieval Christianity strangled the human spirit for so long. As I understand it, particularly for the bizarre natural sciences stuff, a lot of this is actually _Aristotle's_ fault, not Christianity's. Adding the…

[dead]

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#116
Comenius! I'll be damned—this is the first time I've seen anyone actually reading his Orbis Pictus. There's a country whose educational system basically revolves around Comenius (the Czech Republic). And even there I don't personally know anyone who I'd be 100% sure has actually read the whole book!

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#117
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never owned a copy of Roget's, and now I'm curious/tempted to get one, but my go-to digital word picking assistant has always been OneLook Thesaurus: https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/

Hey, I'm the developer of OneLook. I'm so glad to see it here! The concept clusters on the site are directly inspired by Roget's work. Like the author, I see a thesaurus less as a synonym dictionary and more as what the word literally means, a storehouse of treasure. I'm in the midst of a long-overdue data refresh across OneLook right now, so I'd be curious to hear your feedback once it's done.

[dead]

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#118
post #69

The New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible is by far the worst translation on almost any metric you can think of, except maybe understanding how evangelical Christians read the Bible in the 90s and 2000s. The NIV has so many inexcusable translations that reinforce a theological worldview that matched the conversation on atonement and justification that was happening in the 90s and 2000s. There's a g…

I've only ever read KJV and haven't heard of the others. Is the downside that KJV is 1600s English? That particular line: KJV: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. NRSV: For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. NIV: For I know that…

One potential issue is that some English words have changed meaning since it was written, and sometimes in extremely confusing or misleading ways. For instance 'convenient' and 'prevent' used to have radically different meanings.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics. What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structu…

Thanks. I'm reframing that as god playing 5D chess. The same issue seems to occur with "deep" thinkers in other areas (e.g. trying to understand French intellectuals). The trouble is that it can be worthwhile thinking about something without depth, or paying attention to a smart persons' thoughts on something shallow. And a priori we can't always know what is worthwhile. E.g. I liked the blog, because here's a smart…

In all seriousness, the "god playing 5D chess" framing, is exactly at the core of the last few thousand years of religious scholarship including everything from the Talmud to Aquinas and by extension most thoughtful sermons in most religious traditions today.

To an atheist, it seems very obvious that there is a intellectual whirlpool and cognitive error meta-pattern at work, which crudely summarized would be, "close attention to any subject and its context provides a fractal landscape within which infinite complexity and subtle relationships may be discerned" (the universe is reflected in a grain of sand; or, if you practice breath meditation, in the focus of breathing): this is interpreted as the signature of the divine. Because nothing we can produce with our human agency has such complexity. We are simple, serial, things; the world is parallel and multidimensional at every scale.

The world IMO is worthy of wondrous regard. But it's not because of design, not in any sense usually meant, bar those that Wolfram is pointing at with his "Rudliad" and the anthropic principle.

A deist is liable to say, ah ha, well, that is where the divine shows itself. But this is IMO the last of the gaps into which it might flee. Or, more charitably and ecumenically, one might say, this is where definitions of the divine converge for the atheist and the deist; what we mean when each say "the divine" is this, that the universe is wondrous and has deep orders and it betrays fractal similarity and order; and what a thing it is to be not just alive within it but aware of being so!

That is a cause for humility reflection and gratitude, for sure.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is quite a bold claim you make there! Since you seem to hold a strong conviction, could you please make more explicit what concretely one would not know / missinterprete regarding the Western culture, not knowing anything about those concepts you listed, but knowing the bible itself back and forth? And to what excent one would need to dive deep into those concepts? Or in other words: What fundamental concepts in…

My convictions are pretty hollow because I'm demonstrating the pointlessness--or arbitrariness, if you like--of gatekeeping the ranks of the "well-educated," as the author tries to do here.

Doh! Fell for it, I guess ;)

Hmm, while I agree that this particular book selection could come of as rather heady, and the author is obviously not doing an exercise in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English either - but just gauging from the post itself, I find it plausible enough that the auther indeed just loves those books. My red flags: Putting others or other works down, pretending everyone is on the same level of knowledge ("everybody would agree that...", "It's pretty easy to see that...") and in putting the focus onto ones own (percieved or real) abilities. I see nothing wrong in engaging in complex, deep works, but I think some sense of humility should be at least subtly present; If that is not the case over and over again, I either assume that at least some form of signaling is going on, or that the author is genuinely that much out of my leage enough to make it hard for me to connect (I meet people like this in real life, they were often also nice people too, but I could simply not keep up - which is fine, not every crowd is for me and I am not for every crowd...)

On the bible itself: if we are strictly talking about the culture of the western world, I do not think it is controversial claim the bible has been and still is a fundamental element, for better or worse, and often also due to critics and their thoughts. Trying to make sense of the western culture without the bible could be compared to trying to make sense of chinese culture without the writings of Confucius - or a maritine biologist trying to explain the oceanic ecosystem, while working on the hypothesis that geothermic energy cannot interact with oceanic life at all. There will simply be wide, gaping spots in knowledge, and plenty of hacks needed to fix them somewhat.

Post reply on HN