111–120 of 215 posts
The first three books of "The Wrinkle in Time" series. The first three books of the Earthsea cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin. These both skew young but I valued re-reading them as I got older: The Dot and the Line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dot_and_the_Line The Phantom Tollbooth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Tollbooth
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle Essentially start with the classics of philosophy. Its my biggest regret I wasn't introduced to them as a child.
Let's do some logic. 1. For 2000 years people have read and thought about these books. Much new thinking has taken the ideas in them and developed these ideas out of all recognition. 2. The human condition is not as it was when these books were written. We do not have slaves, nor do we have a farm with olive groves and stuff all else. We have cars, tvs, computers and THE INTERNET. 3. The person we are talking to is 1…
And as practice, take a job as a door to door sales person. Build up resistance towards rejection and learn how to influence people.
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle Essentially start with the classics of philosophy. Its my biggest regret I wasn't introduced to them as a child.
Let's do some logic. 1. For 2000 years people have read and thought about these books. Much new thinking has taken the ideas in them and developed these ideas out of all recognition. 2. The human condition is not as it was when these books were written. We do not have slaves, nor do we have a farm with olive groves and stuff all else. We have cars, tvs, computers and THE INTERNET. 3. The person we are talking to is 1…
1.This quote, The unexamined life is not worth living.” ― Socrates along with many more reflect a part of the human condition that has not changed. Even modern advertising deals with ethos,pathos, and logos http://avenueright.com/entries/83/a-three-minute-guide-to-et.... Even more relevance in thoughts about is war ever just ?, freedom of speech, ethics,rhetoric and dialectic(what good lawyers abuse), and etc. There seems be a large amount of timeless truths about humanity and human nature.
2. It's true , somethings aren't the same., but somethings are. Also I think there is a good reason they are still taught in a typical PHIL 101 class. They still have value.
3. The average 14 year old would probably not care. However in reference to this 14 year old, maybe. Child prodigy's exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_prodigies
4. Finally, I said I regret not learning it, and offered my opinion. It was nothing more than that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 25 and I have no understanding of human, sexuality, rich people, old people etc... How do I catch up?
Read stories. Start with short stories and blog posts. Also audiobooks are great for when you are walking around. Take walks where you talk to yourself or a friend about those stories and thereby think about them more clearly via the same mechanism that makes rubber-duck debugging a good way to solve technical problems. This YouTube series is a good start to how to think about stories: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?…
I fully agree with listening to people. You need to respect them first, though. Every human being tries to live a good life. The filthy beggar on the street, the greedy wall street trader, the corrupt cop, the geeky programmer. I listed stereotypes. If you get to know people, you learn how they are not stereotypes. It does not matter if you travel around the world or around the block. You can meet very different people everywhere. Usually people love to talk about themselves. Just ask questions.
More concrete? Find something you dislike (folk music, Pokemon, PHP, Justin Bieber, conservatives, art museums, baseball, soap operas), then find out why other people love it.
Learn about biases, fallacies, psychology, persuasion. We meatbags are so broken, confused, and warped.
I wish when I was 14 I was exposed to more contemporary literature, instead of great classics. And I have no regrets about missing out on math books—most of my friends went to math camp for that kind of knowledge. I'd recommend David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her; The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis; Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I wis…
I'm 25 and I have no understanding of human, sexuality, rich people, old people etc... How do I catch up?
It feels like biotech is where computing was in the 1930's... what's to come, and how it will change the world is both frightening and exciting.
On the "soft" side (whatever that means): ethics, the history of ethics, from every point of view.
Two lecture series I always recommend, and feel like everyone should watch with a gun to their head (as the instructor himself says):
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY -- Harvard course on justice / ethics.
- https://youtu.be/NNnIGh9g6fA -- Robert Saposky (and guests) on the biology of human behavior.
Literary theory. Gaining a deeper understanding of how masters of symbolism, language, and creativity think and put together their work; the history of literature; etc. will open you up to new ways of thinking just like studying pure maths or programming would.
Now to invent a time machine and give myself this advice! Boy I could've used it.