In software engineering, many seem to know about Chesterton's Fence, but hardly anyone seems to know much about Chesterton. I found Orthodoxy, which many consider his best book, to help not simply with one particular topic, but just about how to question assumptions generally. It's a shame he isn't more widely read - with the exception of some passing cultural references and a dated concept here and there, much of what he writes sounds like it could have been written last week. And his approach of combining humor into everything makes the reading enjoyable, even when the topic itself is dense.
Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
201–210 of 515 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being somewhat skeptic myself in my younger years and coming closer to God through my relationship with my girlfriend (who isn't even a believer herself)... I just recently came up with a hypothesis why so many Math and CS people were famously Atheist. I grew closer to God through just observing the natural world, and my natural relationship (affection, friendship, etc.). My hypothesis is that so many of these (incre…
Mathematicians I personally know well are stoutly religious. They describe the world of number and form and structure with the same kind of language the clergy describe God, and so there is some sense in which these are felt as aspects of the same thing. I also know a number of engineers who are deeply religious, perhaps encouraged by recognizing "design" in nature, seemingly requiring a designer. In my conversations…
I always found Donald Knuth’s professed Christianity somewhat curious. Then I watched a small bit of his interview with Lex Fridman, and happened to catch the part where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer. So, OK.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#203Yes, the first few chapters of the book Zen Showed Me the Way (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.139823/mode/2u...) somehow made all the descriptions that I'd read of Zen Buddhist enlightenment and awareness, and how it's brought about, finally make sense. The memoir captured for me the first-person perspective of going through that process and tapping into that perspective.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#204Crafting Interpreters was a treasure trove of making different concepts click.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#205Not a book, but LSD made me realize that the entire phenomenal field was one unified thing, that it contained my entire identity as a separate self, that such separation is conceptual/language based, that there is in fact no such separation in the physical world, and that if I was aware of this field, then I couldn't possibly be anything within it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#206The thing that really made Haskell click for me was learning OCaml. I was getting confused about little things such as whether a particular token was a type or a value, particularly with some of the more advanced extensions enabled. Learning OCaml gave me a secondary perspective on the ML family, and now I can comfortably navigate Haskell code more or less.
I find this ironic, because I found ocaml extremely confusing.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not GP, but I have a similar experience. The Tao Te Ching presents a kind of supreme entity which is the unity underpinning all things. It questions dichotomy and difference and scarcity and control, as these things are only possible in a world of differentiated objects. We can’t always be present to this Unity because sometimes we need to eat a sandwich. But the book is a nice reminder—“hey, we all come from the sam…
Yes yes but this is a longer version of what I inferred from parent post. God is Love is The Force is 42, etc. Instead of asking "What attracts you to this idea?", I want to ask: "What made you think it was true?"
>> "What made you think it was true?"
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
We don't know what it is, it is only experiential. Some call it Tao, some call it God, some ... Energy. Some work against it, some work with it in a non-striving way.
When you think about it, energy underpins every single process in the universe, yet we do not know what it is or whence it came, only it's effects and transformation.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#208SICP - recursion
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#209SNSUDDFFDD
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well of course they'd vehemently disagree, they're on a different path and they believe that path goes to a different destination, while in reality necessarily all those path lead to the same destination. A Hindu might believe they're on a path that leads to reincarnation, a Muslim might believe they're on a path that leads to heaven or hell. At the end of their path though, necessarily something real is going to hap…
Logically speaking I do not follow. Why would it be the same? Why could it not be possible that different religious groups would have a different outcome "after living"? It's just as unprovable, no?
Yeah that's true. Though many (most?) religions believe their path/destination is the only true one, so believing there would be different outcomes for different groups would be a new religion those religions would vehemently disagree with. And of course that belief would be itself one of the possible final destinations of all the paths of which only one is true.