How to live an intellectually rich life • Hacker News Board

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#251

Post by maj0rhn » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:20 PM UTC

Perhaps a more enlightening view is in the book "The Socratic Method," by Ward Farnsworth, who is dean of the UTexas Law School. This is a great book for those just starting on the adulthood road, though it could have been shorter.

It analyzes the dialogs of Socrates with practicality in mind, showing how to question the world around you, question your own beliefs, and question the beliefs of others, all without coming off like a dick (as Socrates often does). Moreover, as related to the OP's article, it tells you precisely how Socrates would have defined an intellectually rich life, and I think Farnsworth is correct.

Farnsworth's Socratic method is about much more than just asking questions. The trite "Know thyself" injunction is seen to be a specific outgrowth of the Socratic method, echoing in some way the OP's claim that everything tracks to philosophy.

Incidentally, the book includes a stunning revelation from Ben Franklin saying that he found the Socratic method to be the best way of getting people to change their mind and do what he wanted. He gave it up, however, because it was too powerful a tool and he decided to adopt instead a more diffident personality, which he found also successful.

I would have thought a book like this would sell about 10 copies, but it has 800 comments on Amazon! [I have no connection with the author or with Amazon.]

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#252

Post by miunau » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:22 PM UTC

bpshaver wrote: post #161

iandanforth wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who puts "Ulysses" at the top of a best books list is suffering from expertitis. Ulysses has a massive user experience problem. It's hard. Dense, convoluted, absurd. If your friend asks you for a good book, you don't recommend it. The only time you do is when your college English major, or advanced highschooler, who is bored with the tropes of even very good novels wants to stretch themselves. Then you hand th…

Why are you conflating "best" with "what you would recommend a friend"? Many of the best things in life are hard. And you wouldn't necessarily recommend them to a friend. When you consider specific domains, often the best instances of X tend to be harder versions of X. Or, when people become familiar with many instances of X they seek out the "best" instances of X. Its natural that those best instances would be diffi…

How did you find Ulysses, was it a good read for you?

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#253

Post by gradstudent » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:27 PM UTC

bpshaver wrote: post #161

iandanforth wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who puts "Ulysses" at the top of a best books list is suffering from expertitis. Ulysses has a massive user experience problem. It's hard. Dense, convoluted, absurd. If your friend asks you for a good book, you don't recommend it. The only time you do is when your college English major, or advanced highschooler, who is bored with the tropes of even very good novels wants to stretch themselves. Then you hand th…

Why are you conflating "best" with "what you would recommend a friend"? Many of the best things in life are hard. And you wouldn't necessarily recommend them to a friend. When you consider specific domains, often the best instances of X tend to be harder versions of X. Or, when people become familiar with many instances of X they seek out the "best" instances of X. Its natural that those best instances would be diffi…

>Or, when people become familiar with many instances of X they seek out the "best" instances of X

I think you're saying the same thing as the GP? Ulysses is a book for lit nerds, which I suppose the Modern Library board were.

Looking at the list, there's hardly any books from after mid 20th century. That makes me think that the board comprised primarily old lit nerds, who stopped reading long before voting. The list is also super ethno centric, which makes me more dubious still about the claims for "best" anything.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#254

Post by RajT88 » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:29 PM UTC

jacobgkau wrote: post #249

RajT88 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places you go for work are mostly corporate parks in the suburbs. Of course they all feel the same. I had the same experience and that was why - rarely did I get to visit the big cities. I went to places which had Chili's and Target and Outback Steakhouse. On the odd times I visited DC or SF or Toronto - really amazing and different experiences.

Both the DC and SF metro areas have Chili's, Target, and Outback. Can you articulate what made DC and SF "really amazing and different experiences" from one another, beyond vibes? Asking as an American who's pretty sure it's all the same here (and has traveled internationally to places where it's not).

I'll try. YMMV, but:

DC:

You can get just about any kind of food - because just about every culture in the world is represented. You can find some of the more home-y type menu options too for the same reason. For example, Greek restaurants where I am at don't generally have Taramosalata (carp roe dip). Due to the shorter flights to Africa, the is a much larger African population in the DC area. One trip, I bought some Nigerian movies at a gas station. Then there's all the historical stuff - tomb of the unknown soldier, Vietnam wall, Air & Space Museum, etc. As I wandered around town on one of my early trips there, I keep seeing things I thought were very familiar - and it turns out at least some were because Bethesda (HQ'd nearby) had done an awesome job recreating apocalypse versions of them in Fallout 3 (which I played a lot of).

SF:

I went cycling a few times with a friend of mine. We went over the Golden Gate bridge, which was amazing. Also to the top of some mountain (big hill?) overlooking the city. What a view! I like to fish, and dropped a line near my hotel and caught a leopard shark. I saw an old Japanese homeless man wheel a little red wagon on a pier near the Mozilla HQ (near the many-billion dollar company I was visiting), and catch a pile of Jacksmelt using a spark plug as a sinker. There is a lot of excellent Asian-influenced dining options - my personal favorite is Lilo Lilo Yacht Club. I got to see a tent city of what appeared to be techies - all really nice huge family-sized tents, well dressed and apparently happy and well fed. One time, I was having a drink in a bar in SFO, and chatted up a guy who had just come from an executive meeting with a bunch of VP's and CTO's of Sony, where chewed them out about their usage of Kubernetes. I saw a shirtless man walking around with what appeared to be pony boots? I assume part of the gay scene.

Now - you may not like all that, but you are not generally having those experiences near suburban corporate parks. Yes, they have Outback Steakhouses, but they have rather a lot more going on.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#255

Post by m463 » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:30 PM UTC

iandanforth wrote: post #126

crims0n wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am about a quarter of the way through Modern Library’s top 100 and it has been a worthwhile journey. It is “just” literary fiction but it is among the best humanity has produced. I have learned so much about the human condition, my ability to articulate ideas has improved tremendously, and I feel like my mind has been “freed from the tyranny of the present” (to quote Cicero). https://sites.prh.com/modern-library-to…

Anyone who puts "Ulysses" at the top of a best books list is suffering from expertitis. Ulysses has a massive user experience problem. It's hard. Dense, convoluted, absurd. If your friend asks you for a good book, you don't recommend it. The only time you do is when your college English major, or advanced highschooler, who is bored with the tropes of even very good novels wants to stretch themselves. Then you hand th…

There's definitely some of that going on.

I've gotten the same feeling watching old movies a second time.

I would watch a movie when I was young, and it just came out. It would be "modern", maybe state of the art, and it would have an impact on me. But I was young, and easily impressed by the cliche or trite.

And then I would watch the same movie decades later. Times changed, the art has changed, casting, pacing, effects have all advanced to support the storytelling. And I am older, a different person, and maybe more aware of what is "timeless" with a little more experience under my belt.

It might be a historical deep dive, but compared to the available material our present has, some older media should drop off the list.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#256

Post by Karrot_Kream » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:32 PM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #159

FlyingSnake wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for adding extra context. I wasn’t aware of Hamta. My experience is in rural central and South India but I’ve travelled extensively in Garhwal. How different would you say rural JK/HP/LA/UK is? Your last para rings true. Goa, Kerala, CG and Odisha have better rural administration than MH, TL or KA because of the absence of heavyweight cities.

> How different would you say rural JK/HP/LA/UK is? Rural UK is much poorer than rural HP and JK. The administrative structure of UK is very top heavy (everything is decided in Dehradun), and Dehradun+Haridwar have caused tourism and real estate induced Dutch Disease to arise. JK and HP also have a tourism economy, but also have a strong industrial base (pharma in HP, heavy industry in JK) plus more investment in hig…

JK's interesting history from partition onward has definitely biased its political culture to inspiring bottom-up, panchayat-forward governance.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#257

Post by sepositus » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:34 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #235

austinl wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Be careful… about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind." - Seneca, Letters I was surprised to learn that the temptation to read too many things was…

Sucks that the vast majority of those books were lost forever. Early Christianity was a scourge in that regard, how much culture we lost forever because of those zealots.

I didn't realize Early Christianity had a monopoly on the destruction of books? As far as I know the burning of rival civilizations has been happening for thousands of years.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#258

Post by sepositus » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:44 PM UTC

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #244

jimbokun wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course the reality is just that the US has become the axis of evil, and perhaps always was, it just had the best PR. Sigh. Yes, the Soviet Union really was the worker's paradise with free, prosperous, happy people! Can we get away from the sophomoric idea the USA was ALWAYS the ONLY source of badness in the world, just because right now it's the most powerful nation in the world and also a complete mess?

I suspect that the communist project has lived under constant fear of the US, that the economy ultimately was bankrupted from having to defend itself against the US war machine. The US has waged war in virtually every country around the world, for example Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Korea, which were significant threats to both Soviet and China. China has virtually been besieged since the 1950s, with Americans present…

Wasn't communism influenced heavily by being anti-capitalist? They fundamentally disagreed with the tenants that the United States stood on. Your comment, if I'm understanding it correctly, makes it look like the communists were just trying to do their own thing in their own countries and the big bad U.S came in and bullied them out of existence.

I'm not defending either sides here. I'm not a Reaganot. But to think most communist regimes were not hellbent on the destruction of western capitalism would seem a bit misleading to me.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#259

Post by concerndc1tizen » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

monero-xmr wrote: post #245

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America Obviously America refers to the continent, so I'll use the shorthand country name "the US" instead. > is the best That may be true, but I do wonder if it was a lucky accident. What if the Irish famine hadn't happened? What if WW2 had been averted (but maybe the EU wouldn't exist...). > rural cabin That's nice, but what value is it if the forest burns down, the lake is polluted, the wild life is dead, and th…

You just have no idea how incredibly enormous and empty the US is

And yet, every viable plot of land is used for farming.

Similarly, I would argue that you should not underestimate the harmful and wide-reaching effects of industry.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#260

Post by ivape » Fri, May 02, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

gen220 wrote: post #241

ivape wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's argued that God had a plan (all-knowing). The compelling argument to read the Old Testament in full before the New Testament is that this whole thing was a deliberate sequence. That's if you are willing to entertain the notion on a literary level (forget about belief). Take the story of Samson for example, one argument is that God showed that humans would persecute a man whom humanity couldn't even contemplate c…

I totally agree. I think for theological reasons (if your goal is to convince yourself that Jesus is the Messiah of the Abrahamic religions), then it can’t be distilled. However, I do think the abrahamic origin stories (genesis), the tribulations of the Jewish people in Egypt and reception of the Ten Commandments (exodus), and the moral teachings of Christ that replace those commandments (gospels) are more or less se…

I appreciate your points. Morality is what most people want to take away from all of these books, but the thing they want to leave behind is one requirement that God seems to have, and that's straight up obedience. Obedience doesn't really fit inside morality, and in fact if you just distill morality out, obedience won't make it. The Old Testament hammers home the need for obedience to God's laws in story after story, until finally God just kinda lets us know that "hey you guys really cannot follow the law, so lets shift to a relationship framework with Christ". That's how I've been making sense of WHAT the Old Testament is in the context of the sequence, and further, why I don't ignore it because it seems to be he values both morality and obedience (and again, obedience doesn't fit into morality - Just the story of Abraham and his son, there's nothing moral about it).

It's a thoroughly Christian view, that being humans lack the capacity to follow God's laws because we're inherently sinners - but that's a whole nother' can of worms. It's kind of like a Kindergarten teacher (God) letting the kids run the show for a day (Old Testament), just to make it clear, they can't manage it. It's quite a thing to believe such a supreme being would run a sequence like that on us (in fact, that's how I make sense of a lot of the craziness in the world, that God would in fact let things run its course, however messed up (even in modern times, e.g - the narcissistic scale of social media, wars, factory slavery in China, migrant slavery in Mideast construction projects, abject poverty in the third world, pure greed and gluttonous abundance in the west, drug epidemics that rival plagues, etc, where all of these things are just as Biblically fucked up as parts of the Bible)). It's my only case for why the Old Testament is quite relevant to understanding the fullness of God. In short, the desire to understand how and why God would work in this way leads me to consider the entirety of the Bible, beginning to end.

Fun topic!