So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo.
It really opened my eyes to many issues about race I was not aware of and did a great job explaining the real problem is systemic racism. It had a pretty profound impact.
Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
351–360 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#352Antifragile: How to live in a world we don't understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I realized that my bad relationships are mostly the result of my lack of skin in the game. That indifference is not an advantage but that it is paralyzing. That I have to feel to be able to risk and do something. In addition to applying the concept of antifragility to many external things. It has motivated me to start a business and to…
Nassim Taleb, not Massimo
Yeah, autocorrect.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#353Most recent: Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. For the past year or so, I've been trying hard to understand why people act the way they do, when those actions and beliefs are often irrational. This book brought so much of that together.
Very first: The Song of Wandering Aengus, by William Butler Yeats. I read this when I was six or so. I found it as an illustrated children's book in children's section of the public library of the very small rural town. Someone decided this very adult poem, about an old man who wasted his life chasing an unattainable magic dream, was a good children's story. It introduced me to the idea that poems and stories could express sadness and failure and other negative feelings, not just the happy silly stuff of the other age-appropriate things I read.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#354Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse
Beautiful book, full of wisdom. It's short but I had to read it multiple times (and I'll probably read it many times more, each time discovering something new and deeper and relevant to my current state of play).
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#355Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, made me realize that almost 50% of jobs in captialism are not really nessasary. Made me an anti-capitalist and despise most of the users in hackernews.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#356Most recent: Factfulness , by Hans Rosling. For the past year or so, I've been trying hard to understand why people act the way they do, when those actions and beliefs are often irrational. This book brought so much of that together. Very first: The Song of Wandering Aengus , by William Butler Yeats. I read this when I was six or so. I found it as an illustrated children's book in children's section of the public lib…
Now I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
But I will find out where she's gone
Kiss her lips, and take her hands
And wander through the dappled grass
Pluck 'til time and times are done
The silver apples of the Moon
Golden apples of the Sun
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#357Most recent: Factfulness , by Hans Rosling. For the past year or so, I've been trying hard to understand why people act the way they do, when those actions and beliefs are often irrational. This book brought so much of that together. Very first: The Song of Wandering Aengus , by William Butler Yeats. I read this when I was six or so. I found it as an illustrated children's book in children's section of the public lib…
Hans Rosling is one of my greatest heroes.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#358Free Will by Sam Harris had a great affect on how I view the people and by proxy the world around me.
He argues that anyones decisions are a direct result of the physical structure of their respective brain, which in turn is moulded by their genes and experience so far, rather than a by an unexplainable free will.
The book made me reconsider how people treat each other because of their beliefs and actions - from harbouring negative feelings towards somebody due to their opinions to locking up people for committing crimes.
At the very least it has helped me in personal relationships and encouraged me to try to understand where another persons opposing viewpoint is coming from rather than feel negativity or superiority towards them because I feel they are wrong.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#359"Deschooling society" by Ivan Illich.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#360Measure what Matters by John Doerr had a similar effect on me to what you're describing with Freakonomics. I don't remember a lot of details from that book, but the way I set and measured goals after reading it changed almost overnight.
Have not read the book. Could you elaborate? Here is what I have figured out regarding this topic. 1) most times what really matters to you is impossible to measure. When you drill down to core motivation/drives. E.g how does one measure “happiness”, relationship quality, friendship, quality of life, learning etc. 2) Due to 1. we measure a proxy for the outcome we seek. 3) if we get this proxy wrong, and we optimise/…
That's great input/insight, I think I agree with with most of what you're saying. What I really got from this book is that I was not managing my goals correctly. As a programmer when I'm given a problem the first thing I do is break it down into small, easily achievable pieces that then build up into the final solution.
I wasn't doing this with my goals and a byproduct of that was that I wasn't able to measure to progress of my final goals.
It's really more about how you manage your goals, not what they might be, but even with something as broad as happiness I think this is still possible. If you set "being happier" as your final goal, you can start to set daily, monthly, yearly... goals that fold into happiness. Happiness may not be strictly measurably, but if you know that working out 3 times a week makes you happier you can set that as a weekly goal. You then can set monthly and yearly goals around what working out steadily will improve (lifting more weight, running further and faster) and those things will usually be easily measurable.
There's edge cases for sure, as with most things. I will say it works better in a work environment where most progress can be easily measured (Even though it often isn't), but I think a good goal system is something that can be beneficial for any goal you may set.
However I do agree with #3 & #4, if your final goals are not in the right direction any adjustments to the daily, weekly, monthly goals will not improve that and may have a negative overall effect, but I think that resolves to a much larger issue than your goal management system.