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YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#41

Post by barry-cotter »

kraftman wrote: post #33

H is for Hawk: I gave up reading this book about halfway through. It drags out a lot with needless fluff; she spent about 3 pages just naming the bird! She seemed to really hate T.H. White's 'The Goshawk' so I decided to give it a read. I much preferred it (he names his bird in one sentence) and felt she'd read between the lines much more than there was in the book. The three body problem: This is a brilliant book un…

If you think Helen McDonald and thought she hated the book you saw only the barest surface of what she was trying to say. T.H. White lives in McDonald’s head. The Goshawk was if not the first book she read with any level of criticism and complexity. I can see why you’d put it down, it’s neither swift nor light reading, but the entire point of writing a memoir of grief combined with the taking of a goshawk, all overlaid and intertwined with the story of T.H. White’s life is to bring us a little closer to seeing the broken and bleeding human beings everywhere around us.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#42

Post by nwj »

edanm wrote: post #4

Happy to see some great books recommended there. Specifically, let me call out: The Three Body problem. The Lathe of Heaven. And while I haven't read Parable of the Sower yet, everything I've read of Octavia Butler has ranged from really good to some of my favorite books ever, so I'm sure it's a good one. One anti-recommendation (kind of): I recently read Finite and Infinite Games, after many (many) recommendations f…

Completely agree with you about "Finite and Infinite Games".

Also read it recently and was disappointed. It's written in a style that I associate with continental philosophy. Obtuse language that can be difficult to follow.

That wouldn't be the end of the world if the underlying ideas were really brilliant, but I wasn't convinced.

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#43

Post by adamiscool8 »

sgillen wrote: post #3

“This is water” has to be one of my favorite short essays/speeches of all time. If you haven’t read it/seen it before so yourself a favor and go through it, it doesn’t take very long. Seriously wish I could get these ideas into everyone’s head.

I've read this three times now, yet I still don't see the profundity. It seems like a lot of obvious "how" -- of course your framing changes your outlook -- but no "why".

I can imagine everyone in traffic, or in the grocery store has a perfectly legitimate reason for why they're acting whatever bothersome way they're acting. But how does that help me accomplish my goal any more efficiently?

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#44

Post by retsibsi »

westoncb wrote: post #34
psyklic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer references so I have more information available to assess the validity myself. If an author makes assertions without evidence to back them up, then they are much less credible. Having many recent studies available to back up a hypothesis at least informs us that it is credible, given our knowledge at the time.

Sure, all things being equal, it's better to have the references than not. That said, as a practical matter, if the author cites 100 papers, and each paper takes half an hour to judge the reliability of it (assuming you have good command of statistics and scientific methodology, and some domain knowledge, and access the the required journals), we're talking on the order of 50 hours to validate the argument (of course…

There is a middle ground: spend a few hours verifying a small sample of the citations. This still takes more time, effort, and ability than most readers will have to spare, but it is feasible and would be enough to expose the worst offenders. Of course it can't guarantee that every study cited in the book is reliable, but it can give you a sense of how accurately the author characterises the studies and how carefully (s)he has chosen them. And if you choose your sample carefully, you can directly verify the claims that you care most about.

(Even better if this is done collaboratively, for a larger sample and less time spent per person.)

> for ~99.9% of readers, the argument presented will end up working solely as an authority argument

Agreed, but an author's authority can still be undermined or reinforced by expert opinion. In an ideal world where book reviews were written by qualified, careful people with time to do a thorough job, the existence of citations would be extremely important, even if hardly any ordinary readers looked at them. Obviously we don't live in that world, but sloppy scholarship is often exposed eventually.

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#45

Post by Gatsky »

jmondi wrote: post #8

I am really glad to see Mans Search for Meaning on here for another year in a row. It is a short read with a very powerful message. A few others I would really like to see on this list would be: - Principles by Ray Dalio - Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday - Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

Listening to Mans Search for Meaning right now, agree it is very worth wile, and quite distinct in the Holocaust literature.

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#47

Post by westoncb »

retsibsi wrote: post #44
westoncb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, all things being equal, it's better to have the references than not. That said, as a practical matter, if the author cites 100 papers, and each paper takes half an hour to judge the reliability of it (assuming you have good command of statistics and scientific methodology, and some domain knowledge, and access the the required journals), we're talking on the order of 50 hours to validate the argument (of course…

There is a middle ground: spend a few hours verifying a small sample of the citations. This still takes more time, effort, and ability than most readers will have to spare, but it is feasible and would be enough to expose the worst offenders. Of course it can't guarantee that every study cited in the book is reliable, but it can give you a sense of how accurately the author characterises the studies and how carefully…

That's definitely a better, more realistic process than what I described.

> Agreed, but an author's authority can still be undermined or reinforced by expert opinion.

That's a good point. Actually, that's probably how I will try to validate this book (or others like it): I'll give the 'okay', once I see some unassociated other researchers confirming that the work is good, conclusions drawn are not a stretch etc.

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#48

Post by guiambros »

westoncb wrote: post #35
b_b wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely get where you are coming from, given the unfortunately common practice of misconstruing scientific studies to make exclamatory headlines. I should add then, that the author definitely backs up the studies (which are multiple and often independently discovered) with reasoning about why certain things are evolutionary advantageous and how they fit in to societal phenomenons. I hope you will give this book…

Thanks b_b, that does increase my interest and I'll probably look a bit closer now :)

disclaimer: I've commented so many times on this book before [1][2][3][4] that I may sound like the author's PR person (spoiler: I am not; just truly enjoyed the book).

I second parent's comment that for me this was one of those perspective-altering books in recent years. Even now, months after I finished, I still have several thoughts going through my head: why schools start so early, the societal impact of sleep deprivation, why doctors complete ignore the importance of sleep for your health [5], what happens when you drink alcohol (particularly at night), how Alzheimer's works, lucid dreams, and more.

I had already read about most of it in piecemeal over the years, but having everything pieced together for me, in a cohesive and fluid narrative, really helped for things to "click" for me.

Of course, if you want just the TL;DR, the gist is "Yeah, you really should sleep 7 to 8h per night, no joke". But if you want to understand the WHY, then it's a great read.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17381548

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446932

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17520658

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17589509

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17531171

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#49

Post by daveed »

westoncb wrote: post #27
b_b wrote: post #9

I saw someone mention it in a HN comment before, but I'd like to restate it here since it is definitely one of those perspective-altering books: "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker. The author is a professor and prolific researcher of the effects of sleep on the human body, and goes into nearly every nook and cranny of what sleep does for the human body. He has scared me off of my usual practice of sleeping 6 hours or l…

> Throughout the book, the author cites a scientific study and article on nearly every page, so you know that these are real hard facts. This is almost discouraging to me. If spending too much time on HN has taught me anything, it's that citing a study (especially medical, nutrition, and psychology papers, among other fields I'm probably missing), is not nearly enough of a guarantee that some assertion should be call…

If the topic of the book isn't something you know well, how well do you think you can judge the coherence of the argument? Is coherence measured in some presented mechanistic model? Is it measured against your prior conception of how the body works (gained from school or other historical reading)? What if we were wrong before?

I guess I'm asking this because I'd believe that this attitude is not good when heeded by the general population. My belief there is that in that population, the better essayist wins over the average expert.

Probably cosigning by other experts would help. As well as links and discussions to opposing studies.

Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List

#50

Post by sushid »

Under a book on Napoleon, Sam Altman says:

> An incredible primary-source portrait on a brilliant (but obviously deeply flawed) individual.

What is the obviously deeply flawed characteristic about him that Altman is referring to? I read Napoleon: A Life a few years ago and found him fascinating with character flaws like every other human being, but nothing that particularly struck me as "deeply flawed."

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