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Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

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Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#691

Post by goldenshale »

Accelerando by Charles Stross: Be there to receive a phone call from a sentient hive lobster consciousness that escaped from the lab, and watch the singularity happen in a hilarious and mind bending fast take off.

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge: explore the far future in a space opera dreamed up by a computer science professor turned sci-fi author. This book literally inspired the first IoT sensor "motes" created, and we haven't come close to achieving the vision he explores just as texture in this rich book with fascinating characters. Not my favorite wordsmith, but one of my favorite idea-smiths.

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter: create a new mathematics from the axioms up, while strolling along with a wise tortoise and a hare who share fascinating ideas and connections from art and music to number theory, incompleteness, and consciousness.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#692

Post by james_s_tayler »

kangnkodos wrote: post #676
kangnkodos wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. In the one Dawkins book I read, the mathematical part definitely gets addressed. It may change your mind about the mathematical part. I once read elsewhere that almost all the specific details Darwin came up with have been overturned by other scientists. But the new scientific results prove evolution and natural selection even harder. My own personal speculation is that there may be many simple proteins that…

Have you looked at this four part article? I haven't read it yet. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2019/08/a-respon...

Ah this looks like the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#693

Post by Vastov »

johny115 wrote: post #636
bemmu wrote: post #100

"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous. What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not contin…

Long time ago I read some idea (probably on reddit) from some guy, that was quite similar to this. The idea being is that essentially you can't die. There is no death. If universe is infinitely large and also it keeps restarting itself with big bang and some universe death all over. Then at some point. Right after you die, something exactly as you will be reborn somewhere else. Even if it takes unimaginable amount of…

Ah jeez, I was just about to head to sleep. It’s like the library of Babel, but with universes. In infinite time with infinite random arrangements of matter, the matter will undoubtedly arrange itself exactly as it is right now. Thanks for the brain melt.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#694

Post by ncmncm »

combatentropy wrote: post #309

Mere Christianity , by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by-step approach. The Elements of Style , by William Strunk and E. B. White. I liked writing since I learned how to. I didn't find this book until I was 17, and it unlocked me to write in a way that better helped others. The Language Instinct , by Steven Pinker. I guess…

Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash.

Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them.

When White put out the second edition after Strunk died, he made up a bunch more rules, the went back and doctored Strunk's original text to follow his new rules.

But he didn't check his own text. Typically he breaks his own rules on the same page where he is promoting them.

The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#695

Post by ramblerman »

binaryorganic wrote: post #299

Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?

Honest question. Why does it matter?

We are looking for ideas to bend our mind. I'm happy to keep the authors gender, race, religion, or nationality out of that. The same applies for HN comments.

Going through all 278 comments to find a female name is more notable to me.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#696

Post by teekert »

andrewflnr wrote: post #555
teekert wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That idea also comes back in Diaspora. That book contains some nice things, like mind-grafts, procreation/creation in a non-biological society etc. Loved that book. I also like Ted Chiangs books. I.e. the idea from story of your life (a language that treats time flow differently), also "Understand" [0] is nice: What happens we we actually increase our thinking capacity. I mean that is hard to comprehend without a nic…

"Understand" is one of my favorite stories of all time.

Yeah, mine too! Stories are really the best way to imagine the unimaginable. Ted Chiang is a master in of this type of story (as is Greg Egan!).

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#698

Post by james_s_tayler »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #692
kangnkodos wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at this four part article? I haven't read it yet. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2019/08/a-respon...

Ah this looks like the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks.

Hmm... So it comes down to 'what is the actual mechanism behind which novel proteins arise?'

Well that at least leaves me in a different position than I started. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#699

Post by dragonwriter »

ncmncm wrote: post #694
combatentropy wrote: post #309

Mere Christianity , by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by-step approach. The Elements of Style , by William Strunk and E. B. White. I liked writing since I learned how to. I didn't find this book until I was 17, and it unlocked me to write in a way that better helped others. The Language Instinct , by Steven Pinker. I guess…

Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash. Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anyw…

> The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when."

No, the books message is that there is a progression from undisciplined to rule-following to transcendent writing and you may be anywhere on that spectrum (though, if you are looking for a book on how to write, it's probably not deeply into the latter range), and that having the set of rules that the book presents available helps you move from the first to the second and prepare you to move to the third.

In general, I think it's accurate enough. The rules it presents aren't the only set of rules that can do that, and there certainly is room for debate about their merits among competing alternatives.

Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

#700

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

Smarter and wiser aren't synonyms :)

The best teachers (that could be books) will find you when you're ready. Other people's milestones are theirs, not yours. The best way to use this list is to pick a book by gut feeling. That said, I'll leave my candidate: "The Presence Process" by Michael Brown.

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