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Five Books: The best books on everything

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Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#71

Post by jldugger »

harry8 wrote: post #61
nindalf wrote: post #5

The Economist does something similar with their Economist Reads column. Their topics are more esoteric though. The best books to understand - The Scottish Independence Movement - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/05/02/wha... - Poker - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha... - Florida - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha... - Investing - https://www.e…

The economist writers are like chatGPT of journalism. It all sounds fine and you think it's great right up to the point it's on a topic you know /anything/ at all about. Suddenly every single time, just on the topics you know just something of it has no depth, no understanding and has no idea what facts it just made up. The writers are clearly intelligent and literary it's just they genuinely don't care to understand…

> It all sounds fine and you think it's great right up to the point it's on a topic you know /anything/ at all about. Suddenly every single time, just on the topics you know just something of it has no depth

These are related facts -- journalism for general audiences will always come off shallow to experts. Experts are better off seeking niche publications catering to their expertise, and just supplementing that with some general audience material.

Even the experts recognize they layperson vs expert audience distinction -- if you look at Andrew Gelman's five book recommendations, none of them are going to transform you into an expert. At best they are the 5 books that got him excited about the _idea_ statistics.

Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#73

Post by johnchristopher »

comicjk wrote: post #42
Nihilartikel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recommended the not-really-a-prequel, 'A deepness in the sky' and quite enjoyed that too! Very different plot, with a few connecting elements to the former, but still cracking good sci Fi.

I think A Deepness In The Sky is actually better, especially for people on here. The story takes place on spaceships thousands of years in the future, but the characters are still using code based on Unix timestamps, and still complaining about legacy software.

Is is just geeky or is there a deeper story ? I enjoy Ted Chiang, Robert C. Wilson, for instance.

Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#74

Post by barry-cotter »

harry8 wrote: post #61
nindalf wrote: post #5

The Economist does something similar with their Economist Reads column. Their topics are more esoteric though. The best books to understand - The Scottish Independence Movement - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/05/02/wha... - Poker - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha... - Florida - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha... - Investing - https://www.e…

The economist writers are like chatGPT of journalism. It all sounds fine and you think it's great right up to the point it's on a topic you know /anything/ at all about. Suddenly every single time, just on the topics you know just something of it has no depth, no understanding and has no idea what facts it just made up. The writers are clearly intelligent and literary it's just they genuinely don't care to understand…

Do you think the Economist is unusual here? Journalists are overwhelmingly dilettantes even about subjects they have covered as a beat, with limited knowledge. That’s what journalism is.

Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#76

Post by comicjk »

johnchristopher wrote: post #73
comicjk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think A Deepness In The Sky is actually better, especially for people on here. The story takes place on spaceships thousands of years in the future, but the characters are still using code based on Unix timestamps, and still complaining about legacy software.

Is is just geeky or is there a deeper story ? I enjoy Ted Chiang, Robert C. Wilson, for instance.

There is a deeper story. The realistic technical details are the bones; the flesh is the relationships between two human civilizations and a less-advanced alien race that doesn't know humans exist.

Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#77

Post by nathansherburn »

latexr wrote: post #34
nathansherburn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I missed something about the reason you oppose the website... It sounds like you took the primary criticism in the parent comment to be about reading in general . I took it to mean that the best way to learn say economics is not to read one of "the top 5 recommended books on economics" but rather start by googling a specific aspect or question about economics that interests you and then following the thread.…

> It sounds like you took the primary criticism in the parent comment to be about reading in general . I took it as being about this website or something the website represents. I do hope no one is against reading in general. > I took it to mean that the best way to learn (…) start by googling a specific aspect People learn different subjects in different ways. Perhaps googling fits some people and some subjects, but…

Yep fair points. I should say, given this is hackernews there's every chance you might know the person who made this and if you are coming at it from something like this angle, I can understand your frustration.

The site is a nice idea and does what it says honestly and well. I certainly don't have anything bad to say about the people who like it or who made it.

My feeling towards these sites is more of a personal frustration I have with the advertisement of books in general - whether that be through good reads, best seller lists, book stores etc.

I often find myself making lists of books to read like this but all it ever results in is me beating myself up for never getting around to them. On the other hand, the way I have actually learnt things has always been through googling an interest and following the thread. Often the thread leads me to reading a book or two. But rarely does the thread lead me to needing to find the top 5 books on x.

For me these sites mostly just create a sense of guilt for not having read the relevant "must read" books.

I suspect this is what's behind OPs frustration at the idea of "ticking off" books on a list.

Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#78

Post by harry8 »

jldugger wrote: post #71
harry8 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist writers are like chatGPT of journalism. It all sounds fine and you think it's great right up to the point it's on a topic you know /anything/ at all about. Suddenly every single time, just on the topics you know just something of it has no depth, no understanding and has no idea what facts it just made up. The writers are clearly intelligent and literary it's just they genuinely don't care to understand…

> It all sounds fine and you think it's great right up to the point it's on a topic you know /anything/ at all about. Suddenly every single time, just on the topics you know just something of it has no depth These are related facts -- journalism for general audiences will always come off shallow to experts. Experts are better off seeking niche publications catering to their expertise, and just supplementing that with…

You're conflating two things and that is probably my fault.

The list of books here is shallow. Asking a few investment professionals would have got them to a better list, IMHO. If they don't care about investment, why write it?

Separate to that. The economist is flipping terrible. Beyond, shallow, actually very, very wrong in obvious ways on anything you know about - that kind of lack of depth of understanding. Someone here asked me why I think the economist worse than other news and I guess its because I take it more personally how messed up they are because in the broadest possible sense they accord to similar politics and ideology to myself. A lefty friend of mine, who is intelligent and sensible put me onto it with respect their incessant drum beating for every possible war. Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq - all of them and more. It was suggested to me to look at one current event in a small amount of depth, the kind you'd expect a journalist to be able to match. Eg, join twitter [1], follow some people who seem to know things, read their links critically, anything good you find, follow the author, cull that list of anyone you later decide is not up to much. Then go read the economist on it with a view to just finding the number of salient and important facts that you would use yourself to form a view and think it ridiculous to leave out that the economist somehow manages not to note at all. It didn't make me a lefty but I sure changed my ideas on the economist dramatically.

Try it yourself one day. There's shallow because depth is impossible in x hundreds words and there's deeply misleading in beautiful language.

Pick A.I. or Microchips fabs, or Julian Assange, or Electric Vehicles or end to end encryption or anything you want to know a little more about. Do the work for a few evenings first then go to the economist's take.

YMMV of course it may. Mine sure suddenly did.

[1] Never post, delete the a/c when you're done - keep it focused on finding things out.

Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#79

Post by leto_ii »

latexr wrote: post #10
leto_ii wrote: post #6

I find this to be simplistic pop intelectual nonsense. This is not how to learn anything. It's way more meaningful to understand and pursue your own actual interests than to humble brag by ticking the "correct" readings. Not to mention that talking about the best anything is basically meaningless, except for very tightly constrained achievements (e.g. we can talk about the best sprinter, but who's the best philosophe…

I’m having a hard time parsing your complaint. > This is not how to learn anything. You don’t learn anything by reading books? So if you have an interest in astronomy you don’t learn by reading books on astronomy? How do you learn, then? Must one go study to become an astronomer as the first step? Won’t you have to read a book on it at some point? > It's way more meaningful to understand and pursue your own actual in…

Thanks for the thorough reply.

I think part of my point was covered by nathansherburn's sibling comment

> It sounds like you took the primary criticism in the parent comment to be about reading in general.

> I took it to mean that the best way to learn say economics is not to read one of "the top 5 recommended books on economics" but rather start by googling a specific aspect or question about economics that interests you and then following the thread.

I think my reaction was a bit vehement because it's not the first time I've encountered (albeit well intentioned) lists of "great books" on HN. In general I've grown to dislike ticking lists of things, be they books, "things to do before you die" etc. I just feel like this is too simplistic of an approach to anything in life. In my experience, the things that I learned best or the most meaningful experiences I've had were self-guided, often extemporaneous, almost always not matching neat prior expectations.

> Who’s talking about humble bragging? Wether you brag or not it’s up to you, I don’t see anything on the website encouraging you to do so.

True. This was mostly conjecture on my part as I've seen many people having neat lists of read books on their private sites/blogs (or links to goodreads etc.).

Addressing specifically the content on the website, I can say that the lists often seemed arbitrary, too granular or simply besides the point. I won't go into details, but I find all/most of the following to be confused, confusing, cutesy pop-intellectualism:

https://fivebooks.com/category/mathematics-and-science/maths...

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/artificial-intelligence-gpt... (pretty nonsensical, I assume it was made for laughs mostly)

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/learning-python-and-data-sc... (as practicing data scientist I've used none of these)

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/data-science-roger-peng/ (a random mix of things - Introduction to Statistical Learning is useful, but basic.)

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/nicholas-higham-applied-mat... (recurring theme, well exemplified here, is of books about smth, not something books. You're not gonna learn maths from these books. You're not even gonna start learning maths from these books.)

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/luciano-floridi-philosophy-... (just rando stuff. Plato, Descartes, Kant... thrown all in, because there must be smth about information somewhere there, right?)

Re: Five Books: The best books on everything

#80

Post by nl »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #57
pkd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I found amazing when I found Verner Vinge was that there were still sci-fi authors of his calibre that I had never heard of, given I have been reading sci-fi since I was 8. There are more things in this world etc etc. A Fire Upon The Deep belongs on any sci-fi cannon and is probably top 10.

I’m still looking for the next such author. Sadly I think I have expired the list since I haven’t found any new great ones in the past six years. I’ve read pretty much all the classics though.

Have you read Ann Leckie?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_Justice

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