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Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

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941–950 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#941

Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Bottom line: judge your success in life by how well you make your decisions, not by your outcome. You have full control of your decisions, and often no control at all over their results.

Is an outcome not the other side of the decision-making coin? I understand that the outcome should not carry all the weight, but it surely often carries a lot of the weight of a particular decision. That is, how does one get good at making decisions? By seeing positive results flow from them.

> Is an outcome not the other side of the decision-making coin?

No, and that's the key. You cannot truly control outcomes, so judging your life and self-worth on them is leaving your happiness and fulfillment to chance.

> That is, how does one get good at making decisions? By seeing positive results flow from them.

Nope. You get better at decision-making by being reflective about your past decisions. Outcomes can be a factor in that, but only insofar as they can point you to the realization that you missed information that was available to you.

There are many decisions in life where there is no "good" outcome. There are some where the "good" outcome is catastrophic for you personally, and that catastrophe is avoidable if you compromise your ethics. If you see a child drowning in a river and know that there's a good chance that you will die if you attempt to rescue them, rational self-interest alone tells you to walk on by. Stoicism puts a layer on top of that - can you live with yourself without regret if you do that? Are you willing to accept the risks to live up to your own standards?

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#942
I recommend George Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". This is about comparative mythology, aka comparative story telling. He works out the core elements and common concepts that appear in story telling across cultures and time.

It opened my mind to be able to understand all kinds of storys on another level.

In school I always hated literature. It was like they tried to make me do something I just didn't understand at all. Literature was just random stories for me and all interpretation and attribution of meaning was fruitless and had I to just guess/fake it. Yea maybe my education was just bad who knows, doesn't matter now.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces changed that. Now I was open for all the literature and saw everything in a new light. I could recognize common concepts in stories and human life in general.

It also opened my mind for later Alan Watts reads on the interconnected-ness of everything. Someone already recommended Alan Watts. Which I can only approve of! I'd also like to add "The Way of Zen" and "The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are", also by Watts.

(self-copy from previous similar discussions)

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#943
post #828

I have seen Harari's "Sapiens" and Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" in the comments. Both are nice reads but Harari's book is shallow from multiple respects, and Diamond's book omits important counter-examples. To me the book that made everything fall into place with respect to political history (and at some point, political philosophy) - and that I actually read before Harari and Diamond - was Francis Fukuyama's "T…

> To me the book that made everything fall into place with respect to political history [...]

Could you elaborate ? I would like to understand how it made everything fall into place for you.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#946
post #500

OK, it might be a bit embarrassing to post this, but I'm going to say Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up." Not so much for the tidying part (though I did find that extremely helpful), but the whole idea of only keeping things in your life that "spark joy" (not an exact translation by the way - "spark excitement" or "spark meaning" are other ways I like to think about it) has had a profound impact on…

My wife started watching that Marie Kondo TV show. I came to realize that there are few possessions I own that I would really be upset about losing. "Only keep it if it sparks joy"? Yeah, just burn the house down, I'm fine.

where is the lol emoji on here. I feel the same way. too many things in the house.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#947
I was introduced to the book "The Illuminatus Trilogy", by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in High School and it turned out to be pretty impactful on how my worldview developed. It pushed me towards questioning things, as opposed to falling into some Conspiracy Theory rabbit-hole which the book could easily nudge you towards.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#949
I read 100 books last year and there were five books that changed my outlook of life in some significant aspect. The list here: https://mailchi.mp/8ff9bef428e2/want-to-know-someone-better-...

Of those five books, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" by Gabor Mate changed me the most. I actually re-read portions of the book last night.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#950

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Not an easy read, but it deeply changed the way I think about incentive structures and the law of unintended consequences. It's a tough pill to swallow for people (like myself) who cling to utopian ideas, but the older I get the more I realize we must live in the world as it exists, with human nature as it really is. Dreaming of a better world is counter-productive if one does not…

The problem with just accepting how the world really is, is that it pushes many people into a state of stagnation, never really pushing the status quo. If you refuse to accept the society you live in today, then you have more incentive to change it tomorrow.

Nonsense. Acceptance of a realistic understanding does not preclude using that understanding to achieve your goals. It is certainly better then designing your policies based off a rejection of reality.
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