I was reflecting today about how often I think about Freakonomics. I don't study it religiously. I read it one time more than 10 years ago. I can only remember maybe a single specific anecdote from the book. And yet the simple idea that basically every action humans take can be traced back to an incentive has fundamentally changed the way I view the world. Can anyone recommend books that have had a similar impact on them?
One book that changed me was reading Master and Margarita in Russian for the first time.
It was the first book I started reading I could not put down until the end. Gained a lot of appreciation for literature at that time.
The other book that I enjoyed and changed me was ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ by Alan Watts. I was a fan of Alan Watts works through his lectures already and it was wonderful to hear his ideas in writing for the first time.
I wish everyone read or watched Alan Watts lectures and books. The world would be a much nicer place if that was the case.
My favorite quote is by him:
‘We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.’
Great quote, Watts is truly inspirational. What a happy surprise when Ctrl+F takes you right to the first comment ;)
If anyone doesn't have the time or attention span to commit to a full-blown book, The Joyous Cosmology [0] and Become What You Are [1] present some of Watt's ideas in a more condensed format. The former is a ~30 page essay freely available online. The latter is a collection of ~15 very short essays (1-12pg each) - a perfect replacement for smartphone scrolling when confronted with 5-10 minutes of free time.
There is a game available on most gaming platforms, PC and console, called Everything which is home to an experience crafted using Watts' lectures. It is quite an interesting experience. Not quite a game but more of an interactive philosophical exercise, but quite good, and a very interesting introduction to Watts' work.
Is there a recommended order of Watts’ books, a fundamental one to start with? I’ve ended up buying a few of his books, but haven’t started on them yet.
Thanks for mentioning an amazing book of literature. The Master and Margarita is my favorite fiction book! I've read it in two translations and I prefer the Burgin & O'Connor to the Glenny, but both are great.
Everytime I read it I gain more insights. I absolutely recommend reading this book alongside a readers guide which gives more background and depth, there are many biblical, historical, and author-related references that won't be understood otherwise. The author's own life is massively relevent to the events of the novel. I recommend this guide:
My experience with secondary literature about MaM is negative. I went to the University Library and checked out a massive commentary on it and a book about its interpretation.
The latter argued that, contrary to a common notion, Woland is emphatically not the Devil. I did not get far in trying to understand it, but this and the similarly non-understandable commentary really took away some fun out of reading the book, because I constantly felt I was too stupid to get it.
Reading commentary is good, but maybe on a way lower level than literature professors trying to make a name.
I can sympathize with this, however, if you read my recommended guide, it absolutely isn't "that kind" of criticism. It's very readable and made a lot of sense to me. :)
Was amazed when I saw the recommendation on the top comment. My fiancé recommended me this book and I just finished it on my commute this morning (this specific translation). Still thinking about it! Wonderful book, super engaging and just absolutely beautifully written. I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended!
About depth of the book: we've studied it in literature class in Russia for a month, because it's a kaleidoscope of interpretations, one would definitely miss too much without a guide (especially in 17 y.o. as myself). The only piece with more class time is War and Peace for obvious reasons.
I did a meta review of translations before trying that particular translation. I found it extremely readable, and the humor comes through nicely, while also maintaining some of the long sentences Bulgakov liked and remaining faithful in general to his style.
I LOVE the Master and Margarita but I've only read it in English. When you say you read it in Russian for the first time, did you mean you've read it in English before? If so, were there huge differences?
Russian is my native language so I read it in Russian for first and second time. Never read it in English so can't say. But I think this is one of those books that will lose some of its 'magic' in translation.
This is disappointing to hear, but to anyone who is deterred by this comment from reading it in English, don't be. Even in English, the book was undoubtedly one of the best books I have ever read. There's something about it that makes you go "What happens next?!" for all 400 odd pages of it, and before you know it, you're at the end. It's truly a masterpiece - Bulgakov spent 10 years writing the final version of the novel after burning his initial manuscript twelve years prior in 1928, but as you will come to learn, manuscripts don't burn ;)
I've read it first in Russian (I'm a native speaker) and then in English (Ginsburg translation) when I was learning the language. I don't think it lost too much in translation, but it might because I'm very familiar with the original text. You don't need to know anything about Russia or Soviet Union to enjoy it.
Another book similar in spirit and quality to M&M is "Danilov, the violist" by Vladimir Orlov.
I speak both Russian and English and read it both languages. Yes, some of the magic is lost, but not too much. Mostly it's word interplay and phrases that are just hard to translate.
But you can recover a lot of understanding even without speaking the language with a bit of work. By say trying to get a feel for what Moscow might be like in the 1920. Political persecution and censorship are major themes. Even things like psychiatric hospitals are important because they were often used as an alternative torture and imprisonment system. Writers are poets were also important. That was before TV, radio was just getting started so writers were sort of like the Youtube celebrities of the day. And controlling what they say, do, and act was critical. In other words things that might seems kind of "meh" or odd carry significance and knowing about it might make it for a richer interpretation and a more interesting read.
Can you share which translation you read? I imagine there's multiple that people will still find enjoyable but there's a lot of options for russian lit.
I read the Mirra Ginsburg translation, which I have heard is a sin because it is based on the censored text. If I could do it over (which I probably will in a couple years) I would probably read the Burgin/Tiernan O'Connor translation that another commenter has mentioned. There is more information on all of the English translations here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita#Engli...
> Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices - thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. 'No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!'
(This is Pontius Pilate's response to Yeshua.) To me this is about staying silent when you see evil being committed. But it doesn't even have to be 'Evil with a big E', it's just about speaking up when you see something that doesn't sit right with your morality.
The other big takeaway for me was about how Margarita threw away all the rules of society to save the Master (her beloved). But she did it for more than just his sake, I think; she certainly took her liberation from society's expectations of women.
Thanks for pointing out. Even though I don't share your take on this, I find it interesting.
I think the first example is just some innocent banter of a couple characters from long ago, who had a very naive understanding of the world because they couldn't begin to comprehend its true complexity.
I think the second example is something any cool person would have done, because witches are awesome.
Absence of cowardice (also known as self-preservation) will severely limit what people allow to do to them.
This includes limiting all the things that you listed as worse than cowardice.
On the other hand, lack of fear will empower ideologies that employ suicide bombers.
Also it will make nuclear wars much less unthinkable.
As a more technical companion to Freakonomics, I would recommend "The undercover economist" and its sequel by Tim Harford. It's a great introduction to the way economy shapes our lives and choices. You will never drink coffee or sit in a queue the same way after reading it.
Another book that changed allot about how I look at the world is "The long tail" by Chris Anderson. Maybe too thin of a concept for a whole book, but definitely interesting.
Thank you for this! I love Alan Watts too. Recently I've started listening to "chillstep" mixes of his talks on youtube (while doing yoga/meditating). They're really fantastic. Eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLu1wP9HhYM
I've registered here to write this.
It is interesting that two most voted books here, Master and Margarita and Animal Farm are both about Stalin.
In MoM the all 3 main characters have real prototypes. Master is Author (Bulgakov), Margarita is Author's wife Elena, Woland is Stalin.
Bulgakov was under assault of Soviet regime, he wanted to emigrate, but Stalin kept him in country. He was in constant fear of being detained for anti-soviet propaganda. Her wife which he loved a lot was forced to became secret informer, she reported periodically to officials against him. Bulgakov knew that, and this theme also in book. This moment is so tragic and central, because her wife was editor of the book. MoM is about exceptional courage of Bulgakov, his personal response to Staling, his sole main reader. At that time, just comparing Stalin to Statan was enough to be executed.
There's a rather modern and new German translation which has been turned into an audio play by Bayerischer Rundfunk. I adore that! They have cast an Austrian as Fagott, with a wonderful Viennese dialect.
No idea whether Fagott has some linguistic extravagance in the original, but it works really well on this Master of Ceremonies.
Really appreciate your phrasing - I feel the same way about Anthony Bourdain's material (while on a very different matter) - has convinced me to check out some more Alan Watts.
Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Russian Revolution. I didn't understand why, but did it, and then the book had a second, much bigger impact on me. And of course what a way to learn about allegory!
It was the first time I realized books could be dangerous, subversive, and truly educational as well as simply informative or entertaining.
Totally, I agree! Even though George Orwell is more known for 1984 but his work truly shines with the Animal Farm. It is a children's book fwiw but every aspect of it is meant for the grown-ups. Outstanding!
Luckily if you're in Australia, you can read this book for free because it is public domain there.
>>I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Russian Revolution.
You have to only look at the management hierarchy in your company. Pigs in the Animal Farm novel eat apples.
We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.
Why do you think your bosses get business travel, no limit credit cards, RSU, big bonuses and neat double digit monthly pay check.
It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.
>Why do you think your bosses get business travel, no limit credit cards, RSU, big bonuses and neat double digit monthly pay check.
Sorry, but i dont believe this is an accurate analogy. The reason is that otherwise they might leave for another opportunity. No-one is telling workers what the pigs are saying in AF.
One of the strangest things about that text is that very few of the folks I've talked to about it seem to feel that the issue with the pigs at the end is that there is a farmer.
That is to say, I very rarely find anyone who will agree that the book is anti-capitalist at teh same time that it's opposed to Stalinism.
I see the book continually taken happily anti-communist text. But the text is certainly not _just_ about the Soviet system under Stalin.
Over the years, the big impact of Orwell to me has been how readily people can look at systems that they consider to be Other than their own and critique them while eagerly ignoring the implications for their own situation. That is, everyone here thinks the sheep are dumb, but at least they went through a period of time where they tried to replace the farmer with a different pig... where I live in Texas, all the sheep just think they are the farmer.
To me it’s a warning that when you rightfully overthrow an authoritarian you have to be careful not to trade that authoritarian against another one. This seems to happen all the time. Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia and probably many more.
The word "revolution" is probably the most deeply ironic one in the whole of the English language. You fight and die to overthrow the oppressor only to end up back where you started.
The only exceptions are revolutions guided by good ideas and solid values.
Just "overthrow the current leaders and then (??? magic happens here ???) and then we get a better society" doesn't work. You end up where you started or worse because usually the ideas haven't changed.
Intellectual revolutions must precede political ones.
This is why I'm kind of a dull boring centrist politically. I dont support any major attempt to rock the boat because there has been no intellectual improvements that might guide such a thing.
Most revolutionary thinkers don't think replacing the existing leaders will "magically" lead to a better society.
They have grievances with the existing systems, reason to believe those in power won't address those grievances, and reason to believe replacing those in power with people more sympathetic to their grievances will address them.
Also, there has been a boatload of revolutionary thought about how to make a better society over the last century or so. There are clear ways that our system is imperfect and clear ideas of how it could be improved. I'm not sure why you claim there are no "intellectual improvements" over the status quo.
> They have grievances with the existing systems, reason to believe those in power won't address those grievances, and reason to believe replacing those in power with people more sympathetic to their grievances will address them.
So they are doing exactly the same as those in power, which is taking care of themselves.
> The only exceptions are revolutions guided by good ideas and solid values.
Those are mostly not exceptions; successfully uprooting an existing power structure takes more than good ideas and solid values, and replacing it with something that will stably sustain itself both during the revolutionary emergency and afterwards without either falling apart or enabling a power hungry would be despot to exploit it to create an authoritarian regime takes far more than that.
The US “Revolution” was a regional separatist movement led by the local elites and local governments that did not upend the basic local social, economic, or political power structure save for severing the latter from a remote central government (and the resulting new central system was replaced with something more closely approximating, and deliberately modeled on, the old one very shortly after the Revolution in the face of widespread perception of imminent failure otherwise.)
In other words, it mostly wasn't revolutionary and in the one way that it was it mostly failed.
It was a liberal revolution, but not a social one. It definitely shifted the power and I think calling it a revolution is justified. A bit of a side note, but I wholeheartedly recommend https://www.revolutionspodcast.com it starts with the English revolution, then moves to the US, then back to Europe for the French Revolution. There are a lot of episodes on the revolutionary XIX century in Europe and how the “question” slowly changed from the political one to the social one.
Russians are probably the least luckiest people in the world.
* they bore the brunt of Mongol invasion which utterly wiped the aristocracy at the time and set back the countries development by generations and depopulating the land. Luckily, the Mongols stopped there and didn't move further west, saving the populace of Western Europe
* Without warmwater ports, Russia lacked the capacity to participate in maritime trade that bolstered the economy of Western Europe
* Brutal and absolute monarchical rule suppressed any kind of representative government; Serfdom (essentially, slavery) was abolished only in the late 19th century
* Once it got its act together and started Industrializing in good stead... now comes the Crimean War, depleting morale, resources and will of the people
* Oh... was that not bad enough? World War 1, which strains the country so bad, that Germans successfully foment unrest and ultimately Revolution. The Revolution itself ends up being the best strategic decision by the Germans, and the Communist Government signs a treaty essentially ceding large parts of the country to the Central Powers
* But wait! That didn't mean the end of troubles for Russians, and they endure a prolonged Civil War fought not just on the Western theater, but also on their Eastern provinces. Red and White Russians fight each other constantly, appropriate resources from the peasants by force.
* The Country has barely recovered from all of this, Stalin comes to power. The madman purges experienced officers and intelligentsia leading to a very ineffective State and Military; he signs a pact leading to (temporary) peace as they know they can't fight the Germans
* Whoops, nope, the Germans invade anyways, reach as far as Moscow. Millions of Russians perish. St. Petersburg is besieged in one of the most destructive sieges ever, period
* At the end of the war, Russia has lost millions of its population, resulting in a demographic catastrophe that will affect it forever
* Once again, Stalin foolishly throws away a chance for friendship, and instead of working in good faith, we end up in the Cold War. The Soviet Union makes tremendous progress, but is no match for the economic and military might that comes with the vast (and now booming) population of the West. The Soviet Union was _offered_ aid as part of the Marshall Plan, and could have possibly used it for kickstarting their economy and supercharging economic growth but no
* Despite having a highly educated workforce, Soviets fail to capitalize on it, instead becoming the same repressive state they replaced. They fail to take advantage of the technological improvements and ultimately fall far behind
* the final kick: right after the fall of Soviet Union, when the people finally hope to be free and pursue and obtain the benefits of modernity, they're hit by an economic and social collapse. Again, the result is depopulation; crimes are high, lives are wasted by alcohol and tobacco.
And this is just the highlights. So... I do feel bad for the Russian people.
The Eastory channel on YouTube has done short (10 minute) animated videos of the eastern front of WWII - Germany vs Russia - tracking all army unit movements and the movement of the frontline, and summarising what each side was trying to achieve at each stage. (It's more interesting and watchable than my description sounds).
"here, 40k prisoners of war. 300,000 soldiers here. 500,000 POWs. Here, 1.2 million soldiers. Another 120k POWs." on and on and on. The scale of it is just unthinkable.
But TBF, we're doing rather alright compared to Africa, India and some of South America. Because of heavy emphasis on engineering disciplines in the USSR and because oil now, I guess.
Though as years go by, I hate this snow mush more and more. With a passion.
> they bore the brunt of Mongol invasion which utterly wiped the aristocracy at the time and set back the countries development by generations and depopulating the land. Luckily, the Mongols stopped there and didn't move further west, saving the populace of Western Europe
It's actual Russia (now called Rus` or Kievan Rus` in modern history), then Little Russia, now Ukraine.
> Without warmwater ports, Russia lacked the capacity to participate in maritime trade that bolstered the economy of Western Europe
It's bunch of various nations, then Great Russia, when part of them was captured by Russia, then Grand Duchy of Moscow, then Russian Empire (since 1860), now Russian Federation.
Time span | Historical name | Modern name | Language then and now
?? - V | Russia (Русся) | «Old Russa» town | Old Norwegian, not exists
VII-XII | Russia (Русь) | Kievan Rus`, Ukraine | Slavonic, Ukrainian
XVII- pt | Russia (Россия) | Russian Empire, Russian Federation | Many, Russian (modernized Church Slavonic)
There was also the reign of Lenin. It started with the execution of the Tsar and his family, and culminated in the Red Terror. A quote from Martin Latsis when he was deputy chief of the Ukrainian Cheka sums it up:
>Do not look in materials you have gathered for evidence that a suspect acted or spoke against the Soviet authorities. The first question you should ask him is what class he belongs to, what is his origin, education, profession. These questions should determine his fate. This is the essence of the Red Terror.
People always forget one of the craziest blows to Russians: sometime around 1648 tsar Alexei, under the influence of the Orthodox church, banned all secular music. I guess “music is of the devil” was named as the motive, but the actual cause likely were skomorokhs, or folk jokester-singers ― satire was always the strong suite in folk entertainment. So, in the 18th century Russian music had to start again, beginning with the ‘classical’ genre this time. I also suppose this is why folk singing is much better known than really old folk music (though a lot of songs too are late inventions by individual composers). Meanwhile, the church itself didn't have a tradition of music afaik, again preferring singing (rather monotonous, at that).
I myself have seen only brief mentions of this, and thus far couldn't find a definite source detailing this mess.
That's how it goes 9 times out of 10. I learned that from reading Why Nations Fail. It busted the whole myth of "progress" and replaced it with "change".
Not an assumption. Look at the world. Read history. Most times power structures are challenged the challenge isn't successful or it is overthrown and the same or worse power structures replace it.
10% is still optimistic. The Russian, French and Haitian revolutions all worked out pretty horribly and the American Revolution killed a ton of people and destroyed an enormous amount of property to avoid the terrors of Canada.
Washington was quite the exception. So many at the time predicted he would be a dictator, but he gave up power 3 times voluntarily, and set an amazing example.
Your last sentence diminished the value of first sentence. The countries your mentioned are just different not authoritarian and probably are so because of too-much-fingering by imperialist countries.
I took it as more an anti-authoritarian story than purely anti-capitalist or anti-communist. The anti-capitalist parts are fairly self-evident, at least to me: that's the rather brutal system the farmer has imposed on the animals at the start.
Booting the farmer out and starting again with the animal-owned collective sets the story up for the real message, which is that power corrupts and it is very easy for anyone attracted to power to co-opt legitimate grievance for their own ends. The return of the farmer brings a nice circularity to the story as well as giving the idea that the imposition of will on others is usually to their detriment. Capitalism or communism are basically indistinguishable to everyone existing without power or influence.
It is an allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The farmer represents the Tsarist autocracy. In a Tsarist autocracy all power and wealth is controlled by the Tsar (Farmer Jones). This is actually a long way from capitalism. In the end the pigs form what is referred to as an oligarchy.
So many people seem to want to name-check Orwell for anti-communist purposes without recognizing that the man himself fought for a revolutionary socialist militia in the Spanish Civil War. In other words, he put his actual life on the line for communism (in the non-Stalinist form he interpreted it as), and actually ultimately probably died from complications related to injuries he sustained in that conflict.
His writing changed after Spain. He saw the deliberate press distortions, and the Soviets installing listening equipment in the telephone exchanges. If anything, this gives him greater credibility. This is a review he wrote of /We/, which I dug up while thinking about your comment. http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/zamyatin/english/e_zamy
Nothing there in that review is inconsistent with the anti-Stalinist but revolutionary socialist views of the POUM militia he fought with in Spain.
Now, arguably "Emmanuel Goldstein" in 1984 is meant to be a kind of Trotsky figure (and his book within 1984), and the fact that Goldstein and his book are ultimately shown to be fake and created by the Party may be a kind of critique or renunciation of Trotskyism and similar currents. Hard to say.
For me one of the weirdest use of this book was a vegan (and animal rights supporter) friend who copy/pasted on Facebook the speech of Old Major, the eldest pig who incite the Revolution, who was explaining to the animals how bad the farmer was treating them. For her it was perfectly expressing her feeling that farming animals was a monstrosity and she was completely ignoring that the speech was designed by the pig to manipulate the listeners (the other animals) and that it was a metaphor of communism. So for her, the issue was indeed the farmer, not as symbol of capitalism, but simply as a farmer exploiting living beings. All symbolism was evacuated and all that remained was a rousing speech for animal rights.
I suppose all book interpretation eventually shows the ideology of the reader. It doesn't even have to respect the presumed intention of Orwell who, from what I know, never expressed any support for veganism or actual animal rights.
>Over the years, the big impact of Orwell to me has been how readily people can look at systems that they consider to be Other than their own and critique them while eagerly ignoring the implications for their own situation.
"Capitalism is terrible" is a pretty constant meme on the left in US politics right now, perpetuated by many people who have read that book.
>where I live in Texas, all the sheep just think they are the farmer.
Ah the classic "people that don't vote to tax the rich for entitlements think they are rich". If your model of how people vote depends on people being completely stupid, it's wrong.
It is incredibly relevant to politics today. Galvanising people's anger to get them to support something completely unrelated that's not good for them at all, is something we see constantly. In Brexit, in Trump, but also in many other cases. People are easy to manipulate. And instead of a warning, people are treating Orwell's books as an instruction manual.
Btw, I enjoyed watching the score on the above comment jump up and down. Apparently a bunch of people get irritated when their ideological hero gets called a dirty commie using the man's own words.
It doesn't exist yet, but when Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast* wraps up the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution is the next stop. I'm really looking forward to it. Duncan does an incredible job of tying together the precursors, politics, social situation, and military campaigns into a coherent serial narrative.
Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler, is another allegorical book about the Russian Revolution, more specifically the Moscow trials that followed. The book had a strong impact on me.
It’s a great book but I would recommend it to readers who are already somewhat familiar with the Russian Revolution and how Stalin seized power (defeating both the left and right-wing oppositions within the Bolshevik party) after the death of Lenin.
I'm not an historian or anything of that kind but I'm really interested about the Russian Revolution and I spent quite a few hours on finding the best books about it. My knowledge about those books mainly comes from r/askhistorians (highly recommended!) and academic journals such as the American Historical Review and the Slavic Review. I saw a few other people recommending Miéville's October and even Reed's Ten Days. Now, I'm not claiming those books are bad in any way (I own Reed's) but if you're interested in an historical analysis those are probably not your best shot. Miéville is a sci-fi author who describes himself as a socialist, so he is not trained as an historian and, at the same time, he's definitely simpathetic to the Revolution. Reed's book was written during the Revolution and is a great book if you look at it as a primary source, but it's definitely a partial one. If you're interested in a book of history, then I would recommend you either Fitzpatrick's "The Russian Revolution", which is a short (about 200 pages) book from one of the great pioneers of the revisionist school in soviet historiography. For a more recent (and longer) book I would take a look at S.A. Smith's "Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928". I want to make it clear: Miéville's and Reed's books are great, but one should approach them knowing the context. It's similar to another great book (highly recommended!) by Orwell: Homage to Catalonia. It's similar to Reed's Ten Days, but I would not recommend it as an history book. Hopefully, those recommendations should be enough, but if you have other questions feel free to ask. For a quick look about Soviet historiography, here is a _great_ article by Sheila Fitzpatrick (the author of one of the books I recommended above) reviewing 5 books that came out in 2017: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/sheila-fitzpatrick/whats-left
Once you know the context, you can appreciate more books like Reed's and Mièville too.
Thank you! Appreciate the recommendations and explanations. I've been wanting to approach the Gulag Archipelago but was looking to enhance my understanding of the historical context and political climate of the times first.
Yes approaching it with context is extremely important, as its the heavily influenced by the cold war. Consider that Gulag Arcipelago estimates about 60 million dead in the gulags, which is simply not accepted in today's historiography. 60 million would be equal to over one third of the Soviet Union's population, even before the Second World War.
I just finished reading this and loved it! As someone without much preexisting knowledge about the course of the revolution or anyone involved other than the Tsar and the main Bolsheviks, I found it to be very accessible and engaging. You really get a sense of the personalities of the main actors, especially Lenin.
I found Sheila Fitzpatrick’s The Russian Revolution 1917-1932 to be a well-written and fairly balanced account of the period. In her first chapter she goes as far back as the emancipation of the serfs to describe the societal context that led to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. The book is easy to read, not too long but is well referenced if you want to further explore.
Trotsky's book on the revolution is a literary masterpiece on par with Thucydides, though it's obviously not the best choice for an objective or broadly-based historical picture.
A People's Tragedy, while important as it has been widely read, is nowadays criticized quite heavily in the historiography of the Russian Revolution. Consider reading a few other books (like S.A. Smith's for a very recent one) if you want a different perspective.
Interesting, I did not know that. I see by your other comment that you've done more research into this than I have - I'll take a look at r/askhistorians. Thanks for the heads up and the suggestions.
I picked up A People's Tragedy after reading Figes's book on the Crimean War - do you happen to know if that book is similarly criticized? In other words, should I put a mental asterisk just next to A People's Tragedy, or next to everything by Figes?
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Figes' books in general, but with a few searches I came up with a few reviews. The first, on the LRB, is quite positive, but the author, Geoffrey Wheatcroft does not seem to have, based on his wikipedia page, much expertise on the topic. The other, published in Victorian Studies, is more academic, and is quite negative. The author, Andrew Lambert, cites numerous errors. His most important critique is that this book narrates what he calls the "old-crimean war", and that it largely ignores what are now considered some very important aspects of the war. If you want some alternative books, consider taking a look at this thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5v7ggr/what_...), where u/kieslowskifan, a user who I absolutely admire for his knowledge, recommends a few crimean war books to a fellow redditor. Happy reading!
For a feeling of what the early Soviet Union was like, I highly recommend We the Living by Ayn Rand. If you don't like her politics, I still recommend it to understand exactly what it was that she is reacting against.
That book is not exactly autobiographical. But she does draw very heavily on her own personal experiences to draw that time and place as accurately as she could. For example the purge that ended Kira's university education was not made up, and indeed would have ended Ayn Rand's career if she had been one year younger.
You're being down-voted for no good reason. If you want to understand what drove Ayn Rand to the extremes then "We the Living" is probably the best explanation there is.
A famous contemporary account is Ten Days that Shook the World. it was written by an American who, it's safe to say, was fairly pro-communist.
But really it's such a pivotal moment in modern history that you're not going to starve for material. It sounds glib, but in this instance you could do worse than start on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution
I highly recommend Homage to Catalonia if you liked Animal Farm. It really explains how Orwell became disillusioned with communism (while fighting for it).
Simplistic yes, but also true. He became throughly disillusioned with socialism because he felt that someone like Stalin would always take control of it.
My interpretation was that he was always anti-authority, but his experiences led him to believe that an authoritian figure will always try to grab power and it doesn't matter what `side` they say they are for, power is their aim.
True he liked the spirit of his socialist militia but by the end I think he felt its spirit had been crushed and abused by others.
That was clearly sarcasm. A directed one and thus patronising. Irony happens when there is a contrast between intent and effect, like "the man had to bring his car to the repair shop after driving over a pothole. He is ironically responsible for maintaining the roads"
Truly, most of those who struggle to speak it and write it do not deserve the English language, any more than their great teacher Alanis Morrisette. The situation you describe is not irony. Irony is a property of communication, not of coincidence.
An event can still be situationally, or cosmically ironic even if it's not in fiction. if you really want it to be a property of communication, then think of the communication as being between the universe, or God and the subject.
More importantly, English is defined by common usage, and the usage of irony in describing an unexpected combination of real events has been common for hundreds of years. I believe this probably comes from people's common belief in fate, or that their lives are part of some broader story. Under this mindset, it makes perfect sense to use terms from literature to describe phenomena of life. And your insistence that irony is a property of communication is satisfied.
Words have multiple senses, and the ones from common usage are just as valid as the ones from academic usage, though they may be harder to pin down.
This is why it is important for words to have specific meanings. This muddling of "irony" is at least partially responsible for the narrative fallacy that you describe. The universe does not care about our subjective experience. "Unlikely" events occur in everyone's life, but not because the Fates are taking poetic license with that life. If the roads should be better maintained or if they are maintained much better than they should be, we won't know from repairs to the local road superintendent's car.
I love new usages that make English more capable or more entertaining. I detest those that impoverish our discourse and thus our thinking.
* Factfulness and Thinking Fast And Slow. The latter helped me internalise that my thinking, like most humans, is biased. Even being aware of those biases doesn’t always help. We need to go above and beyond to overcome our biases. Factfulness goes into detail about what those biases are and how they lead to a distorted world view. Rather than taking the easy way out by blaming journalists/politicians/rich people, he turns the focus onto us and our biases and speaks about how to look at the world in an objective fact based manner.
* The Dictator’s Handbook. One simple axiom - leaders do what is necessary to stay in power. Using that idea they explain the basis of all political systems, whether autocracy or democracy or somewhere in between. I didn’t really understand politics before I read this. CGPGrey has a video where he summarises the book. [1]
* (Only for Indians) India After Gandhi. You can’t really understand your country if you don’t know it’s history. History stopped in 1947 according to our history books, and most people are blissfully unaware of what came after. They don’t know how close India came to losing democracy or how easily it could happen again. They don’t understand the dangers of promoting one language at the expense of others because they don’t know that it’s been tried before. Every Indian needs to know so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past over and over.
While his admission concerns mostly the theory of priming, the problem is not specific but a methodological error. In my view all his research should be looked at with suspicion and with a view to have his experiments replicated independently sooner rather than later. This has been a problem throughout social psychology and other branches of science, so nothing specific to Kahneman, he's just the best known. Which brings up the next thought, which is I always look at information from the epistemic point of view: where does this knowledge come from: rational thought, experiment, experience, faith? I just notice, without judgement, how eager some of the posters here are to accept a theory or a philosophy even when it has already been debunked, or the evidence is flimsy, or maybe it's formulated in ways that are not even "debunkable". And there is a pragmatic view that if it feels right and it helps, why not.
India After Gandhi is truly a powerful book, and you're right in saying that it is our duty as an Indian to educate ourselves about post-1947 happenings. My only issue with the book, though only slightly, was the fast that Guha was a bit too soft on Nehru. There were many flaws/bad decisions (and good decisions too indeed) taken by Nehru which, I think, the book downplayed.
Nevertheless, Guha is truly an amazing historian and all of his books deserve to be read!
I read the first five or so chapters of Factfulness based on this recommendation, and do not recommend that book. Here is my review (also posted to Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2713701220):
The book was recommended to me as being mainly about bias, with the state of the world as examples, but this was wrong – the book is mainly about the state of the world, and it gives a few basic biases I already knew about as examples. The state of humanity all over the globe is not something I care about as much – I can’t personally affect it and it won’t affect my personal life – and the book never explicitly justified its assumption that it is important for people to know.
I did appreciate one thing: the book’s description of exactly what system is supposed to replace the “developing”/“developed” dichotomy. I was told as a child that it was obsolete, but never what was supposed to replace it. The book proposes categorizing countries within a distribution of four income levels in which most countries fall in level three. The author never justified his choice of four levels, nor his choice of boundaries between the levels, but I am willing to believe based on the graphs that at least this model is more useful than the older two-level dichotomy.
However, the rest of the book was pretty boring. I didn’t fall in the category of “people who think the world is getting worse” that the introduction assumed I fell into, so the next few chapters that kept insisting that the world was getting better were redundant and boring for me. The other chapters all seem the same and I don’t think I’ll learn anything useful from them.
I can guess that Bill Gates recommended this book because it is written for people like him – rich philanthropists who are wondering how best to use their power to make a difference in the world. Most people do not fall in this category.
>>They don’t know how close India came to losing democracy or how easily it could happen again.
Would it have been a bad thing? Well, China is doing swimmingly well. And please don't give the oh-India-is-very-diverse argument. Those who claim China is not diverse, doesn't know China.
Democracy was not something that originated out of India. It got shoved upon and lapped up by the very white-washed freedom-fighting leadership back in the day. No other alternative has/was ever been considered ["A political system with Indian characteristics"]. Also, for a country with a very high illiteracy rate, I never figured out how democracy actually works.
>>They don’t understand the dangers of promoting one language at the expense of others because they don’t know that it’s been tried before.
So let's just promote English and ensure there will always be animosity and division amongst the intellectuals (since by definition, they'd already know English) and the rest who only speak a "regional vernacular".
The thing that has shocked me most on my interactions with the Indian English-speaking (elite) is on how unoriginal they are. I could have well been speaking with a Brooklyn hipster and wouldn't have been able to tell the difference (other than the appearance and context).
Well with none of their "regional vernaculars" being developed and growing up on just a diet of American and British books and (liberal) ideas, can't quite blame them.
ps: I do a lot of business travel to India. Let's just put it that I have a love-hate affair with the country.
I was just thinking about our government in India earlier today and how the illiterate population play a role in sustaining a bad functioning government. My concern was mostly with the environment and how those in power seem to be doing nothing to fix what needs to be done urgently. I do not know how to explain the craze that the common people have for politics, but it is very active here. They get riled up very easily and this has let people who have the ability to trigger the thoughts of the masses into power. Very often, those who get into power do not join politics to bring change but only because they see how easy it is to be corrupt.
On the flip side, I think most of the modern generation has a better understanding of what needs to be done and where our priorities should be but it's gonna be a long time before those in power go away for good. But it might be too late by then, and I'm afraid we'll be stuck in this cycle.
I've only read a couple of history books about India, one by William Dalrymple and the other by Ramachandra Guha. I'd highly recommend both of them. In case you want to know about the last decades of the freedom struggle, Gandhi After India is probably what you're looking for.
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 me.
I realized there were lots of things in my life (much more than just physical objects) that I had just sort of accumulated without thinking about what I really like or if something was good for me. I found the benefit of "practicing" this concept without mundane household objects allowed me to have a stronger sense of what I really enjoy in the more important aspects of my life.
My experience is kind of opposite. I decide one day to discard everything I own and live out of a suitcase for a while (had plenty of savings so was not living poor).
I had bookshelves full of books I never read, architecture books, art books, children's books, clothing I never wore, toys and figures I didn't play with, stuffed animals, framed posters, and entire household of stuff.
5 years later I miss some of that stuff. For lack of a better word I think it was part of my identity. Of course not all of it but lots of little things, even if I didn't use them they served as anchors for memories. Even if the only anchor was when I bought them that would remind me of other things that happened around the time I acquired the item etc..
I'm still mixed on if it was the right thing to do.
I think you went too far. The mindset is never about minimalism -- or what you can do without. It's about ensuring that what you have is good. You should have stuff. Books, toys that are memorable, clothes of different kinds. What you have needs to be important though!
That's not the Marie Kondo thingy. Ms. Kondo's recipe is that you go through your stuff category at a time (books, shirts etc) and per each item figure out if that thing "brings you joy" or not.
My wife was into it. We went through our stuff and ended discarding lots of crap. So, it's rather "go through all of your stuff once in a while and throw all crap away" than "ultra minimalism at all cost".
Thanks for posting this. I am the kind of person to whom many forms of minimalism are seductive, and yet, the books, tchotchkies, and ephemera pile up.
This book helped me too. I used to hoard all kinds of stuff and find clever ways to store it because it might be useful some day, if I could ever find it at the right time. Eventually I started intentionally buying duplicates of things I needed so there would always be one on hand. I'd especially be reluctant to get rid of stuff that didn't take up a lot of space. I didn't realize how much it added up. Sometimes getting rid of even very small things can make storage much smaller and more manageable. I know where everything is now, and it saves a lot of time! I moved to a tiny apartment and got rid of most of my things and now I'm just nice and cozy with the stuff I actually want.
I don't think this is embarrassing at all. After the initial purge, I couldn't believe how much it changed my purchasing habits. I now have a very simple rubric that prevents me from buying things I don't need. Tidying Up reads as a sort of mild self-help manual but it conceals a powerful anti-consumerist undertow (speaking as an American, anyway)
I really like the phrase "anti-consumerist undertow!" but I also visualized it in the opposite way - consumerism as the undertow, and "Tidying Up" as the "swim parallel to shore until you're out" advice.
It's a really great idea, and the way people are taking to it is really nice to see. I even see people understanding after a few eye rolls the importance of her more Shinto inspired things (such as being thankful to items).
From her I learned that all items have a home. I had heard such an idea before, but her explanation made it stick. Now I don't lose keys or gloves or ear muffs, they all have a home in my house. It's not ideal placement, I often end up backtracking a bit, but I think the idea isn't to wring efficiency out of every decision, but to just know and accept, and that feels ok when you're around joyful things.
This has a very different impact on me, since I enjoy experiencing taking apart and putting back and restoring and playing etc... vintage musical instruments in my spare time.
It never gets old. There is no real reason to sell one because each instrument is almost childlike in some incorporeal manner.
I ended up purchasing more things, but just being more tidy.
"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 engage with reality. We can build a better world, but only by being honest about the current state of things.
+1. Reading Sowell really challenged my utopian impulses, it's amazing how deep his thoughts are but how simply they're expressed, apparently he advised people in the bay area to stop protecting so much open space in the 1970s with the warning that this would increase housing prices dramatically eventually. In hindsight this seems so intuitive and obvious but he gets credit for not needing hind sight and anticipating the most salient consequences.
Interesting fact: Economics in One Lesson is an extended meditation on Frédéric Bastiat's classic essay "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen." Part of Hazlitt's goal was to make Bastiat's ideas more modern and accessible. However, enough time has passed that some of his examples are a bit dated. I actually prefer the original. Bastiat is a splendid writer.
Just a heads up - the theory explained in that book (Austrian school) is 100% fringe economics. It's very popular with libertarians, but not really considered to produce very useful outcomes by pretty much any other school of economics.
You either haven't read the book or you you misunderstand how much of the book is Austrian economics. Yes, modern Austrian economics is considered fringe. However, historically the foundational results of early Austrian economics has been fully integrated into mainstream economics. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School):
> Among the theoretical contributions of the early years of the Austrian School are the subjective theory of value, marginalism in price theory and the formulation of the economic calculation problem, each of which has become an accepted part of mainstream economics.
> The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
Probably the biggest reason the Austrian School is "fringe" (a fairer descriptor is "heterodox") is that there's no money in it.
Economics is a value free science, at least how Austrians practice it, but happens to show that government intervention is usually harmful. For example, Keynesians believe that the business cycle is an inherent failure of markets with no known cause and that government must intervene heavily to correct such errors. By contrast, the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle takes nearly the opposite position -- that intervention, mainly in form of credit expansion causes booms. A bust is a correction of errors made during the boom and should not itself be corrected with more easy money, starting the cycle all over again.
Now, the vast majority of working professional economists derive all or much of their income from the government in one way or another. Many work for the federal government or the Federal Reserve Bank or consult with them. Or they work in government funded universities doing research with money from government grants.
Early last century, Hoover then FDR discovered and embraced John Maynard Keynes who offered a general theory that supported heavy government intervention. The Keynesian prescription just happened to provide an intellectual basis for policies that would require government to grow much larger and more powerful. Before long government began to fund more and more professional economist jobs. And no surprise, those jobs went to Keynesians.
A few decades later Milton Friedman (not an Austrian) said, "We are all Keynesians now" -- not as an admission that the theories were correct but a concession that in practical terms it's nearly impossible to work in the field and not be a Keynesian.
Do you have an opinion as to what you think is wrong with it, or just bandwagon fallacy?
What for example, do you think of Subjective Theory of Value or the Theory of Marginal Utility, which were developed by the father of the Austrian School, Carl Menger, in the latter part of the 19th century? Or the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, for which Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974?
Yes. It’s all very plausible sounding, neat, and internally consistent, but you can’t derive a useful macroeconomic model from it that matches real-world, empirical observations. (Of course, the same could be said for a lot of mainstream stuff).
Part of it is probably just the historical context - monetary systems in the modern economy are very different than the gold-standard, fixed exchange rate kind of environment the book was written in, for example, which changes a lot of how things operate. But even then I think it still would have suffered from the fallacy of composition, where you can’t start from a description of interaction between two people and just scale it up - the emergent behaviour is almost always surprisingly different.
Could you provide a concrete example where it breaks down?
With regards to Austrian economics, as far as I remember, the school is not even mentioned in Hazlitt's book, but you are right that he was heavily influenced by it. But the book and its propositions stand on their own, I think.
Although Sowell writes very convincingly and brings logical arguments at first sight, most of his statements on the free market are based on intuition rather than data. He consistently uses a handful of examples (minimum wage, housing market) and extrapolates those to other areas in the economy without substantiation. Always assuming a fully efficient market (which it is not, see different bubbles in past few decades), rational actors (i.e. ignoring human emotion and/or marketing effects that effect consumer spending) and full price elasticity of all goods/services/labor.
It's an interesting read, but be (very) skeptical. The world and economics is a bit more complex than the picture he portrays.
> assuming a fully efficient market (which it is not, see different bubbles in past few decades)
Well, I think it's part of the book to speak in favor of free markets as opposed to centrally planned "markets" (such as prices for money, e.g., interest rate).
If you're criticizing an underlying assumption, then of course I can also go ahead and criticize parts of mathematics for some of their axioms. Yet, that doesn't make mathematics wrong, only more limited in scope.
The Quest for Cosmic Justice is another great book by Sowell that challenges the utopian mindset that underlies many modern policy discussions. It contrasts utopian "cosmic" justice with the much more prosaic (but achievable) "human" justice
In similar veins, his 'A Conflict of Visions' and 'The Vision of the Anointed' are two stunning incisive books that show pretty directly why we are where we are now, as divided as we are now. Likely corresponds strongly with Haidt's 'The Righteous Mind', referred to elsewhere in this topic.
Nearly two decades ago Sowell sent me a signed copy after I emailed him challenging him on something he wrote in one of his columns!
Sowell's weak point it is that (and this is is not unique to Sowell, it's common to both nominal supporters of free markets and their opponents) there's too often an implicit conflation of the economic system that actually exists with a free market. The way he taught me to look at policy in terms of incentives more than makes up for any of that though.
Funny thing is, reality is based a lot in perception. For example, it was "reality" that the higgs boson didn't exist before 2012. It was simply part of a model.
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.
Definitely "The Machine That Changed the World" by Womack, Jones, and Roos [0]. This is "the first book to reveal Toyota's lean production system." Before reading it, I had never imagined just-in-time production or value chain mapping, or vehicle assembly lines that can profitably produce quantity one of a product before being reconfigured to produce a different model (SMED: single minute exchange of die).
Now I see muda everywhere and cringe when I overhear people talking about applying kaizen and how they think they're practicing "continuous improvement" while repeating the same rote, industrial, mindless processes that they have been for the last 40 years. We can do so much better. Toyota tried very hard to teach GM how at their NUMMI[1] plant, but it wasn't the right location relative to their suppliers for JIT to fully work and "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
In software people use agile as an excuse to not think through the core architecture.
I believe agile was invented to incrementally improve an already well thought production process. Once the assembly line was setup, agile was used to eliminate the unproductive activities. I am not sure agile will be helpful to build the assembly line itself?
In most scenarios that's what people try to do with agile.
Setting up a mechanical assembly line is very different from setting up a software pipeline, although, as you can tell already, they use some of the same words and metaphors.
It isn't possible to build a mechanical factory in weeks with readily available tools [0]. We just don't have that kind of concentration of knowledge, we don't have the skills, the know-how etc. to accomplish that. Whereas with software: you have OSS, you have the Cloud, and all kinds of numerous tooling that helps you get started immediately, and iterate on that until you get to the final product. That kind of iteration, debugging etc. is just not possible with manufacturing. Which is why in manufacturing you need great designs and processes: bad decisions are very costly. They are costly in software too, but... your MVP will still churn out value, even if its not efficient. Once you prove that your product satisfies a need, you then make it better, you make it more efficient, scale it out, yadda yadda. But getting started is absurdly easy. And thats why lean works.
The designers of lean realized that all that worry about scaling, about automation, planning, QA... while its important, it doesn't provide the most value for everyone. For a smaller company, its more important to get out a product that solves a problem even if its janky. Once you prove its usefulness, you attract more money, more people etc.
So lean solves two problems:
* gets you started quickly and fails bad ideas fast
* lets you justify bad design if it provides more value
One could argue that the technical debt built up by this kind of process has to be paid down someday. If your product survives for long enough, you will have enough resources to do that. And then you have a core product that brings in revenue, and you repeat the same lean method for other products. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum.
[0]: where this assumption fails, you see a lot more manufacturing. e.g. in China, the fruits of this kind of aggregation in manufacturing skill is visible, and that's why Chinese manufacturers are so adept at responding to changing market conditions.
I agree with your points above.Having said that knowledge and experience is a critical factor and I am fine with using agile for MVPs and startup scenarios.
My issue is with the way agile is evangelized and implemented in the Enterprise. These Enterprise people simply rationalize that if Toyota can do it then why we can't without realizing where it fit and where it does not.
Personally I think it does not fit with the culture of thousand approvals and beating the dead horse i.e. endlessly cross examining any design or implementation failures.
This happens because Enterprise people love the buzzwords. Agile and cloud are the latest buzz in Enterprise so they watch a ppt or two somewhere starts pushing agile into a culture where it does not fit at all. This results in sufferings and frustration.
Kaizen seems to be manufacturing's equivalent of agile. Everyone says they do it, but almost no one actually does it because that would mean totally re-configuring their business.
I hadn't recognized the equivalency of [lean] and agile before. That's interesting and helps give me a better appreciation for why we only end up paying lip service to the idea. Thanks for the thought.
A good approach to this is to start small. Apply kaizen on small things, get the "kaizen culture" ingrained in your team/company culture, and slowly move on to bigger things.
For me it was a sequence of books that did it. The Phoenix Project first, then David Anderson's Kanban book. Some tine after that was The Goal and Deming's Out Of The Crisis, and a book of Taichi Ohno musings.
You're right, what has been seen cannot be unseen.
It's interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it explains that a lot of the ideas driving how Toyota worked post-war came from the fact that they knew they wouldn't be able to let people go in an economic downturn.
Why did GM's people's salaries depend on not understanding NUMMI/TPS? I would have thought it would have been clear to them they either adapt or die, and thus their salary depended on understanding it.
Simply accepting you're in the wrong location means moving, and you can't move a factory and all it's workers cheaply. Similarly, no one wants to automate their own job away, as that would result in them not having a job.
Granted, long-term that thinking kills companies, but short term it keeps the bills paid, the kids fed, and the beer cold.
From what I was able to gather it was less about being in the wrong location and that the internal politics of GM set NUMMI up for failure.
America was able to be a powerhouse of manufacturing during WW2, I remember reading that a lot of the DNA for JIT/Kaizen/Lean came from the Marshall Plan[1].
The Chicken Tax. Because of it, US auto manufactures promoted and sold the one market segment where they had 0 to no competition. Even today, the big American automakers suck balls at making Sedans and focus exclusively on Trucks and SUVs.
The tools don't really mean anything, it's mostly adopting the principles enforced. And everyone has to adopt it for it to work. The ones that do it best, have a strong company culture. You define the why before the how and what.
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.
I found William Irving's A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy a very legible contemporary (if somewhat idiosyncratic) introduction to Stoic thought, and maybe more accessible/applicable than the classic sources.
Exactly! This book is my recommendation as well to everyone who seeks to learn more about stoics. It is easy to understand, you can relate to the things said, and it is practical! It makes you think and challenges your beliefs as you go on and on. It makes sense!
The idea of "Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts" reminds me of this TED Talk:
"If you ever struggle to make decisions, here's a talk for you. Cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths shows how we can apply the logic of computers to untangle tricky human problems, sharing three practical strategies for making better decisions -- on everything from finding a home to choosing which restaurant to go to tonight."
Meditations is what immediately came to my mind also. It's a humbling and reassuring look into the mind of a great leader and stoic; to know that there was this man, the most powerful in his time, who strived - and struggled - to be the best he could, is inspiring.
Are we really going that low to take beliefs from WER (white, educated, rich) people? I mean wasn't Seneca the rich man during that time? And also Marcus Aurelius book doesn't seem appealing to read because it was never meant to be published.
About the 'white' part: the Roman empire apparently did not categorize people based on something as superficial as their skin color: "physiognomy did not function as a criterion of social status in the Roman system of stratification". [1]
I also liked this book. Also because it shows how similar problems people had then.
For more stoicism I would recommend "Daily Stoic". It's one meditation per day.
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?
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg is an amazing eye-opener. It's a book about how how to interact with your fellow humans in a way that enriches the lives of everyone around you. It's full of things that should be obvious, but in practice are not. You can think of it as a more advanced version of Dale Carnegie's "How to make friends and influence people", with more focus on conflicts, and a specific communication methodology.
I use non-violent-communication (NVC) constantly, at work and at home. It basically is a method that forces you to listen and to speak without judgment. But “People Skills” by Robert Bolton is a much more scientific and nuanced approach that I’ve found greater success with. They key is to so ingrain these methods that you are no longer using a method. In the end, you simply really care about what people have to say, you delay judgment as long as possible, and you practice empathy while remaining clear about your own needs and boundaries. Also, being direct.
Just last week I sat through a meeting where no one was listening to one another, elephants were being buried underground, and we were becoming more divided. Taking a cue from ‘Radical Candor’, I invited the room’s abstract complaints and negativity to focus on me, specifically. Luckily, someone was so pissed at me and my team that they launched into a list of things we’d done wrong. That gave me a chance to listen, to show I cared, and to connect the dots with his previous discussion at the meeting. Basic stuff. But it opened the floodgates to honest conversation for the rest of the night.
I always say that computers are easy, humans are hard. Would love to see more recommendations about this topic.
Humans are "Hard" because they are individuals with their own motivations, drives, capricious emotions and in a word, are not always "rational". I feel most of the books on management/organizations/communications, approach Human Communications from a utopian viewpoint. They assume a path of least resistance and then impose a structured process (fad of the month) to arrive at a positive end goal. I have come to the conclusion that this is all unworkable BS (note books like "Leadership BS", "Bullshit Jobs" etc.) and we need to change our approach completely based on actual realities rather than wishful thinking. To that end i found the following books useful;
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (aka The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence) by Balthasar Gracian - A set of aphorisms with penetrating insight into Human Nature.
Why we do what we do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci - A short book from a psychologist.
The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work by Peter Block
Management: A Political Activity by Ted Stephenson
> I always say that computers are easy, humans are hard. Would love to see more recommendations about this topic.
I wouldn't go so far :). They're both hard; and need talented individuals to function together and come up with great ideas and processes on how to build, maintain and scale them.
And as nerdy engineers, we often discount the humans, which we ought not to do.
All this "if you answered c, e and f, we are not of the same opinion" feels passive-aggressive to me.
The whole thing feels manipulative to me. It makes me think that people try an insincere way of talking to me, in order to manipulate my feelings and reaction.
I've had huge discussions with friends who try to live the book, and neither of us could make the other see their point.
One of their examples was "My boyfriend likes to go DJing, but sometimes I'd love for him to stay home and cuddle with me. So I clearly tell him that him leaving makes me feel alone and that I would like some warmth. But I don't tell him what to do, to stay at home, for example. I only talk about my own perception and feelings."
–
"Yes, that's great, but in communication there is the level of pragmatics above pure logical semantics. And you telling your boyfriend that him leaving makes you feel very alone is just another way of saying 'please don't go'".
This book was extremely influential to me and changed my outlook. If you’re reading the book and sense insincerity, I’m not sure how to address that beyond encouraging you to read it with a lens that it is completely sincere.
Since reading it, I have been amazed at how unclear many people communicate. They say things to express some basic emotions - anger, frustration, etc - but so many people do not express in clear terms the root of this feeling.
In your example, the woman does indeed want the boyfriend to stay at home. But saying you want someone to do something, at a minimum, doesn’t explain why you want that. It also doesn’t give them much recourse to either object, or come up with alternative solutions.
I can't agree with an idea that encourages you to not say what you want, for me, this is the opposite of good communication. If you want your boyfriend to stay at home, you should say so and then explain why. Not actually saying it is likely to make the situation more confused and lead to conflict.
It encourages you to first understand and say what you need, then talk about what you want as one possible solution.
We're very "good" at solutionising what we think we want rather than what we need. One of the things I took away is a way to clearly consider and express the root cause of something. In the DJ example not wanting their partner to go may be due to any number of reasons that aren't clear to the DJ, they could be lonely, feel insecure, feel mistrustful of fidelity, feel ashamed at their own lack of passion for an activity etc. Any number of these things can come to the surface when you start saying why something bothers you rather than the first solution your brain offers up, plus it's a much nicer conversation when both parties are involved in building the solution.
What's also nice is I've had better "shower conversations" with myself to figure out what I really want from situations.
Importantly, saying it without coming down with harsh judgment on the other person is also key. You truly don’t know what’s going on in their mind, or what motivations they may have had in doing something. NVC encourages realizing this and avoiding assigning feelings or intent to the other person, since you don’t know if that’s accurate.
“I feel lonely much more than I want to when you’re gone DJing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I don’t like feeling lonely. Can we figure out something to help me feel lonely less often?”
And yes, you could say “I wish you’d stay at home,” but is that really the desire? The desire is to feel lonely or ignored less of the time in this scenario I think; maybe I’m wrong!
Maybe the DJ said she couldn’t come with thinking she would be bored. Maybe she’d love to come, but thinks he doesn’t want her there.
Saying clearly the why, without judgment on the other person, certainly seems to be pretty NVC to me.
It seems natural if asked:
"Can we figure out something to help me feel lonely less often?”
To respond:
"Ok well, what do you want?"
If you're not willing to give actual things you want, then the other person has to "mind read." And from my experience in relationships, when people are trying to mind read what the other actually wants, this always ends up in issues/problems.
Mind reading is not the goal of this conversation.
The response you said might happen - "OK well, what do you want?" - would indeed be a desired response. The reason is that the response leads to a conversation, where they can both talk about possible solutions. And the solution doesn't have to be "don't go DJ tonight," although that could be one.
Imagine if the conversation instead was this:
Girlfriend: "I don't want you to DJ at the club tonight."
DJ thinks: "What? She knows this is really important to me, but she just wants me to stop going. What the heck. She doesn't want to support me in this now, after I've done it for so long?"
DJ says: "This is really I important to me. Stop trying to control me, I don't try to control you!"
Girlfriend: "I'm not trying to control you, I just want you to stay home tonight!"
DJ: "Sounds like control to me!" huffs out of the room
Giving the DJ some amount of context can help avoid anyone feeling accused, and can help someone misinterpret why someone wants something.
Hah, but sometimes the non-verbalized component of this communication method is a bit silly if they actually want you to consider ‘not go’ to be the only option.
“Oh, when you said you would feel alone you were actually (more or less) forbidding me from going out tonight.”
It sounds like your friend may have missed some of the more critical points of the approach. Let me try:
* My boyfriend went DJing three times last week,
* but when he leaves, I feel lonely (n.b. this is different from "him leaving makes me feel alone")
* because I need some companionship in my relationship.
* I'd like to ask him to stay in with me at least x nights a week.
I talk to my boyfriend about my 1) observations, 2) feelings, 3) needs, and 4) requests (this is verbatim the four-step process outlined in the book). To all this, I might add:
On the other hand, I also wonder if DJing is his way of meeting his own needs for independence/action/excitement, and how he would feel about staying in x nights a week. Perhaps there's another way that we can make sure both of our needs are met, such as inviting close friends over to stay the night when he's gone, or inviting our friends over for a house party so he can socialize and I can still have him around.
---
Communication works when it's a good-faith effort on both sides to understand where the other is coming from and meet each other's needs mutually. The goal shouldn't be to manipulate the other's feelings and reactions, but to focus on the parts that no one could possibly disagree on (observation, feelings, needs—e.g., "I feel lonely") rather than blaming ("that makes me lonely") or subjective judgments ("3 nights a week is excessive").
If "we are not of the same opinion" strikes you as hokey, consider the intention of phrasing it that way: If you get in the habit of telling people when and why they're wrong, you're going to erode the spirit of cooperation required to arrive at a happy solution.
Re: the wording: I would be perfectly fine with "if you answered b we disagree". But that extremely gratuitous and overly complicated way of saying it really feels manipulative. Who talks that way, ever?
I haven't read the book. Does it really go so far as to say that the girlfriend should say all that but shouldn't say "I would like it if you would do that"?
'Cause there's a big difference between "I don't tell him what to do" and "I don't express my preferences/desires".
No, it is totally fine to make requests! NVC just advises you to give some context about your feelings and needs before you make the request, instead of jumping straight to it. The prescribed sequence is:
1. Observations: things that are objectively observable
2. Feelings: your feelings about them
3. Needs: the needs you want met
4. Requests: a proposal as to how you want your needs met
It's not always practical or necessary to go through the whole sequence. Sometimes all you need to say is "I'd like you to stay." But if things get tricky or contentious, it can help a lot to separate observations from feelings, and start with objective facts first.
For example, if someone is really upset that their partner isn't staying home with them, they might be tempted to say "Obviously you don't care about this relationship because you never spend time with me!"
That's not going to work nearly as well as "When you leave me at home alone a lot, I feel lonely and ignored. I need time and connection to feel good about our relationship. Could you stay home tonight?"
Explaining your feelings serves (at least) two purposes: (a) it helps the other person have empathy for you; and (b) it provides information about the true purpose of the request. The extra information helps ensure the right need is addressed (in this case, it reveals that what's wanted isn't just presence at home; it's quality time and connection), and helps the other person find alternative solutions if they can't accept the proposal (maybe their partner has an appointment to visit a friend at the hospital and really can't stay; but they are still many ways to address the underlying need, e.g. "It's important that I see my friend at the hospital, but I do want to spend time with you; can we make a plan to spend tomorrow night together?")
If the only information provided is the request, then the receiver can only say yes or no; they aren't equipped with enough information to find a solution that might work better for both parties.
(I guess I should add that this is my interpretation; it seems like people have different interpretations of NVC. I think of it as a tool to use when things get difficult, and for me its purpose is to convey information more clearly, not to obscure my true preferences.)
I found the opposite, that by verbally giving context to feelings it can be a more honest and effective communication. And no, the book does not say you should "only talk about my own perception and feelings" and discourage making direct requests of others in order to ask to cuddle—it merely allows you a helpful framework to communicate feelings around it if communication is difficult. See zestyping's sub-response to a sibling thread.
I think that is why I value Non-Violent Communication so much, for its desire to be compassionate and empathetic to both your self and others while realizing that you don't just deserve to get what you want from others just because you want to feel a certain way or feel you need a certain outcome due to circumstances.
The Dale Carnegie comparison threw up a red flag for me because that book is all manipulation. I have an ex-friend who read it and swears by it, but she's just become completely insufferable and fake. It's like she's constantly in a job interview.
I think that says more about your friend than it does the book. When I read the book back in high school I felt it was less, how can I manipulate people, and more, how can I become someone people enjoy being around.
Just because someone's an asshole doesn't mean they're autistic.
I've read the book and had a visceral reaction to it personally. It is called "How to win friends and influence people" after all. Seems to be a love it or hate it type of thing.
I can see that kind of reaction. When I read it, the book seemed to be a lot about giving people what they want by changing things about yourself and your mindset. For some people that's a good idea (if you're a selfish jerk), and for some people that's a terrible idea (if you already give in too much to other people).
As someone who moved to the US at a young age, reading How to Make Friends and Influence People explained a lot of the apparent insincerity/fakeness that bothered me in both business and personal interactions, and that had been very much a mystery to me.
How did that go again?
Dear $FIRSTNAME $LASTNAME,
I am writing you to emphasise how much your business personally means to me and how $EMOTIONAL_STATE I feel about it...
Also remember that he was a huckster, for example changing his name so people would associate him with the steel Carnegies (no relation).
I know some people get turned off by his delivery and how some people poorly execute what he teaches, but I have found this to be a life changing book. I've read it easily a dozen times and listened to the 8 hour audio version almost as many times.
The main take away that I use all the time is that most of us jump to solution oriented problem solving when in conflict or explaining our side, and that's usually not what people are looking for. When someone is upset, they are usually looking for empathy. They want to be understood. When they are understood, they are able to problem solve or hear the other side.
The problems are that:
1) Marshall is teaching a new language. So, he's speaking slowly, repeating himself, and talking at a very basic level. That's why it sounds unnatural.
2) People generally suck at giving empathy, even more so when they are personally invested in the situation. So, they have a bias against it.
But, like learning any new language, when you get to native speaking level, it sounds very different.
I do couple's coaching on the side, and this is one of my main tools. It is amazing to watch. A couple who comes in and sit on opposite sides of the room, not looking each other will be cuddling on the couch crying in each other's arms 20 minutes later, right after I translate their actions into the feelings that drive those actions and simple requests. They see each other at a deep level, and that's what people typically want.
“The Design of Everyday Things” changed the way I see literally everything. You’ll never look at doors the same way again, and prepare to forever be frustrated by poorly designed objects, and delighted by incredibly well designed ones.
There is no better book on the philosophy of UX, imho.
not only UX. programmers can actually learn a lot about building software if they see the meta in the book (replace door w/ interface. think about the mental model your library user is going to build for your library. make things easy to use when the correct pattern is employed and impossible if improperly done. minimize cognitive load) the book is brilliant
+1 for this gem. At least once a day I catch myself thinking some everyday object (or app) I’ve encountered could be more usable if it had certain signifiers to better illustrate its affordances, or lacked certain signifiers to obfuscate unintended affordances. Should be required reading for anyone who aspires to put products out into the world.
The first time I tried to read this book after Luke Kanies the founder of Puppet recommended it I barely made it 15% in, but after 6 months of noticing poor design everywhere I went back and gave it another go. I'm not in UX but I think about this book almost daily.
Indeed, I think of that book (which I read over a decade ago) every time I push or pull a door the wrong way. Reading it is like being able to see the matrix - but it’s simultaneously enlightening and frustrating when you realize how poorly so many things are designed.
+1 reflecting back I think this is one of the books that has been key to changing my thinking. Was one of the first design book I read, but the lessons have been with me for the last decade+.
Maybe trite, but the Bible. For a mind-blowing experience, read Matthew chapters 5–7, and have in mind that the topic is: “what it means for a person to be righteous, or good.” The analysis of the role of moral rules, the place of worry and anxiety in driving us to short-sighted compromise, the tension between “secret” good-doing versus good-doing for public recognition, are all potent, helpful, and life-changing.
The Book of Mormon as well, for those of us raised in a certain cult. Also D&C 132[0] where Joseph Smith has a "Revelation" about taking multiple wives and basically threatens his wife with hell if she doesn't go along with it (she wasn't a huge fan of polygamy).
> And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.
You have to keep in mind that this was written by multiple authors 2000 years ago in a different culture using different ways of putting things. It is also a good exercise to entertain a mental position that is not yours; read a hindu verses assuming hindu gods exist, read the bible assuming God exists. That way you are not in danger of loosing out on valuable concepts just because the supernatural is alien to you.
For a book used by millions of people as the only source of wisdom for over a dozen centuries, I can hardly disagree more about the 'overlooked' part.
I am not commenting about its actual merits, as it has some merits and some beautiful verses. But it is just a book among many. It should stop being the only book many people read.
They may not have meant this, but I took it to mean "overlooked by some groups". Especially nonreligious types, I feel, could learn from a lot of the secular wisdom in the Bible (and I say this as an agnostic). And I know there are many contradictory, sexist, barbaric, and other awful things in there, and I'm not trying to apologize for those bits. Just that there's more good things in there than many nonreligious types often know.
As an example, my agnostic, very nerdy brother read the whole thing and said he learned a lot from it. I figure there's a lot of potential people out there just like him.
You dont even have to take it literally. I learned from Asop's fables and I acknoledge animals can't talk. What I got from Noah's ark wasnt that God is a genocidal maniac or he loves us all very much, but that if you know what needs to be done, do it and don't care what others think.
Yeah, even if the whole base of the story is lunatic.
Sorry, but the Noahs story does not makes sense logically (all the different animals on one ship) nor morally. Killing everyone and only spare some lunatic.
But if you can take from it "do what needs to be done" well, good for you. But I would argue a common trivial dantasy book contains as meaningful wisdom if you neglect 90% like with the bible.
I do not call the flood lunatic. I rather meant the idea that the all-loving god send it to wipe out his own creation but then decides to spare some and instruct him zo build a boat so humans and animals can survive....
Btw. that the scenario is allmost word for word the same as in the Gilgamesh epos, is another funfact.
My experience is, that the Bible shows you what the reality is really is. If you truly reflect on it for yourself you will uncover how right it is. But this assumes you really want to think and see the truth. And yes it will hurt (in a good way).
Every other statement, "I have my own beliefs" is short sighted.
And Bible is not equal to the institution you call "Church"!
* The Selfish Gene - our bodies are vessels for DNA as they travel through time. Also colony insects and birds are fascinating.
* Thinking Fast and Slow - study after study shows that we exhibit so, so many cognitive biases, as our minds take shortcuts. there are some things you can do to recognize and mitigate these biases.
* Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.
>* Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.
The Penguin History of Europe series is great for this, especially The Pursuit Of Glory, which details the time when states switched from being based on their king, to states being based on a 'unified set of people', i.e., an imagined community.
There's also the amazing Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, which is a bunch of essays, one on a forgotten European kingdom that ceased to exist, and no-one claims it as their heritage. It shows you how easily your identity of a citizen of a state can get lost and forgotten - your great-grandparents may have seen themselves as Etrurians, but that state is gone and now you think of yourself as an Italian, but nothing much changed about your family
> Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.
The Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Magyars, Mongols and many, many others would disagree. And the Khmer, Mon, Viet and Tai.
> Overall it is worth reading Imagined Communities because of its purported cultural significance. But much of it is so garbled and unclear I’m not sure what people are taking from it, aside from the proposition that the modern nation-state was invented in the last few centuries due to modernity. In the end the book is kind of a long tautology.
"The Selfish Gene" was a revelation to me. I read it during college, as a break from my math, CS and physics classes. It felt like having an evolutionary biology course on the side.
I was going to put down "The Selfish Gene" myself. I remember picking it up in high school and hating the first few pages. I read the first chapter in college, and I didn't get what all the fuss was about. After college, I picked up the book, and was blown away! In retrospect, my younger self wasn't ready for it
For younger readers, or those who prefer a lighter reader, Dawkins "The Greatest Show On Earth" covers similar material in a more accessible (if less rigorous) manner. I forgot to mention it in my own recommendations, but it is one of the books I recommend at every opportunity.
I came here to recommend Thinking Fast and Slow. I'm not surprised that it was mentioned a few times already. I am about to head into my third read of it. If I had to pick one concept from this book that had the most impact on my decisions and the way I look at other people's decisions, it would have to be loss aversion / prospect theory.
Love your list, but wanted second Imagined Communities. I don't see it as much as the other's (frequent HN recommendations). Drags a bit, but is short and impactful. I especially thought its exploration of how _language_ influenced nation's was particularly enlightening. If you find the Selfish Gene to have powerful explanatory effect, I bet you will feel similarly about Imagined Communities.
> Basically, Gat is refuting a modernist view, which has arguably gone from being revisionist to normative, that the concept and execution of a nation is a historically contingent construction of early modern Europe, and more precisely Revolutionary France of the 1790s.
"The Selfish Gene" was also a great discovery for me. I guess that coming from a CS background it was a big revelation to understand the biology in such a different perspective. Really worth reading.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this one yet: "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", by Jonathan Haidt [0]. This book fundamentally changed how I think about religion and politics. It helped me understand a lot of behaviors which I'd previous considered absolutely incomprehensible.
I just finished reading this and it is definitely incredible. It put in to words the many jumbled and foggy thoughts I've been having on the subject for a long time. I feel as if I can perceive people's motivations so much more clearly now, and so many people's apparently contradictory behaviors are suddenly explained and obvious. Fantastic and very important book.
The Coddling of the American Mind which he co-wrote with Greg Lukianoff is an important book about problems faced by the current college-age generation and the effects that social media, helicopter parenting, and certain ideologies have had on them. The Atlantic article it started as is also good, but the book expands and improves on the argument.
It’s less of a classic as the Righteous Mind because it’s more focused on a topical issue. I think it pairs well with Laura Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances.
"Deep Work" by Cal Newport. It completely changed how I view my work, and how I spend my time, more than any other generic self-help book I've come across. It isn't the usual "delete Facebook, and everything will be fine" blog post. The main take-away for me is making a well-defined separation between "busy"/"shallow" work and "deep" work. This takes the form of spending long, uninterrupted periods engaged in deep work (e.g. academic research), with shorter periods allocated for shallow work (e.g. checking and responding to emails). I have managed to allocate one day per week for myself where I completely turn off WiFi, allowing me to focus on whatever task I choose. This means not accepting the temptation to respond to interruptions from instant messaging apps, email, news websites, etc., and it has worked wonders for my productivity! For me, it serves as a weekly reminder of the insane amount of content I consume while online, along with the (highly expensive) constant context-switching I must perform to do this.
I'm actually reading through his "How To Become a Straight-A Student" right now. Nothing particularly profound, but the task tracking method is definitely helping me stay on-top of college work while having a full-time job at the same time.
Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - it changed how I approach teamwork and conversations. It made me aware of how my behaviour was limiting outcomes. :)
Frankly, it made me aware that I was being an asshole and that I should change.
However, it wasn't necessarily the book, but the course that I found really useful.
A LOT of people are put off by the name of the book. I would highly suggest you not judge Carnegie's book by it's cover. It is filled with brass-tacks advice and concrete examples of how to improve your own life and the lives of others around you. Though the title may seem 'manipulative', the book is anything but that. Consider the title as a marketing gimmick from 1933 and read the book nonetheless.
Indeed. The central point of the book is really the importance of human empathy. If you want to influence people, you have to consider their needs and wants rather that just being self-absorbed and entitled all the time.
True, but it's hard to force oneself to care about other people, to be honest. Many are naturally self-centered, and it's not easy to trick/convert one's mind into not being self-centered. There are some tips like finding a common interest, but not enough. The book has gaps in that aspect.
incidentally, Dale Carnegie didn't write that title. The main title and all the chapter titles were written by an advertising copywriter named Vic Schwab. Arguably the titles made it the publishing phenomenon it is. Schwab also wrote a book that probably changed the lives of many marketers. It's title is "How to write a good advertisement"
I found the content manipulative and I honestly can't understand why this book is so revered. Maybe my expectations were set too high but reading it left me feeling underwhelmed.
I agree. The content was in sync with the title. There were some decent advises and observations for example regarding how to be more tactful, but in general the book seemed to be about faking and manipulating your way to victory. It's very sad if people feel they have to cut corners this way by programming themselves to react certain ways, instead of trying to find genuine happiness that delivers the genuine smile and interest towards people etc.
I read that book. It definitely changed how I look at people.
It also made me a lot more cynical. I realized around halfway through that the author was (very skillfully) deploying his techniques in the direction of the reader. Further, the author is long-dead. We cannot possibly have a genuine emotional connection.
This helped me understand that genuine empathy is irrelevant. All that matters to convincing people is that they feel empathized with. How you actually feel isn't important, though for many it's likely to be by far the easiest and most reliable way to get there.
Dale Carnegie provided me with a very useful set of tools that I can use to achieve the outcomes I want. For that I'm appreciative.
In another book titled "Never split the difference" the author distincts empathy and sympathy. You can be empathic aka. understand how and why the other person feel. This helps you understand the other person and ask the right questions. You don't necessarily have to agree with it (sympathy).
Both have an important role in your connections with other people but its useful if you learn to separate them.
What makes an emotional connection genuine? I firmly believe that Dale Carnegie actually cared about his readers, and was telling them these things in order to make them happier, and make the world a better place. And I am grateful for his efforts. Isn't that a valid emotional connection, even though we never met in person?
Or think about it another way... when you listen to music by Bach, do you feel an emotional connection? Do you see it as crass or alienated, or are you feeling something that a long-dead composer wanted you to feel, and grateful for the experience?
I agree! I also firmly believe that Dale Carnegie cared deeply about the reader he modeled in his head.
In the context of Dale Carnegie, I think that a genuine connection requires the active involvement of two people interacting with one another. For all that the emotions involved are unquestionably valid, I do not consider the genuine emotion one person feels for an imaginary other person to be a genuine emotional connection with another human being.
Bach, to my knowledge, did not like to rattle on about the importance of synchronous emotional engagement.
Bach, above all, wanted his listeners to experience a connection with God. Not necessarily the dogma-bound God as defined by a specific religion - he did after all compose for both Catholic and protestant masters - but certainly some all-pervading sense of the divine which, if allowed to act as mediator between us and Bach and all of creation, does appear to act as some sort of emotional engagement - indirect, yes, but also transcending the barrier of time and certainly high up on the composer's list of priorities.
I agree! It's been my experience that people genuinely believe they can reliably tell real empathy from fake.
It may be possible that the detection heuristics a given individual relies upon might, upon occasion, be a bit less reliable than could be hoped for. I've witnessed both false positives and false negatives.
Again, you're right. People do earnestly and honestly believe in their ability to detect genuineness.
The book emphasizes this fact. If you don't actually care about the person you're trying to influence, if you aren't acting in what you believe is their best interest, they can tell (usually). We have marvelous words in English for this, like "smarmy" and "skeezy".
It gets even more interesting when you figure you that we're already all playing it! We're all judges, and both false positives and false negatives are already common.
I'd concur that the book was a huge eye-opener for me. Earlier, I used to think that I only needed to be right (for e.g., while making technical design decisions) and just say it out when I disagreed. This book taught me that the way you put forward your thoughts also matters. You can be right without being a dick and without screwing up your relationships with others.
I followed up this book with Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That was another fantastic book for me.
For me, these two books fit right into the category of those that literally changed my life.
Agreed. Relationships are how we get things done in life. Reaching consensus, asking for help, motivation - all based around relationships with others.
Since How to Win Friends is already mentioned, I'll add Musashi here. There are so many lessons it's hard to pick them all out, plus I don't want to spoil it for anyone.
7 Habits made me think about certain things differently, but I had many people tell me that it really changed their life. Didn't do that for me, but "change your life" is a really high bar. Definitely How to Win Friends did.
It took me way to long to listen to my dad's advice and read that book. It has a very bad title and will probably cause immediate social ban if caught reading it at school as a teenager (also kids/teen dynamics are sometimes 100% opposite than adult dynamics, being nice and non critic as a teenager can be super risky in some social settings, it's all about not caring and being sarcastic, thank god this period ends at some point, to most of us), but nevertheless, it's the must-have book to transition from the annoying, hot tempered, emotional, entitled, short fused, sarcastic and boasting teenager I was into an adult.
+1 for the book. In my case, I couldn't really follow or properly understand the advice in that book until I stumbled upon The Charisma Myth and followed the exercises there. Only then I had enough social skills to apply Dale Carnegie's tips.
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari.
Hands down the book that most influenced me. The book had (for me) not one but several simple-yet-profound ideas that were forever inserted into the foreground of how I make sense of the world. For example, the existence of shared myths that allow humans to cooperate on a large scale. Or how I too, am religious, though I was sure I wasn't.
If you enjoyed this then I highly recommend Ideas: A History by Peter Watson, a far superior book in my opinion.
I found Sapiens to be shallow and full of useless waffle after reading Ideas. It really highlights the fact that Harari presents one particular version of history and there are many great thinkers that have an opinion on the things he discusses. E.g. Harari speculates on how and why money came to be used where as Watson presents a plethora of ideas on the origin of money and discusses the merits of different views.
Ha. My gut reaction to reading your and your parent post was "What?! How can they criticize the book. It's pure truth!" Guess I really took a liking to that book. :)
But seriously, can you elaborate on where you thought it was biased?
It’s not so much that it was biased, more that it presented a particular view on history as if it was the truth. Harari view would have been a data point in “Ideas”, which is more a (very detailed) survey of the ideas about history. Gun, Germs and Steel is actually discussed as are Jared Diomonds other works in relation to his ideas of the grand narratives of human evolution and thought.
Harari often speculates about what people in the past were thinking when we have actual written accounts from the time. The point of “Ideas” is that imposing modern ideas on the past doesn’t really work or is at least difficult because the ideas of the time were so different. An example would be the modern conception of an “artist” being a concept created during the romantic period. Before that people doing painting or music considered themselves craftspeople. So trying to read intent into what they were doing based on the modern conception of an artist is a fools errand. Harari seemed to do this kind of thing all the time.
There were some interesting facts in Sapiens but there was so much fluff as well. Maybe this is just me but do we really need a page of speculation about what society would have been like if we used seashells as currency?
Maybe it’s the editors fault but I though Sapiens could have been a cut down to a third of its length by removing (to me) useless, unreferenced speculation about what people may have thought. A don’t get me started on the poor referencing.
Anyway this has turned into a bit of a rant so I’m going to stop here.
Highly recommend Ideas: A History. It’s denser, a little drier but definitely far superior to Sapiens.
I just finished this recently and would definitely recommend as well. It really made me question a lot of assumptions I had about humanity and history. For example it's really not obvious that the agricultural revolution should have ever taken place considering the challenges associated with changing from a proven system for survival.
Fantastic and I completely agree. The book helped me to get perspective on current events and helped provide relevant historical precedent for almost everything in the world around us.
For example, I never thought about how ideas that are touted by organizations or religions are frequently argued to be "natural" or "divine" or somehow sewn into the fabric of the universe. The book helped me to become a little more skeptical by portraying how versatile and diverse human societies can be, and how there is truly very little that is "natural", "eternal", and meant to be.
Similarly, the book helped me to realize how unprecedented the current rates of economic and technological growth are. Its an exciting time to be alive, filled with almost infinite possibilities, and that fact is especially inspiring when you understand how much more restrictive previous generations and cultures were.
I'm finding it a bit hit and miss. I agree, the "shared myths" notion is very appealing. And I enjoy learning the facts that form the skeleton on which he pins his thinking. However, I can't help feeling that a professional thinker -- philosopher, whoever -- would debate his proposals. It seems to me that a collaboration with a second author would have leant robustness to his philosophy. As it stands, it comes across as an historian stepping outside of his expertise unchallenged. All well and good, but a bit flimsy.
I look forward to reading further books published in response by others.
It was a funny book in that he introduced very few facts about the world that I didn't already know, but that he tied all of it together so well. I find that I'm a much more empathetic and rational person whenever I try to frame my opinion of something/someone the way Harari would.
The Design of Everyday Things makes me rethink every user interaction or problem I face, and not just at work. Every time I open a door, I begin to think about that experience.
Recently, Educated by Tara Westover, and in the past The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, both have taught me to approach individuals with the true ignorance of their lives that I have. You don't know where people come from and what life led them to where they are when you meet them. Try not to make assumptions. Additionally, I have to remind myself that I grew up loved, cared for, and privileged compared to so many other people.. the fact that I could read their story and post here is a testament to that, helps me try to stay down to Earth and that I had some advantages growing up that others did not.
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker... I used to be a chronic advocate for sleeping less until I read this and did my own scrappy post-research. I'm much more conscious of my health and my sleep now.
Please do go on, you seem to have similar taste to mine (Why We Sleep and Design of Everyday Things) so I'd love to know which other books make it into your top 10 or whatever.
Antifragile: 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 connect more with my loved ones, changed my perspective on research, what's important and the power of the passing of time. It definitely impacted my life.
Nassim is really a great thinker. His latest book "Skin in the game" probably is underestimated by the public. It's relevant to quite a lot of current events happening that have a huge impact on modern society.
Most 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.
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
"Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson changed how I thought about language and how I use it to orient myself in the world.
"Thinking in Systems: A Primer" by Donella Meadows changed how I approached designing/troubleshooting software systems as well as changed how I think about political policy decisions and their results.
"Object Thinking" by David West dramatically altered how I approach designing OO systems. I especially liked the chapter(s) where he used different real-world metaphors for designing systems. For example, asynchronous communication (email) is often more appropriate than synchronous communication (calling someone on the phone). Delegation of tasks without "micromanaging" (i.e tell don't ask).
"Ever Wonder Why?" by Thomas Sowell gave me an insight into some of the underpinnings of Conservative thought. I'd never had the opportunity to hear any of the arguments he brings up in college or in my own liberal social groups.
Why is that you never hear about Sowell and his work? I consider myself fairly well read, but I've only discovered him the past few years. I wish I had found him earlier!
The only book I've ever bought judging by the cover (well, the title) only was George Lakoff's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. It wasn't what I expected (what did I expect??), but it was insightful and thought provoking. One of the first books I've come across that shows you that the world is much, much more complicated than the simple (and "obvious") stuff we are taught in school.
So many, and I wish I could write a long paragraph on each, but I'm unfortunately short on time. I'm posting any in case just one person who hasn't heard of those checks them out and gets value:
-Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hosfstadter)
-The Mindbody Prescription (John E. Sarno, completely cured my long-term crippling RSI that kept me from using computers and was ruining my life)
-Feeling Good (Dr. Burns, cognitive therapy mostly centered on depression, but I want to learn about this before I have depression so that I can avoid it and do 'maintenance' on myself)
-The 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman, made me understand a lot more about how people express and receive love, and the problems that arise from mismatched languages in relationships)
I can't believe this is the only post with Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! Such a fun, creative book. Parts that stuck with me: lock picking, finding safety hazards at Oak Ridge, playing drums, working intensely.
I developed bad RSI starting about 5 months ago. It's manageable now (mostly from stretches and nerve glides my physical therapist taught me, and using an ergo keyboard and foot pedals) but was scary there for a bit. I've read about a third of the way through The Mindbody Presciption (after seeing it mentioned on HN) but I feel like he just keeps repeating himself and hasn't actually told me anything useful yet. I know I need to finish it but I'm curious what your experience was.
The problem with so many of these books is that there's been a lot of criticism and praise for all of them, tear downs, rebuttals, critiques, etc; not to mention various kinds of "evidence" both in support and against the various theories involved. The history of the ideas is long and convoluted, and is almost impossible to sort out today without a long and concerted effort on the part of the reader.
I prefer to take the information as more a "tour de force" - information to inspire my thinking, and where it seems to be relevant (or has supporting evidence of efficacy), application of it to problems at hand.
Yes, I second "The 5 Love Languages". Very good lessons for how to strenghten important relationships in my life. Before, I didn't realize how much more I prefered one kind of love language over some others.
The 5 Love Languages is not supported by any scientific research, basically, it's a load of bollocks. It's just the latest self help book to be in vogue.
Lots of things that work aren't supported by scientific research (yet?). It's your choice not to use it, but to claim that something is bollocks probably means that you will never follow what most people tell you about lots of things (where are all the double-blind peer-reviewed studies about how to bake a good cake or write a good novel?).
Yes, but claims about a "good cake" are not making generalized claims about human behavior. The only downside of a "bad cake" recipe is someone trying it and it's not a great cake.
There are massive consequences for releasing a book claiming to be a factual model for how human brains work and how people should behave towards each other based on this model. If the book becomes popular, this sort of model can become the defacto truth to most people and live on in public consciousness for years as pop psychology.
As an example, look at things like Meiers Briggs (ISTP, ENFJ etc), "Type A vs Type B personalities", DISC personality testing, etc. ALl of these are based on old, flawed, and straight up bad research. Yet companies across America (and the world) are still giving people training and hiring people based on these studies. Note, DISC, for example was based on William Moulton Marston's work, a guy who DIED in 1947. The "research" which became DISC is from 1928! Businesses are still dressing up this old and flawed research and selling it to businesses for huge profits.
"Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much" - by Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir.
Access to scarce resources induces a particular scarcity mindset, which the authors -- both behavioural economists at Harvard and MIT respectively -- show with a large variety of
well-chosen examples.
The kicker is that time is one of those resources. In other words, I may be economically well-off, but if I'm short of time, I adopt the same scarce mindset that poor people (poor in money terms). I fritter away my time, I don't save it and so on. This book really showed me to deal with my time as carefully as I deal with my money. Great read, of the Freakonomics kind.
I imagine I’ll take heat for this, but the first answer that comes to mind is A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari. It has been justifiably criticized by many people on many grounds, but as with OP and Freakonomics, certain of the concepts in that book frequently appear in my thoughts 20 years after I worked through some of it. I don’t associate it with truth; but some of the mental models have really stuck with me.
Edit: also Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. It’s slim and user friendly to a fault, and would be easy to underestimate at first glance, but imho contains great wisdom and beauty.
I've wanted to read A Thousand Plateaus for a few years. The first time I tried it, all that stuff about wolves and geology just lost me. I will have to try again. Honestly, I found it harder than Heidegger's Being and Time, which I worked through while listening to Hubert Dreyfus's lectures on iTunes U a few years ago.
Whenever I read about Deleuze and Guattari I get this feeling they are on to something - I just don't know what!
Perhaps try reading Freud's account of his treatment of the "wolf man" first - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Pankejeff#Der_Wolfsmann... - then read the chapter "One Or Many Wolves", bearing in mind that it's dripping in sarcasm. That chapter had me laughing out loud.
I know what you mean. It’s hard to avoid feeling like what appears to be glossolalic nonsense would all be revealed as a majestic tour de force, perfectly comprehensible and life-changing, if you were familiar enough with Marx, Freud, Leibniz, Spinoza, Bergson, Kant, Sartre, and god knows whom else, to put it all together. I’m not, so I can’t prove or disprove the case, which makes it a weird answer to OP’s question; but per above, it remains the case for me that images and terms from that book have never stopped working in my ideation processes since I picked it up.
One thing with Thousand Plateaus is that you don't have to read the book in sequence. You can start with random chapter. That's the only thing I remember from the book.
Rhizomatic values and actions vs arborescent ones, de- and reterritorialization, the drawing of lines of flight, and nomadic war machines, more than anything else. I’m not sufficiently grounded in Marx or Freud to follow their narratives confidently, so my interpretations are probably overly simplistic; but I think they’d have approved of my taking the words and making them my own.
More than any of those individual terms though, I took from the book a sort of gestalt of expansive, additive, richly intellectual ideation, one based not on truth values, but in thinking new thoughts. In my edition, the translator’s introduction portrays D&G’s notion of a concept as a brick that should not be used to build a courthouse, but to be thrown through a window. This whole way of being in the world was enormously refreshing to me when I read it.
Roots vs trees? If these ideas have any merit, surely it should be possible to express them clearly, and without (gratuitous?) invocation of pseudo-scientific terms.
What is pseudoscientific about those words? Read the book to see how they are used, and why the selected language is actually sensible in its given context.
Your criticism is like telling a pharmacist not to use the terminology that distinguishes some kinds of drugs from others. It may be true that the blue pill makes your dick hard and the red pill cures your headache, but if you actually want to go into it and address why and how they do these things you need a more focused vocabulary that is clearly defined in its context of use (which G&D do).
A rhizome isn't just a root, it's an offshoot of a plant with the ability to create an entirely new plant.
You have a point with arborescent, but it is translated from French, and from what I know of French morphology, arborescent could probably sounds to a French person like "treeish" or "tree ADJ", and therefore not quite so formal/illegible.
The joke I tell about A Thousand Plateaus is that on one of the plateaus is good writing. Didn't make it into the book though
After I read it, I felt like I could see the world for what it really is: just a bunch of fallible humans all pretending they knew The Way Things Should Be. Popes, CEOs, tech gurus, presidents, the lot of them all desperately clinging to their beliefs lest their followers abandon them.
That book made me realize that all the truths everyone "just knows" and takes for granted aren't necessarily truths. They're beliefs, or myths. Even so, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that: a culture or civilization needs beliefs or myths to function, but what those beliefs are can determine the ultimate fate of that civilization and whether it's sustainable.
What I really took away from it is that I no longer really believe anything. Or perhaps more accurately, I recognize when something I hold true is actually a belief and not truth, and am willing to question it or understand that I continue to hold it despite any supporting evidence. I learned that beliefs are choices people make, for reasons their own.
I was always an atheist, but I realized religions are just more beliefs like any other belief people hold as true.
I learned that some beliefs can be beneficial ("If I'm good to others, others will be good to me") and others destructive ("Humans are the pinnacle of evolution"). Ideas don't need to be true to be helpful (which is why the relentless drive in tech communities, often, for the objective truth or a logical ordering and categorization for everything rubs me the wrong way).
Note, of course, that he was wrong about the gene being the unit of selection. Selection happens at an organismal level. As we've come to understand the interconnectedness of the genome, this has become even more clear. Dawkins' ideas generated a lot of debate among evolutionary biologists in the 1980s, but have largely fallen out of favor. They're just too simplistic to reflect reality.
Glad that somebody pointed that out. IMO, if somebody wants to get a quick overview of genetics, their time would be much better spent watching lectures 4-7 from Sapolsky's Human Behavioural Biology lectures [1]. In those 4 lectures Sapolsky's explores contradicting theories about (among other things) the unit of selection and gradualism. Highly recommend the whole series.
I think the claim that Dawkins views are "just too simplistic to reflect reality" is probably too simplistic itself. For a start, you can check the Wikipedia article on The Selfish Gene and its section on units of selection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene#Units_of_sele...
There's evidence that selection happens at the organismal level (duh) and at the species level, but nothing else. There's some weak evidence that it can happen at levels above species (genus, family, etc), but it's not super well supported.
The question of population-level selection (what you've called group selection) is more contentious, although it shouldn't be. The grandpa of our field, E.O. Wilson, whom we all adore and wish we could constantly hug, loves the idea. Sadly, evidence doesn't love it. Like, there's basically none. There's no real theoretical underpinnings that would make it possible, either, because there's just too much gene flow between demes (...partially isolated breeding populations) to allow selection to happen.
> I didn't realise Dawkins' theory had been so thoroughly refuted.
It has not. The "battle lines" between the "Dawkins school" and the "Gould school" were established in the 1970s and 1980s, and they are pretty much the same still. Each school probably thinks they refuted the other one decades ago already.
Also the majority of biologists don't give these much thought either way.
>
What I encountered were quite a few references to Stephen Jay Gould, hardly any to other evolutionary theorists. Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is bevolved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about - not just the answers, but even the questions - are consistently misleading. His impressive literary and historical erudition makes his work seem profound to most readers, but informed readers eventually conclude that there's no there there.
> If you've read anything Stephen J. Gould has ever said about evolutionary biology, I have some bad news for you. In the field of evolutionary biology at large, Gould's reputation is mud. Not because he was wrong. Many honest scientists have made honest mistakes. What Gould did was much worse, involving deliberate misrepresentation of science.
neither of those quotes, written by people who are not biologists, actually demonstrate how Gould is supposedly wrong. I find it ironic that they are the ones accusing Gould of politicizing evolutionary biology, but they are the ones doing the politicizing.
What Prominent Biologists Think of Stephen Jay Gould
Many nonspecialists believe that Stephen Jay Gould was the preeminent evolutionary theorist of the 20th century. His The Mismeasure of Man might be the most widely read book on biology/evolution among scholars in the humanities. But people specializing in the fields in which Gould pontificated generally had a poor opinion of his scholarship.
Bernard D. Davis (1983)
It is…not surprising that Gould’s history of the efforts to measure human intelligence, The Mismeasure of Man, received many glowing reviews in the popular and literary press, and even a National Book Critics Circle award. Yet the reviews that have appeared in scientific journals, focusing on content rather than on style or on political appeal, have been highly critical of both the book’s version of history and its scientific arguments. The paradox is striking. If a scholar wrote a tendentious history of medicine that began with phlebotomy and purges, moved on to the Tuskegee experiment on syphilitic Negroes, and ended with the thalidomide disaster, he would convince few people that medicine is all bad, and he would ruin his reputation. So we must ask: Why did Gould write a book that fits this model all too closely? Why were most reviewers so uncritical? And how can non-scientific journals improve their reviews of books on scientific aspects of controversial political issues?
John Maynard Smith (1995)
Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publically criticised because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary biology.
Ernst Mayr (2000)
Skeptic: You developed your theory of allopatric speciation in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1970s Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould applied that to the fossil record and called it punctuated equilibrium. Was this just a spin-off from what you had already done? What was new in punctuated equilibrium?
Mayr: I published that theory in a 1954 paper (“Change of Genetic Environment and Evolution,” in Huxley, J., A.C. Hardy, and E.B. Ford, Eds., Evolution as a Process, London: Allen and Unwin), and I clearly related it to paleontology. Darwin argued that the fossil record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better than others. But what I derived from my research in the South Sea Islands is that in these isolated little populations it is much easier to make a genetic restructuring because when the numbers are small it takes rather few steps to become a new species. A small local population that changes very rapidly. I noted that you are never going to find evidence of a small local population that changed very rapidly in the fossil record. My essential point was that gradual populational shifts in founder populations appear in the fossil record as gaps.
Skeptic: Isn’t that what Eldredge and Gould argued in their 1972 paper, citing your 1963 book Animal Species and Evolution several times?
Mayr: Gould was my course assistant at Harvard where I presented this theory again and again for three years. So he knew it thoroughly. So did Eldredge. In fact, in his 1971 paper Eldredge credited me with it. But that was lost over time.
E. O. Wilson (2011)
I believe Gould was a charlatan….I believe that he was…seeking reputation and credibility as a scientist and writer, and he did it consistently by distorting what other scientists were saying and devising arguments based upon that distortion.
Richard Lewontin (2015)
Steve and I taught evolution together for years and in a sense we struggled in class constantly because Steve, in my view, was preoccupied with the desire to be considered a very original and great evolutionary theorist. So he would exaggerate and even caricature certain features, which are true but not the way you want to present them. For example, punctuated equilibrium, one of his favorites. He would go to the blackboard and show a trait rising gradually and then becoming completely flat for a while with no change at all, and then rising quickly and then completely flat, etc. which is a kind of caricature of the fact that there is variability in the evolution of traits, sometimes faster and sometimes slower, but which he made into punctuated equilibrium literally. Then I would have to get up in class and say “Don’t take this caricature too seriously. It really looks like this…” and I would make some more gradual variable rates. Steve and I had that kind of struggle constantly. He would fasten on a particular interesting aspect of the evolutionary process and then make it into a kind of rigid, almost vacuous rule, because—now I have to say that this is my view—I have no demonstration of it—that Steve was really preoccupied by becoming a famous evolutionist.
Robert Trivers (2015)
Many of us theoretical biologists who knew Stephen personally thought he was something of an intellectual fraud precisely because he had a talent for coining terms that promised more than they could deliver, while claiming exactly the opposite. One example was the notion of “punctuated equilibria”—which simply asserted that rates of (morphological) evolution were not constant, but varied over time, often with periods of long stasis interspersed with periods of rapid change. All of this was well known from the time of Darwin. The classic example were bats. They apparently evolved very quickly from small non-flying mammals (in perhaps less than 20 million years) but then stayed relatively unchanged once they reached the bat phenotype we are all familiar with today (about 50 million years ago). Nothing very surprising here, intermediate forms were apt to be neither very good classic mammals, nor good flying ones either, so natural selection pushed them rapidly through the relevant evolutionary space.
But Steve wanted to turn this into something grander, a justification for replacing natural selection (favoring individual reproductive success) with something called species selection. Since one could easily imagine that there was rapid turnover of species during periods of intense selection and morphological change, one might expect species selection to be more intense, while during the rest of the equilibrium stabilizing selection would rule throughout. But rate of species turnover has nothing to do with the traits within species—only with the relative frequency of species showing these traits. As would prove usual, Steve missed the larger interesting science by embracing a self-serving fantasy. Species selection today is a small but interesting topic in evolutionary theory, not some grand principle emerging from paleontological patterns….
Hard to imagine—but at the end the organism appears to be in full self-deception mode—a blow-hard fraudulently imputing fraud, with righteous indignation, coupled with magnanimous forgiveness for the frailties of self-deception in others….
Much less so, it was said was Stephen Gould, who was into self-promotion, self-inflation and self-deception full time. Not only was his science hopeless but so was much of his behavior in other contexts as well.
Again, I find it really funny that these guys are politicizing the guy who they claim to be politicizing science. All of this critique is criticism of character and of rhetorical style.
As an aside, I also think it's funny that you could easily* substitute the name Gould for Feynman in each of these criticisms, but somehow Feynman is considered a demi-god among physicists for having the same 'character flaws' and rhetorical flair.
Your first criticism was that Krugman and Yudkowsky weren’t biologists, so I found multiple examples of biologists saying Gould was untrustworthy. Now you’re claiming that the critics of Gould are politicising science. This is a bit rich seeing as Gould always put his politics above science.
Comparing Feynman to Gould is distasteful. They may both have been blowhards, self publicists and excellent writers but only one of them launched campaigns of harassment against other researchers. You could not easily substitute Feynman for Gould in these criticisms. Feynman never wrote anything as dishonest as Mismeasure of Man.
> Opposition to sociobiology and evolutionary psychology
Gould also had a long-running public feud with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists concerning the disciplines of human sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, both of which Gould and Lewontin opposed, but which Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker advocated.[93] These debates reached their climax in the 1970s, and included strong opposition from groups such as the Sociobiology Study Group and Science for the People.[94] Pinker accuses Gould, Lewontin, and other opponents of evolutionary psychology of being "radical scientists", whose stance on human nature is influenced by politics rather than science.
If you would like to back up your claim that the same criticisms could be made of Feynman as of Gould here are the summaries. I’m sure the parallel statements will be easy to find if you’re right about Feynman.
Krugman: Gould was a good writer but vastly more respected outside his field than in it because he was a good writer more than a good scientist.
Yudkowsky: Gould wrote multiple books in which he acted as if other peoples’ life’s work was unknown to him, pawning off their intellectual work as his own, pretending that the field was in a state of confusion and that he, the towering genius, had brought closure and clarity.
Davis: Gould wrote a book of breathtaking intellectual dishonesty that was looked upon with favour in the popular press and panned by experts writing for other experts.
Smith: His ideas are so confused as to be unworthy of discussion but outsiders think he’s a genius of the field because he can write well.
Mayr: One of Gould’s only actual claims to originality was a trivial extension of work dating back either to the founder of the field or to a course taught to undergraduates in which he was a teaching assistant.
Wilson: Gould was a charlatan who dishonestly and repeatedly mischaracterised the work of other scientists.
Lewontin: Gould would take reasonable ideas and caricature them to the point they were plainly wrong.
> Your first criticism was that Krugman and Yudkowsky weren’t biologists, so I found multiple examples of biologists saying Gould was untrustworthy. Now you’re claiming that the critics of Gould are politicising science. This is a bit rich seeing as Gould always put his politics above science.
And they are guilty of the exact same non-arguments. Doesn't matter if they are scientists or non-scientists, the criticisms are exactly the same.
>> Opposition to sociobiology and evolutionary psychology Gould also had a long-running public feud with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists concerning the disciplines of human sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, both of which Gould and Lewontin opposed, but which Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker advocated.[93] These debates reached their climax in the 1970s, and included strong opposition from groups such as the Sociobiology Study Group and Science for the People.[94] Pinker accuses Gould, Lewontin, and other opponents of evolutionary psychology of being "radical scientists", whose stance on human nature is influenced by politics rather than science.
Again, where's the real critique of opposition to sociobiology? There are actually numerous flaws with sociobiology and evo-psych, which you seem to just dismiss out of hand as made up lies. The interdisciplinary fields of Science and Technology Studies and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, which Gould was drawing from (though not necessarily in an optimal manner) provide sober critiques of the authority of science and of the political nature of knowledge and knowledge production. These fields look at how scientific practice is actually done and draw out mechanisms through which knowledge is produced through the interactions between people, prior knowledge and beliefs, objects of experimentation or evaluation, goals, pragmatic circumstances, 'grey' and information infrastructures, and community norms and expectations. Take a look at Epistemic Cultures (https://www.worldcat.org/title/epistemic-cultures-how-the-sc...) for a great example of such work, which compares scientific practice among high-energy physicists and molecular biologists, who follow very different trajectories in the formulation of new ideas, according to their circumstances and needs.
Gould's work is along similar lines.
One major critique of the Mismeasure of Man is that Gould dredges up long-dead hypotheses about race. However, these claims are in fact not dead, and have real impact on the world today. As an archaeologist, I can relate. Laypeople still think that archaeology does and believes things that have been debunked and shifted away from decades ago, things that 'prove' the inferiority of some races or that fuel nationalist and racist agendas. The thing is, people who are devising racist and nationalist policy are generally not intellectually honest, and don't care to actually read up on why or how these claims are wrong. They find an article from 1934 that supports their views and they go with it, and dismiss any criticism as coming from ""radical scientists", whose stance on human nature is influenced by politics rather than science.". Mismeasure of Man is clearly a popular non-fiction book geared towards educating laypeople about the flaws of race science, with the hope that people will recognize when policy is being enacted based on shitty science and oppose it when they do.
I’m glad we’ve come to an agreement that Gould was on at least one occasion a tendentious writer and that you’ve withdrawn your claim that Feynman was anything like him. I’m going to bow out here. Good luck with your archaeological work.
I am not asserting that he is tendentious. I'm writing that his public outreach work is a necessary part of being a scientist, as it helps improve public understanding of valid and invalid knowledge, and helps hold its improper use to account. You're trying to split the difference regarding your original claims, but you're just plain wrong.
I never took back a word of my original claims though I did respond to your further claims in response, always backing them up with quotes and citations.
Below you or any other future readers may find a guide to the many faults in The Mismeasure of Man, all of which misunderstandings, distortions and deliberate omissions tended certain ways which supported Gould’s politics, though not the truth.
Stephen Jay Gould’s Analysis of the Army Beta Test in The Mismeasure of Man: Distortions and Misconceptions Regarding a Pioneering Mental Test
> 5.1 Gould’s Judgments of the Army Beta
Among the many topics of negative analysis in Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man [1] is the Army Beta test. Although not the most prominent section of Gould’s text, his 23-page passage on the Army Beta is typical of his style in the book. Throughout the book, Gould criticized early scientists who studied individual and group differences of being misled by preconceived notions based on their social beliefs—instead of the data. Yet, Gould himself was motivated to write The Mismeasure of Man by his strong political and social beliefs, which guided him to present his text describing the early intelligence scientists as blinded by their prejudices [4,7,12,50]. Given Gould’s pervasively incorrect statements in The Mismeasure of Man about the Army Beta, factor analysis [3], the place of intelligence testing in the immigration debates of the 1920s [5,9,10], the biological basis for intelligence [4,8,9], and the questions regarding Gould’s analysis of Morton’s work [11–14], we wonder whether there is any section of The Mismeasure of Man that is factually accurate.
Like other sections of The Mismeasure of Man, when Gould wrote about the Army Beta, he omitted relevant information that contradicted his preconceived beliefs and misinterpreted data in order to portray the study of individual human differences as ideological pseudoscience. Contrary to Gould’s claims, the Army Beta’s content, instructions, and time limits were all appropriate for a group-administered intelligence test a hundred years ago. We believe we have also demonstrated that the Army Beta very likely measured intelligence, given the results of multiple confirmatory factor analyses and the positive correlations with external criteria (both during World War I and in modern times).
I never claimed you took back any of your own claims. But you did misrepresent mine. Your quotes and citations do not support your argument in any way, and are therefore irrelevant.
I did not read the entire article you just posted, but it is worth noting that it misrepresents Mismeasure of Man as clinical research itself, rather than a historical and theoretical critique which it is, and holds improper standards against it (which is very funny because that's exactly what they claim Gould is guilty of!). Historical research is certainly biased, and that's okay. Historical research depends on omission as a crucial feature, otherwise how would you write a book about a focused topic? The two kinds of work have different kinds of data and follow different argumentation strategies, yet the authors of this paper expect otherwise. This is unreasonable and demonstrates a clear lack of understanding regarding what history is, and I have a hard time taking them seriously as a result.
Dawkins is amazingly lucid when he sticks to topics he knows very well. “The Selfish Gene” and “The Extended Phenotype” were world altering for me. Like integral calculus, I rarely have cause to apply the concept in the domain in which it was described, but the understanding that his conveyance of the material shaped in me is something I feel in my thinking every day, more than two decades later.
“The Mating Mind” by Geoffrey Miller (another biologist who would do the world a favor by sticking to his domain of expertise) came to me more recently but has left a similar impression. It impeccably elaborates upon the power of sexual selection and how it intertwines with natural selection.
Hmm, I'll check that Darwinian Fairytales out. However, I must say, I've read Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology, to see what critics of Dawkins and evolutionary psychology had to say, and found it rather poor.
So, for now, my considered view is that Dawkins has many interesting insightful things to say, while his critics are often attacking straw men.
The search engine coughed up a PDF. I randomly opened it (p. 173) and read up to this author-provided "TL;DR" on p.176:
The main reason, however, for thinking that sociobiology is false, is the simple
one I gave at the beginning: that it is obvious that human beings are the most
intelligent and capable things on earth. But genes are not human. Therefore (etc.).
Well, it might make more sense in context. You can't litterally read a random sentence on a random page of a book and expect to have a reasonable opinion on its quality.
It's such a weird twist of irony that someone like Dawkins invented a term that has been so abused and deformed beyond all recognition. As expected, he hates what it's become; but it has truly evolved, beyond his control, so there's a wonderful truth there!
I also recommend Dawkins' follow-up book, "The Extended Phenotype." Dawkins' most popular writing may be on atheism and the critique of religion, but I think his greatest contributions were really found in this book plus The Selfish Gene. Though as a caveat, "The Extended Phenotype" requires some more technical sophistication in evolutionary biology than Selfish Gene.
I enjoyed that and some of his other books, but it was The God Delusion that did it for me. Having been born in a religious society makes it hard to break out of needing to assume there is a god, but that book could give people enough explanation to drop that assumption.
I always think it's really interesting how our upbringings shape us. I'd never even heard of god until I was 4, when I must have heard the word mentioned, asked my dad what it mean, and it was explained to me as a thing up in the sky that some people believe in.
Seconded. This is the only book I’ve read that truly “changed” the way I think (excluding school textbooks) in a fundamental way. It was like discovering a new spacial dimension orthogonal to the existing 3. Like, how did I even live before this book?
Seconded. I actually read "The Blind Watchmaker" first and that had just as big an impact on me. As someone else said, no going back after reading it. It also gave me the confidence to realise I was actually an atheist, not an apologetic agnostic!
I read through the bible every year and each time it shapes my thinking. For example, I was reading Exodus this morning about how we should care for the foreigner. I imagine several thousand years ago this was pretty radical. It also seems very relevant today.
Not only that, but the 4th commandment (of the 10) was changed to include their experience in Egypt related to "foreigners" and the sabbath.
Exodus 10:11,12 (NASB)
"...but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; [in it] you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy."
Then notice the change in Deuteronomy, it's specifically to address the experience of being a "foreigner" and being mistreated in Egypt.
Deut 4:14,15
"...but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; [in it] you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day."
It's really sad when people who claim to be "Christian" do not understand that the most foundational teachings of God in the bible include caring for foreigners in a very personal and special way.
I've been listening to the Bible when I drive somewhere almost every day since the beginning of last year. I use Prof. Horner's plan, which divides it into ten lists, and provides a consecutive chapter to read or listen to for each lists. So, ten chapters a day at 1.25x (it sounds like a New York cadence) takes about 25-35 minutes. The YouVersion Bible app makes it automatic for me. The idea is that you get an intense survey of all the books. Here's a brief description of the plan: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/19-professor-horners-bib...
It has gradually shaped my thinking in ways that is hard to describe. I've really began to understand just how much the Old and New Testaments tie together; many ideas and concepts are repeated several times in different books.
does the YouVersion app continue all 10 lists for the full length of the plan? Each list has a different number of chapters and I haven't done the math, but it looks like they aren't going to evenly line back up after 1 or two cycles. Looks like an interesting plan to me, but based on my YouVersion experience it seems like they are probably non-ideal. Obviously you like it, so I'm curious how it works.
Yes, that is the beauty of the plan. The shortest list is just the book of Acts (28 chapters), and the next shortest in the book of Proverbs (31 chapters). When a list ends, it starts over again. So over the course of the year, you'll go over those books ~12 times. The longest two lists are the Pentateuch books (200+ chapters) and the prophetic books (250 chapters). So on any given day, you are listening to various books that keep changing, and you get a mix that helps you form connections between the books.
I have just two minor quibbles with the YouVersion plan:
1. As the chapters are being read, each chapter is announced with just the number, not the book. So you have to guess the book from the context. This was confusing the first couple months, until I became familiar enough with them to be able to guess the book from the content and the context of the chapter.
2. The plan is meant to continue indefinitely, but the YouVersion plan must be restarted after the first cycle (250 days). It irks the perfectionist in me, but in practice it's no big deal.
I second that. For a book that's the foundation of our entire Western Civilization it's amazing that so few read it these days. No wonder our civilization is breaking down. Not to mention how mythologies in so many cultures have embedded remnants of its first book, Genesis. Also the inspiration of countless masterpieces of literature like the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (1989), mentioned at the top of this list.
> For a book that's the foundation of our entire Western Civilization
That might be putting it a bit strongly. "western civilization" derives from ancient greek society, which wasn't christian, but contained many concepts that are considered foundational to our society (such as democracy).
It may be putting it a bit strongly, but biblical references and allusions permeate the Western canon and Western culture pretty thoroughly. For the last 500 years it was the only book that nearly everyone had read. Before that it was for over a thousand years the only book everyone knew at least some of.
Few books have ever had such penetration of a culture. The Koran, the Analects, the Pali Canon are perhaps the only meaningful comparisons.
The 500 years figure I chose was not a coincidence. The printing press and the Reformation are connected. If a person in Europe or the New World could read, they would have read some or all of it.
Before that familiarity came from weekly readings at Mass, which is why I talked about partial familiarity for the thousand years prior.
I'm an atheist, but there's a difference between dismissing the book's contents and dismissing the impact and influence of the book's contents.
Actually learned persons in the west have considered democracy a terrible form of government that inevitably gives rise to tyranny for millenia. It's hardly foundational, rather it's a known anti-pattern. Republics were an attempt to harness the benefits of democracy without the drawbacks.
I set out to read through the bible once, but I don't believe I can get much from the prose style of KJV or similar. I decided on some website that would send me a free "modern", more readable, version. Unfortunately, they never sent it and I moved on.
Is there a version you might recommend? Or just advice on reading the archaic prose?
For reading, I like the English Standard Version ['ESV']. Kind of splits the difference between erudition and enjoyability.
KJV is cool for the Cormac McCarthy-esque prose [strike that, reverse it], sounds great when declaimed, but it is kind of a chore to machete through as a reader.
There are so many variants these days, it's not unlike choosing a Linux distro
Yeah, ESV and NIV (new international version) are pretty solid. Also the NKJV (new king james version) is a good one.
http://bible.com has ~60 english versions and a way to show 2 in parallel if you want to compare a few. http://biblegateway.com lets you look at 5 at a time... I thought I remembered one that let you do arbitrary number, but I can't find that one.
My go-to vote as well. Some of my favorite passages pertain to the awareness of-and management of- one's internal motivation and thought process when attempting to do good work.
"So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all."
I read it 45 years ago and liked it. But the only thing that sticks in my memory -- and it is enough, I suppose -- is the author helping his friend fix his motorcycle with a piece of shim made on the spot from a Coke can.
The sequel, Lila, is also really great. He's worked out the structure of Quality, in detail, and it makes a lot of sense. p.s. If you love Pirsig, read Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) - the form is identical.
My inspiration when it came to me learning/building/programming computers and most everything else I undertook in my 20's. It made me strive to be a know-er of things, not just a user.
This book changed my worldview too. For me more the idea that the world is how you perceive it, that events and objects have more than one aspect, property or interpretation.
Yes! This book also got me to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau, which was also life changing.
I never fully understood what Pirsig meant by Quality though. I could not understand what it really was, but I didn’t need to. I got so much good out of the book. But if someone could explain better I’d love to hear.
My personal understanding is that much of the point of the book is less to give you a direct understanding of Quality itself, which he says is not directly understandable, but to surround the concept, give you the parameters, where it is where it isn't, being able to identify it when you see it.
+1 For Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This book lead me to accept a lot of parts of myself and seek to integrate all those parts together. I credit it with starting the journey that changed my life.
im sorry i love these threads and all the people contributing but this book is overrated. Please explain to me what is so great and life changing about this book.
It will change your whole conception of what language is and how it can be used. It’s not about the characters or plots; they are recycled from antiquity. It’s about the absolute mastery of interrelation between words and imagery. It is something that has a meaning entirely emergent of its’ own self referential structure, rather than what is being described, in a sense that is almost mathematical. Realizing that was possible with writing really blew my mind.
Reader beware, this book can eat smart people. I've known multiple PhDs who, after reading Ulysses, could never get through a party without talking about it.
'Joke' from my mother (an English Lit. professor):
If someone tells you they enjoyed Ulysses, they're either pretentious or mad.
If someone tells you they enjoyed Finnegan's Wake, they're a liar -- because no-one has made it through that book.
A good number (I won't say plenty) of people have read Finnegans Wake and enjoyed it. At the risk of being branded a liar I can say that I've read the whole thing (out loud) and found it a very worthwhile experience. Some of the language play is very enjoyable.
n.b. reading _Finnegans Wake_ out loud is fundamental to the purpose of the book and it's enjoyment as a reader. I find myself laughing regularly and not knowing exactly why; maybe just because of the surrealist nature of the language.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan.
It changed the way I see the world, how to have a sceptical mind and not only how but why one should question.
And also, it shows to me that, if you don't have a answer for something, doesn't mean that it can not be true. It's just that you don't know. And for a lot of things, this is the correct and only answer that we can have now.
I read this book at a time when I had lost my religion which had been very dear to me and the foundation all of my thinking. I was reading lots of different religious texts. This was the first thing I read that said that how we know what we know is more important than what we know. It was the first philosophy I had encountered that would challenge even evidence in favor of itself on the grounds that that evidence didn't meet a certain bar of quality. That was huge and this book helped me understand that concept. Which really made scientific skepticism stand out from other belief systems.
I came from a deeply religious family and read this book after reading Contact (a friend lent me). It too had a lasting impact on my worldview. I cultivate a skeptical worldview nowadays thanks to this book.
He took me out of the pit of my sunken thoughts, I wake up, I take off the blindfold, it was the first book to open my mind and I will always be grateful
I second the recommendation of Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. He takes this simple concept and expands and applies it to modern tech, politics, the workplace, education, etc:
"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play."
The player in a finite game actually wants it to end, where the play itself is just a means to this end. He is "playing against play." The player in an infinite game wants it to continue, and revels in the game itself.
"Although it may be obvious, it is worth stressing that “play,” as it is used here does not mean merely “playing around.” Play, in this discussion, is a metaphor for any number of complex human engagements whenever they take on a competitive, or cooperative, character. Corporations, for example, not only compete with each other but are in themselves populations of strivers, each trying to supplant another, each struggling for higher incomes and titles. The same applies to schools and colleges where attaining superior grade averages, degrees, and honors absorb the lives of students. Sexuality and marriage are often finite battle grounds with winners and losers. In fact, the features of play–finite and infinite–are essentially the same whether we are children playing jacks or soldiers caught up in a war between nations."
To me it is a concise and broadly applicable way to see the world.
Jordan Peterson describes something like this, but as if one is embedded within the other, as the game itself which can be wonr or lost, and the meta-game of all future games which means you get to continue playing; and uses it to discuss why cheating in games is so bad, especially when teaching children about cooperation.
Cheating might win you the game, but it means nobody will trust you and nobody will want to play with you in future and you're out of the meta-game, you lost the more important thing. It's important to lose fairly at a game, so you get to play again long term.
Something that comes up in HPMOR where a dark lord can't submit and be humble to learn a lesson, instead fighting and killing everyone but losing the larger goal, and something which surely comes up every time someone is "technically right" on a mailing list or forum argument but in such a way that nobody wants to engage with them in future.
1) "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch - This book allowed me to embrace a sort of rational optimism in my world view. Also I was convinced by this book that the true test of a good government is not about whether you can pick the right leaders every time, but about being able to remove the bad ones relatively quickly.
2.) Candide by Voltaire - contributed to my personal sense of humor and belief that we live in neither the best nor worst of all possible worlds, but simply the most absurd of them.
3) The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Helped me understand the power of small effeciencies in large systems and the importance of metagaming.
RAW's Cosmic Trigger and Prometheus Rising for me: I read both when I was 13 and was a recently-converted Southern Baptist. I quickly shifted my entire understanding of epistemology and the nature of reality.
Wilson's "Everything is Under Control" was another important one for me after the Illuminatus! Trilogy. That's what sent me down the path into Thomas Pynchon, Hakim Bey, Noam Chomsky, etc. Can't really turn back after that.
I can't belive nobody has mentioned "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau.
To be fair, I'm not a big recreational reader. But this one will always stick out to me. When I read it in college, it had such a profound effect on me, I belive it literally helped shape who I am as a person even to this day
Maybe it was right place, right time. It is certainly an impressionable age, but I have read it again as an older man, & it was just as powerful.
I've read "Guns, germs & steel", "How to win friends & influence people", "Freakonomics" & some of the other stuff that pop up in the comments, they are all fine. But none of them influenced me like "Walden" did.
When I initially read this thread I had precisely the same reaction.
Emerson and Thoreau weren’t just naturalists preaching justice. Their Nature is the same Nature Marcus Aurelius refers to in Meditations. Once you put their work in the context of the Trinitarian/Unitarian debate of the early 19th century, you see how deeply they thought about not just civilization, but science and philosophy together.
I’d add to Walden, Emerson’s Nature, and especially his essay Man, the Reformer. In today’s ultra-specialized and mostly-capitalist society, this piece has the power to simultaneously shatter and solidify your identity and sense of worth.
The Transcendentalist practically gave young America its voice following independence. They’re certainly worth revisiting if you only remember Walden as a reclusive pond.
"Difficult Conversations: How to discuss what matters most". I bought this on the strength of an HN suggestion.
It's like Design Patterns for human conversations: the result of studying how people interact, common patterns that work, and how things break down. Really crystallised a lot of insights I'd perceived but never thought about systematically. I highly recommend it.
Word of warning - there are a few books with this title. Look for the one by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen.
Also Thinking Fast and Slow, recommended elsewhere in this thread.
On the surface, it's about how to have conversations about difficult topics. Often these are conflict resolution type conversations. These range all the way from "you never take the bins out" to marriage breakups to large international political conflicts. These conversations can often go off the rails and conflicts are made worse, not solved. Whatever the scale, these kinds of conversations tend to follow familiar routes.
If you dispair at the way that conversations tend to devolve into personal attacks in national politics, office politics or your day-to-day interactions, this book is a very insightful handbook.
The book is the result of a big study at Harvard Business School of a large number of case studies. It spots the patterns that humans tend toward. In each case it identifies the pattern, why it happens, what the result can be (usually negative) and how to spot it coming and mitigate it. It also has snippets of conversation as case studies.
It's been a while, so I can't remember each item. But one example is that people tend to connect their identity to the point they are trying to argue. You challenge the point but to your conversation partner it feels like a direct personal attack. If you can find a way to acknowledge that connection, gently separate it from the identity, you have a much better chance of resolving the conflict.
I find a particularly strong parallel in the Gang of Four Design Patterns book. These are the broad problems that people try to solve with software, the structures that tend to emerge as people solve problems.
And, like design patterns, some things are deeply insightful and some things are obvious. E.g. of course 'iterators' are a thing. But development is so much better for having vocabulary to talk about them.
I can give one tiny little bit of advice from several years about tutoring and teaching mathematics and physics...
Always start with examples.
If I am trying to teach the fundamental ideas of complex analysis, I want to show folks how to take derivatives of complex functions with several worked examples and then show them how to do line-integrals on the complex plane -- I want them to have a big repertoire of things that they have worked out. I want them to have done for themselves several "closed loop" integrals that have come out to zero, and some that have come out to one, before I ever imagine putting the residue theorem underneath their noses. When I explain that analytic functions are these conformal maps which preserve angles, I want them to understand that how we defined analytic functions requires them to locally look like scaled rotations, and to understand that neither scaling nor rotation can change an angle.
Same thing in computing. I wouldn't dream about explaining what a monad is until I've explained what a functor is, and I wouldn't dream about explaining what a functor is without thinking through how lists and maybes and functions and eithers and pairs are all "outputtish" in a certain hard-to-describe way, maybe even discussing how a `forall z. (a -> z) -> z` is actually outputtish in `a` too, before I could finally define some bad definitions ("can get an output out of it" -- well no, I can't do that with the function!) and then alight on "okay so here's a good definition of outputtish as mappable, you can take a function and map it over the output" and then the fact that this has a specific jargon name at that point is no longer of any consequence, "we call this a functor" -- great, some name to memorize, but the concept is "not hard."
In other words, abstractions are patterns in concrete topics. The Dewey Decimal System organizes a library. It is incredibly difficult to convince someone to use the Dewey Decimal System to organize a pile of five books: "What's the point in having this big abstract unifying theory about book contents? I only have five of them!". But what you do if you want to teach someone the Dewey Decimal System is to make sure that first they have a whole library that is in some mess of a state, they can't find what they need to find and they can't see where to file new "books" (examples, pieces of information) and then you come over the hill with this Dewey Decimal System and you look like a righteous force for justice, "aha! everything can be well-organized!"
I have tried so many times to lead with the "Here's how you want to think about this sort of problem!" theory for all of my tutees, and it always leaves them looking at me with that "what abyss of hell did this crazy tutor crawl out of?" face. By contrast if I am just encouraging about "okay, what do you know about this system?" and am very careful to snip the premature theory of "Uh, F = m a?" that they have been exposed to, we can often work through a problem in words and then work through it in numbers and then I can suggest that here is a different way to think about it in terms of, say, momentum conservation.
"Debt: The first 5000 years" completely changed the way I view money, society, and relationships.
"The selfish gene" changed the way I define life, opened my eyes to virtual life, and morality of selfishness vs. altruism.
"Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life" changed the way I view the life and material existence. Whereas before I viewed them as two separate domains, after I see them as a spectrum.
Chinese classic taoism treaties: "Dao De Jing", and "Zhuan Zi", offers a via-negativa way of thinking and view of existence, the values are beyond words.
My pick is "Tao of Pooh," which is kind of a westerner's ELI5 of Taoism. I can't overemphasize how useful Taoism has been for me as a lens through which to understand and participate in the world. (And there really isn't much mysticism to it)
I second Tao of Pooh. It’s genuinely insightful and I plan to read it again. However no one I recommend it to seems to take it seriously. They think it’s a parody of some sort because it seems unlikely that a “serious” text would involve Winnie the Pooh.
> That made me prick up my ears, and say that that was not so. The example I gave was Graeber's claim that the:
>> Federal Reserve… is technically not part of the government at all, but a peculiar sort of public-private hybrid, a consortium of privately owned banks whose chairman is appointed by the United States president, with Congressional approval, but which otherwise operates without public oversight…
> That is the kind of glaring error that Graeber claims he does not make.
> Of the twelve votes on the Federal Open Market Committee, seven are cast either by the Governors of the Federal Reserve--who are officers of the United States government, nominated by the President, and confirmed by the Senate--and five are cast by Federal Reserve regional bank Presidents, who take office only when approved by a majority of the Governors.
> Not one, but all twelve.
..,
> And let me give the last word to a commenter on the last:
> I don't want to get involved with him because he's so damned crazy, but I just noticed that note 19 to chapter 12, p. 451. Egads. He has no idea what he's talking about. Not understanding the Treasury bond market in a book that purports to be a major treatise on debt???... Someone should tell him that deposits are liabilities for banks
>> But then he starts talking about how democratic methods of structuring organizations are often more efficient than rigid hierarchies, and so will often arise spontaneously when people really need to be get things done. And he uses Apple Computers as an example:
> Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages.
> In other words, I am now angry at myself for paraphrasing the book, and trying to put theses into Graeber's mouth, because this is such a rambling, confused, scattershot book that I am doing you a disservice by making it seem more coherent than it really is.
> But Graeber is basing part of his argument on the attitude of ancient Sumerians towards prostitution (vs later attitudes), and this is his evidence for the attitude he says they had. And so the question for me is, did he not actually look at the list of mes? There are plenty of Sumerian texts that are mentioned or summarized in books but hard to find in translation, but this one, as I mention above, is easily available. So if he didn’t read the actual list of mes, he did sloppy research and I’m bound to wonder where else he skipped research he ought to have done.
> Or did he know what was on the list, and that things like destruction of cities and troubled heart and fear and terror were there (they are) but went ahead anyway because darnit he was sure he was right and how many of his readers would question it, or had ever actually seen that list? Cause it’s pretty obscure.
> Either way I can’t really trust him anymore–if he’s ignoring or eliding things in areas I know something about, surely it’s happening elsewhere in the book and I just don’t see it because how could I?
DeLong has been on a strange Graeber-witch hunt over the years and it appears there is a lot of bad faith in his criticism of Debt. Here is a response to DeLong from Graeber and it specifically addresses most of the points you quoted here:
Mine would be "Why we get fat and what to do about it" by Gary Taubes. Not only it changed my life (overweight to my healthiest ever), it also led me to challenge everything about our dietary dogmas. I further read "Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living", watched a lot of lectures and saw studies which question our current notions. Overall I am more skeptical of studies which have links to those benefiting from it commercially.
This is the book that switched on the light for me. It’s no exaggeration to say that it put me on a path to the best levels of health and fitness I have ever known. I am 56 and feel like I’m in the prime of life.
About 10 years ago I read a book called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". In summary, it describes a different way of thinking about money and wealth and the mindset of a successful person versus one who struggles with money.
For a long time I had wanted to start a business but after reading that book I truly believed I could. It was a long journey but I now run my own software business and I honestly would not have started on this path had my friend not recommended it to me.
To be honest, I'm almost embarrassed to admit it. It is not high-brow literature, and I don't even think it's considered to be a good book on being an entrepreneur, but it was a very important part of my story.
There are also at the very least rumors about the Author being somewhat fraudulent. At the very least the story is not genuine. Doesn't mean it doesn't have valid points to teach.
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
- As someone who doesn't want to "negotiate" and be a hard bargainer across the table, this book taught me how to bring empathy to every negotiation, and to use that get both parties what they really want most. It's also a fascinating read that details a number of his negotiations as chief hostage negotiator for the FBI.
"The Dictator's Handbook" by DeMesquita and Smith is a popular take on their academic work that describes a metamodel for reasoning about power and politics that bypasses how things "may" or "should" work and talks about how they "must" work.
This is a great book. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people who live in a nominal democracy see the title and think, "this doesn't apply to me." Even more unfortunately, it very much does apply to you, in, for example, the United States.
The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Dostoevsky. At the time I didn't realize that it changed me, but looking back on it, the perspectives I learned from it fundamentally how I viewed and understood other people.
It’s so good. I just finished reading the Constance Garnett translation and it’s just gripping all the way through. Well, I guess apart from Zossima’s life story in the middle, but that definitely has its place.
The Gutenberg HTML of it is definitely a labour of love and extremely high quality: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-h/28054-h.html . I converted it to a nicely formatted epub for Standard Ebooks and it’s in review now, so hopefully will be available this week.
Too many things. It implanted the idea that people, all people can be understood explicitly, through empathy (and that all people can be empathized with). It showed me a way of thinking that was based off of human emotions and understanding but also analytical. Father Zosima's conversation with the woman with the dead child also helped me resolve the question of how much of a part one's thoughts and intentions play in whether you're a good person, and in general what it means to be a good person and how that can change. There are other things, but on first reading those are the ways that it directly influenced my viewpoint (that I can remember now).
Thinking fast and slow had the biggest impact in changing how I think about a lot of things, epic study of how you’re predisposed to think and make decisions in a particular way. Coincidentally I read it at about the same time as freakonomics!
It made me aware that someone as successful and powerful as Napoleon himself was by a large extent only a product of the people and the mood at the time. What I mean is that it wasn't him who inspired the people; it rather was just the Zeitgeist he was the perfect person for.
I'm not a native speaker and can't really put it into words, but it completely changed my view of the amount of influence we really can have in this world, and how much we are a product of our time.
Narziß und Goldmund by Hesse.
Again a lack of words from my side.
Whoever is looking for meaning in life should read this book.
The last sentence of this book is (at least in German) the literary most perfect and awakening phrase I've ever read. I couldn't sleep for days afterwards.
War and Peace came immediately to mind for me as well, but mostly because I do not think I have ever read a more magnificent novel.
I'm a literature professor, and in academic literary study, we don't spend a lot of time talking about which books are "better" than others. But personally? I'll just never get over that one.
I suppose I'd have to add Aeschylus' The Oresteia (the oldest of the ancient Greek tragedies we possess, and the only complete trilogy). I was a truly terrible high school student, who I think just barely got into college. Reading The Oresteia as a freshman made me decide that one way or another, I would have to figure out how to read and study literature for the rest of my life.
I'm about halfway through "War and Peace" right now, and am amazed at how much life Tolstoy packs into the book. So many amazing scenes, and pithy characters. What's striking me now is both the characters' greatness mixed with their weakness. There's something to me inexplicable about my admiration of Pierre, Natasha, Count Rostov etc., but interesting how as the book continues their faults are revealed. Also, the timeless conflicts/themes/impetus of money, politics/social hierarchies or groups, marriage, etc.
I'd love to know some of the things you find interesting or meaningful about the Oresteia - I read it as a freshman in college and was never particularly impressed, but these days I'm becoming more and more interested in revisiting ancient literature. What about it left such a mark on you?
I read it in English as "Narcissus and Goldmund". The subject at the core of this book is very dear to me and it really moved me and like you, I was affected for a long time. I give away all the good books to friends saying "You must read this, it's excellent!" and thus I no longer have my copy. I must read it again.
By the way, if by some chance, there is a big overlap in our tastes, I recommend the fictional work called "Loving Vincent". It's a "moving painting" rather than a "movie".
'The Power Broker' by Robert Caro is ostensibly a biography, but it's actually about how power works. The protagonist starts out employing idealistic methods, but falls flat on his face, and comes to delight in any means of achievement. I found that once I understood the protagonist's raw goal-seeking, and the dynamics that emerge from it, I started to recognize similar dynamics at many levels of society and government.
Barack Obama read it at 22 and said it was mesmerizing and that it shaped how he thinks about politics.
I always viewed reading a book as collecting a soul. If you fully grok a book, you grok the authors thoughts. Being able to put yourself in another persons mindset is crucial.
Speaking of "groking", Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love and The Fountain Head have probably had the most impact on my mindset.
Each book is rather different, but in general the idea of all three is
> You have to be in life for yourself, and only you can define who you are / want to be.
That doesn't necessarily mean you need to be mean, but the idea that "greed is good", or that it's okay to be selfish, provided you think long term. It's about coming to terms and accepting you are greedy. But with that insight you can do introspection and learn about what drives you and make decisions yourself.
It's almost as if another layer of consciousness, learning about ones self.
Welp. And this is why I think Ann Rand was deeply evil and The Fountain Head was a horrible work of propaganda.
It's not okay to be greedy, nor is it okay to be selfish. And these ideas are responsible for much of the harm in the world.
It is okay to know what you need and advocate for your needs, to take care of yourself. But that is not being greedy or selfish. And to do it effectively means you have to be able to recognize the difference between a "need" and a "want". You also have to be capable of balancing your own needs against the needs of others.
A mindset of "greed is good" and "it's okay to be self" does not even try to understand the difference between "need" and "want" and provides ample justification for screwing over everyone else in pursuit of greedy (unneeded) wants.
There are many people, like a younger version of myself, who think it wrong to advocate for your own needs and wants. And who are smart enough to realize that every "need" truly is a want when you take a large enough perspective. And that holds them back from expressing themselves. The Fountainhead is essential reading for anyone who thinks in that way.
On the other hand, for well-adjusted folks, taking the book literally, is a recipe for overcompensating.
"It's ok to be greedy/selfish" is a clickbait title for the statement that you look out for yourself first and foremost whether you admit it or not, and you want things innately.
In a well regulated capitalist environment, those drives are yoked in a way that the paths through which you become rich and powerful and sexy are the same paths through which you improve the lives of others around you.
In a poorly regulated one you get dupont and enron, but show me a silver-bullet government theory and I'll show you an unrealistic fantasy.
>A mindset of "greed is good" and "it's okay to be self" does not even try to understand the difference between "need" and "want"
You're assigning that. Honestly I don't think most of Ayn Rand's critics have read her books.
The "well regulated capitalist environment" of which you speak is the fantasy. It has never existed.
What could exist is a world based on economic democracy, where no one becomes rich or powerful and everyone has to work together because society is structured to prevent anyone from taking power for themselves.
An economy where the stock corporation is replaced by the worker cooperative -- still an independent business operating in a free market of goods and services, but governed democratically by its workers -- would be much closer to that reality. No one would be able to amass much personal power. And any power amassed would always be held in check by the democratic structures that granted it. A world like that would do a much better job of preventing the accumulation of personal wealth way beyond need.
You don't need "get tons of power" as an incentive. Most people are plenty motivated by the "make enough to live a good life" and "have meaningful work". Plus, in a democratic socialist economy, the average worker would have much more incentive to get creative than they do in the current economy. Because they own the business and directly reap the benefits of their innovations. In the current economy, the average worker has very little incentive, by comparison, to innovate new efficiencies. They won't benefit. At best they'll get a promotion or a bonus, and not even that is guaranteed.
You're just using different words to describe socialism, which I frankly don't think needs any further arguments against it besides pointing at it's attempted implementations.
No, that's not socialism. Socialism is "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole" (from dictionary.com). dbingham is proposing something different - vesting the ownership and control of enterprises in the workers at those enterprises, not in society as a whole.
I think the closest to this, in current practice, is the German model, where workers have at least a say in the direction of their enterprises (not sure about ownership). It seems to be working out really well for them.
I can't give you a specific example. The kind of thing I was talking about is called a "work council" (or, let's see if I can get German in here without mangling it, "Betriebsräte").
It is, technically, a form of Democratic Socialism - you could also call it Free Market Socialism, but it hasn't been tried anywhere. Only state socialism has been tried.
Ayn Rand was a deeply flawed person who would have been aided by having more empathy for others. But she does make a few fantastic points that unfortunately tend to get lost in her ancap fervor.
Namely, that people tend not to think for themselves and slavishly follow social convention for no reason. Not for things like, "should I take all this money?" But rather for things like, Does doing this thing actually bring meaning and joy into my life? Or, Do I actually find deep value and beauty in consuming this media? Or noticing how often we adopt opinions of others for our own, without reflecting on whether or not we actually agree, and whether or not we actually care about what this other person thinks.
And then apply these thoughts to your own creative potential. How often have we not created something because others would not have appreciated it or preferred it another way? When was the last time we did something without consensus or approval, on our own, because we wanted to? How many things are we hanging on to because that's what everyone else does and we don't want to be cast out?
I find that those points are good and necessary ones, but can be had outside the wrapper and nudge in the direction of being blindly selfish and to ignore the suffering your pursuit of desires wrecks upon others.
Much of Bhuddist thought addresses the same concepts, but the goal is reduction of suffering.
Consider Ayn Rand as someone who had everything taken from her and her family in the name of absolute collectivism/communism, and that the articulation as a reaction to that.
So it's like a reactionary book ... it's existence might makes sense in historical context.
The book "1776" changed the way I thought about many many things. It's about the military presence and the early years of the US Colonies and the British presence as well. Everything was so different back then. Getting all those details shows how life was different in almost every way imaginable: people only had 1 or 2 outfits, income taxes of 2% were considered unimaginably high, military only had 9 bullets per soldier, stage plays were the main means of entertainment, bitter cold affected everyone, no communication meant lots of confusion, etc. Lots of great details in that book.
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns helped me get out of a hole of anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Not to say I'm all the way there, but I'm far better than I used to be, and perfectly functional. His list of 10 cognitive distortions was tremendously enlightening, like I felt a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders when I realized how I could combat my bad thoughts with rationality.
The first is Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. This was the first political book I had ever read and it completely rocked my world. I knew the US was involved in some nefarious stuff, but never to that extent. Completely changed the way I read news / history & how I react to current events.
The other book is Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (https://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impov...) was a book I had to read multiple times. It gave me a new understanding of how deep culture and environment really do influence your opinions of the world. I spend a lot more time reflecting on my own opinions about the world and I'm much more mindful of the opinions I declare publicly because of this book.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky - introduced me to the rationalist movement
The First Immortal by James Halperin - introduced me as a sixth grader to things like cryonics, nanotech, etc. Got me thinking about a realistic ambitious nearer term future for humanity, rather than a more fantasy-like one in the other sci-fi I'd read at that point, like Asimov and Heinlein
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen - gave me much greater agency in life. Made me realize “You are today where your thoughts have brought you;
you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”
I'll be in the minority then, but to me these are my best books.
The Power of Vulnerability by Brenè Brown and
Quiet by Susan Cain.
The first is not a real book since it's audio only, there is no written counterpart but it changed the way I see, connect, live in the world entirely. I _never_ found something along those lines.
While the second book, Quiet, although a little boring in some sides, made me accept my introversion (although I don't appear like an introvert).
If I had to pick only one then it would be the power of vulnerability, such a shame it hasn't a paper counterpart (you could read all brene brown books probably and get the same message, but that audio book is so great).
I had to think deeply about this and particularly about a book changing the way I think about things and how often I think back to things in the book. For me it has to be Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain. It made me realize that I am more creatively skilled than I thought I was — a realization which has enhanced my life greatly. To some lesser degree The Artist's Way has influenced me as well.
Perhaps the most nuts-and-bolts useful of books for me has been John Saxon's Algebra 1 and Algebra 1 1/2 textbooks. After coasting through high-school algebra without gaining any real mastery, in my early 20s I sat down with these two masterworks of clarity and re-taught myself algebra in the space of a couple full weekends. I use this (re-)learning every day of my life.
A related book, and the basis for much of whats in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is The Natural Way to Draw, by Kimon Nicolaïdes. It is a text book and has structured lessons in it, so if you need formal structure its helpful. Following the lessons is not required to gain a lot from this book.
Antifragile by N N Taleb. Additionally also the black swan by the same author.
All said and done I feel like it's made me look at and evaluate a lot more possibilities at all important junctions in my life (if not all junctions). It's helped me channelise my mind better to understand signals I care about in an otherwise extremely noisy world. It's also made me a stronger individual being able to do more for people and look at things sometimes as just a series of outcomes, and making everyday life and outcomes more tolerable for me emotionally as well.
Antifragile has changed the way I've thought about many things. A couple key concepts in the book are like lenses that gave me entirely new ways of viewing the world.
The Lindy effect: The strongest systems are usually the ones that have been around the longest. Accordingly, there should be a healthy distrust for any recent invention or practice.
The world is too complex to understand: Complex systems are mostly not designed, but exist and thrive by virtue of natural selection. This includes human societies. Even leaders and managers of these systems do not understand why they work. In particular you can't predict the outcome of tampering with complex systems, and you should avoid doing it in a wholesale centralized way.
Stress makes antifragile systems stronger: In particular a certain amount of stress, challenge, and variation is necessary for a person to remain strong.
Extreme tails: Fragile and antifragile systems often have payouts where a single event dominates the outcome. As an individual, there are two takeaways. There are only a couple of opportunities in life that count. They will only count if you maintain the optionality to take advantage of them. A single tragedy can ruin you. You have to look out for it constantly, even if everything has been pretty rosy up until now.
“The Kingdom of God is within you,” by Leo Tolstoy. It changed the lives of Ghandi and MLK as the essential primer and exposition of Christian anarchism and its consequent pacifism. It led to my discharge from the military as a conscientious objector just as the war with Iraq (pt. 2) heated up.
Second, Wendell Berry’s many essays and short-stories. His skepticism about technology can be taken to Luddite extremes, but his questioning of the full human impact of technology has profoundly affected how I think: that technology not only enables new human possibilities, but more importantly, shapes the very meaning of what it means to be human.
Finally, Paul Graham’s essays, especially his one on wealth. It’s the clearest explanation of “Make what people want” that I have read, and has a liberating affect on a mind that has been conditioned by society to be just another employee. I wouldn’t have jumped head-first into the startup world were it not for PG’s influence.
For what changed my outlook on life? Xenocide - Orson Scott Card. The 3rd book in the Ender's Game saga, it spend a lot of time exploring how people with fundamentally different perceptions and interpretations of the world around them led them to conduct themselves in ways that conflicted with each other, but were virtuous and the right thing to do according to them.
Was a big help in helping me understand how empathy can help to resolve issues and how fundamentally different we all can think - be it medieval humans or alien beings.
Maybe it didn't change my mind about "everything," but it did change my mind about everything related to negotiating.
The premise is that "no," is not an answer to be feared and avoided - it's an answer to be sought out. Getting a "no" is a key part of understanding the other side's position.
Many of the techniques he teaches can be used in non-negotiation settings.
For example, consider the seemingly simple problem of asking good questions. The author advocates interrogative-led questions over leading questions:
- interrogative led: begins with "who," "where," "what," "when," and "why."
- leading: binary answer, and usually begins with "do" or "does"
Consider the difference between the answers you're likely to get by asking "Did you like the movie?" vs. "What did you think of the movie?"
When you ask someone an interrogative-led question, you acknowledge their agency and challenge them to think. When you ask a leading question, more often than not, you're trying to manipulate the other person. Worse, you will get much less helpful answers.
Works great for job interviews, and many other professional settings.
One oddity: I've seen interviews/presentations with author, but he's a surprisingly bad speaker. As a how-to writer he's one of the best I've read.
I know it may sound silly, but The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meant a lot to me. It taught me not to take life too seriously and to just embrace its weirdness.
As a book lover, and a very frustrated one at that (for I never seem to have time to read all the books I would love to have already read), I've found Pierre Bayard's How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read both inspiring and liberating.
The title sounds it's appealing to some kind of self-help shenanigans on how to fake your knowledge on books, but in truth is a very coherent metaliterary theory that delves into memory, psychoanalysis, honesty, and creativity.
Because of this, and since it correctly argues that the line separating what you have read from what you haven't isn't as clear or obvious as it appears, it's inspiring because it shows you a way through the seemingly endless human library; and liberating because it allows you to reconcile yourself with your limited knowledge of any particular set of books.
Since it's impossible to know even a fraction of all that has been published, and because your memory is fallible, whenever you are talking about books, whatever book it may be, in some sense you are always talking about a book you haven't read.
That being so, it's far better to own it as it is and to take advantage of that fact, talking confidently about any book. And this is where this book can really come handy.
Ever since I first read it some years ago, I felt I had a weight lifted from my shoulders. I'm not as bold as Pierre Bayard is, and I still find myself awkward for not having read so many important books. But now I'm more at ease, knowing that others, whoever they are, are also in a somewhat similar situation. Instead of feeling an ignorant sod, I now know I'm surrounded by an endless throng of likewise ignoramuses.
To me, it’s “in search of the lost time” by marcel Proust. In this hustle and bustle world where people build startups for high evaluation, money and reputation, reading this book is an oasis in the desert experience to me. It inspires me to rethink of my simple day, to pay more attention to details, to figure out why little thing become what it is, to cherish small achievements and to appreciate people. And more importantly it inspires me to be alone and use the mind to think about the world and rebuild it.
Again, I'm glad you reminded me about this book. About to introduce it to some friends through our book club. I'll be re-reading it soon, so maybe I'll put on that movement while I read the end :)
Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by Dr Sarno litreally gave me my life back. Suffered back pain which I thought was from sitting and coding for 11 years. I had no idea emotions can have an impact on physical pain. real excruciating pain that went away almost 3/4th of the way through the book. this sounds so sales pitchy but mind body connection is real I think how now we wonder how doctors in 1950s said smoking tobacco isn't bad for you, we will wonder in future on how doctors denied the mind body connection.
Ishmael (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)) - it changed how I view the planet from a species-centric perspective to one focused on maximizing the potential for sustainable life for all creatures
I went on to read more than a half dozen books by this author, all of them were equally amazing and thought-provoking. I wish I could like this entry times a thousand.
This one did it for me, too. I was utterly, utterly changed by it. It's a new story for humankind. A story with a much bigger potential, a much more hopeful arc, with a future of unlimited potential because it goes beyond humankind toward a community of life that has its own larger reason to exist.
I used to think of laws and society as just arbitrary things. However, I now see that they reflect thousands of years of wisdom / improvement and are critical to creating the conditions for people to flourish. The right to earn a living helped me understand the common law system and why we should care about unenumerated rights and how to create a more just society.
The concept of the political helped me see how nihilistic egalitarianism and feckless bureaucracy isn't a bug but a feature of liberal democracy and how it doesn't have to be that way.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (I don't know which translation I read).
Imagine the plot of three or four excellent movies woven together. It struck me how little human nature changes over time and across cultures. It also features some fascinating Russian history as a backdrop. As a person who almost exclusively reads non-fiction, it changed my view of how powerful fiction can be. I can't fathom what must've been in Tolstoy's mind to have the ability to create something like this.
Honorable mention to The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I'd like to learn more about Russian literature - I don't know if it's these authors and books that grabbed me, or if it's something larger.
19th c Russian literature is awesome. It might be personal, but Russian literature has a very special place in my heart. I recommend reading other works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I also strongly recommend Gogol and Chekhov.
Most of the books that changed how I think were effective because of the subject matter and not the specific book or writing style. I suspect other books on the same subject would've been equally perspective-changing. Here are some examples:
1) "A Guide of the Good Life." This is an approachable intro to stoicism and helped me become more conscious of which things are within my control and which things are outside of my control. I now spend a lot more time focusing on the former and a lot less time being anxious about the latter.
2) Books like "Traction" (by Gabriel Weinberg) and "Cracking Creativity" that take a fuzzy subject like marketing or being creative and show that you can get very far by following recipes/algorithms/heuristics. Skill like creativity are not purely innate; they can be learned.
3) "Economics in One Lesson." (Spoiler: the one lesson is: "economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.") After this book, I now think much more carefully about proposed policies/rules/business strategies/etc. "Subsidized child care" or "charge businesses per seat" can sound great on the surface, but specific proposals often have so many unintended or negative consequences that are not discussed, and it's important to weigh those consequences against the benefits.
4) A statistics textbook. I don't remember the specific book that was my first stats textbook, but learning about statistics made me a lot more skeptical and inquisitive about data. Now when I see a graph or number reported in the news, I think "are there ways that this might be misleading?" instead of "omg cool this is a graph in a popular magazine so it must be true."
"Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
I'm only a quarter of the way through but it's already giving me vast amounts of insight into the roots of western civilization. It's also equipping me with mental models to analyze modernity and determine where we are in the history of civilization. It looks like we're in the decadent period.
My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knasgaard
An auto-biographical novel that's over 3600 pages for the entire series. It's really just the most accurate literary experience of modern man. I'm finding it quite useful to analyze my own conscious experience through life.
Seems most of the books recommended are for non-fiction, so I'll add some fiction to the mix.
The Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons. It is deeply philosophical and caused me to think about life in a way no other science fiction has before or since. I found myself really sympathizing with the characters in these books, and found the overall plot incredibly fascinating.
Another good one is the Commonwealth Saga series (and others set in the same universe) by Peter F. Hamilton. It's a very _big_ space opera with lots of engaging characters, interesting technology, exciting descriptions of interstellar war, and a good reminder of just how unlike humanity an alien species could be. It really opened my mind to possibilities of humanity in the future in terms of how we might progress, both in terms of progressing out into the galaxy and how we could progress as a species.
Presents a compelling case for being optimistic that economic growth really will keep making the world continually better on average, and in particular explores the reasons why the contrary position is often so prevalent in the media, popular opinion etc.
Regardless of whether you agree with the thesis of the book per se it's a fascinating read which will definitely give you a lot of new perspective on debates on big topics - things that come up often on HN such as AI, climate change, international relations etc. I thoroughly recommend it.
I discovered the dire situation of men, with health and social conditions that top women’s problems by a factor 50, but we’ve never heard about. Funny thing is the guy is still a feminist in his approach (give men what used to be only given to women), but finally seeing men in a society where we really carr a lot when women face a problem... it changed my vision of life and humanity.
Mostly all about life, not technology, but all the books below have science behind them and many references and studies. I have read every one of these books, some multiple times. These are the books I would make required reading if I gave a class on life, they cover sleep, nutrition, exercise, brain health (depression/happiness), memorization and learning.
* Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
* Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
* Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (evidence based, ~1,000 references)
* The Promise of Sleep: A Pioneer in Sleep Medicine Explores the Vital Connection Between Health, Happiness, and a Good Night's Sleep (sleep debt)
* Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
* Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
I have my eye on Why We Sleep and want to read it soon. I did ask Matthew Walker once about the fact that he says you cannot pay of Sleep Debt whereas William Dement (Promise of Sleep) says you can pay off up to 1-2 weeks but no more. In my experience, I can pay off some sleep debt in a week but it levels out after that.
I haven't heard back on that, probably should message him outside of Twitter, but was hoping for a public dialogue.
Girard was a professor at Stanford and writes about the idea of 'mimetic desire'. His overarching idea is humans are fundamentally creatures of mimesis, and whether we realize it or not all our desires are born out of mimic the desires of those around us. We don't think critically about what we actually want, we just sub-consciously mimic each other's desires - which ultimately leads to conflict.
The short story of how, if you're rowing a boat over a river and you hit another boat, you shout at the person in the boat how careless they are and why aren't they paying attention, and you're incensed and annoyed at their stupidity. Then you turn and look, and the other boat is empty and drifting, there isn't anyone in it.
I don't think I've ever stopped thinking about that story and how, even if there was someone in the other boat, I could react as if there wasn't, and things would be better.
Not a book, but once I'd read and re-read enough https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/ articles to start to understand his view on narcissism and how it's an epidemic problem in the West.
“Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Taleb. It is hard to compress it into a short summary, but it can be something like “be very aware about unknown unknowns”.
Strongly disagree. The geographic determinism theory of GG&S is frustrating and ignores significant factors in the rise of the West.
This review is something I generally send out to people after they've read GG&S, and strongly recommend Eric Wolf as an author. He puts many of the points I would make significantly more eloquently:
I would argue that “changing the way you think” doesn’t require the book to be factually accurate. The idea that external factors like geographical starting conditions can have a huge impact and shape things as complex as human culture is a powerful one, regardless of the conclusions drawn in the book.
If anything, the way it has been challenged and shown to be flawed is a lesson on and of itself - that complex systems have emergent properties, and that those starting conditions are not as deterministic as it might appear at first blush.
If GG&S changed the way you think, I'd highly recommend following it up with either the book from that review (Eric Wolf's "Europe and the People without History") or Ian Morris's "Why The West Rules, For Now".
Guns, Germs and Steel is an absolute garbage book. It's pseudoscience, plain and simple. It's teaching unacceptable ways to think about culture, by any anthropologist's standards.
I can second Guns, Germs and Steel. I'm continually evaluating how much things are a result of my own work vs just a byproduct of the environment I'm in.
One book that had a large influence on me was "How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday" by Gerry Spence. The portion of the book which spoke to me the most about arguing in relationships.
The author poses the idea of intentionally losing when arguing with a loved one since the victory will usually be a hollow one.
It might seem like simple advice, but I found it extremely influential in my life.
There are many times when being right is actually the worst thing to be and made me consider if winning an argument was worth (potentially) damaging a long term relationship. When it was, this book gave some good advice about quickly repairing the damage and minimizing the consequences.
Love that this came up. He is the type of man one wants to emulate. This had a huge positive influence on my romantic relationships and will probably help with my family one day.
Sapiens, recently. It had a profound effect on how I think about people, history and progress... Particularly, the points about group size and all th cultural clockwork required for and limiting our ability to function as large groups.
Paul Graham's essays, which are kind of a web book.
Practical Ethics, by Peter Singer influenced me a lot (made me study philosophy) but I was a lot less expensive impressed by my decades-later re-read.
Yes, the book within 1984. I think that 1984 deserves several re-reads and the nuances of it can only be appreciated if you are in a world of 1984 and share a few of the problems Winston has, including the health ones.
Ludwig Wittgenstein - mainly Philosophical Investigations, Blue and Brown Books, and On Certainty. It gradually changed how I view the entire world around me, and dissolved my interest in philosophy, as well as in many other "sciency" things that - I realized - I was only interested in because of implicit metaphysical interpretations that ultimately stemmed out of conceptual confusion.
I would also nominate Wittgenstein for similar reasons. To this day I still consider him the "deepest" philosopher I've read, paradoxically because he managed to stay on the surface of things and not get tricked by alluring (but ultimately nonsensical) word constructs. The subtlety of his thought is both mindblowing and very pleasing aesthetically — has anyone matched his talent for metaphor yet?
"Enders Game" for me, I think. By Orson Scott Card.
I was in my first couple years of military service when I read that. I can't really say how it changed my outlook on life, other than the fact that I liked how realistic the writing was, in regards to how children can adapt to an extreme situation (and how quickly naivety and innocence can be lost).
Lead me to read other books by Orson. I like many of them.
Two tiny books by Stephen Wolfram (Actually transcribed lectures):
- "Computation and the Future of the Human Condition"
- "On the Quest for Computable Knowledge"
And by extension his proper book - "A new kind of science". The two above books might require you have at least played with (and enjoy) cellular automata to latch on to the concepts he is talking about with enthusiasm.
These tiny books in combination with some other similar books and ideas transformed the way I think about the world, physically, biologically, technologically - all from the perspective of computation - in terms of computational reducibility, kolmogorov complexity, emergence and entropy (RE maxwells demon - the meaning of life? more like the universal property resulting in the emergence of life like patterns and fluctuations in energy and matter)... sorry all a bit vauge, but difficult to articulate succinctly, read the (very short) books and maybe you will latch on to the same train of thought, it was mentally transformative for me.
I read it once a year. It changed how i think about everything. My career is based on this book. My interaction with people and groups of people is based on this book.
Yeah, it's a starting point, but still the best one with the most clearest thoughts. Every other System Thinking Book is more specialiced to one domain and seem to drive additional agendas.
I can recommend everything else she has written. I go back to "Thinking in Systems" once a year and analyze my life, my projects again with her framework. There is always something new to discover.
33 Strategies of War. It taught me to not fear conflict, but to plan in advance for it.
A lot of warfare is not about violence even. Violence and attrition are bad, to be avoided. The goal is to win before the first shot is fired.
A lot of things that can be applied to life. For example,
Holding the high ground - don't lower yourself to someone's level just because they're taunting you. If you maintain the high ground while others try to drag you down, you'll have a large advantage.
Counterattack - sometimes the best offense is to stay on the defensive, to tip the enemy off balance and counter.
Sometimes you have to be intimidating as a form of defense. Sometimes you envelop/surround and destroy. Sometimes you want to draw attacks to decoys and straw men. Sometimes you hammer them down with suppression fire to advance. Sometimes you want to lose battles to win wars. Sometimes you have beaten and humiliated an enemy, but instead of destroying them, you recruit them to your side.
All skills useful in business, work politics, and anything that involves conflict.
Chaos, by James Gleick. It's somewhere between biography and science for laypeople. Almost a biography of an idea. What he wrote about the edges of science and how scientific rebels think about their fields blew my mind when I read it in my teens, and it started the closest thing to a religion that has taken hold in my mind: a kind of Pantheist vision of how a fully deterministic universe can lead to an infinite, confusing, and beautiful world, with mathematical inevitability and precision rather than by some kind of magic.
The first book that changed my life was "The Second Sex" by Simone De Beauvoir. Is not an easy book to read, with many philosophical and historical references, but it really shaped me. It changed my perception of women and also my awareness as a man.
Another thing that changed my life was not a book by a record. It's not the same thing, I know, but I must name it because I was influenced more by its literary part (the lyrics) than by its music. The album is "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" by Genesis.
"Getting Things Done" by David Allen didn't change the way I think about everything, but it definitely changed the way that I looked at a lot of things. It's often panned today as being "common sense", but I think that's a mischaracterization - at the time it became popular, it ran counter to the conventional wisdom of how to manage your time and attention. Reading it made a profound and lasting impact on how I approached my work.
From a technology standpoint, "The Pragmatic Programmer" changed the way I looked at programming. When I read it the first time, I was a Visual Basic programmer, with only a passing familiarity with the world outside the Microsoft ecosystem. After reading that I began to explore Perl, then Python, and installed Linux and learned it. For my career as a developer, then team lead, and then manager, that book changed me more than any other book I've read in the field.
- Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society"
- N.N.Taleb "The Black Swan"
- Danny Kahneman "Thinking Fast & Slow" (also his papers with Amos Tversky)
- Thomas Ligotti "The Conspiracy against the Human Race"
- Peter Wessel Zapffe "On the Tragic" & "The Last Messiah"
- Sokal, Alan D "Intellectual Impostures"
- Simon Herbert "A The Sciences of the Artificial"
- Herbert Marcuse "One-Dimensional Man"
- Schopenhauer "Parerga and Paralipomena"
- Lewis Mumford "The Story of Utopias"
- Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish"
- Edward S. Herman "Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
- Franklin Foer "World Without Mind The Existential Threat of Big Tech"
- Ben Goldacre "Bad science"
- Emil Cioran "The Book of Delusions"
- Gracian "The Art of Worldly Wisdom"
- Heidegger Martin "The Question Concerning Technology"
- Jacques Ellul "Propaganda The Formation of Mens Attitudes"
- Mumford Lewis "The Culture of Cities"
- Orwell "1984", "Down and Out in Paris and London", "Animal Farm"
- Huxley "Brave New World", "The Doors Of Perception"
- Michael Pollan "How to change your mind"
- Jeff Hawkins "On Intelligence"
- Fyodor Dostoevsky "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", "Notes from the Underground", "The Brothers Kasamarov", "The Gambler", "The Idiot", "Crime & Punishment"
- Peter Smith "Teach Yourself Logic"
- Thomas More "Utopia"
- Emil Cioran "The Trouble With Being Born"
- Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago"
- Nietzsche "Complete works"
- Bulgakov "Master and Margarita"
- Gerald M. Weinberg "The Secrets of Consulting"
Every couple of years I reread Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It is a short read, but it really grounds me and I always interpret it slightly differently based on what is going on in my life.
Charles Perrow's "Normal Accidents". It's sort of the beginnings of a general theory of systemic risk in technology, moving away from the particulars of various technologies or management strategies. There are several technology areas he fits into his model, including civilian nuclear power, jet aircraft, chemical processing plants, and cargo ships. The model focuses on what kind of energy density is involved, how complex the actually-existing engineered system is to be in order to achieve its objective, and how bad the situation is when unexpected interactions (arising from the complexity) lead to the energy being released.
This kind of clear, higher-level thinking about technology is rare and valuable. In the IT world, there's presumably a way to use the model, substituting "data" for "energy", but I've never seen (or come up with) one.
Charles Duhigg "The Power of Habit" and Kelly McGonigal "The Willpower Instinct" both greatly impacted my perception of people's actions and ways of life. Currently reading "Thinking Fast And Slow" and it has the same effect on me.
Jordan B. Peterson "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" made me more proactive and helped to summarize some past experience.
Richard Feynman "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" awesome book, about awesome life of awesome person.
The Science Of Yoga by I. K. Taimni - A commentary on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. This might fall more on the religious side for many people but the author as well as the original scripture has nothing to with Gods in Hindu religion and describes how we perceive our reality and how should we proceed to understand it and ourselves further. I have read a lot religious scripture commentaries but this original scripture and author's interpretation of it is something next level for me.
A book I keep coming back to (re-read every two years or so) and recommend others is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
It has shaped my thinking on 'what is good' or 'what does quality' mean. As an engineer it is easy to appreciate the author slowly going insane about the details he keeps coming back to, and as a human it is invaluable to have an understanding yourself of when something is 'good'.
Reading Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell changed my views of human nature and expanded my imagination on how societies can be organized.
The book is a series of histories of disaster events, natural and human-made. It shows how traditional ideas of what happens to people in crisis - i.e. that it brings out the worst in human nature and people need to be managed, by force if necessary - are wrong and that disaster and hardship create temporary communities that are peaceful, egalitarian, and supportive. In many cases, the experience of working in common to support others was so powerful that it led to profound individual and even structural political transformations.
All in all, it's a deeply optimistic view of human nature, one that you rarely see these days.
Studying and playing poker in high school changed how I thought about problems of incomplete information and how to gather the most information possible to make a decision. This book, in particular, for introducing The Fundamental Theorem of Poker and its use and application, gave me tools of reasoning and analysis of complex problems that I have built on and still use to this day.
I experienced the same thing reading that book. It gave me a powerful feeling about the things a teenager can do in an adult world. And a great story for a video game addict.
The Power Broker. I picked it up out of urban interests, but it gets into so much more of how our political system has been shaped over the last 100 years, and it's scary (or reassuring?) how little it has changed. But also all the insane things Moses did to reshape how cities were built in the USA and how hard it will be to fix his urban sprawl motivation.
Crucial Conversations. In my educational upbringing there was never any exploration of emotional intelligence and how to communicate. Since reading this book I notice elements it describes in basically every meaningful conversation I have.
I cannot help but view every single thing involving humans through this lens. Humans physically cannot choose to ignore emotion and think or communicate "rationally". That's why people who think they're "logical" have no immunity from motivated reasoning, and "rationalist" can turn so toxic and so divorced from reality.
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl changed how I viewed most of the world, especially as a counselor. Learning how experiences change how a person views the world and its impact on their life.
Reading about how he experienced time in a concentration camp with endless hope to be reunited with his wife kept him going and surviving each day hungry, cold, and doing his best to take care of the ill. He learned the positive impact of hope and when individuals lost it, they quickly fell ill or died. It gave me perspective and to challenge my way of thinking in addition to helping clients learn there are multiple ways to interpret anything.
Totally changed how I view budgeting/team management, etc. Helped me learn about my own productivity and how to improve it. Introding flow and such to me. A lot of other books say similar things but they are generic, so its easy to write off with "oh, well software os different". But peopleware is specifically about software development.
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence by David Benatar . The best argument I've read as to what it means for a human being to be brought into existence, why it does that person more harm than good, and why we should consider the question. While people generally find the idea distasteful, especially if being or becoming a parent is a primary focus of their life, I have yet to see any well-reasoned refutation to his argument that isn't addressed in the book. The only problem is it can leave you with a somewhat constant feeling of "well, what now?".
"The Image" by Daniel Boorstin. It's kind of about what living in a world of mass-produced images does to our sense of space, time and reality. So much of our experience is of things that were created by other people to persuade us to do something, and that's a pretty recent thing. More here: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/th...
I am skeptical a single book can change how a person thinks about the world - at least on a practical level.
Actually transformative concepts are usually not simple, and they need to mature in the thinkers mind.
Most important subjects are ao large it would be impossible to cram them into a single book.
Books can be insightfull and amazing, and there are several that are so vivid I find chapters from them popping into my head. A few recent books I feel have been very enligthening to me:
Notes on the synthesis of form by Alexander. Skunk works by Ben Richie. Influence by Cialdini. Skin in the game by Taleb. Isaacson's biographies.
I think when someone is on the brink of a new understanding and read a book that speaks to the topic in just the right way, it can create major shifts. Though I do think the foundation of that transformation is usually the work of many years of life experience.
Between the World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Reading about the abject fear and death in which he grew up really helped me get a tiny insight into institutional racism's effects. I can't fully comprehend the entirety of the black American experience, but that book helped me gain a small glimpse.
I've been studying history privately for about 8 years now, and 'Maps of Time' by David Christian has fundamentally changed the way I look at the progression of mankind. Essentially, he's described from the highest possible level how modernity has come to be. There is too much detail in the book to go into depth, but it's a fascinating, and more than worthwhile read for the knowledge-seeker.
Another I'd add is 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. I have a Bachelor degree in science and never thought I'd be able to add to my understanding of evolution, but this book accomplished it. Almost everything I've studied can be broken into two periods - that I studied before reading the Selfish Gene, and what I studied after.
Lastly, I'd add Hume's 'Treatise on Human Nature', specifically his theory of substances. The basic idea was that as you learn more information about a substance, how you define that substance changes. First you see an orange ball, and you think it's just an orange colored ball. Later someone tells you it's a fruit, and your understanding of it changes.
How this is relevant is that I realized this can be applied to the world at large. Our understanding of any given phenomena is intrinsically linked to what we know about it. So there is no such thing as 'enlightenment' 'self-awareness' etc, there is only ever increasing awareness as we move through life, and we can also make a point to be intentional about increasing our own awareness.
>Our understanding of any given phenomena is intrinsically linked to what we know about it
Duh? I don't understand what alternative could possibly exist. Do some people somewhere think that the less they know about something, the more they understand it, or that the very first look you take at anything in the world is all you'll ever need to know about it?
For me I think it was more about making the process of learning explicit, and the corollary that there is no such thing as 'complete knowledge'.
Where I think for a lot of people they learn about a thing, or a group of things, until they come to accept something as absolutely and definitely true - "what I know IS reality". Then the learning process just kind of stops there because they think they know, when really they just know slightly more.
I see it all the time, people with the illusion of knowledge when there is a ton more to the story.
It really illustrates the enormity of the energy problem and the changes that are needed to make sustainability a reality, especially for densely populated regions like Europe and Japan.
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh completely changed how I look at life, death, etc. Basically how I perceive the world and myself and others.
I think any atheist rational person should read this, to get a more realistic view on himself/herself and the world around you.
Our society is too individual and self-centered, which is actually a wrong view on how the world works. I recommend this to anyone, especially when you lose someone or something big in your life.
Recently: Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker, and The Elephant in the Brain (by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson), two books which share the quality of being bold and courageous in their claims, which go against huge parts of the "common discourse".
Measure 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.
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.
The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias. It inoculated me against a lot of potentially bad financial decisions. Also a fairly quick and entertaining read - which helps in a dry subject like personal finance.
Poland by James Michener - or any other of Michener's historical fiction. Not all of them are great literary works, but because they span thousands of years, they caused me to start thinking generationally.
Every Michener impacts you differently. Also, his style of writing is unmatched in my opinion. He is a master storyteller and can take any topic to make it interesting.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
It's mindblowing just as a work of history (prehistory really) but it also entirely changed how I viewed environmentalism. It made me realize that untouched wildernesses don't exist. Every single landscape on earth has been irrevocably and entirely reshaped by humanity. The Earth is a garden and we are its gardeners, now we just need to get good at it.
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.
This book consists of over 100 very short stories that are inspired by Buddhist teachings. It's contributed quite a bit to making me wiser, happier, less anxious and having better interpersonal skills.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Democracy, The God That Failed. I believed democracy was the "ideal" (basically the secular religion of the USA), and just flawed in implementation. This book does an excellent job of presenting the argument for ownership of the state, limiting the scope of those who could possibly own, and the short term vs. long term interests of different kinds of government.
I read a lot of books. I also listen to a lot of books. Listening to Audiobooks in the shower is a true power move if you haven't tried it. I was sceptical until I realized that my medium-term memory was as good or better than for books I'd read.
Anyhow, few books have made as significant an impact on my life in both personal and professional circumstances than "Difficult Conversations" by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen.
A learned habit to stop and empathize with the motivations behind people's emotional upset has completely changed the way I interact with everyone in my life. I used to think that I was rational and a great communicator. I've come to understand that I've missed countless opportunities to comfort those I care about while saving myself literally years of stress.
Many of my regrets are based on retroactive realizations of how avoidable some of my communications failures actually were, given the long term damage that they helped to cause.
Please, read Difficult Conversations and give copies to people that you love.
Sometimes when I feel a bit sad I remind myself to read a few chapters. It reminds me what I find important in life. What I can ask from myself and from other. It gives me joy in a good way.
It was the first/only book that put into words feelings I've had for my entire teenage-->adult life around the complexities of a dysfunctional middle class family.
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.
"Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins. The claims are hard to prove and I'm not sure how much actually is true (although most things sound plausible), but it changed the way I think about geopolitical events. I usually try to find out what the economic incentives there are behind an event (e.g. wars and oil).
"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini
This explains so much of human behavior, but I hesitate to recommend it to people because it is so easily weaponized. To borrow from Harry Potter, it's the closest thing I've seen to a book of charm spells, but was written as a defense against the dark arts. Better everyone read it rather than just the marketers.
What I really love about this book is how much of politics it has explained for me, including the downfall of the USSR and the American civil rights movements, but also newer events like Schwarzenegger's poltiical career.
If you like this, I'd also recommend:
"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman
"Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely
"The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg
All are in a similar vein. For more focused book on human behavior, I recommend first time team leads/managers read:
"Switch" by Dan and Chip Heath
A solid guide to changing organizational behavior.
1. All of Nassim Taleb's Books - They changed the way I thought about tail probabilities and risk taking + bar bell strategies in general
2. Thinking Fast and Slow - made me think about all of the biases that my mind has that I dont even realize
3. The organized mind - This book gave me a lot of ideas about how I can change my life to live with less distractions and maybe do thinks more efficently
4. The Vital Question - Made me realize how lucky we as humans and complex cellular beings are to even exist.
5. Misquoting Jesus (and all of Ehrman's other books) - Gave me talking points I use against any/all overzealous Christians in my life. The stories of the bible are not remotely close to the stories that where handed down by the people that were with Jesus when he died. Over 100s of years and many errors (and a lot of luck), people decided Jesus was the son of God. Unfortunately for them, the chances of that being true are very very close to zero.
Bart Ehrman is not the most conservative scholar. He's also been known by peers to have two faces, depending on who he's dealing with, whether his audience is academic or pop.
Bruce Metzger is a far more reliable (and recognized) guide, regardless of religious inclination. At worst, you will have a more balanced perspective after reading Metzger, and at best you will see where Ehrman has let you down.
"Over 100s of years and many errors" is pseudo-science. It makes for a Dan Brown novel for the uninitiated, but it doesn't fit the facts. Few mainstream scholars today would deny the accuracy of the New Testament documents, nor their 1st century authorship and dating.
I'll check him out. Im not sure what your definition of mainstream scholars is but most evangelical christians i speak with in the US don't doubt the accuracy - and they compose a large group of people.
Fantastic. Would be great to hear how you find him.
"most evangelical christians [...] don't doubt the accuracy"
By "mainstream scholars" I don't necessarily mean evangelical Christians, just non-fringe ancient historians or textual critics.
In this respect, Ehrman himself is interesting, because he's not actually the most extreme liberal, and you can find Ehrman himself correcting the fringe scholars when he wants to. When Ehrman is writing for the masses, however, you almost want to say to him "you should know better". After all, he had the privilege of sitting under Metzger.
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Before, I'd thought of science as absolute truths about the universe which we could only discover, linearly. Afterwards, I learned that science is as much a political process as any other major institution, that scientists are not immune to human psychological biases, that the process of getting scientific theories accepted is just as subject to selection bias ("the old generation dying out") as the things it studies, and that science is effective to the extent that it acknowledges these biases in a way that faith does not.
For a real mindbender, read Kuhn (history of science), Carlota Perez (economics), and Stephen Jay Gould (evolutionary biology) in rapid succession. There're very similar ideas there around paradigm shifts, selection bias, and responses to environmental change there, appearing in many disparate domains.
Kuhn needs to be put into perspective, though (just as Feyerabend). See Chalmer's What is this thing called Science? for an introduction and much more material. And Gould has some good stuff (The Mismeasure of Man is challenging), but he's controversial, and some of his ideas (NOMA, ie the notion that religion and science are "non-overlapping magisteria") are, dunno, not convincing.
"Extreme Ownership" - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin : This is an amazing book which will make you stop complaining no matter what. It's all on you to make it better. Such an amazing book which changed my perspective on external world dependencies.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848190-extreme-ownersh...
"Tools of Titans" - Tim Ferriss : This book can be seen a summary of 15 most popular non-fiction books. There are a lot of guests in this book with a diverse back ground. There is wide wisdom you can pick on every page of this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31823677-tools-of-titans
Oh man, this is such a pretentious answer, but Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein. Seriously.
The basic idea of the book that you cannot think straight until you understand the hard limits of thought, and respect it can never be more than a supplement to performing useful actions in the world, is a lesson I've never unlearned.
I read a book about personality types (Myer's Briggs) and wanted to learn more, which led me to Carl Jung as a teenager. This opened up the whole world of classical books to me and I somehow ended up mixed up with the ancient Greeks (Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, some stoics, some skeptics) on a daily basis for over a decade after that. I didn't agree with much of it, but it turned my world upside down and gave me some amazing thinking tools.
Then Nietzsche did the same years later - he truly can't be appreciated until you've spent 5-10 years reading philosophy searching for 'truth' and being frustrated.
Finally, engineering school really twisted things again and made me confront the difficulty of maintaining fundamental skepticism in the face of reliable scientific law (or even the occasional deterministic program).
The book that have an impact on me is “so good, that they can’t ignore you”.
I started reading this book after my startup failed. I was looking for a job and I have this mindset that I need to find this perfect job to fit my passion. So the job hunting took sometime.
Picking up this book helps me understand there is not much need for passion but more on the development of my talent and skills. It’s listed as a self-help book so some might dislike it.
However the book did shed a different light on me. I’m in my new role for about two years now and within this period I gotten a double promotion.
Do I love the work I do? Not really, it’s product ops mainly so people find you to fix “issues”. However it does improved my skills a lot especially in the area of managing cross functional teams .
I think this book is great for people going through career transition. And it changed the way I view passion.
I recently read that one and it made me see my profession as a software engineer in a new light.
At work, I catch myself using possessive pronouns about code a lot for example. It really shone a nice light on the human element and how we reason and think about code and programming.
The Lessons of History written in 1968 by historians Will Durant and Ariel Durant. They distill a lifetime of research into a small 100 page book. The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, the culture of man.
Annals of the Former World by McPhee. It's a geologic history of the United States, from Precambrian time to now, as well as a history of human understanding of geology.
The intersection of billions of years of history, a scale where ice ages come and go like thunder storms, where mountains go up and down in quick succession, with the human timescale of scientific progress, really altered my perspective on a lot of things. We didn't have plate tectonics until the 1970's. My grandfather went to high school and college learning the classical theories of orogenies, and just two generations later, a blink of an eye relative to the movements of our Earth, human understanding of what shapes our world is massively advanced.
It's made me think about every human endeavor differently. Everything we do and are is so ephemeral.
One book not already mentioned is Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity. It makes fairly broad and sweeping analysis, so there is plenty to disagree with. That said, this book opened my eyes to important concerns about language and cognition that, only in retrospect, seem glaringly obvious.
* Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by K. Anders Ericsson
Much of our upbringing and education is underpinned by the assumption that "talent" is a real thing. Peak dismantles that assumption pretty thoroughly. The implications are far-reaching and I recommend it to everyone.
When he says anything, he means anything. How to measure the value of a human life, how to estimate things you know nothing about (like the gestation period of an African elephant), and how to get better at measuring things with limited information.
‘Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect’ by Ian Stevenson.
This book radically changed my understanding of reality, consciousness and the nature of self. I’m a very skeptical and scientifically minded person; this book looks at the subject of life after death from an evidence based approach.
The book that changed my life is "The Brothers Karamazov," by Dostoevsky. Nowhere I found such a great depth and insight into the nature of human freedom, and the reading questioned many beliefs I had at the time about human nature and the meaning of life.
I distinctly remember reading and re-reading the chapter telling the tale of the Grand Inquisitor. Only after two or three readings of the whole novel I began to grasp Dostoevsky's answer to the Inquisitor's objections, which are not stated plainly in the text but are instead suggested by the way the narrative unfolds.
I have read many other books by Dostoevsky (my other favorites are "The Devils" and "The Idiot"), but "The Brothers Karamazov" is still my favorite.
There is one book that finally made me to do some work and it's called "The Midas Method".
Some of it describes a set of rules (methods) we should live by to make the luck leaning towards us.
Simple things as "Watch your language! Never say “I can’t do that”" or "Never blame anything or anybody else for your misfortune" And my favorite is "Grab every opportunity which is going" You'll keep yourself busy and open for the world.
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Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.
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"Dumbing us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. The author is a decades-long schoolteacher. Throughout this book, I got to know the history of compulsory government-provided schooling as we know it and began to question whether such a system is even necessary.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The lesson on the surface is that you need to practice/work to become good at anything, but the deeper message for me was that everything is basically preordained. People are acting based on what's logical to them, which is the sum of their experiences. Since we can't control what happens to us, we aren't really in control of what we do either. I mean, the future is still wide open, but looking back, everything happens for a reason, and those reasons are pretty much out of our control. I'm not entirely certain that was the message Gladwell was trying to portray, but that's how I've viewed life ever since I read that book.
I only read 10% of a book called "Ego is the enemy". I don't intend on reading it anymore. It was recommended by a few developers I respect.
There was one specific anecdote that rung true. Jackie Robinson, the first African American baseball player. It took a lot of guts to actually make in the MLB. First to get in athletically. Second to not lose his cool, because of racial segregation. Third, to actually be recognized as Rookie of the year. He had a lot of opposition against him but never got triggered. And he was a role model for many.
There's some other good books, like the "Toyota Way" and "Thinking fast and slow"
One book that changed my perception about things is "Commentaries on Living by J. Krishnamurti". I used to have pretty rigid belief about things and ways of living. This book really helped me identify and break down the walls I had built for myself that prevented me from growing.
There are lots of books that changed the way I think. An example that may be of special interest to the HN community is "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport (http://calnewport.com/books/so-good/). I have spent lots of time finding the perfect career, until I learned from this book that you must stop finding the perfect career. Just do something that you like enough to spend lots of time on it. Everything else will come. It was very liberating.
Louis Menand’s _The Metaphysical Club_, from 2001. It is a combined history of William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and their later acolyte, John Dewey, as well as of their related ideas, which go by the shorthands Pragmatism and Pluralism. Although a formal history, Menand is a fine writer and there’s much practical philosophy in here, much of which serves as the wellspring for other contemporary books cited in comments here. It was a great book for understanding America, strains of American thought, and how not to be wrong.
No specific book changed my thinking on "almost everything." Mostly old age did that, and the process of attaining old age. Some of that process included books, and some of those are listed here.
> every action humans take can be traced back to an incentive
It's not enough to know that an action traces back to an incentive. You also need to know which of multiple possible incentives might be the incentive. The obvious incentive is often not the actual incentive, as we're seeing demonstrated in current American and British politics.
What I find mind blowing was the amount of classical literature there is: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLghL9V9QTN0jTgA1qrhWr... I recommend this video sequence because it can give you (a bit of cheating) a map of classical books and for people like JP who quote Dostoevsky novels like: Notes and Three Brothers, at least have a glimpse of which one are worthy diving deep into.
This is the book that really got me into programing. I'd tried programming before, and had even studied a C++ textbook and written some simple programs. But it really hadn't clicked. Graham's points about the fundamental expressiveness of different programming languages really blew my mind. This started a chain of "learn language X and try to build Y" for different values of X and Y.
Part of what I realized is how much I had been hampered by how difficult C++ is to pick up (especially with the IDEs of the early 2000s, which would give you an "empty" project with a couple hundred lines of code in it). When I realized that to write a Perl script, all I needed to do was open Notepad and start from an empty file, it was just so unbelievably liberating. That and also, obviously, just how much easier dynamic languages are to work with in general. Of course I eventually came back to C++, but that was the spark which kicked off a journey that lead to me flying through CS in college and eventually ending up in a PhD program.
Edit: Fixed link. Note also that the essays are available online for free, though you have to reverse engineer the reading order from the table of contents.
Due to its simplicity and truthfulness for me: Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi.
Not only did it help me see that no matter how accomplished/famous/old someone is, there is the demystifying shared thing that we all do, but also humbled me when I get too full of my skills or experience with anything in life. It’s a pretty silly thing but always pops in my mind and changes my behavior almost instantly.
Obviously it didn’t change the way I think about everything but changed the way I think about everything with people and social situations.
A manager at work (not mine) gave me a sliver of a book called "What Does it All Mean?" by Thomas Nagel. It prompted me to appreciate and learn more about philosophy. It also helped me learn to enjoy things like philosophy for their own sake, outside of an academic setting. The book itself is a nice read and very short. That gift was a much appreciated positive spark, and it affected how I think about almost everything, though not so much directly.
I think about "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell a lot directly. Over time I've appreciated it as a way to both motivate me to work towards success, and also to cope with feeling not successful enough. The fact reflecting on that book is helpful for both sides of that coin is part of its staying power for me, I think.
"The State" by Franz Oppenheimer was also impactful. It was the first kind of political theory that really gripped me. The idea that the State was something to analyze and scrutinize in the way that he did was exhilarating. Touched a nerve that resulted in significantly more questioning of authority and critical thinking about power, generally.
"why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby" made a difference, too. The book itself is great and it helped me to learn Ruby, and it also introduced me to _why. His work made me view programming as not just a craft, like building a chair, but also as an art form, like writing a book. It can be a way to express yourself and be creative, and programmers can, indeed, be creative, too!
Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations/Accountability
I read these books when I first got into management and they changed so many things about the way I communicate with others. Everything in the books is obvious but things I was never taught growing up.
Learning how to understand others' intentions by the totality of their body language along with what they say is incredibly important. It's helpful for diffusing tense situations, understanding whether or not strangers pose a threat, easing tension in a relationship, etc.
Made me see the world, my life, my code and my desires, everything in a total different way.
It's like when you want to an apple then someone points out that a hole the worm's head can be seen out of it, or that actually the painting you're about to throw is masterpiece worth millions.
Gives light were it's all darkness.
It's really life changing, at least, it was for me.
I read the book “The anatomy of peace” 16 months ago, and it has impacted my life in more ways than I ever would have thought possible.
It helped me understand how I created all the trouble I have experienced in my life, why I never became “succesful” and why I had felt so stuck most of my life.
I now understand how my mindset, how I see the person in front of me, either as a person or as an object, has a greater impact on my results than anything else.
Even on my abillity to be unstuck, to change my mind, to moce fast and break things.
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown revolutionized my understanding of anxiety, guilt, shame, vulnerability, courage and trust. For most of my life, I could not distinguish between the feeling of anxiety and the feelings of guilt, shame, and vulnerability, nor did I understand or see all the different forms of armor I donned in order to avoid feeling vulnerable. This book clarifies the distinction between these feelings, describes the different forms of armor we wear, and discusses how building shame resilience and daring greatly are critical to forming deeper and more meaningful connections with the people around us.
The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples by John Gottman revolutionized my understanding of trust and relationships. Reading it was like flipping on the light switch after stumbling around in the dark for decades.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson revolutionized my understanding of myth, faith, suffering, evil, meaning, and responsibility. It illuminates the underlying ailments that plague our modern societies and describes what we can and should do, as individuals, to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. It reaffirms the basic tenant of many world religions that suffering is real, and that the intentional creation of unnecessary suffering is evil. And finally, it makes a case that meaning is derived from responsibility.
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 "The Origins of Political Order". An absolute must-read.
I think most books I read should impact me, given the time invested in selecting and reading them.
My most recent example is Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, it made me realize how difficult it would be for us to communicate with, or even comprehend the motives of a sentient alien. I wrote a full review here: http://www.alphadevx.com/a/519-Review-of-Solaris-by-Stanisla...
* The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It introduced me to an entire world I didn't know was there before. Straight up Vipassana meditation is better, but it's less accessible, and this book started me on the path. Parts of it cross the woo threshold for me, but the book can fundamentally alter how one sees reality. We are not really how we appear to be. It is possible to greatly attenuate suffering. There is no taking his word for it; you can see it for yourself.
I read a lot. But no one book has changed the way I think about almost everything, persistently. It will be foolish to assume, some book will magically do that.
All good ideas help, and we test those theories and decide our ourselves to keep the idea or ignore it. We are sum total of our ideas and behaviors, and it constantly evolves. Good books help with forming good ideas, and clear thinking. It varies from person to person. It could be Quran, a psychology book, or a puzzle book.
Books:
1. Sapiens - It finally connected a lot of dots on how things work in the world (money, governments, religions, companies etc) and how humans communicate at scale.
2. On intelligence - Gives you a decent perspective on how brains work. How they are like learning centers that are continuously trying to figure out what is going on around us. How they store and recall that data and finally how they use our senses to put a lot of context around different concepts like objects, ideas, poems, people etc. Also it shares some examples to prove that our brain is not limited by its senses. Those examples just blew my mind wide open.
3. Biography of Einstein - I always imagined that people like Einstein are lone geniuses and worked in a silo. But it was pretty clear from the bio that even Einstein learnt and practiced his science by bouncing off ideas and fine tuned his explanations through many many different and equally brilliant people. And the role that his parents played in constantly keeping him challenged.
Non book:
Blue planet 2: You think aliens would be different than us? Check out some of the species on our own planet and no animal will ever seem alien to you anymore.
Some ideas that got triggered outside of a particular book:
1. All non natural things around us that I thought were super complicated were actually built by humans like me. Rules, bridges, planes, rockets, buildings, religions etc. This opened my mind that even I am capable to contributing in a significant manner.
2. Happiness is not the goal. It is an incentive to get the goal. This keeps me motivated to think beyond the current issues and focus on the future.
Principles by Ray Dalio. It provides a good principle-based decision making framework, and I also found his own principles to be interesting and insightful.
Two books by Erich Fromm, a German/American philosopher of the 50s/60s: The Art of Loving. Some points: To him love is a skill that has to be practiced and learned, love in a relationship is constant hard work, love of another is only possible if you first love yourself, and you cannot love another human being if you do not love mankind. A little bit later he published The Sane Society, a Marxist critique of capitalist society, how consumerism leads to self-alienation etc.
>Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism have in common that they offered the atomized individual a new refuge and security. These systems are the culmination of alienation. The individual is made to feel powerless and insignificant, but taught to project all of his human powers into the figure of the leader, the state, the "fatherland," to whom he has to submit and whom he has to worship. He escapes from freedom and into a new idolatry. All the achievements of individuality and reason, from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century are sacrificed on the altars of the new idols. ...built on the most flagrant lies, both with regard to their programs and to their leaders.
Sounds familiar?
- Donna Meadows' Thinking in Systems, how to model anything as an interconnected system, and how unseen positive and negative feedback loops cause unintended consequences in any system
- Anne Lammott's Bird by Bird - I have to write a lot for my work and this is the best primer on getting things out the door
- For the Australians: Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu, on how early white European settlers completely misunderstood indigenous agriculture, all the things that were lost when Europeans settled Australia, and what we can use today. Gives you a VERY different look at Australian history.
- Ha-Joon Chang's Economics: The User's Guide. Just came out, an absolutely amazing intro and look at modern economics, the flimsiness of neoliberalist thought, and how we need to use the tools of each economic school of thought to think about the economy, not getting stuck on one school
A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley (and her corresponding Learning How To Learn course) absolutely changed my approach to learning and studying.
Applying the lessons made my studying many times more productive. After getting Bs and Cs in many of my undergrad classes, I recently finished a five course post-bacc CS program with all As. While Dr. Oakley isn't the only reason, it absolutely helped!
Jaynes's Origin of Consciousness -- not only because it's a fascinating argument in itself, but because it really makes me wonder, if Jaynes was right, is there another population-wide "upgrade" in store for humanity. If so, what it would look like?
Also, now that we know more about epigenetics, that's another really interesting framework in which to contemplate Jaynes's thesis.
Bastiat was a great French Economist and liberal political philosopher. He been considered as more of a popularizer than an original thinker, but that's unwarranted. The Law is the greatest work of classical liberal political though that I have encountered. In school we all read Locke's Second Treatise of Government, but we should have first read The Law. It's very short--more of a long essay than a full length book--but it packs an earth shattering wallop.
Bastiat is also an intellectual ancestor of the Austrian School of economics. The famous Hazlitt book, Economics in One Lesson, is an extended meditation on Bastiat's classic essay, That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen [2], which is the origin of the Broken Window Fallacy.
Sick Societies by Robert Edgerton changed my view on pretty much all aspects of mankind.
By giving vivid examples of failing or badly functioning and "maladaptive" (processes in) various (indigenous) societies he made made me value our current state of existence very much: Government, rights, laws, police, infrastructure, jobs, and all that really are a great achievement of mankind.
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz was one of the most profound books I've ever read. It combines cognitive behavior techniques with cybernetics (developed by Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann) to help manage ones minds and to cultivate a healthier, more beneficial thought garden. Upon further reflection, this book is steeped in stoic principles and practices.
On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins changed the way I see myself and the world in a big way. I don't necessarily see his approach as a pathway to AI (though I don't dismiss it), but I thought it had some easily understandable insight into how our minds work.
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries got me thinking about applying the scientific method to things I never thought of before.
For me it was this free book available on https://www.core-econ.org/
It is an easy to approach economics book. It helped me understand how a few simple ideas like free markets, firms and technological innovation led to the creation of the amazing prosperity of our civilization.
I think I got about halfway through Principles and just could make myself finish it. I get that the guy is super methodical, but it seemed too much for me.
Dale Carnegie's Winning Friends and Influencing people is so simple, but the technique really works.
Become genuinely interested in people, make them feel good, they will appreciated it. The advice is essentially don't be a jerk and do talk to people about the things they are interested. When you start doing that it's like playing life on easy mode.
In his latest collection of essays originally published in Natural History magazine, paleontologist Gould examines diverse and diverting topics. The title piece refers to toes, and we learn that five is not necessarily the optimum number. Gould re-examines the work of astronomer Edmund Halley and 16th-century Irish Archbishop James Ussher, who pinpointed the moment of creation (Oct. 23, 4004 B.C.);
Edit: I see The Selfish Gene listed here quite a bit. It might be of special interest to you to read Dawkins "rival" on the other side of the pond - Stephan Jay Gould. His "punctuated equilibrium" resonates with me more than Dawkins take on evolution, simply because it involves something less "neat".
Plus, even as a child I found Gould made me laugh out loud sometimes.
1984 changed the way I perceive language and culture permanently. The notion that if certain words no longer exist in the language, then the associated idea will disappear from the culture was Earth-shaking to me.
Another idea that book drove home was the power for the media and the utter control of your life a government can exert when it completely controls it.
"The Problem of Political Authority: The Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey".
I'm wrecked after this book. Hated that I couldn't find a good way to disagree with it. Feels like so many nice things I thought about the world were ruined, and will never come back.
The implications permeate so much of our daily life.
The book Momo by the German author Michael Ende is fantastic. It has completely changed the way I think about time, patience and listening to other people. It is a children's book, but also highly recommended for adults - there is also an English version available, but I don't know how good the translated version is.
"Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations" by Robert D. Austin, Dorset House, 1996. Changed my entire world view. The basic idea - which Austin arrives at using an offshoot of game theory - is that all incentive systems will be gamed by the people to which they are applied, and there is no way around it.
Gibson's "The Peripheral." Not just a prescient story, but a veiled commentary on how easily we're using technology as a proxy for being there, and all the psychological changes that come along for the ride. "Neuromancer" was meh for me, but this one really reads well on all levels.
Farenheit 451. It made me look at the things we have in the world today differently. I personally think it came closer than 1984 at predicting the future. The attitudes of the general society in that world reminded me of the way certain topics, information and discourse have become taboo and society has become the arbiters of what information is deemed allowable. The way everyone is expected to numb themselves with drugs, their giant tv screens and their ear buds and anyone that would rather learn is looked at with suspicion.
I never actually read it until around the time the iPhone came out and everyone was walking around with those white earbuds. I remember sitting on the bus reading and I looked up and stared around at the people on their phones with their white earbuds and all I could think was holy fuck Ray Bradbury was right.
Not a book but a graphic novel, _Lucifer_ by Mike Carey. It was a spinoff of Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_ which explored the Devil's life after quitting his job as ruler of Hell. In case you were thinking about the TV show–no, it's nothing like that. Lucifer in the GN, i.e. the fallen angel Samael, is a complex character but in a way he's driven by one simple desire, to be free from his Father's Plan for Creation. To not be controlled by predestination in a clockwork universe. To escape from a controlling parent.
Mixed in with the magical fantasy and high adventure, there are major philosophical themes of what it means to be free–and for Lucifer it is to absolve oneself from all concept of or involvement with worshipping a deity. It was a big influence on my thinking about religion and philosophy.
Inner game of tennis - Timothy Gallwey classic on sports psychology. unpacks ego and its role in learning and performance. from amateur to elite levels. introduces concepts like 2 "selfs". reading this book was a very religious experience and dare i say improved my weekend tennis too.
I'd done a lot of computer systems and engineering control courses but this book put systems into perspective for me. They're everywhere and we're embedded in them. If you want to change the world this is the book to read. Its also a quick read.
You have to include Robert Greene's '48 Laws of Power'. Whether you choose to participate in power plays and scheming and maneuvers, it is exceedingly valuable to understand them and their perpetrators. This is the modern version of Macchiavelli, full of historical examples.
"Darwin's Cathedral" by David Sloan Wilson allowed me to come to peace with religion. Now I have a framework to understand why religions do what they do.
Reading "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer and "Private Truths, Public Lies" by Timur Kuran prepared the ground for it!
Why Nations Fail really helped give me deep intuitions around politics. It taught me that political stability is immensely hard to achieve and very rare. I've since come to see every situation as a political situation. This helps me reason about my environment much more clearly.
Modern Physics and Anti-physics by Adolph Baker. Understanding what science is as process and theory helped me distinguish science and pseudo-science in a major way.
Also: A Pattern Language, The Design of Everyday Things, and An Introduction to General System Thinking, the latter by Gerald Weinberg
The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner. It's about Bell Labs and the people behind it.
The idea that a company would have some kind of special research division where people can pretty much do as they wish (just "improve the product") feels like something in a fantasy world. But it existed, and it gave us amazing inventions that fast forwarded technology and improved the lives of everyone, and barely anyone even knows about it! Lasers, the transistor, fiber optics, UNIX, the cell network, even friggin information theory.
Even the [eventual] HQ building was designed in a interesting way. They had purposely long hallways of offices, so whenever you had to go to lunch (or the bathroom) you would inevitably be 'caught' by coworkers, forcing interaction.
"The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916" by Alistair Horne
Details the battle of Verdun (France v Germany), one of the longest and bloodiest battles of WW1 with around 700000 dead, more than 1 man killed every minute for 10 months. A slaughter of men by machinery. I've read a bunch of books about the great wars and they are all affecting, some of them deeply, but this one showed me in stark relief the mindless brutality and utter futility of war. People talk of wars as necessary, of actions as heroic. It's sad that a civilized species, capable of high reasoning, can still resort to base violence so easily. It wasn't very long ago, and there's been a lot of violence since, some of it on comparable scales. We don't learn much.
I was blown away by Erwin Schrödinger's "What is Life?".
Just using pure reason and inference he not only made accurate predictions about DNA he also inspired a whole generation of physicists to switch to molecular biology and discover the fundamental building blocks of Life.
That really made me aware of all the things people do to try to influence other people. I probably read that book 15 years ago, but I still recognize sales tactics based on principles in that book. It helped me to be more aware of attempts at manipulation when people are trying to sell things. It had a big effect on what I noticed going on in the world.
It's really more about human psychology and how people attempt to influence each other than it is a book about selling.
Surprised not to have seen it elsewhere, but I remember telling my mom that we began studying astronomy in grade school (5th or 6th?) and she gave me Cosmos by Carl Sagan. I didn't know there was a TV series for it at the time, where reading it truly blew my mind that there were other galaxies and stellar objects beyond the Milky Way, and how happenstance humanity's origin story began. It also provided a great foundation for understanding what future missions would explore: finding habitibility zones outside of the earth, probes zooming to the edges of our galaxy, radio telescopes designed to listen for signals from far away, and space telescopes expanding our map of the cosmos just to name a few.
Possibly a controversial choice but "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek has had at least a subtle influence on almost every political economic belief I hold.
As I side note I now have 10 books in my amazon shopping cart. This thread proved to be pretty dangerous.
The Moral Animal had a big influence on me. "a 1994 book by Robert Wright, in which the author explores many aspects of everyday life through evolutionary biology" (wikipedia).
I'm not sure it's the best now but it was my introduction to it at the time.
1491, and 1493 by Charles C. Mann. These books completely changed my worldview about the scale and complexity of human development in the Americas before European contact. They also opened my eyes to how much older globalization is than we normally think.
1) Carlos Castaneda's first three "Don Juan" books: read them while I was in med school in the early 1970s and they ALMOST made me drop out, they were so powerful (then). I looked at one recently and thought "meh." People change.
"The Power of Positive Thinking" — I read this when I was in junior high and a real jerk. It instantly ended my jerkitude and put me on a much better path.
Resilience Thinking, by Walker and Salt, is a concise and clear presentation of what makes complex things resilient, and how it can go wrong. I see the ideas from there everywhere from ecosystems to business. This one really made it much easier to think about the big picture and the long tail of consequences in otherwise messy systems.
Complexity, by Mitchell, is an introductory look at complex systems that changed the way I see the systems in the world and sent me off on a long tangent to learn more.
Life's Ratchet, by Hoffann, is just plain mind-blowing, or at least it was for me. It's about the inner mechanics of living cells, and does a really good job of conveying how insanely complex life is.
The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox, by Richard Fobes. The brilliant description of radial outlines in this book gave me a repeatable process for coming up with creative solutions which I have applied to countless problems for over 20 years.
The Chalkbox Kid, because I read it when I was 10 and it was the first real book I read from cover to cover which wasn't a small children's book. It's a good story, too.
More recently, the short novel The Machine Stops blew me away with its prescience.
An old statistics professor recommended I read The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. The book's voice has some ego and it's unnecessarily verbose at times, but it changed the way I think about modeling, forecasting, and day-to-day assumptions.
* The Alchemist - the closest thing in my life to a religious text. Just a beautiful story that I can recall at any time for some calm.
* Desert Solitaire - just read this recently and it gave me an entirely new outlook on the relationship between humans and nature.
* Don Quixote - I was blown away by how a book that is ~600 years old could make me laugh and keep me interested. Changed how I think about people 'a long time ago' since they could enjoy the same books I do.
* House of Leaves - this one just split open my brain in an irreversible way, sort of like how you hear people describe certain drugs.
Skinner's views on human behavior evolved a bit after this book was publish until he died but this book was my first contact with his ideas.
This book changed the way I view humans (myself included). It made me more empathic.
It allowed me to unified many concepts of human/animal behavior and AI.
This is crazy but Peter Thiel and Blake Masters' book Zero to One changed the way I thought about everything. Thiel's thoughts were so contrarian to everything I had learned or thought I knew that it literally changed my reality.
It was kind of like when I learned how to program - what I read in his book - gave me a new lens to interpret how or what I saw in the world. It created a crack that made me wonder what else I wasn't seeing or able to see.
There was a page in there about secrets in plain sight and it bothered me for years because I couldn't understand what he meant until I finally read Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday.
Stephen Covey 7 Habits. Not so much the habits themselves, but rather the ideas presented. Specifically: principle-centered life, character ethic vs. personality ethic, circle of concern and circle of influence, etc.
There are 3 for me:
I agree about Freakanomics - it definitely got me thinking about how economics rules the world in one way or another.
The New Jim Crow - this gave me a way to frame structural racism and its impact now, in today's society.
The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football - I read this in high school. And it really gave me an understanding on how sports reflects our society's structure and values in the narrow sense. And got me thinking about how, more broadly, pop culture is a really good lens to use to understand our culture whether it is sports, tv, music or mass media.
Sounds nerdy and specialized, but Abelson & Sussman's SICP; 1st read an early draft in a CS class ~1985 and it changed the way I thought about computers, programing, science and problem solving forever...
The Better Angels of Our Nature - Steven Pinker. A mammoth book but this is because it covers so much. Everyone time I put it down I was left with something to reflect on human nature and how far we've come!
The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib
Totally changed my view of running a business and gave me real structure and clarity about marketing is and how to effectively do it as a small business.
Highly recommend if like you are like I was - wondering when and how the next client was going walk in the door
"The Apple Grower" by Michael Phillips [Chelsea Green] - its technical insights aside, it showed me that it's possible to attain proficiency and maybe even excellence at something, no matter how daunting it may be, though sheer fanatical dedication.
"Old Southern Apples" by Lee Calhoun, as above but more about the potential wisdom and benefit in pursuing the quixotic.
"Beethoven's Letters" by LVB trans. Kalischer [Dover] - made me realize it's OK to struggle mightily with everyday difficulties even if you're shooting for the loftiest goals.
Arthur Clarke's Childhood's end. I know it's fiction but it left me speechless. And aside from the descriptions of technology foreseen at that it was written, I think it's timeless.
“No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.”
- The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (there is absolutely nothing quite like it, and it taught me to laugh - or at least giggle - at anything)
- Dune (the notion of mental discipline, at least as idealized by Frank Herbert, made an impression on me)
- Sherlock Holmes (focused awareness and logic)
- Godel, Escher, Bach - The Eternal Golden Braid (multiple takes on awareness, logic and creativity)
There are more, but I tend to avoid Malcom Gladwell style books (and Freakonomics uses a lot of the extrapolation-by-slingshot-logic approach) and the like because they play upon our biases and are often quickly disproved.
When I was a teenager I read "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant. I hadn't had much exposure to philosophy before, but it sparked my interest in philosophy at a relatively young age. It covers the most widely known Western philosophers, one philosopher per chapter, and was written for a mass audience. I don't recall a whole lot about the book itself (other than thinking it was fascinating at the time), but it was very influential to me because of the foundation it established, and all the other stuff it inspired me to read and learn and think about later in life.
The other book that feels most influential to me is "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. I read it many years ago when I was in college and studying CS. Maybe I just read it at the right time in my life, but I remember loving everything about it and being fascinated by all the different topics from math/science/CS/AI/history that it touched on while exploring its central thesis. In really broad strokes, the book is an exploration of logical paradoxes and the insights we can draw from them. It ultimately leads to a focus on the concept of recursion (in nature, in the human mind, in mathematics, in CS and AI, etc.), and how certain patterns of recursion found in math, nature, and the mind could form the basis of creativity, inspiration, natural diversity, human intelligence, etc.
But that's selling it short. It's a huge book that ranges over so many topics that it can seem overwhelming. I devoured it at the time, and it fired my imagination for many years later.
It's been 20-30 years since I read either book, so I can't say if they would hold up for me now. Maybe. But they introduced me to so many different ideas that led to so many more ideas and lines of reasoning throughout the rest of my life. For better or worse, I would be a different person if it weren't for those books.
1. First, Break All The Rules
2. The Richest Man in Babylon
3. In The Company of Others
4. The Algorithm Design Manual (when I was 19 I went from consulting to FTE and this gave me a jump in knowledge)
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.
Of all the books I read - fiction and non fiction, wonderful ideas in SF and Carl Sagan - I'd have to single out Selfish Gene, as it single-handedly changed my perspective and mental/internal framework of the universe. I struggled philosophically with questions of consciousness and our place & meaning in the universe.
Note that I cannot always wholeheartedly, universally recommend all his later philosophical / atheism books to a wider audience, Selfish Gene is a no-brainer to me.
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Close second is Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.
- The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan - It gave me the tools required to cut through bullshit and helped me free myself from the shackles of a religious upbringing
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - Gave me the courage to look at things differently when everyone thinks we know it all
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel - It made me question what I was doing professionally and I now have a list of questions to answer whenever I am in a startup to help guide me
- Compersion by Hypatia From Space - It help remove limits to how I can love and care for the people that are important to me.
I'm reading 'The Demon Haunted World' at the moment - "Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practise these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along." From 1997. Very prescient. We've a mountain of suckers... a Suckerberg.
Everything from leadership to how your mission needs to speak to people's reptilian brain first, because that's how people ultimately make their decisions.
It helped me think about the deep motivations that should drive me to build a successful company. Apart from making money. And all the benefits that comes with thinking from Why, to How and then to What.
It was an eye-opener for me. And it's full of real-world stories to really make you understand his points.
I highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Simon Sinek himself, on Audible.
In a nutshell: The mental models we typically use to think about and understand the behavior of organizations such as corporations and governments are deeply wrong.
"But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past" by Chuck Klosterman was very influential in getting me to step back and question all my assumptions.
It is the story of Beowulf, told from the monster's point of view. It underscores the constant internal struggle between nihilistic despair and finding meaning in life (for yourself and others). It strikes a chord with Ozymandias[0].
It is primarily responsible for me abandoning my strong Catholic upbringing (and, ironically, despite John Gardner himself being a Christian).
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. I used to think of the world mostly in terms of dramatic events, heroes and villains. I now mostly see systems and incentives, patterns and trends.
The Selfish Gene by Dawkins, back when he was more young and idealistic. It changed my relationships with people. Recently reading Sapiens I recognised the same qualities in the writing.
I highly recommend Jean Case's book "Be Fearless: 5 Principles for a Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose." It's packed with some incredible stories (some you'll know of, others will be new to you) about people overcoming their fears to create change. (Full disclosure: I work for Jean so this is somewhat of a shameless plug, but I promise the book is amazing!) https://readbefearless.com/
* The Selfish Gene - our bodies are vessels for DNA as they travel through time. Also colony insects and birds are fascinating.
* Thinking Fast and Slow - study after study shows that we exhibit so, so many cognitive biases, as our minds take shortcuts. there are some things you can do to recognize and mitigate these biases.
Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.
Marvin Harris' theories of material anthropology. I can't one-line the meaning behind his findings and theories, because it's wonderfully complex.
It's an explanation that makes sense out of otherwise nonsensical human habits of cultures (tribal, ancient and modern).
If you're curious and want to read something enjoyable—he's a decent writer—check out "Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches" (preferably one of the later editions), or for something a little denser: "Cannibals and Kings".
Not a book but the novella “the machine stops” by E. M. Forster. I read this in the late nineties and it still pops up in my head frequently — especially in our age of the internet.
Reading Rand’s essays both made me appreciate her views more and made me cautious to accept her epistemology as a whole. I don’t consider myself an Objectivist, but I still consider her work to be a strong influence on my life.
Likewise. In addition, The Fountainhead was, IMO, better written... and it has the additional perk of being shorter than Atlas Shrugged. If anyone was thinking of sampling Rand, I'd almost always suggest starting with The Fountainhead.
Fair points. After about 75% you can stop reading Atlas Shrugged. I just found the whole idea of the railroad, and the battle between Mooch, Boyle, and Jim Taggart, versus Dagny, Reardon, and Eddy Willard to be fascinating.
Agreed, Fountainhead was the first book I read, thouroughly enjoyed it. Atlas Shrugged, I was looking forward to bury myself in it, but it was hard to finish.
A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander.
This is the original "pattern" book. About architecture and living spaces and exactly what makes a good place to be in so good.
Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation" [1]. This book basically shaped my views on science, philosophy, art, literature, religion, music, politics and architecture, in a very profound way. The first volume is incredibly accessible, highly entertaining and deeply original.
The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. This is a non-popular example, I found it because I like the series.
The book introduces the context of the scientific revolution and the thinking from which the ideas that we think of as science developed. It tells a very different story than the "dark ages to enlightenment" narrative and shows the seriousness and depth of thought at the time and also of subjects that many dismiss even without thinking, such as astrology.
The Selfish Gene & The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins
Evolution is the reason we exist! Understanding how it happens and why it can lead to counterintuitive outcomes is very important. He also narrates his own audiobooks and is excellent at it.
The Blank Slate & The Better Angels of our Nature by Pinker
Both books counter much accepted wisdom. The second book, in particular, will make you think of humanity in a fundamentally different light.
The Black Swan & Fooled by Randomness by Taleb
The role of chance in everyday life! It plays a big role!
Dawkins: A lot of really interesting things in life are really weird and puzzling, such as sex. Literature and religion try to elucidate it, but fail to get to the bottom of it. The insights popularised by Dawkins really make a lot of sense of it.
Pinker: Absolutely. There is this notion that things were much better in the past. These books shred it to pieces. It's also worth looking at Pinker's Enlightenement Now, and Julian Simon's The State of the World, though that has a lot of libertarian propaganda in it. However, the statistics are sound.
Taleb: Not a huge fan of Taleb. The point about the role of chance is much better made, in my view, by Robert H. Frank in his Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.
TBH, Proverbs by Solomon (A Jewish King). It speaks about being a human & the repetitive behavioral patterns of humans, regardless of whatever century they were born in.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, A Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis, Feeling Good by David Burns - changed the way I see and cope with things and people that used to "cause" me lots of stress in the past.
Behave by Robert Sapolsky, The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson, Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman - we are animals shaped by evolution. The human brain isn't perfect and makes lots of silly mistakes. I learned not to belive everything I think.
"Pragmatics of Human Communication" by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, and Donald D. Jackson followed by "How Real is Real?" by the same author.
"American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America" by Colin Woodward.
The illuminating thing for me was the history of different groups, where they were from, where they settled, where they migrated and basically how these cultures remain in those areas for the most part.
Maybe I had a naive view before, but after moving from one region to another, it was enlightening to see things described this way and help understand aspects of southern culture.
For me it was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. It made me see how human conflict is a part of our nature that I needed to know better, and perhaps embrace a little at times. The book of course is about how to win in ancient warfare, but it explained this in universal terms that get to the heart of how humans engage in any sort of conflict. I've then gone on to read other great books, but this began a major evolution in my thought process about many things.
Richard Dawkin's "The selfish gene", and "The blind watchmaker". Profoundly impacted and reinforced my thinking about God and religion. "Atlas Shrugged", while very verbose, the utopia it presented was exciting and some aspects of such meritocratic community has rubbed off. Immensely helped with shedding many biases, and focus on ability, specifically in the workplace. I also think it somehow made me less empathetic.
We've all asked the questions: "What's life all about? Who am I?" This book won't give you the answers but it will show you why all the "solutions" given since the beginning of time are probably wrong. The author blends Eastern Zen with Western Psychology in a mix that will have your mind spinning right from the first page. Fair warning: You may lose your-self after reading this book.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. I love this simple framework. It's all about how to enjoy learning and improving at things. The author applies it to a wide variety of things, from art appreciation to surviving the holocaust. It really resonated with me. I believe learning anything can be fun.
Atlas Shrugged: I like this book because it attempts to show how things some people think are virtuous can be bad, and visa versa. The protagonists have a sort of honor code to them that defies common ideas of morality.
Don't Shoot the Dog: Describes how to do positive reinforcement training on dogs, horses, and even your children. People don't seem to realize how similar we are to other animals. Also, it's nice to know that positive methods can be more effective than punishments and dominance tactics.
Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop. An exploration of complex adaptive systems and emergence and how they relate to everything around us changed my worldview permanently.
For me, when I was a teenager in the 80s, "The Tao of Pooh" really shaped how I think about the nature of the world and how rebelling against so many things was really holding me back and making me frustrated. Given my current disposition, it probably needs another read after 25 years :)
This course helped me find places where i was allowing my own mind to run the show by default without thinking critically about my own motivations, thoughts, memories.
The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot when I was in my late teens. I had never heard about Buddhism before or anything like the ideas he presented.
Grant Cardone's Be Obsessed or Be Average last week.
Finally, but mostly, Maurice Nicoll's Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff, though I recommend reading what is widely considered the "introductory" text, "In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D. Ouspensky.
Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life by Wayne Dyer
Although it sounds like a self help book, it’s actually a fascinating interpretation and explanation of the Tao de Ching which was written 2500 years ago by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.
It really helped me understand the wisdom of that text, which without the accompanying interpretation by Dyer is a bit like reading Shakespeare without the notes.
I think about this book almost every day, and it truly did change my life. highly recommended.
"Feel the fear and do it anyway" by Susan Jeffers. Read it while end of my university studies and a big reason to why I moved and now lives abroad (over a decade ago now).
"The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Lots of life wisdom in there. https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/ I recommended to watch the video _after_ you read the book.
It's an outstanding book though I also liked his 'Beneath the Wheel' and 'Steppenwolf' a lot. Siddhartha has an unusual depth for the topic it tackles, namely achievement and meaning. Highly recommend, and the best part—it is free!
"Science and Sanity" by Alfred Korzybski was a good one for me. It's where we get the phrase 'the map is not the territory.' It's been a decade since I read it so I really need to pick it up again. It's a very insightful tome about the relationship between our use of language and the reality is supposedly describes, and the implications of this imprecise relationship on the quality of our thought.
Probably the two that I find myself thinking back to most often are Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlein), The Phoenix Project (Gene Kim), The Great Shark Hunt (Hunter S Thompson), Several Bukowski short stories and most recently The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake (Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, Evan Bernstein).
Says a lot about risk taking and potential rewards. It's short enough to read in one sitting, but more importantly, picking up a book like that reminds me why the world needs more risk takers.
I started reading this book because of your suggestion. Unfortunately it is at best a product of its time (1967) and at worst actively antagonistic towards the naked apes who are not straight, white, and male. I got halfway through before I had to quit. If anyone is still reading this thread, I recommend passing on this book.
Design Patterns by the Gang of Four and Power Negotiating by Roger Dawson. They both showed me that there are advanced levels to things that can be learned.
Great book about our how humans think. He breaks our slow, logical reasoning as system 2, and our fast, automatic visceral processing. He points out we might think we have control over our thoughts and actions (system 1), but more often than not our System 1 is intervening or providing the true reasoning for our decisions. Great book to introspect your decision making and that of others.
- NKS (Wolfram), among other things for the idea that sometimes reasoning backwards from what you observe cannot work.
- I read Brave New World (Huxley) when I was young, and it didn't have such a strong impression on me at the time, but it has strongly influenced some of my political takes over my whole life.
- The four steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank) showed me that there can be method to the apparent madness that is entrepreneurship.
"Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky really changed how I see the media and everything related to the media.
Like many "radicals" (it's the same for libertarians), he has great observations about the way things are, but umconvincing ideas for solutions. Oh well.
You are at least somewhat misrepresenting Chomsky, as he is notable for constantly saying that he won't offer grand plans and possible solutions.
He's one of the few public intellectuals with the humility to step away from saying "do this", and constantly speak to the power of "countless small deeds of unknown people" in creating a better society.
I guess you're right, but at least when asked about a "solution", he will speak in favor of anarcho-syndicalism. Which has an okayish track record - it usually didn't last very long but it also didn't seem to kill or subjugate anyone in its name.
"The Dictator's Handbook" by Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.
It lays out the inevitable power dynamics behind any political system, democratic, autocratic or corporate. The rules for the players are the same, despite different terrain.
If anyone thinks politics can ever really be about policy (for politicians) here is the cure. What has to be done to get power, hold on to it, and why, regardless of motives or competence.
I completely agree with Freakonomics and incentives.
I would add Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman. It too follows the thread of incentives, but also more interesting aspects of human psychology like memory, and the 2 parts of the brain. Understanding how the 2 parts of the brain are often at odds with other, has vastly changed the way I think and helped me realize times I'm susceptible to bias and misunderstanding.
For personal development, social behavior and relationships these two sets of books are the best theory available, and significantly better and more fundamental than anything else I found written on the topic.
- Models: Attract Women through Honesty + The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson
- The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy + More than Two by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert + Opening Up by Tristan Taormino
The book takes music theory as its subject, but explores perception, culture, the meaning of art, innovation, and other related ideas in its lengthy footnotes and tangents. It shows a world of practical considerations that go into art, which many would assume is primarily subjective.
Schoenberg is known as a composer for exploring atonality, and for having many students who became important composers.
"I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Legacy of Male Depression" by Terrence Real, a relational therapist.
The ideas in this 20-year-old book are just starting to catch traction, but basically it's that depression manifests differently in men than in women. This is because, the book's thesis goes, of the differences in social conditioning between men and women.
1. The first book I read that changed my view of my own mind, that is, taught me to "think about thinking", was Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I truly felt like my view of myself and the world I live in changed dramatically.
2. The second book that had a huge impact on me was Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky.
3. The third book has to be The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Alexander Solzhenitsyn (the abridged version by Edward E Ericson, Jr). When I mention this book, I meet a lot of people instantly debating the death toll numbers presented by Solzhenitsyn, but for me, the main point of the book is about complicity in the context of the Stalinist regime and complicity in evildoing more generally.
There are a few anecdotes there as well, but it's less fun than Freakonomics. Still, it explains so much about institutions, governing, and generally how societies work. It does make you rethink everything.
So this is technically to language, but as someone who writes on top of codes it gave me so much to think about I feel it still counts. Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison. The way he explores using senses, how to build metaphors, how to construct things gave me new ways to look at a lot of different things. I reread the book pretty regularly and glean something new every time.
Daniel Dennet's books - explains how complex designs like our mind can appear out of very simple rules without the need of a designer or what consciousness basically is - a high level view i.e. how can we understand it in simple terms - or what is the purpose of humor. Some examples: "Darwin's dangerous idea", "From Bacteria to Bach and Back".
I was raised in a culture where if someone has luxury items, a big house, and an expensive car, then they were rich.
The Millionaire Next Door defined wealth in a different way for me. Wealth was no longer how high your income was, but wealth become how long you could live without working. You can increase your wealth by saving/investing more and by lowering your expenses.
* Elephant in the brain - the hidden motives we all follow, should be required reading before people come up with policy improvements to the world
* Sapians - great for a global view of our history, and an understanding of how important myths and religions have been for us being successful (as protocols for getting on)
* Thinking in Systems - toolchest of mental models for dealing with complex systems
Happy by Derren Brown altered the way that I choose to approach a lot of things in life. It's essentially an intro to stoicism. Something I had never really read about before.
It was really an attitude change for me, and realising that I can only control what I can. I can't control people's reactions to that. It set me off on a bit more reading into stoicism.
Oh I loved Freakonomics!! What an excellent question. I want to propose 2 books:
1. Getting Things Done by David Allen. It really changed how I approach not only my workday but pretty much everything that could constitute "work" in my daily life. It's a bit of a learning curve to start, but once you implement GTD in your life it becomes second nature. You can learn about it here: https://gettingthingsdone.com/ and there's a good intro to it here: https://zenkit.com/en/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-getting-thin....
2. How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger. When you start thinking of plants as medicine it really changes your whole approach to food and life in general. I've started following his 'daily dozen' and I've got to say that I feel absolutely incredible. (Check out his website here: https://nutritionfacts.org/)
Amazing works of fiction that I come back to again and again include Anna Karenina and The Three Musketeers
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. It’s a slim, experimental novel with a narrator who spends every second of the book noticing smaller and smaller details about the world around him—such as the burrs on the underside of a soda can tab opening and how they can grasp a plastic straw that would otherwise float—-and what this all reminds him of.
Guns, Germs and Steel. So many types of thinking and areas of science that I wasn't aware of. Not every part of it has to be correct for it to be incredibly interesting.
I'm about 6% in to The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and I am certain that it has already changed my life. It presents the friction between the corporate optimization function (increase dividends and share value) and the basic human right to privacy and freedom that is continually being tipped in favor of the corporation. Our data has been spun to be this inconsequential means to make our life easier when in reality it is exploitable resource able to be crunched into manipulation for a profit.
It has changed my life because it has realigned my career aspirations as a software engineer.
"Das Kapital" by Karl Marx is still the most accurate analysis of the causes of economic crises. His labour theory of value gets to the root of what's going on behind the smokescreen of market forces presented as fact in western Economics courses.
"On The Road" by Jack Kerouac was a liberating, mind-expanding experience with no drugs involved. Kerouac's free-form style and open-ended approach to life made a great impression.
"Cosmic Loom" by Dennis Elwell debunked the narrow-minded, reductionist attitudes of scientists towards astrology and opened up my mind to the value of symbolism.
I think it was "The Fifth Discipline" by Peter M. Senge that described a business-style game (retail, wholesale, and production of beer) that in 95% of cases resulted in massive overproduction crisis, very much like what Marx has described. Of course, the cause was very much unlike what Marx suggested; the book is about systems thinking and this particular system was an example of a system with delays in signal passing.
That's worth knowing for some readers maybe, but for me personally after looking through the bullet points in that post, I found it didn't really apply to me.
None of the things he's criticizing were things I took away from the book. Examples, "If you're gonna go broke, go broke big"--> obviously stupid, just disregarded it; "Convinces people that college is for suckers" --> already was completing my degree, am well aware of the value of a higher education and also how it isn't for everyone, this had no impact on me whatsoever; "Advocates committing a felony: have rich friends for trading stock based on non-public inside information, he says "That's what friends are for." --> I am perfectly aware of what insider trading is and that it's a felony, again not exactly what I took away from this book.
And so on. What I took away was assets vs liabilities and using your money to make more money. That's it. And that's all I needed, that was the golden key.
In addition to books others have already mentioned, I'd put "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong".
It made me understand just how much of what I was raised believing about the history of the US was just plain mythology. It also explained why I always hated US History in school...
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry. Two people had to recommend it to me independently before I finally read it. Reading and deeply contemplating this book dramatically increased my ability to understand and predict emotionally driven behaviors. Drama in movies and in life started to make sense.
There are plenty of good reads here already but for posterity I am going to add Edward Abbey to the list. His work is a primer on what freedom is really about rather than this 'freedom' word bandied about by politicians. His work was also important to the environmental movement.
The Ophiuchi Hotline, by John Varley (and all the books that followed in the Eight Worlds Saga). Cloning, brain transfers, photosynthetic humans floating for millenia around saturn. I dedicated a significant fraction of my work career to implementing this (unsuccessfully, as you might imagine).
The latest one for me was "On intelligence". It made me understand that intelligence is not that hard to understand on a conceptual level. The book is about machine intelligence, but the most impressive thing for me was the simplicity of how Jeff Hawkins defines intelligence
Foucault's Pendulum can be a bear to get through, though lots of delightful language.
People could get different takeaways, but it made me think very deeply about falsifiability, the limits of persuasion, and the thin lines between plausible, reasonable, and likely theories about the world.
The appendices of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, followed by some of Robert Anton Wilson's other work.
Doing the experiments contained within some of his books will take you on a very rational, sensible journey to some very strange places, and may break parts of your worldview.
Mindset, by Carol Dweck. Highly Recommended. The fact that any skill can be learnt provided you work hard for it really impacted me. Also, it was one of the first books I read, which normalized the importance of hard-work - forever different after reading that book.
The thing is, if I were to die tomorrow, there are a lot of things I would do today that I would not do today if I expect to die in 40 years. So what is 'meaningful' depends entirely on your expectations. If you keep living your life as if you might die tomorrow, you'll never go to school, never have children, etc. etc.
"meaningful depends entirely on your expectations".
Totally. That's what I meant. To me personally a meaningful day means no complaints, good connections with people, have at least a positive impact on people, etc. This doesn't have to be extreme. It's a strategy to push away negative thoughts and to focus on what really matters every single day.
The best part about this book is that there's zero marketing around "how to be successful in life" or "what successful people do" or "how to become rich". But it actually describes the real way to achieve those things :) unlike 99% of books with flashy titles, etc. It's been an eye opener!
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).
Awesome, was hoping this book would show up. I only had to read the first 2 pages to know the whole of my philosophy summed up. It is not easy to read since it requires many analogous references to really apply it, but worth the effort. Definitely re-readable.
Not a full book, but one of the documents that had the most profound impact on my life was The Heidelberg Disputation by Martin Luther. It's no exaggeration to say it completely changed how I think about a wide range of topics.
A long time ago (2006), I picked up 'How to simplify your life'. I bought it off a store because it had pictures in it and I thought it would be easy reading. chuckle
It turned out to be better than it looked. I highly recommend it.
This book really highlighted for me how we literally rewrite history to suit our own prejudices, and finally taught me what "history is written by the victor" actually means (including claiming victory).
Most of Stanisław Lem's work, starting with "The Cyberiad". Some of it may be 70 years old now but universal books don't age, really. For English readers, I strongly recommend Kandel's translations.
For me, it’s How to Lie With Statitics. It opened my eyes to how much lies are in numbers. Also, another good one is 1984. It really made me think about my online life depending so much on Google.
It's written by someone who lives violence on an everyday basis, and his insights are amazing. Particularly for people who rarely experience violence, but when they do it will be catastrophic.
I think one book that changed a lot was the Qur'an - it made me an atheist. I don't come from a muslim background but it made me realize, how some religions (well at least the abrahamitic ones) came to be.
I am not a muslim and see multiple sides of islam but you cannot just say- Qu'ran you have to mention the editor as well. (Unless you read the original arabic version).
It matters a lot since I've seen eastern books having hugely varying translations.
For example, an Indian friend of mine tells me that 'I am become God ... ' is a very inaccurate representation of the original hindi text
I read various translations, scientific editions by (german) islamic schoolars - I know there are other versions out there which are more white washed.
I can especially recommend Bill Warners "An Abridged Koran", if you believe there are errors in his translation, please let us know.
Changed my perception about the state, our society, people's beliefs and media's influence. I was fascinated how Orwell was able to accurately portray the characteristics of totalitarian and authoritarian states.
This essay persuaded me to change a belief which was previously core to my belief system: that work is an inherent good. I don't think that his view of an ideal society is entirely realistic now, but as technology replaces jobs, I see Bob Black's vision of productive play to be a lot more palatable than slavishly continuing the capitalist obsession with work as work becomes more and more unnecessary.
The 4-hour work week. It's not that it had very powerful ideas or that it was well written. It opened up my 19-year old impressionable mind that _time_ is the most valuable asset.
Once I came understand that human beings are survival machines built for the single minded task of gene survival, everyone’s behavior become much more predictable.
The Lessons of History, by W. & A. Durant changed my view on several "big topics" of history and society, such as biology, religion, economics, and war.
One can't really summarize the argument. It essentially describes the structure of modern society as it's existed since, say 1960 or early. The text may seem opaque but if you read it closely, you actually need any explanatory texts, though they exist.
Honorable mention:
Game Theory Evolving, Herb Ginitus
Biochemical Individuality, Roger J. William
The Working Brain, Luria
Using Your Brain For A Change, Bandler
The User Illusion, Norretrander
How The Beattles Destroyed Rock And Roll, Elijah Wald
Mathematical Logic, Manin
The Ascent Of Man, Bronowski
The Book Of Secrets, Osho
I recommend you give the book named The Giver a read. It shows the flaws of a perfect society and how our experiences make us who we are. It's a great read.
For me the answer is any random book from Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchet. Both authors basically shaped my understabding of humour and the state of the world.
For me it was Catch-22. I read it at around 14 and it taught me that sometimes the truth is the complete opposite from what it seems, or what you're told.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell really changed the way I perceive how money works, and furthermore it drove me to take a chance at a new business project
The end of alchemy, Mervyn King. There are several very interesting points and mental models in there. Eye opening for someone that did undergrad Econ.
Programming: C Traps And Pitfalls. Most programming books are focused on the happy path; in reality we spend most of our time in the unhappy one, trying to fix or debug something. That book made it a lot more hospitable to be in that state.
My worldview-changing book was probably Stranger in a Strange Land, when I was maybe 15. I also ready Brave New World around then.
I was raised in a super religious house; for whatever reason, that one or two books started my down a path of materialism/skepticism and away from religiosity/dualism/spiritualism. It was just the start, mind you. I was probably already primed and heading that way anyway, and that just happened to be the spark. I don't mean that there were any huge insights or great revelations for me there.
the second through third book of the ender's game saga dealt a lot with how to communicate with aliens that may not communicate in any way we could really even understand, and whether or not there were beings that we would never be able to communicate with. It may sound pretty autism spectrum but it's something I often think about when communicating with other people.
Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd,History of Sexuality by Foucault, Methophors to Live By by Lakoff
All of these portray the world as a series of systems. First deals with interconnected systems like war, business, conflict, the second the notion that culture itself is a series of systems of power and sexuality has been used as a system of power, and third that most of our thought can be made from simpler set of blocks i.e metaphors from which we construct almost all of existence.
Was brought up in a very toxicly pop-libertarian household, and it really opened my eyes to how much all of nature (including human culture more specifically) depends on working together towards common goals.
1. Cory Doctorow - Walkaway. A near-future realistic fiction that takes the concept of Wiki, Open Source, Free Software, anarchy, and post-scarcity to a very exciting conclusion. Dramatically radicalized my conception of the economy, the establishment, politics, engineering, and my own life goals.
2. Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People. The definitive guidebook to interpersonal relations. Taught me empathy.
3. Thornton Wilder - Our Town. A play about a little girl who gets one more day after her death to visit her memories. I read it at 16 and it brought me to my first understanding of mortality.
4. Peter Watts - Blindsight. A romping and intellectually trusting sci-fi involving space vampires. Good biology. Made me seriously question the nature of consciousness.
5. Eric Hoffer - The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Dense and hard to get through old book on what it says in the title. Helped me better understand the Trump movement and similar nazi/alt-right movements that were beyond my ability to grasp before.
6. Douglas Adams - The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Helped me understand that though I may die (or the universe may end), that might be OK.
Prescribed reading for Australian English secondary school classes in 1972-5: Animal Farm, 1984, Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird. I didn't get very good marks in English but I really enjoyed reading the books. The clear warnings of the evils of socialism are just as valuable today. Surprisingly our teachers were all hopeless socialists; 'just hadn't done it properly'.
I recently listened to The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and feel that it has changed the way I think. As an entrepreneur who has been in the trenches, I felt a lot of empathy for Roark's uncompromising ideals, his pursuit of excellence, his wanting to leave the world a better place with his work even if he wasn't able to claim credit and his continual battles with the status quo.
+1 to Autobiography of a Yogi. Made lasting impact on my life. This book has a lot of magnetism to it, some agree and some disagree but here are some of my favorite quotes in the book:
"Wisdom is the greatest cleanser."
"Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge"
"In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle."
Other notable books that had an impact on the way I think are:
On The Shortness of Life - Lucius Seneca
Steve Jobs Biography - This was way back before I moved to states and gave me an intro to states as well as S.V
I understand the point author of the question makes (which I suppose is "to recommend one book you liked" essentially), but if I would take it literally, as written, then - no single book ever changed the way I think about everything, or even about majority of things.
The point of the question is not books you like, or books which changed everything, but books which changed you.
If you grew up, as most people did, your world view was shaped by a child's world view seeing a small slice of local life and some nationwide lowest-common-denominator TV/media.
If you haven't read anything which has shaped, changed or distorted that brain you see the world with, you either had an unusual upbringing or you haven't read anything very interesting.
My biggest one would be that about two years ago I read The Goal by Eli Goldratt, who is a physicist-become-industry-consultant.
I cannot write a glowing praise of it. On paper, it is an awful book, because it contains a textbook but it is trying to be a novel, and so you have to roll your eye when the main character takes the physicist's advice and suddenly his business life and relationships are all sailing smoothly. Even worse: the mathematical derivation that it provides is performed in a context of a steady demand for named products, a manufacturing context, and so it has almost no value in the software engineering "project context" that most of us face, where everything we produce is essentially different from everything else we produce. To understand that you have to read a sequel called Critical Chain, but that sequel is written even worse: at least with The Goal you could imagine yourself as a brave manager finding "Herbies" and putting them "at the front of the troop." But the sequel is just a textbook that has been artificially forced into anecdotal form.
Nevertheless, the points covered by the textbooks deeply changed my view of my purpose at my company and beyond. The essential thesis is that we commit a fallacy: everyone knows the basic accounting knowledge "profit is revenue minus cost" and that the point is to generate more profit, but the fallacy is to assume "there's nothing that I can do to change revenue, that's the job of sales, so the way to maximize profit is to reduce cost, so we will cut costs across the company and then we will be extremely profitable." And it doesn't work! At least, not consistently. What follows is a failure of the greedy algorithm: to improve the efficiency of the system, the greedy algorithm says that you make every single part more efficient, and this is also precisely wrong. The result means that you lose a certain sort of robustness against catastrophe that anyone who has gotten good at backgammon can tell you all about: beginners, who play every move safe, systematically make "good luck" impossible and "bad luck" inevitable: and so they are routinely beaten by the masters who seem to have bad luck all the way until some run of amazing luck causes them to make up their loss and more.
As a consequence you create a circumstance where, as Eli puts it, the entire shop has three priority levels: "hot, red hot, and DO IT NOW". You create a circumstance of "end of the month syndrome": you start every month cutting costs and then you end every month throwing away these lofty ideals in order to meet overdue deadlines and save some customers who are getting mighty irate with you.
All of these are failures to understand that what we'd now call velocity in fact just is profit. With a bit of help from my econ course back at Cornell, most systems can be described with an "order queue" and each order can be associated with its marginal revenue and a marginal cost. You may have to be creative to uncover these in some contexts, for example marginal revenue for a software team at a mechanical contractor may be "paid for" in some "cost savings" for the contractor as a whole in an informal "this is why we keep you programmers around!" type of situation. Marginal cost, similarly, requires being very careful to say "no, I am not going to count my programmers' time in that, unless I really intend on hiring them specially like contractors for this order and only this order." Generally labor, like the building that you are occupying, is a fixed cost.
The velocity of something in the order queue is just the reciprocal of the lead time that it spends in the order queue, and each item in the order queue represents a marginal profit, and your profit comes from creating as much marginal profit as fast as possible -- hence from increasing velocity as much as possible. Furthermore the only reason to prioritize things in that order queue is if you are accepting orders of negative marginal profit and you intend those orders to eventually get cancelled by their recipient -- in the typical case you can mostly ignore all scheduling optimizations and just take orders first-come first-served.
So what you're looking at is a sort of physics about how your organization makes money, and about through my second read-through I started to see how that needed to change my own professional behavior and how I could help my companies to do better. And it's just gone beyond my professional life into thinking about how to increase my throughput of things that make me happy, how to increase my throughput in household chores, how to increase my spiritual throughput. There's a sort of nice ubiquity to any sort of physics.
"Dictator's handbook" by Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and "Coup d'Etat" by Edward Luttwak. I read them both around the same time, in this order. It changed the way I look at politics in the world. In particular it completely changed the way I perceive a so called "Revolution" that happened in my country when I was a teenager (in 1989, the fell of communism). I had some hunches it was actually a coup, but was never sure. After reading "Coup d'Etat", I know it was indeed a coup (among others, it was listed as such in an appendix).
"Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error" by Kathryn Schulz. I especially loved the bit where she explained that if people see things differently, we 1) think they are uninformed. If we know they are informed, we think 2) they are stupid. If we know they aren't stupid, we decide 3) they are evil.
I also read another great book that talked about differences between conservative, liberal, and libertarian viewpoints, with a notion of different taste buds that are active when observing the world that was really interesting, but unfortunately, the name escapes me.
Critique of Religion and Philosophy, by Walter Kaufmann. I went into the desert with this book and my Christian faith, and when I came out I had this book.
_Godel_Escher_Bach_ by Douglas Hofstadter made me realize how everything I've found interesting in Art-music-math-science-nature-etc have interrelated features that can be explained from a logical/computational perspective. It planted some ideas in my head that would later blossom into a deep passion for computer science and particularly programming languages.
The biggest one for me was Richard Wilhelm's translation (with annotations -- the annotations are really important) of the Tao Te Ching. Following that, the same translator's work on the I Ching. (Sorry for the potentially weird transliteration -- I never know what to do for Chinese!)
My own interpretation is that while we can say "I think therefore I am" you can't really prove anything else. The tao takes it some small step further: There exists you, but there also exists everything which isn't you (even if that's nothing). So, in other words the existence of A implies the existence of not-A, even if that's the empty set. Between A and not-A there is a boundary where you transition from A to not-A. In other words, by implying the existence of one thing, you imply the existence of 3 things, even if 2 of them are the empty set.
This turns out to be really handy. If you say "tall", it implies "short" (not-tall) and it even implies that there is a point between "tall" and "short" where it transitions from one to the other. This is actually a tautology, based on the definitions of the words, but it can be used as a base of reasoning. The classic example is that a cup can be empty or it can be full. A cup that is always empty is not useful, and neither is a cup that is always full (for the normal definition of "useful" when applied to a "cup"). It has to transition between empty and full for it to be "useful". Similarly, a spoke in a wheel is defined as much by the places where it isn't as it is by the place where it is. You can't have a spoke without a space and when you think about spokes, you should also think about the spaces between the spokes because they are just as important. Or if you don't want criminals, one easy way of accomplishing it is by getting rid of laws -- no laws, no criminals. More laws, more criminals. This is just reasoning based on the tautological definitions of words, but it can lead you to pretty interesting insights.
The I Ching is interesting because it documents 64 states that you could possibly be in. It then describes all the transitions between the states. There are consequences for moving from one state to another. The consequences are described in those transitions. It is surprisingly apropos! Though it was supposed to have been written by the Yellow Emperor thousands of years ago, in reality I think it's been tweaked over and over again for thousands of years and the 4096 different possible transitions have just been worked out by exhaustion.
Many people think of it as a fortune telling thing and you can roll dice (or draw straws) to pick a starting condition and the transitions, but my impression is that this was originally a study mechanism. In fact, it's not a book you can easily read through. Randomly selecting a starting condition and transitions allows you to study one thing at a time. I still haven't gotten through everything :-) Basically, I think of the I Ching as design patterns for life. I'm here. I want to go there. What is the best way to go about it and what are the likely consequences of those actions? Very useful.
Reading the "Holy Fathers" and their understanding of the Scriptures, particularly St John Chrysostom. St Ignatius of Antioch and St Justin Martyr as well -- the wisdom of the men who was merely a generation or two removed from the very Jesus Christ himself. I also find reading the second-hand non-Christian sources of Jesus and his followers fascinating as well, such as the works of Josephus and Tacitus.
The Bible being profound to people isn't anything new to people, but it was in particular the writings by these men that deepened it for me, solidified it, I don't know what was it. Maybe it was because I was a functioning agnostic the entire time I was brought up, it just made it that much more real to me. I can't really put my finger on it, but that was the experience I had.
For my non-cliche picks, starting with "Mindset" by Carol Dweck. Particular the a-ha moment here was the dichotomy between the "fixed" mindset and "growth" mindset. Shedding the notion that we were "fixed" in our ways. The particular example that resonated the most with me was the one about Michael Jordan. How I used to remember so many people saying "he was born with that talent" or "it was a gift from God"
No the gift was not his talents, it was his work ethic and determination. To find out he was actually cut from his high school varsity team at 15. To hear the stories of how he practiced so determined (and took great offense if his team mates didn't take practice as seriously as he did, sometimes to the detriment to some relationships), it just changed my whole perspective. I was going through a tough time of my own at work, and this book allowed me to realize that the feedback I was getting wasn't attacks against my character or meant I wasn't smart enough or good enough, they just were what they were, and they were opportunities to grow. Everything can be malleable with enough time, energy, focus, and most importantly, the right mindset.
A follow up to this in a tangential way was "The Obstacle is the Way" which really helped me learn how to roll with the punches, and turn everything into an opportunity, a challenge. If something wasn't fair, wasn't right, seemed impossible, it didn't become my destruction, it became my motivation.
Finally, for leadership, and kind of along that same theme of rolling with the punches and stop buying into the "life isn't fair" or "I got a unfair shake" was Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Lief Babin. The book details the stories of the Navy Seals that fought in the Battle of Ramadi in 2005-2006. Most people will be particularly interested in the chapter about Chris Kyle of "American Sniper" fame, as he was part of this Navy Seal unit.
Besides the awesome stories, the book details a great mindset for ownership and leadership in general. Teaches you how to ditch the word "they" when referring to other people in your organization (I found myself often complaining that things were more difficult than they needed to be, often using the word "they" when describing who exactly was making my life difficult). It helps you realize your part of the bargain when it comes to your organization's success.
It may sound corny, but the Fountainhead had a big impact on me in my early twenties. As I have grown older, I have unsubscribed to many of the philosophies of Ayn Rand, but there are elements in it that still resonate with me.
I also recently discovered Stoicism and there seems to be a relation (albeit weak one) between Objectivism and Stoicism.
"Free Will" by Sam Harris. A buddy told me to read this after we got in a long debate about free will at a bar. Basically, he told me I wasn't even grasping what free will is, and that the hour to read the book would totally change everything for me. Lo and behold, he was right and the next conversation we had about free will was much deeper and largely framed by the insights in this book. It convinced me that the real question isn't "Do we have free will?" but rather "What is free will?"
"The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch. It's difficult to pinpoint this book as being about a thing or a set of things, but my best attempt is to say it's about attaining knowledge and the non-existent limits to human knowledge. I've never felt more inspired than when I finished reading this book and reflected on the infinite lengths humankind has to go on technological progress. Overall, it's an incredible argument for optimism about what is possible.
Before I read it, I thought anarchism was just punk-ish people who want to run around Mad Max style with no rules. Reading The Dispossessed helped me to see it's actually a fully fleshed out political system, with many rules, that could work well.
Quark and the Jaguar by Gell-Mann; emergence and complexity.
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter; recursion.
In fiction, Gene Wolfe (Severian) and Doris Lessing (Shikasta) have rewired a considerable number of my synapses. To this day they tug at my subconscious.
* Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
* The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
* Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
* Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz
* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
* Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
* The Culture novels by Ian M. Banks
* Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
* Not a book, but Gene Roddenberry's vision in Star Trek shaped who I want to be and the world in which I prefer to live.
Although, I would say that it's hard to choose because just about everything I read changes me in some way. Here I've tried to stick to the ones that changed me for the better, rather than sending me off on an amusing if useless rabbit trail, e.g. Real Magic by Isaac Bonewitz, Illusions by Richard Bach, The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson, H.P. Lovecraft's works.
Bullshit 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.
The Selfish Gene by Dawkins was very influential on me.
Another was Nineteen Eighty Four by Orwell.
I'd also cite The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand as having influenced me, although I read it when I was older and found that it mostly reinforced ideas that I was already sympathetic towards. Similar situation with Atlas Shrugged, also by Rand.
I could probably also call out The Soul of a New Machine by Kidder, as being a primary influence that pushed me in the direction of getting involved with computers.
All the books below have shaped my thought process to a significant degree. I started reading late but I'm fortunate enough to have stumbled upon these gems.
"Debt: The First 5000 Years": This is truly a magnum opus. Until I read this I had taken money, economy, market etc., for granted. And I had held onto the widely accepted, but naive, view that economic systems somehow grew out of barter systems. The range of topics discussed, and the way author shows how seemingly independent concepts are intertwined, is truly astonishing. I'm on my 2nd read.
"Thinking, Fast and Slow": This book made me truly appreciate the value of psychology. I didn't even know the existence of a vast domain called behavioral science until I read this book. Now I'm deliberately conscious about the decisions I take and retrace my thought process multiple times just to make sure that I haven't fallen pray to some of the cognitive biases.
"The Tell-Tale Brain": While I did know that human brain is a unique organ this book opened my eyes to its layered complexities. For instance, how "seeing" is not a single step but a multi step process. From image formation, to identifying the object, to evoking emotional response.
"QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter": The book with the highest signal to noise ratio. I finally understood what science is about, a way to model nature and to keep refining it to fit the observation. There are no true/false theories/models only those that explain nature's behavior better or worse. Nature is agnostic to all our theories and models. She's just the way she is. For details read about double slit experiment.
"How the World Works": This one along with "Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order" has greatly shaped my mental model about the workings of contemporary world. I now understand why does military gets all the funding, why do powerful governments tend to keep its subject under perpetual fear, why is it that the cost of education has been sky-rocketing.
"The Hanging of Afzal Guru and the Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament": A glimpse into the working of Indian justice system.
"Broken Republic": This is by far the most accurate description about current affairs in India. How India is being hollowed out and how its most vulnerable section is the one fighting against it.
"Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life": I'm currently reading it (20% through) and it has already made a big impact. The meaning of information is deep and subtle and pervades not just human being but the life itself.
"The Order of Time": The book that well and truly shook the foundation that I had taken for granted for my entire life. That space and time aren't something absolute and are personal has had a profound impact on me.
"The Upanisads": A truly remarkable work of human mind. Just to think about some of the concepts uplifts my mood.
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. My parents had a Vic-20 and I'd learned to write some BASIC by reading the books that came with it (which conveniently failed to mention that programming was supposed to be hard or was something some adults did as a job). But it wasn't until I read Microserfs, specifically the Wired Magazine excerpt of it, that I knew computers and creating software would definitely, without a doubt, be the driving force of the rest of my entire life. I haven't regretted it for a moment.
Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche. I picked it up knowing nothing but Nietzsche was the progenitor of the saying 'that which does not kill you makes you stronger' (which is a radically misunderstood saying that is supposed to sound naive and stupid). Then I read the chapter titles. "Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Write Such Great Books". I had to read it. It sounded ludicrous from the table of contents alone. And so it was. I later found out that he wrote the book while in the end stages of syphillis, mostly insane. It did, however, clue me in to a whole different kind of thinking by introducing me to philosophy and how problems could be tackled that can't be addressed through more analytical means. Plus, it is full of a great many laughs simply due to the absurdity. The only thing I can recall actually making sense and being true was a bit about how to be most like ones parents is the greatest disgrace because it indicates that humanity has stagnated and not advanced for your generation at least.
And though I don't care for it now, Ayn Rand's works, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, had great impact on me at the time I read them. I went on to read all of Rand's non-fiction philosophical writings as well. It was thanks to her that when I attended college, I majored not just in Computer Science, but also in Philosophy. And I credit that education with granting me a tremendous amount of insight and philosophical confidence. Today I would vigorously disagree with many of Rand's shortsighted conclusions, and even with her physically incorrect epistemology, but she did have a grand idea after all, to derive all of philosophy from first principles. Shame she started with the wrong principles and A is indeed often not A but a superposition of A and B. Beyond that, the modern Objectivist community seems to lack a great deal of the intellectual mettle that I think she herself had, and they seem incapable of letting go of the seemingly helpful flawed evidence of the past and embracing the more sound modern evidence of the benefits and evolutionary advantage of empathy and such. I could go on for hours about how Rand actually DID account for things like charity and supported them, but it's a nuanced discussion and not for a thread like this.
Also, the hardest book to read I have ever read, Comprehensive Mathematics For Computer Scientists. It derives mathematics from set theory on up. It is written like a single books-long (there are multiple volumes) academic paper and if you're not accustomed to reading such information-dense material, it might well be impenetrable. It took me days per page to fully comprehend, often with breaks in between. But it gave me interesting perspectives on at least functional programming and infinity and how to prove things.
I read Freakonomics and Guns, Germs and Steel in college and was initially 'amazed' by it. Now, I see it as mass market rubbish used to influence a particular demographic.
But that goes for pretty much everything really. Catcher in the Rye in high school. Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".
I think books can "change the way you think about almost everything" when you are younger, naive and idealistic. As you grow older, wiser and understand the world more, you leave those childish things behind.
Also, as einstein said : "Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
I'm sure I'm not the only one that used reading as a crutch and a form of escapism and to waste time.
But if you want a book that left an impression on me, K&R's C Programming Language is one. It showed me that a technical book can be concise, well written and enjoyable to read.
Most of the advice in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is fairly relevant and can be learned at any age - the book and Carnegie's courses were originally for older businessmen. The problem with the book is that its title and chapter titles have not aged well - they sound manipulative. The actual advice is very good and focuses on empathy and kindness; timeless concepts.
I've definitely seem people change their behavior after reading it well into their 30s and 40s.
I think what you gain by reading is exposure to someone else's way of thinking. You won't get that by sitting in a vacuum. If you're impressionable, you just assimilate the author's way of thinking without any criticism. That shouldn't be the goal here.
The key part of that quote (whether it's real or not) is the "and uses his own brain too little" part. It's not as helpful to read a book mindlessly like you're watching television and I think you're missing out on so much by just reading technical manuals. You need to form your own opinion about what you're reading by drawing on your own experience and things you've learned.
I'm pretty sure you didn't develop your way of thinking by yourself. You were influenced by mentors and other people's thoughts and opinions. So why would you intentionally stop evolving? How do you know you've reached some "optimal mental state"?
As an aside, if you're into well-written technical books that are enjoyable to read, check out Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/
The primary form of escape reading provided for me was an escape from poverty. Books were my ladder, and my hope. Having few mentors to tell me of a 'world' outside of the one I was living, books were able to transport me to foreign lands, they helped me understand myself, others around me and the world a little better.
Through good books, I could have access to mentors who would would never know me, but I knew them through their writing, and I acquired the tools to add value to the world.
Yes there are many mass marketed B.S books, that's why I tend to read older books that are battle tested and still relevant today(Lindy effect).
Yes, some books have more impact or less depending on what period in our lives we read them, our personal motivations or what prior knowledge and the context that makes the book relevant to us.
Of the hundreds of millions of books in the world, we may only get to read maybe a thousand or so if we try. Someone could invest years of their life into something that takes 8 hours or so to read. I think there's a high chance that their experience reveals to us something which we wouldn't have imagined and amazes us about the world we share.
One book I find goes in the opposite direction--I didn't get much from it when younger, but when I revisited it as a grown man, I suddenly saw a lot more value in it: The Bible. Which is about as far from "mass market rubbish" as you can get, considering quite a lot of it was written by people who were persecuted, tortured, and killed for writing it!
Bullshit. Reading pays off. Always. Just read good books.
You have only one life. But by reading you can assimilate cumulative wisdom from thousands of lives.
Sure, don't just read, personal striving is also needed for a wholesome life.
I agree that if a book claims to be amazing and life changing, it likely is not. I find books can offer singular insights, and intuition about how people and organizations operate, what psychological and historical principles are general, and so on.
I've found that most of the Einstein quotes I've seen online don't have a valid source, where did you find that one? Just as a heads up, since Walter Isaacson never mentioned anything similar to that on his biography of him.
'He loves quiet chats over his own dinner table
with such friends as Gerhart Hauptmann
and Professor Schrodinger. He reads only
little. Modern fiction does not seduce him.
Even in science he limits himself largely to
his special field. "Reading after a certain
age diverts the mind too much from it's creative pursuits. Any man who reads too
much and uses his own brain too little falls
into lazy habits of thinking, just as the
man who spends too much time in the
theater is tempted to be content with living
vicariously instead of living his own life."
In his own field of thought Einstein follows every development with keen interest.
He has the gift of reading at a glance a whole
page of equations. Einstein can master a
whole new system of mathematics in half
an hour.'
As you grow older and “wiser” you realise that your time is precious. So you understand the opportunity cost of reading a book. You should then choose books that are foundational that are often the sources used by other books. You see more deeply into the meta meanings in the books, drawing many more links to other concepts hence you understand them better. This also means you could probably read much more deep/technical or difficult books.
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.
One that I haven't seen mentioned is "The hidden persuaders" by Vance Packard. It's old and some say it's exaggerated in parts, but some of the mechanisms and tricks explained are everywhere. We swim in a sea of marketing.
Practical effect: you'll start seeing your favourite cereals as an entirely indistinct product, with a cardboard box around, with coloured print over it which has no connection whatsoever with the content.
"Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "To Have or to Be?" and "Sane Society" by Erich Fromm, "Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt, and before that several books by Sebastian Haffner about the Nazis, who also had a very keen eye for the things that truly mattered, as unflattering as they are.
The question itself is kind of absurd if you think about it. But it leads to a nice parade of skimmed and unread books. Sorry, if I'm too cynical. I just have seen these questions about books thousand of times and every time I have the same feeling: that people are grossly overestimating the impact of the books they have read and they are just approval junkies. Surely, no book can change your thinking about almost everything.
It's quite interesting that people love the concept of "favourite books". Any time there is a question about our favourite books we feel the urge to share and tell everyone what great books we have read. It's not important what others have read, main thing is to shout out our title.
I still haven't figured out why we love to discuss books so much. Is it egoism or need for approval? Is it because we have to somehow justify hundreds of books we have bought and never actually read? Books become elements of decoration, just to show off and appear smarter perhaps. If they are stacked on the edge of your desk, that's even better, it portraits you as a restless intellectual adventurer. And when your guests arrive you make sure that they get a glimpse of your amazing "library". And some of the guest who kind of dabble in books themselves, are happy to look at your books, skim them, and make some general remarks. Win-win. I'm sure you guys can relate.
Hmm, not every one is like that, there are some no doubt, I remember seeing an add for books by the meter many years ago to fill up your shelves.
For me, I love books, have since I was a kid. I used to love having books on my book shelf and looking at the books every now and then, and remembering the stories. When having friends over looking through the books was something we did (that and CD's/LP's), likewise going to friends places and looking through their stack was always fun. I'm always keen to discuss books I've read and recommend books I enjoyed, or in this case changed my view of life, there are a few.
Now they're all on my ipad and I can carry my library round wherever I go. In many ways I think people are made of stories, we all have our stories about ourselves and people we know, and the stories we read and share are just an extension of that. The stories are about people we may never know and things that we may never see, or never even exist, to want to share these with others seems natural to me.
Some false assumptions your post has made, may help answer your questions.
>Surely, no book can change your thinking about almost everything.
False, for me. Many books have significantly changed my thinking about one, many, or nearly all "things." If you're curious which ones and in what way, feel free to ask here or on my email address.
>I still haven't figured out why we love to discuss books so much. Is it egoism or need for approval?
I like to talk about the thoughts I have about things, including books. This is a sharing concept with my friends and partners - I enjoy hearing their opinions, bouncing ideas off them, and exploring topics. It gives me pleasure. It is not egoism, nor need for approval (I say with extreme confidence).
> Is it because we have to somehow justify hundreds of books we have bought and never actually read?
I don't have opinions on books I've never actually read, so this is an inapplicable statement. I also don't have hundreds of purchased, but unread, books. I have perhaps 20 purchased and unread, and about 50 on the immediate "want to read list" that are unpurchased and unread.
>Books become elements of decoration, just to show off and appear smarter perhaps.
This is not true for me.
> If they are stacked on the edge of your desk, that's even better, it portraits you as a restless intellectual adventurer.
There is nothing on my work desk but my notebook, phone charger, laptop, monitor, headphones, keyboard, mouse, and an empty coffee cup. At home, it's the same, minus the laptop, plus a bunch of postcards from friends jammed between two plants.
At this point, I'm convinced there is someone in your life you are thinking of, that annoys you, that has books on their desk. Perhaps they are legitimately annoying - it would be sad if this makes you hate all book readers.
> And when your guests arrive you make sure that they get a glimpse of your amazing "library".
My guest library is in the living room. It consists of cookbooks, a Haynes manual on the Suzuki SV650, and about 10 different picture books of cats, dogs, bridges, and infrastructure. Also, a D&D manual.
>and make some general remarks. Win-win. I'm sure you guys can relate.
Do you not discuss topics of shared enjoyment with other people? What makes "reading books" an unacceptable hobby discussed between friends?
Your rant gives me the impression that you believe people do things only to appear smarter, better, than others. I remember I used to think that way, because it didn't seem possible to me that "genuineness" could exist - nope, everyone is guided by primal urges. This isn't true. I hope you come to discover this one day.
People are entitled to read what they want. The premise of this "Ask HN" was books that changed the way you think, not what what books offend anyone. Offense is taken, not given. Please consider Socrates' 3 Sieves before commenting with "racist" drivel, which adds nothing to the conversation.
"Wait a minute--this Snow Crash thing, is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"
"What's the difference?"
This was the original definition of a "meme" as coined by Richard Dawkins: instead of humans choosing what to think, what if ideas self-replicate using human minds as hosts? Religions, languages, agriculture, chemistry, the word "like", uptalk, literally any thought or behavior pattern can be framed this way.
Free 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.
It was the first book I started reading I could not put down until the end. Gained a lot of appreciation for literature at that time.
The other book that I enjoyed and changed me was ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ by Alan Watts. I was a fan of Alan Watts works through his lectures already and it was wonderful to hear his ideas in writing for the first time.
The book is available to read for free online (https://antilogicalism.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/wisdom-of...).
I wish everyone read or watched Alan Watts lectures and books. The world would be a much nicer place if that was the case.
My favorite quote is by him:
‘We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.’