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Ask HN: Books on human nature that changed your interactions

6 points by typedef_void ↗ HN
After reading 48 Laws of Power, I started seeing interactions between 1) others & myself, 2) others & others in a completely different light. There were these mental "hooks" I could analyze human interactions through.

Neil Strauss's "Rules of the Game" did something similar.

I'm currently reading Robin Baker's "Sperm Wars" and it's again showing me human interactions through a new light.

So, HN: what are the books that presented new theories / ideas on human nature that has changed the way you view / analyze human interactions?

5 comments

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Alex3917
That 48 Laws of Power book is BS. C.f. pg's How To Make Wealth essay or else Dee Hock's essay on leadership:

http://futurepositive.synearth.net/leader-follower/

typedef_void
Why is 48 laws of power BS? There are rules in the book that contradict each other, but it provides a framework for recognizing patterns of human behavior and analyzing it.
wturner
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War.
julius_geezer
Plato's "The Sophist".

Saint-Simon's memoirs.

Neither really for theories as such, the latter for reflections on the the behavior observed.

Since wturner mentions "Blood Rite" let me throw in Vico's "New Science"

hga
A friend of mine found this to be true for Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

I found something akin, not so much "interactions" as in understanding the "why" about many human things, in reading Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene.