"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman - essentially a book about "bugs" in our minds that lead us to bad decisions,
"The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman - changes the way you look at human-made things, makes you better appreciate examples of design that take functionality into account.
+1 for The Design Of Everyday Things. Unlike perhaps other books in this thread, it literally changes the way you look at the world, or at least the objects around you.
A challenge with _Thinking Fast And Slow_ is that some of its fundamental premises have been called into question during the "replication crisis" in psychology.
Do you mean all the priming stuff? I thought the fast-slow thinking distinction was still okay. In that case, What Intelligence Tests Miss by Keith Stanovich might be a better read.
+1 The Design of Everyday Things. I believe this is a must read for anyone creating something for other people. I'm definitely a better designer because of it.
Not trying to speak for the parent commenter that posted, but those books are part of an overall shift in my career/business thinking from "me working more" to "building assets/systems that work for me".
I'd throw in Ramit Sethi's writing as well in shifting me from trying to "cut" as much expense but rather to grow the profit side of my work.
I found "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" to be horrible. He said he built a lot of wealth by camping outside bankruptcy lawyers' offices and buying the houses from people filing for bankruptcy for super cheap. Then he'd turn around and sell them for full value. He seems like a total charlatan.
The behavior itself is in a moral gray zone. I wouldn't feel good about myself at the end of the day if I made money preying on people going bankrupt. Morality aside, it is bad advice because it isn't feasible to do that in today's world, and it isn't a valid career track. To me it sounds like he's selling a get-rich-quick real estate scheme in an infomercial.
+1 for "In Praise of Idleness", some of the essays from the 20s and 30s that are still contemporary (including one of my favourites Russell's essays: The Ancestry of Fascism) and, of course, the self-titled one is a discussion we see a lot now with all the automation lurking on the horizon.
"Neuromancer" I wouldn't say that would be in my list of "fundamentally" changed the way I think, it's a good story with a cool narrative style but in the sci-fi genre I'd put "Childhood's End" way before "Neuromancer" in changing the way I think.
Going along with this sort of fundamentally changed worldview theme - I loved Debt: The First 5,000 Years but for me it was equally important to read a book called The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner. This book summarizes the entirety of major paradigms in the history of economic thought, complete with great little biosketches of the authors and their times, from Adam Smith to Joseph Schumpeter. Highly recommended, especially as a counterpoint if you are already a little much in the David Graeber camp as I was.
Perhaps because I had terrible schooling that never taught this kind of stuff: The Selfish Gene.
Getting a solid grounding in how life can arise without, well, magic, shifted my thinking quite a bit. At a low level, life has no inherent meaning, so it's whatever we make of it. For many this is probably obvious, but if you grew up in a rather fundamentalist religious environment, it's quite the change!
Absolutely. I had like one page in my textbook dedicated to evolution, so when I read The Selfish Gene and everything clicked and it all made sense, it was the sort of 'eureka' moment I'd always heard about.
Yet sadly 90% of the population still misunderstand/poorly understand evolution by natural selection. They seem to think it's progressive, or some mysterious force of nature that produces "better" animals over time.
Before you downvote this comment and dismiss it, consider it a valid discussion. What are your thoughts on folks that believe in a God that created the laws of nature that are consistent with our scientific models? This is to say a person 1) believes in God and 2) believes that God put forth the laws of nature that are consistent with teachings in the scientific community.
Well it's not contradictory per se - nothing disproves a god hand-adjusting mutations, for instance. It's just got a lack of evidence which means we should assign it a low probability.
More commonly what I see is that people aren't 100% intellectually honest when they get into it. They don't apply the same rigor to their religious beliefs as they do others. Or they sort of re-interpret or cherry pick themselves around their scriptures to avoid awkward parts. Or they start stepping back and making less powerful claims than their religion traditionally did.
Sometimes they step all the way back into "well what if God is just the laws of physics?". At that point I don't think it's much of a technical discussion and more like, hey, if this comforts someone, and it's not making them make bad decisions (like hurting others based on this belief), well I'm not gonna waste my personal energy arguing.
I mean, so long they aren't arguing that the creator of all spacetime and beyond, of infinite knowledge and capability, cares how we dress or who we sleep with ... eh, fine whatever. Now, people selling water claiming it can cure cancer, that's another story ;).
Given the scarcity of life in the universe in general, and the alarming rate of extinction in nature - more than 99% of all living things to ever exist are extinct, it's one thing to say the universe was designed with a purpose. But you can't really say that it was designed with life in mind. Life, and Earth- do not occupy a privilaged position in the universe. If you accept that- and all evidence points to that being the case, you cannot make a case for a theistic God.
you sound much too certain about this. the fact is we really know almost nothing about extra-terrestrial life.
I'm not making an argument in any way shape or form for a divine creation to the universe. I'm just trying to point out that you're making claims you can't possibly support with evidence and sounding as if you're certain of them in the way that people are certain about evidence backed claims. in other words, you're speaking from dogma not from knowledge.
Unlike evolution, abiogenesis has never been demonstrated in a Petri dish. Same for the Big Bang. In my understanding, some theists believe God "instantiated" a universe with certain parameters which we perceive as physical constants, that naturally led to hydrogen transforming itself into consciousness after 13.7 billion years. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, he did it on purpose fully knowing how it will develop. So physics, geology, biology, etc. are all true and also the Genesis creation myth is kinda true (they believe genesis is a metaphor for people lacking the education to understand the full story).
I think if you assume there is a god compatible with science, I don't think there is any god account that matches this. Most accounts of the various gods involve violation of the laws of physics. I think if it's the bible god we are talking about, then I've seen a lot of mental energy spent on trying to work out how it might be compatible. Seems to me, it's driven more by a desire not to give up ones belief in god than a rational desire to find the truth.
Interesting, I had almost the opposite experience after having grown up in a fundamentalistic atheist environment. When I read the bible with an attitude like "God, if you really exist I will listen", it seemed somehow I understood what I read for the first time. It was the strongest experience I had in my life. This is over 30 years ago, I'm a senior developer now) and I still read almost daily in the bible. No other book has really changed the way I think about the world to any close extend.
I mean, that's sort of what I want out of AI. A Culture-like Mind, like one of the hubs in an orbital. Resource allocation issues would cease to exist if we had a benevolent god or something like it!
Maybe most, but certainly not all. See: Christopher Hitchens:
"[Religious belief] is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you - who must, indeed, subject you - to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life - I say, of your life - before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea!?"
Out of interest are you atheist? I find my own atheism comforting. To be confronted at my death with the Catholic Heaven I was taught about as a child would send me into despair. Life would be rendered meaningless for me were I to find out it's all been some sort of game, for which the prize for winning is that you meet your creator and praise him.
I am atheist (born and raised). What do you mean by the Catholic heaven sending you into despair? I thought it was supposed to be a fun and happy place. Hell does sound scary as hell (pun intended) though and I'd rather stop existing than risk going there. For the record, a capricious god which allows hell to exist is incompatible with my definition of benevolent. That being said, if I believed the Catholic god truly existed, you can be sure I'd be following the bible to the letter (a tiny price to pay to avoid an eternity in hell).
Whereas I grew up in an agnostic household, and I’m still pretty strongly agnostic, especially as I’ve gotten into constructive mathematics (where we talk about provability, not truth). Maybe unlike you two, I just didn’t have anything to reject, so there was no need to look into the “other side”?
I like to say “if a god made me, it made me unable to believe in it”, which is certainly an interesting thought exercise, but not exactly inspiring.
You might like to read "The Minds I", a collection of philosopy edited by Hofstadter & Dennett. It has a number of pieces that address this issue pretty directly, including "Non Serviam" by Stanislaw Lem. In it the writer describes the fictional field of "personics" (we would say "artificial life") and considers the role of a human experimenter in creating artificially intelligent beings that inhabit a virtual world in a computer. From there it considers the question of what rights and obligations creator and creation have to each other. For instance, what would we think of a human who created such a virtual world and then demanded that the inhabitants worship their creator?
I completely agree. The Selfish Gene did more to change my view of the world than any other book I've ever read. Not in a religious sense, as many others cite, but rather it laid the foundation for a deeper understanding of people, culture, violent behavior, herd mentality, etc.
A world-changing book, to be sure; though perhaps better to understand it in its cultural context, than to read it literally. In either case, for mature audiences only.
I hate to say it, but The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
The book itself is largely dull, overwritten, and characters are afflicted with "Ayn Rand Syndrome" - where the protagonists are always perfect and the world around them is fundamentally flawed and can only be fixed with free market capitalism. It's like "Joss Whedon Syndrome" without the smarm.
BUT, I did glean an appreciation for following a path of one's own creation, committing to your goals even as the world sets out to discourage you and undermine your work at every twist and turn. It was quite inspiring and invigorating to read this book in my late teenage years.
But then again, I have recently found the same theme to be more accurately and entertainingly portrayed in a Japanese anime: Gurren Lagann
Everyone else can down-vote me because this really doesn't contribute to the conversation but I have to say it: Gurren Lagann is a better inspirational substitute for The Fountainhead?! The geek in me understands completely and I think that is SO awesome!
Fundamentally, both stories were about working very hard to carve one's own path at all costs lest the world twist you into conforming to its desires.
Except Trigger went on to make a fascinating story about clothing and the power it has had for all of history (Kill La Kill), while Ayn Rand made an even more unreadable whinefest where every person in government is solely on a spectrum between incompetent and evil, and the only solution is to give up, take your ball, and go home. (Atlas Shrugged - somewhat undermining the point of The Fountainhead in the first place).
I found Kill La Kill to be an amazing little story. Campy and farcical but also really profound in a certain way. Total deconstruction of a whole genre of fiction as well as a fascinating social commentary on one of the defining aspects of human society (clothing/fashion/social status).
Another anime that really surprised me with its depth and sophistication was Puella Magi Madoka Magica. KyuBey still gives me nightmares just thinking about it.
The Fountainhead is just bad writing. You hit it on the head when you said "the protagonists are always perfect and the world around them is fundamentally flawed".
Its difficult to take a book seriously with such caricatured and poorly written characters. I've seen better writing in comic books.
In my early 20s I embraced Objectivism through this and Atlas Shrugged (bad writing aside), and in my 30s I abandoned it.
Particularly, the process of abandoning it forced me into a clearer view of my personal value system. That in turn has made me a better person: it is hard to have integrity if one doesn't understand what they believe.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide series was formative for my absurdist sense of humour and outlook on life. What a strange, hilarious, sad, and beautiful world we find ourselves in.
Jacques Neveu, Mathematical Foundations
of the Calculus of Probability,
Holden-Day, San Francisco.
Random variables and the associated
probability theory and conditional
probability theory are surprisingly
relevant, especially now with computing,
in the real world. That the set of real
valued random variables X such that E[X^2]
is finite forms a Hilbert space, e.g., is
complete, is astounding. So is the
martingale convergence theorem.
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving.
Heavily about how what people do is in
response to the anxiety they feel from the
realization that alone they are vulnerable
to the hostile forces of nature and
society.
219 comments
[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 324 ms ] threadOne of the most influential books on meditation I've ever read. Quote from the Dalai Lama about it: "This book has the capacity to change lives."
"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman - essentially a book about "bugs" in our minds that lead us to bad decisions,
"The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman - changes the way you look at human-made things, makes you better appreciate examples of design that take functionality into account.
Great book, textbook-ish, but reshaped how I look at people and problems
Edit: Also, David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
I'd throw in Ramit Sethi's writing as well in shifting me from trying to "cut" as much expense but rather to grow the profit side of my work.
Are people who go to liquidation auctions bad?
Both offer some pretty significant challenges to one's notion of self.
- Douglas Hofstadter's GEB: An Eternal Golden Braid
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
- Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest
- Propaganda by Edward Bernays
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
- Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States by Herfried Münkler
- Smedley D. Butler's War is a Racket (more of an exposé)
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (ditto)
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
"Neuromancer" I wouldn't say that would be in my list of "fundamentally" changed the way I think, it's a good story with a cool narrative style but in the sci-fi genre I'd put "Childhood's End" way before "Neuromancer" in changing the way I think.
Getting a solid grounding in how life can arise without, well, magic, shifted my thinking quite a bit. At a low level, life has no inherent meaning, so it's whatever we make of it. For many this is probably obvious, but if you grew up in a rather fundamentalist religious environment, it's quite the change!
Yet sadly 90% of the population still misunderstand/poorly understand evolution by natural selection. They seem to think it's progressive, or some mysterious force of nature that produces "better" animals over time.
More commonly what I see is that people aren't 100% intellectually honest when they get into it. They don't apply the same rigor to their religious beliefs as they do others. Or they sort of re-interpret or cherry pick themselves around their scriptures to avoid awkward parts. Or they start stepping back and making less powerful claims than their religion traditionally did.
Sometimes they step all the way back into "well what if God is just the laws of physics?". At that point I don't think it's much of a technical discussion and more like, hey, if this comforts someone, and it's not making them make bad decisions (like hurting others based on this belief), well I'm not gonna waste my personal energy arguing.
I mean, so long they aren't arguing that the creator of all spacetime and beyond, of infinite knowledge and capability, cares how we dress or who we sleep with ... eh, fine whatever. Now, people selling water claiming it can cure cancer, that's another story ;).
I'm not making an argument in any way shape or form for a divine creation to the universe. I'm just trying to point out that you're making claims you can't possibly support with evidence and sounding as if you're certain of them in the way that people are certain about evidence backed claims. in other words, you're speaking from dogma not from knowledge.
Did God create Man or did he create the laws of natural selection that created Man?
I think most atheists would agree with that statement and would want a benevolent God to exist.
"[Religious belief] is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you - who must, indeed, subject you - to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life - I say, of your life - before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea!?"
Did you invent this term just for the comment?
I like to say “if a god made me, it made me unable to believe in it”, which is certainly an interesting thought exercise, but not exactly inspiring.
It's a masterpiece.
The book itself is largely dull, overwritten, and characters are afflicted with "Ayn Rand Syndrome" - where the protagonists are always perfect and the world around them is fundamentally flawed and can only be fixed with free market capitalism. It's like "Joss Whedon Syndrome" without the smarm.
BUT, I did glean an appreciation for following a path of one's own creation, committing to your goals even as the world sets out to discourage you and undermine your work at every twist and turn. It was quite inspiring and invigorating to read this book in my late teenage years.
But then again, I have recently found the same theme to be more accurately and entertainingly portrayed in a Japanese anime: Gurren Lagann
Except Trigger went on to make a fascinating story about clothing and the power it has had for all of history (Kill La Kill), while Ayn Rand made an even more unreadable whinefest where every person in government is solely on a spectrum between incompetent and evil, and the only solution is to give up, take your ball, and go home. (Atlas Shrugged - somewhat undermining the point of The Fountainhead in the first place).
Another anime that really surprised me with its depth and sophistication was Puella Magi Madoka Magica. KyuBey still gives me nightmares just thinking about it.
One the surface it may seem like a dumb giang robot action-fest. But it has profound messages about fear, determination and legacy.
Its difficult to take a book seriously with such caricatured and poorly written characters. I've seen better writing in comic books.
Particularly, the process of abandoning it forced me into a clearer view of my personal value system. That in turn has made me a better person: it is hard to have integrity if one doesn't understand what they believe.
- What has government done to our money? by Murray Rothbard
- For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard
- The Law by Frederick Bastiat
The world is a rotten place thanks to politicians, and at the same time the world is a beautiful place in spite of politicians.
Right go Jeeves by Wodehouse
More an essay, but profoundly impactful.
Random variables and the associated probability theory and conditional probability theory are surprisingly relevant, especially now with computing, in the real world. That the set of real valued random variables X such that E[X^2] is finite forms a Hilbert space, e.g., is complete, is astounding. So is the martingale convergence theorem.
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving.
Heavily about how what people do is in response to the anxiety they feel from the realization that alone they are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society.