This one is really hard tbh. I don't think I could name one. There was a period where I worked in a warehouse and listened to audio books and college lectures and all those together allowed me to make connections I don't think I would have made otherwise.
A very meaningful book I read was "A Short History of Nearly Everything" just because it showed me how much to the world there was to discover. It made me very optimistic.
I haven't finished "The Brothers Karamazov" and I don't think I would call it a "meaningful contribution" to my life _but_ I do think so far it is one of the only books that has made me say "wow." Every sentence seems to be crafted to perfection and connect with you on a deeper level. I can't personally relate to it too well but I would say everyone should get to experience a bit of it.
Besides those, I read a few auto/biographies which where interesting, I could relate to and gave me motivation and discipline.
Another vote for A Short History of Nearly Everything. Eighteen years ago, I enjoyed that book so thoroughly that I started researching and writing my own nonfiction. The pay is terrible, but the work is fulfilling.
Atlas Shrugged had a profound influence on me, too.
It is a treatise on selfishness. A stench of arrogance leaks out from every paragraph. It showed me the worst of the worst. What not to be. I like to think reading it made me a more empathetic, social, caring person. It also awakened my antenna to the vileness in people that may lie just below the skin.
That is was excruciatingly badly written was a bonus. It showed me that dangerous ideologies are persistent enough to survive laughably poor communication.
It had a profound influence on me as well, I read it as a celebration of creativity and the human spirit. I never got the weird cult stuff that has emerged from it.
I thought it was well written though. She just has a weird style; I kinda dug it. I would call it writing Brutalism, and it was very clear and to the point.
Life of Pi was very memorable in my childhood. The imagery in that book captured my young imagination. I thought about that book a lot. I feel like it contributed something meaningful, in that it’s ok to not take life too seriously.
The works of Alan Watts (starting with The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are) helped me see outside of Western religions and philosophies. It led me to explore many other perspectives on this amazing planet and its people, and to more completely trusting my intuitions.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. An excellent primer on technology, security, abuse of power, and a fun coming-of-age story. I think it does a decent job of introducing folks to open source and, cryptography.
Most meaningful is a hard measure, as there are a bunch within that grouping...
I'll share one from when I was in my 30s, Killer Of Men by Christian Cameron; the entire series is fantastic and came around just at the right time I needed it. It is the story of an older man telling the story of his life and looking back through those eyes (I really like that perspective and it helped me see some things). The entire series takes place in Ancient Greece and the Greco-Persian wars.
Martin Gardner's Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions et al. I devoured them as a boy and made me want to be a mathematician, at which I failed. That failure turned into a 43 year career of puzzles with computers. Even now every day has a puzzle to be solved.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Previously I was very pro government intervention, but this book is great at explaining basic economic principles while ignoring mathematics.
It might be called a little biased by mostly ignoring "market failures" yet basic physics also mostly ignore friction.
Also regarding "meaningful": I had tried to get an understanding of how society works for some time and had even tried reading Capital by Marx but in the end I found most I wanted in Basic Economics.
Thomas Sowell is very unserious. You can also find persuasively written texts that argue that the earth is flat, that cell phone towers give you cancer, that democracy is a mistake, or that pyramids were built by aliens. And people who read those books tend to end up with false beliefs.
Sowell is persuasive only if you haven’t read many other books on economics and society. Always be on your toes when an author is very popular among laypeople (of a certain political persuasion) but held in low esteem by professionals in his field.
Read the micro 101 and macro 101 textbooks used by good universities. Principles of Economics by Taylor is one of the common textbooks. Macroeconomics by Mankiw is another one. Intro courses on any subject tend to be very accessible to laypeople.
Sowell is unserious because he misrepresents the other side. He basically argues that when you leave everything for the market to figure out it will automatically turn out alright, and if it doesn’t then clearly it means you need to deregulate more. You can look up what the arguments against complete free market solutions in healthcare, housing, education, and manufacturing are and you’ll see that the “obvious common sense market based” solutions don’t produce good outcomes for society.
Good response. Another way to understand these topics is to study practical growth stories:
- Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew
- Mysore State, India, Visveswaraya
You study the biographies/auto biographies of ministers of these states, you see the practical challenges with getting free markets. Especially in the initial years (50-100 years of development), until you have factories, industry-oriented education system, discipline, solid work-habits, inclusion of women in the economy, etc, free-market doesn't work. And it doesn't happen on its own, as well. Early days, consistent commitment and encouragement by powerful forces within society is key.
One could say that free markets is a stage of evolution; one cannot recommend free markets as a blanket recommendation. The contextual reality of a place is more important in what's going to work in reality.
“Economic decisions made through the marketplace are not always better than decisions that governments can make. Much depends on whether those market transactions accurately reflect both the costs and the benefits which result. Under some conditions, they do not.
When someone buys a table or a tractor, the question as to whether it is worth what it cost is answered by the actions of the purchaser who made the decision to buy it. However, when an electric utility company buys coal to burn to generate electricity, a significant part of the cost of the electricity-generating process is paid by people who breathe the smoke that results from the burning of the coal and whose homes and cars are dirtied by the soot. Cleaning, repainting and medical costs paid by these people are not taken into account in the marketplace, because these people do not participate in the transactions between the coal producer and the utility company.
Such costs are called “external costs” by economists because such costs fall outside the parties to the transaction which creates these costs. External costs are therefore not taken into “account in the marketplace, even when these are very substantial costs, which can extend beyond monetary losses to include bad health and premature death. While there are many decisions that can be made more efficiently through the marketplace than by government, this is one of those decisions that can be made more efficiently by government than by the marketplace. Clean air laws can reduce harmful emissions by legislation and regulations. Clean water laws and laws against disposing of toxic wastes where they will harm people can likewise force decisions to be made in ways that take into account the external costs that would otherwise be ignored by those transacting in the marketplace.”
He goes on to spend the rest of the chapter talking about limitations of the market. Maybe you should try reading the book before you criticize it.
He acknowledges externalities exist, i.e. you can't have a functioning market when the incentives are wrong, like with pollution. But in those cases where you do have market forces he argues that the market should set the prices with minimal government intervention. That's why he's fervently against rent controlled housing or minimum wage laws. Despite the overwhelming evidence that there are meaningful externalities that necessitate regulation for housing, minimum wages, worker rights, education, and so on.
With regard to health insurance, he argues "Whenever I hear about how many Americans do not have health insurance, my usual response is to wish that I were one of them…I would rather pay doctors and pharmacies directly, without sending the money through bureaucratic channels in the government and the insurance companies".
He (intentionally) misunderstands that the entire reason to have a health insurance mandate is to force healthy people to pay into the system. If only sickly people had health insurance the fees would be impossibly high. You can't have a system where people only start paying for health insurance after they get sick. And if you have a system without insurance people won't be able to afford expensive treatments so they'll just die. Sowell's policy suggestions aren't serious, and he's not taken seriously because of it.
>but held in low esteem by professionals in his field.
this is untrue. It seems clear from other comments you aren't familiar with Sowell's work and are making a straw man argument. Disappointed to see poor intellectual effort on HN.
Probably not as profound as others here but ‘Allen Carr’s easy way to stop smoking’ - I quit 15 years ago and because the pub was a massive trigger for me I spent the evenings learning how to program which led to my career, saved enough money to go travelling around Asia for six months and discovered cycling.
America made no sense to me until I read Faulkners "Light In August". Its almost 100 years old but those themes persist.
Otherwise I would really recommend Moby Dick. Its a rollicking adventure, a wonderful technical description of bygone whaling and ultimately a starting point for introspection on some questions you may be asking yourself.
I listened to 40 hours of Moby Dick on a series of long road trips and couldn't wait to start each one, just me and Melville for a few hours every day.
On a business level, Critical Chain (Goldratt) and the Phoenix Project (Kim, Spafford, Behr) were necessary eye-openers once I got into top management.
"Waking Up" by Sam Harris. I tried meditation a few times before, but it was always boring and I didn't really think it was gonna be anything special. After reading this book, I started practicing daily, and it has changed my daily life and my outlook on life. Mindfulness training is for the mind, what exercise is for the body.
100 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadA very meaningful book I read was "A Short History of Nearly Everything" just because it showed me how much to the world there was to discover. It made me very optimistic.
I haven't finished "The Brothers Karamazov" and I don't think I would call it a "meaningful contribution" to my life _but_ I do think so far it is one of the only books that has made me say "wow." Every sentence seems to be crafted to perfection and connect with you on a deeper level. I can't personally relate to it too well but I would say everyone should get to experience a bit of it.
Besides those, I read a few auto/biographies which where interesting, I could relate to and gave me motivation and discipline.
It is a treatise on selfishness. A stench of arrogance leaks out from every paragraph. It showed me the worst of the worst. What not to be. I like to think reading it made me a more empathetic, social, caring person. It also awakened my antenna to the vileness in people that may lie just below the skin.
That is was excruciatingly badly written was a bonus. It showed me that dangerous ideologies are persistent enough to survive laughably poor communication.
I thought it was well written though. She just has a weird style; I kinda dug it. I would call it writing Brutalism, and it was very clear and to the point.
I used Fountainhead to introduce my kids to Ayn Rand and as a warm up to Atlas Shrugged.
[0] https://www.wakingup.com/
"Self-Reliance and Nature The Complete First and Second Series of Emerson's Essays"
I'll share one from when I was in my 30s, Killer Of Men by Christian Cameron; the entire series is fantastic and came around just at the right time I needed it. It is the story of an older man telling the story of his life and looking back through those eyes (I really like that perspective and it helped me see some things). The entire series takes place in Ancient Greece and the Greco-Persian wars.
It might be called a little biased by mostly ignoring "market failures" yet basic physics also mostly ignore friction.
Also regarding "meaningful": I had tried to get an understanding of how society works for some time and had even tried reading Capital by Marx but in the end I found most I wanted in Basic Economics.
Sowell is persuasive only if you haven’t read many other books on economics and society. Always be on your toes when an author is very popular among laypeople (of a certain political persuasion) but held in low esteem by professionals in his field.
I've read a microeconomics textbook afterwards and the book still doesn't seem too bad.
What would be your suggestion of a book for introducing laypeople to economic thinking?
Sowell is unserious because he misrepresents the other side. He basically argues that when you leave everything for the market to figure out it will automatically turn out alright, and if it doesn’t then clearly it means you need to deregulate more. You can look up what the arguments against complete free market solutions in healthcare, housing, education, and manufacturing are and you’ll see that the “obvious common sense market based” solutions don’t produce good outcomes for society.
- Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew
- Mysore State, India, Visveswaraya
You study the biographies/auto biographies of ministers of these states, you see the practical challenges with getting free markets. Especially in the initial years (50-100 years of development), until you have factories, industry-oriented education system, discipline, solid work-habits, inclusion of women in the economy, etc, free-market doesn't work. And it doesn't happen on its own, as well. Early days, consistent commitment and encouragement by powerful forces within society is key.
One could say that free markets is a stage of evolution; one cannot recommend free markets as a blanket recommendation. The contextual reality of a place is more important in what's going to work in reality.
“Economic decisions made through the marketplace are not always better than decisions that governments can make. Much depends on whether those market transactions accurately reflect both the costs and the benefits which result. Under some conditions, they do not.
When someone buys a table or a tractor, the question as to whether it is worth what it cost is answered by the actions of the purchaser who made the decision to buy it. However, when an electric utility company buys coal to burn to generate electricity, a significant part of the cost of the electricity-generating process is paid by people who breathe the smoke that results from the burning of the coal and whose homes and cars are dirtied by the soot. Cleaning, repainting and medical costs paid by these people are not taken into account in the marketplace, because these people do not participate in the transactions between the coal producer and the utility company.
Such costs are called “external costs” by economists because such costs fall outside the parties to the transaction which creates these costs. External costs are therefore not taken into “account in the marketplace, even when these are very substantial costs, which can extend beyond monetary losses to include bad health and premature death. While there are many decisions that can be made more efficiently through the marketplace than by government, this is one of those decisions that can be made more efficiently by government than by the marketplace. Clean air laws can reduce harmful emissions by legislation and regulations. Clean water laws and laws against disposing of toxic wastes where they will harm people can likewise force decisions to be made in ways that take into account the external costs that would otherwise be ignored by those transacting in the marketplace.”
He goes on to spend the rest of the chapter talking about limitations of the market. Maybe you should try reading the book before you criticize it.
With regard to health insurance, he argues "Whenever I hear about how many Americans do not have health insurance, my usual response is to wish that I were one of them…I would rather pay doctors and pharmacies directly, without sending the money through bureaucratic channels in the government and the insurance companies".
He (intentionally) misunderstands that the entire reason to have a health insurance mandate is to force healthy people to pay into the system. If only sickly people had health insurance the fees would be impossibly high. You can't have a system where people only start paying for health insurance after they get sick. And if you have a system without insurance people won't be able to afford expensive treatments so they'll just die. Sowell's policy suggestions aren't serious, and he's not taken seriously because of it.
this is untrue. It seems clear from other comments you aren't familiar with Sowell's work and are making a straw man argument. Disappointed to see poor intellectual effort on HN.
It gave me a toolkit to survive getting sick and dealing with a life changing event.
Despite being fiction, it sets the standard for elegance and charm.
Suffering from recency bias though, as I read it recently.
Otherwise I would really recommend Moby Dick. Its a rollicking adventure, a wonderful technical description of bygone whaling and ultimately a starting point for introspection on some questions you may be asking yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_in_August#:~:text=Light%....
On a business level, Critical Chain (Goldratt) and the Phoenix Project (Kim, Spafford, Behr) were necessary eye-openers once I got into top management.
Helped me shape the way I look at relationships in my life.
It’s like speaking with … the absolute? beyond human. Cuts through time and space and brings me to it, instantly, always.