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Ask HN: Thought-Provoking Books

23 points by Agraillo ↗ HN
I read many non-fiction books, but recently noticed that only a few qualify as truly heavy, thought-provoking reads, that you literally can't finish in a manageable time because you keep telling yourself, "Wait a minute," then stop to Google something, run an experiment, or just think deeply. My current example (still unfinished) is "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer. It's mind-blowing - the entire memory universe around us that I never properly explored before.

14 comments

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Bad_Initialism
I thought, "That sounds like an interesting book." And then I read the precis on Wikipedia.

Humans. Everything has to be a fucking competition. Turned me right off reading it. This is one of the (many) things I hate about humans. Along with ideas that go in to the brain and get stuck there and have to be defended to the death without the brain ever having thought critically about them even once.

Why gatekeep? Why compete about things that don't need to be a competition? Why let yourself be brainwashed about a philosophy or a company or a person?

Humans. Yech. Barf. I hate humans. They make me sick.

oifjoijoifj
It was written by a journalist and a jew, not a typical human. The OP is probably an advertisement.
tomfox2
I feel the same way. The last time I read Kevin Kelly's Out of Control, I had a similar experience — constantly searching for materials, adding supporting arguments, and feeling as if I had retained nothing after just one read.
rahmanyoo
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch is in same category. I have not finished reading it yet, at best i go 5 pages in one sitting. Jam packed with fascinating facts.
abdullahkhalids
The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a long thought-provoking reflection on the nature of Quality - in the sense of excellence. I re-read it every few years, and still don't understand it fully.

Even more pertinent now in the age of low quality AI produced content.

aristofun
the most boring and thought-killing book I've ever tried to read
oifjoijoifj
The spiritual works from major figures in the major religions, anything which discusses experience in negative terms making no positive statements, so things on emptiness/shunyata, non-duality, dependent co-arising, apophatic theology, unknowing, etc
sloaken
Two classic books by Douglas R Hofstadter

    Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
and

    Metamagical Themas
Both are heavy reads. But I would recommend looking at Wiki article before buying, available used. Just to make sure they fit your style of brain.
Desafinado
If you want truly, truly heavy and thought-provoking you need to get away from brick-and-mortar bookstore, commercial, non-fiction, and get into work that's produced within and for academia.

For example, I've learned more from Anthony Giddens, Crawford Young, and Peter Berger in a handful of books than almost everything I've learned from pop books combined. The real stuff you want to read is in academia and fairly hidden from public view.

Agraillo
Not to argue, but your comment was also thought-provoking, thanks :) It seems like most works of academia are not provoking; rather, they are shaping. Many are written by specialists in the area who carefully choose what to state and suggest, and very often follow the structure of a big "thought" that is further explained and explored. Few pop books that might meet my criteria are basically digests, but fact-based ones. It's interesting that "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a middle ground in some sense. Daniel Kahneman is definitely from academia, and in my opinion, he wrote a digest of what he touched on during his career, which was also thought-provoking for me, but not on a big scale.

Can you name some works by the mentioned authors that might be called thought-provoking digests of some area of expertise?

oldsklgdfth
The writings of Neil Postman. Specifically,

* "Amusing ourselves to death": visual media is fundamentally different from writing and that impacts society. As a medium it supports certain messages better than other, ex. emotion.

* "Technopoly": defines the difference between tool-using and technocratic societies and impacts it has on society.

* "The End of Education": what is the purpose of an education system.