Now that the decade is coming to a close, what where the most (personally) influential books you read? Which impacted you the most either personally or professionally? The ones you learned the most from?
Profound idea that everyone has a primary time focus: either Future-focused, Present-focused, or Past-focused. Fascinating implications of each. Because I'm so future-focused, reading this book helped me understand people who are very present-focused. Also great advice on shifting your focus when needed. I read it 7 years ago, but still think about it almost every day.
--
Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want - by Nicholas Epley
Many new brilliant insights, especially about over-estimating the differences between you and others, thereby separating into us-vs-them tribalism. Scan to the end of my notes, to see. If you know more books like this, please recommend them to me. I adore this subject.
Have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what “Resistance” is. This book is about that. Read it.
Absolutely everyone who is an entrepreneur or wants to be one needs to read this book. I first read it after 10 years of successfully running my company, and was still blown away and totally humbled by its wisdom. Re-reading it today, I'm amazed how my view of business was completely changed by this one little book. See my notes for examples, but definitely read the book itself to get the real impact.
--
The Courage to Be Disliked - by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Wow. A profound little philosophy book from Japan, communicating the psychology of Alfred Adler - a rival of Freud. Told as a conversation between an angry student and a patient teacher. A little book so good that I rushed home from other activites to keep reading it, and finished in a day. A surprisingly fresh perspective on how to live. (The “disliked” part is not the point, so don’t let the title distract you.)
The Count of Monte Cristo - This is one breathtaking epic. I have been putting off reading this novel for quite some time and occasionally see this name popping up in HN too, but never gave a serious thought for giving it a go. Was I wrong! This is an epic in its true sense, and you will feel a sense of amazement as you progress through the novel. I'm quite a reader, and I have not experienced such amazement when reading any other book (atleast in recent times). Perhaps, I read this book when I was pretty down and kind of hopeless where my life is taking me, because this book is all about HOPE. Even if you are not a reader, the storyline itself will beat any of the entertaining stories out there. But this book is more than its storyline. At the minimum, you will learn to hope which is a big takeaway from this novel. If you are on the fence reading this, just go for it.
Other books which I find interesting
- The Slight Edge
- Sapiens
- The Master and Margarita (apart from the fact it is a great novel, this is so wickedly funny )
I'll second the recommendation of The Count of Monte Cristo.
There's a user on HN who learned French just so he could read it in the original, and I can see why.
If you read it, make sure to read the unabridged edition, and not any of the many abridged editions, which are often targeted at children and are a travesty to the mature themes in the original.
I can personally recommend David Clarke's reading of it on Librivox,[1] who does an excellent job.
Completely agree for the Count of Monte Cristo, but wanted to add that I had a similar experience more recently with Shogun (James Clavell) which I found equally inescapably immersive.
If by 'inescapably' you mean trapped in sprawling meandering threads with no meaning or relevance to the story that must be read out to completion before you realize you've been had, sure.
The sword buried in earthquake and the samurai-wife subplots come to mind even all these years later.
Still, it was riveting compared to the shaggy dog that was Tai-Pan, the only book I've had the distinction of hurling at the wall in disgust at its non-conclusion.
There is a 70s TV mini series that did a good adaptation of the Shogun book. So I decided to read the book, it was well worth it. At 1000+ pages I wish it could have been longer. I loved it.
The Master and Margarita is one of the best novels I've read this year too. It is funny and is so fresh with its humour, despite being several decades old.
Funny coincidence. I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo and started reading The Master and Margarita after that few days ago. Nice to see that they are well recommended here.
I picked up The Count of Monte Cristo on a dusty shared bookshelf on some combat outpost in Afghanistan circa 2010. I read through it in two days and loved it so much that I ordered the unabridged as soon as I had the means. Fantastic read.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a true masterpiece. I have the unabridged version and have recommended it to others many times. Dumas has profound insight into human nature--the characters are beautifully drawn (even the villains) and with such realistic contours that they seem like actual people. A brilliant read.
Which translation (if so) of "The master and Margarita" have you read? It's on my to read list for some time but when it's time to pick it up, i'm always turned off from finding the right one.
I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.
On the communication side, it has helped me put more structure around tough conversations, personally and professionally. It has helped me understand others more and vice versa. It's also helped me see toxic traits in others. Such as people who aren't interested in understanding or people who struggle to understand their own emotions.
I'm not sure you need to read the whole book to get value out of it. I'm not knocking the idea of NVC, I think it's helpful, however, reading the book it seemed like the author took a great article/blog post and turned it into a meandering book to jack up his speaking fees.
I disagree. There are a lot of books (especially self-help books) that I feel that way about. I think every chapter in this book is worthwhile, and I plan on re-reading it at least once.
This book has also helped me connect better with others and accomplish what I think needs to be accomplished.
It almost feels like magic how effective it is as it seems to sort of ballet step away and around from conflict. I usually don’t care about conflict so it’s nice to just sort of leave behind all the distractions that come when people focus on the wrong parts of communication.
A recent example where this helped me...I was trying to figure out what tasks needed to be done to launch a product. At first I asked the project manager what tasks he defined and he started getting very defensive because perhaps I thought he sucked at his job. Just by rephrasing that I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to contribute to things that needed to happen and that I wanted to know what steps needed to be taken, the pm opened up. I felt like the book saved me 30 minutes of pointless arguing.
I feel compelled to restate how wonderful this book is.
> it has also helped me think about my feelings
The book focuses on communication with others, but effectively fosters constructive inner dialogue as well. I know of at least one other person who claimed it helped them avoid destructive habits.
> it has helped me put more structure around tough conversations
I deescalated a nasty dispute between two people close to me after reading only the first few chapters. I was impressed because I wasn't the type of person to emotionally connect with people so effectively.
I believe the world would be a better place if more people read this book.
The co-author of this book is (seems to be) Deepak Chopra who acquired quite a fame for his liberal use of quantum physics terminology (quantum woo-woo) and for producing thoughts and ideas which typically turn out be not very coherent under a closer scrutiny (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra), i.e. for "sounding deep while saying nothing"
I wonder how his co-authorship affects contents of the book. I bought the book (b/c of this thread, not even looking at the authorship), and I will judge the book based on its contents, but suporting financially a de-facto cult leader of a not very rational movement doesn't sound like a good move from my perspective.
I can't stand books that "sound deep while saying nothing". This book definitely does not fall into that category. It's one of the books (if not the book) that has had the biggest impact on my life since reading it. It's like a more modern How to Win Friends and Influence People.
In a different version of the book than the one you mentioned, the forward is written by Mahatma Gandhi's grandson. That forward is also very worth reading.
I recently purchased Say What You Mean which is about Nonviolent Communication and Mindfulness. I’ve only read the introduction but it really resonates with me.
Actually connecting with people rather than just talking past them and having them talk past me is something that I find very appealing at this point in life after realizing how much people seem to ignore what I am actually saying (and realizing I am almost certainly doing the same to them).
* I read the Bible out of curiosity and ended up joining a church, so that's pretty consequential.
* Moby Dick and Journey to the West were probably the most sheer enjoyment I got out of books
* Learning C# 3.0 by Jesse Liberty is extremely dated at this point, and was dated even when I read it, but was the first book that made me "get" many basic OO concepts and taught me a language I've gotten a lot of professional mileage out of
* Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual and Sedewick/Wayne's Algorithms. Most people do algorithms in school. I learned about it while I was already writing programs for money all day, which means it deeply impacted the way I think about my work.
* Discrete Math with Applications by Epp -- I didn't read it all the way through but gave me the foundations to actually understand what the hell the books in the last bullet were talking about
* Battle Cry of Freedom by MacPherson was the first really meaty historical book I read. Turns out I like those a lot.
So many more but this seems like a reasonable place to stop for this discussion.
People here are quick to dismiss the Bible as trivial but it has some very good stories and wisdom if you read it with an open mind. In the same way some books help you understand life, relationships and your place in the world the Bible will help you with that. Unfortunately some people start interpret it towards their view of life which lead to some extreme and harsh views that separate us.
Bible is what it is, but its not a source of never-ending wisdom. And being treated as holy book gives impetus to bad people to do bad things and feel good about doing it.
Quite amazing, happy to hear you have found Jesus! Did you read the Bible without any help? It's such a complex set of texts, all from very different ages, from very different people. Couldn't imagine myself getting the most out of it without help.
Wow, a lot of these resonate. Epp's Discrete Math was so much fun--definitely my favorite textbook from college. Moby Dick was mindbending, and my favorite novel until reading Homer's Odyssey. The Bible was a great education in ancient cultures. I was just reading an interview of McPherson on NYT's 1619 project, too.
May your journey of faith be fruitful. I enjoyed reading Dostoyevsky and G.K. Chesterton along those lines.
Question about the Bible — is Jesus a real person or could it be that he is a symbol of and an invitation for, choosing love, to the best of one’s abilities, in every present moment and choice on one’s life?
What is your take on this? What about the Church’ take?
The way I read it, the Bible makes it a point to communicate that Jesus was/is a real person (and that his importance actually hinges on that fact). AFAIK, this is and has always been the Church's position.
> I read the Bible out of curiosity and ended up joining a church, so that's pretty consequential.
Is there a bigger story here? I'm not the type that would find reading the Bible appealing but I can say without a shadow of doubt that if I would, it would not awaken any latent desires for religion.
I've read 3 different versions of the bible and it converted me from an agnostic to an atheist. I think GP may have been predisposed to religion (or at least to the social aspects of joining a church) as the bible, as interesting as it is, is only as interesting as any other selected and vetted collection of philosophy and story telling. Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam also have very interesting texts worth reading.
This isn't meant to be insulting or dismissive, I have nothing but good will to GP, but statistically just reading the bible doesn't usually lead to joining a church. If it did, you could lose the rest of the evangelism and missionary practices and not really see a dent in the population of Christianity.
Probably Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger or Prometheus Rising back in 2010. The “reality tunnel” concept has defined much of my personal and intellectual exploration of the past 10 years.
“ When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.”
The Illuminatus Trilogy is my favorite book of all time.
A lot of people have a hard time with it, considering it nonsense and giving up a fifth of the way through. I'd strongly suggest sticking with it. There is a reason is seems like nonsense and the reason is given at the end of the book - the whole purpose of all of it is to reprogram your brain. It's a journey worth taking.
+1 for this, I read Prometheus Rising in 2011 and it has heavily influenced my mental model for different drugs. It's not particularly scientific but still a fun read.
Robert Pirsig used the word "mythos" to describe this in Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.
To quote:
The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.
There is only one kind of person, Phaedrus said, who accepts or rejects the mythos in which he lives. And the definition of that person, when he has rejected the mythos, Phaedrus said, is "insane." To go outside the mythos is to become insane.
Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina, because it made me a better father; Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, because it taught me of the importance of something that I’d occasionally dismiss as a nuisance; Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC by Pete Egoscue, because it completely changed the way I understood posture, pain, and how repetition influences my body; and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, because it taught me how despite big changes in technology and society and way of living, very little changes when it comes to our personal struggles and concerns; Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, because it helped me realize that in any situation, my attitude is what I always have control over; and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey because it greatly contributed to my mental framework for how to be productive and for this quote, which is probably my favorite of the past decade:
“In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.”
Thanks for sharing. Very informative. Especially this quote gave me pause:
> I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for all the time and effort involved in debunking Matthew Walker’s book. As someone who works with individuals with insomnia on a daily basis, I know from firsthand experience the harm that Walker’s book is causing.
> I have many stories of people who slept well on less than eight hours of sleep, read Walker’s book, tried to get more sleep and this led to more time awake, frustration, worry, sleep-related anxiety, and insomnia. …
Disappointing... That book has been highly recommended ad infinitum on HN, to the point that it was sounding like gospel. Maybe that should've been a hint, heh.
Glad someone posted this.
This book gets so much praise. But like any popsci book, there are huge incentives for the author to exaggerate and manipulate to produce a clear and marketable message. Just consider that if there was no interesting story to tell about sleep, of course there would be no book.
Funnily enough, there's also a completely different book by the very same name, written by a German sleep researcher. And this one's actually really good (imo). [1]
What a great critique. I'd like to see a similar treatment of Jason Hickel's "The Divide", which feels both terribly important and very biased and sloppy.
I'd like to give this a more thorough read, but so far this critique strikes me as done in bad faith. I read the book. I'm also in the middle of a biophys PhD, so I like to think my opinion is "extra super special". Here are my comments:
Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Another thought I had: metabolism and longevity go hand and hand. I mean, I just read a brand new paper from George Church's Harvard lab, showing that they reversed several chronic ailments in mice by inserting FGF21, which regulates glucose levels. And sleep absolutely regulates metabolism. Personally, I'm keeping my ears perked up when it comes to metabolism/circadian rhythms/homeostasis, etc.
Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature review paper covering the genome wide studies on depression: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0450-5. Its almost not worth pitting a complex phenotype like depression against another complex behavior like depression. But what the hell, let's brush with broad strokes: the significant genetic variants associated with depression have to do with regulating homeostasis (eg sirtuins). So I would not be surprised if good sleep is at least correlated with low levels of depression.
Point 3: I know almost nothing about FFI, but we have kept mice awake, and they do eventually die. I'm pretty sure humans would die too, but ethics precludes us from performing such a study.
Points 4&5: This is just fussing about Walker's writing and WHO. I'll have to agree with Guzey that Walker's citations and consistency are often weak. And I honestly couldn't care less about WHO. But I'm pretty confident that sleep quantity has declined with time across the world. I remain curious about the connections between light and circadian rhythms (I think retinal cells go straight to the superchiasmatic nucleus, the circadian rhythm controller). Also, sugar is a thing in the modern world.
So yeah, I'm just frustrated by his nitpicking, and his seeming lack of appreciation for sleep as an open biological question. We don't know why we sleep, really. If anything, the title is the worst part of the book. But at least the contents respect the question. This criticism does not. Nonetheless, I am a sucker for obsessive bloggers (eg slatestar, gwern, cowen, etc), so I will definitely be checking out Guzey's other writing. It looks interesting.
I also loved 7 Habits -- before reading it I had kind of brushed it off as just another wishy-washy self help book, but it exceeded all expectations.
However, what I took away from it was nothing about productivity, but rather how to live a good life. Habits 1-3, 5, and 7 are all solid advice that have broad application far outside of the narrow domains of the workplace. The mental model in Habit 1 about the "circle of influence vs. circle of control" has been one of the single most effective contributions to my mental health.
Egoscue was a paradigm shift for me. I had never considered posture as a critical factor in health, and since reading his books, I've gone down the rabbit hole of posture and myofascial therapy, and I'm appaled at how ignored this domain is in society. Most of us are walking around with so much energy trapped in the tension of our bodies, and our knowledge work further disembodies us. To anyone reading this, I highly recommend buying The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion, it's like 6 bucks on Amazon, and will change your life.
If you like Rilke, you'd also really like James Hollis' The Middle Passage (1993).
As for as books from the past decade go David Brooks' The Road to Character was pretty good. His follow-up The Second Mountain would have been better if he didn't recycle so much from the previous work. Sam Harris' Waking Up was pretty eye opening as Harris is a very lucid thinker.
Mans Search For Meaning affected me in a way that very few books ever have. You grow up knowing about the holocaust, you see the imagery, but it's all impersonal. You understand why it's a horrific deed, why hitler was a horrible human being, and why we as a society should never allow that to happen again.
But there's just something about Frankl's descriptions, at least for me. It personalized it in a way I had never really experienced before. That book horrified me in a way that none of the other material on the holocaust ever had.
- High Growth Handbook (general company building tips)
- Traction (the one by Weinberg and Mares; engineer-friendy guide to marketing and growth)
- Understanding Michael Porter (great intro to business strategy)
- Monetizing Innovation (pricing advice)
Personally influential:
- Thinkertoys and Cracking Creativity (how to be more creative)
- Atomic Habits (how to establish good habits)
- A Guide to the Good Life (friendly intro to stoicism)
- What Got You Here Won't Get You There (building self-awareness)
Fun:
- Richard Feynman autobiographies
- The Martian
- Shadow Divers
- Ready Player One
- The Myron Bolitar Series (mysteries with a good sense of humor)
Part of what makes the book good, in my opinion, is that it has useful advice across stages. Some of it applies to very early stage companies. The other thing is that having a good sense of what to expect at 25 or 50 people will have some influence on what you do when you're three people.
Non-fiction: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Of all the books of the last ten years, I can't think of one that more transformed my understanding of (and compassion for) my fellow thinking, feeling, moralizing, tribal primates. https://righteousmind.com/
I can second The Righteous Mind. Currently almost done with it. Has given me many thing to think about.
However, I feel like the author sometimes falls into the same biases/flawed thought patterns he spends the book describing. Because of this, I'd rate it as very good instead of great.
Readit News
https://sivers.org/book
My top recommendations here for the Hacker News crowd - with a nudge for the under-rated, are:
The Time Paradox - by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd
https://sivers.org/book/TimeParadox
Profound idea that everyone has a primary time focus: either Future-focused, Present-focused, or Past-focused. Fascinating implications of each. Because I'm so future-focused, reading this book helped me understand people who are very present-focused. Also great advice on shifting your focus when needed. I read it 7 years ago, but still think about it almost every day.
--
Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want - by Nicholas Epley
https://sivers.org/book/Mindwise
Many new brilliant insights, especially about over-estimating the differences between you and others, thereby separating into us-vs-them tribalism. Scan to the end of my notes, to see. If you know more books like this, please recommend them to me. I adore this subject.
--
The War of Art - by Steven Pressfield
https://sivers.org/book/WarOfArt
Have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what “Resistance” is. This book is about that. Read it.
--
E-Myth Revisited - by Michael Gerber
https://sivers.org/book/EMythRevisited
Absolutely everyone who is an entrepreneur or wants to be one needs to read this book. I first read it after 10 years of successfully running my company, and was still blown away and totally humbled by its wisdom. Re-reading it today, I'm amazed how my view of business was completely changed by this one little book. See my notes for examples, but definitely read the book itself to get the real impact.
--
The Courage to Be Disliked - by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
https://sivers.org/book/Disliked
Wow. A profound little philosophy book from Japan, communicating the psychology of Alfred Adler - a rival of Freud. Told as a conversation between an angry student and a patient teacher. A little book so good that I rushed home from other activites to keep reading it, and finished in a day. A surprisingly fresh perspective on how to live. (The “disliked” part is not the point, so don’t let the title distract you.)
Seriously HN, listen to this guy about books, and check out his site.
I regularly use your book list for inspiration on what to read next
Derek's book 'Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur' was definitely up there for me.
PS. My better half is hating you all guys - I've ordered quite a lot of books today :)
Other books which I find interesting
- The Slight Edge
- Sapiens
- The Master and Margarita (apart from the fact it is a great novel, this is so wickedly funny )
There's a user on HN who learned French just so he could read it in the original, and I can see why.
If you read it, make sure to read the unabridged edition, and not any of the many abridged editions, which are often targeted at children and are a travesty to the mature themes in the original.
I can personally recommend David Clarke's reading of it on Librivox,[1] who does an excellent job.
[1] - https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-version-3-by-...
The sword buried in earthquake and the samurai-wife subplots come to mind even all these years later.
Still, it was riveting compared to the shaggy dog that was Tai-Pan, the only book I've had the distinction of hurling at the wall in disgust at its non-conclusion.
Deleted Comment
I read Robin Buss Unabridged version from penguin for "The Count of Monte Cristo".
Also, some of other interesting books I forgot to mention in my original list
- How to Change Your Mind (don't be put off by title)
- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius (good peek into the mind of one of the greatest emperors of all time)
Nonviolent Communication.
I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.
On the communication side, it has helped me put more structure around tough conversations, personally and professionally. It has helped me understand others more and vice versa. It's also helped me see toxic traits in others. Such as people who aren't interested in understanding or people who struggle to understand their own emotions.
You can save yourself the time/money and just read the Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
It almost feels like magic how effective it is as it seems to sort of ballet step away and around from conflict. I usually don’t care about conflict so it’s nice to just sort of leave behind all the distractions that come when people focus on the wrong parts of communication.
A recent example where this helped me...I was trying to figure out what tasks needed to be done to launch a product. At first I asked the project manager what tasks he defined and he started getting very defensive because perhaps I thought he sucked at his job. Just by rephrasing that I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to contribute to things that needed to happen and that I wanted to know what steps needed to be taken, the pm opened up. I felt like the book saved me 30 minutes of pointless arguing.
> it has also helped me think about my feelings
The book focuses on communication with others, but effectively fosters constructive inner dialogue as well. I know of at least one other person who claimed it helped them avoid destructive habits.
> it has helped me put more structure around tough conversations
I deescalated a nasty dispute between two people close to me after reading only the first few chapters. I was impressed because I wasn't the type of person to emotionally connect with people so effectively.
I believe the world would be a better place if more people read this book.
I wonder how his co-authorship affects contents of the book. I bought the book (b/c of this thread, not even looking at the authorship), and I will judge the book based on its contents, but suporting financially a de-facto cult leader of a not very rational movement doesn't sound like a good move from my perspective.
In a different version of the book than the one you mentioned, the forward is written by Mahatma Gandhi's grandson. That forward is also very worth reading.
Deleted Comment
Actually connecting with people rather than just talking past them and having them talk past me is something that I find very appealing at this point in life after realizing how much people seem to ignore what I am actually saying (and realizing I am almost certainly doing the same to them).
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
* I read the Bible out of curiosity and ended up joining a church, so that's pretty consequential.
* Moby Dick and Journey to the West were probably the most sheer enjoyment I got out of books
* Learning C# 3.0 by Jesse Liberty is extremely dated at this point, and was dated even when I read it, but was the first book that made me "get" many basic OO concepts and taught me a language I've gotten a lot of professional mileage out of
* Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual and Sedewick/Wayne's Algorithms. Most people do algorithms in school. I learned about it while I was already writing programs for money all day, which means it deeply impacted the way I think about my work.
* Discrete Math with Applications by Epp -- I didn't read it all the way through but gave me the foundations to actually understand what the hell the books in the last bullet were talking about
* Battle Cry of Freedom by MacPherson was the first really meaty historical book I read. Turns out I like those a lot.
So many more but this seems like a reasonable place to stop for this discussion.
It is also great source of knowledge of what to do for example:
how to beat up your slave so to not offend god
what to do if your daughter is raped (spoiler alert sell her to the rapist).
what to do to people having tattoos or wearing mixed fabrics.
It is also a great that non of it contradicts itself: https://infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/contradict...
Bible is what it is, but its not a source of never-ending wisdom. And being treated as holy book gives impetus to bad people to do bad things and feel good about doing it.
In that case, to be fair to yourself, did you also read the Quran, for comparison? Other religious texts?
May your journey of faith be fruitful. I enjoyed reading Dostoyevsky and G.K. Chesterton along those lines.
What is your take on this? What about the Church’ take?
Is there a bigger story here? I'm not the type that would find reading the Bible appealing but I can say without a shadow of doubt that if I would, it would not awaken any latent desires for religion.
This isn't meant to be insulting or dismissive, I have nothing but good will to GP, but statistically just reading the bible doesn't usually lead to joining a church. If it did, you could lose the rest of the evangelism and missionary practices and not really see a dent in the population of Christianity.
“ When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.”
A lot of people have a hard time with it, considering it nonsense and giving up a fifth of the way through. I'd strongly suggest sticking with it. There is a reason is seems like nonsense and the reason is given at the end of the book - the whole purpose of all of it is to reprogram your brain. It's a journey worth taking.
It's not all apples and oranges. Some people are right some people are wrong and some things are better than other things.
To quote:
The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.
There is only one kind of person, Phaedrus said, who accepts or rejects the mythos in which he lives. And the definition of that person, when he has rejected the mythos, Phaedrus said, is "insane." To go outside the mythos is to become insane.
There is an infinite bunch of realities, and the one you see is defined by your own experience only.
In other words, what you perceive is what that you are. Or that you can't perceive that what you can't accept.
Hat tip to Douglas Adams who described this idea that obvious.
“In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.”
> I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for all the time and effort involved in debunking Matthew Walker’s book. As someone who works with individuals with insomnia on a daily basis, I know from firsthand experience the harm that Walker’s book is causing.
> I have many stories of people who slept well on less than eight hours of sleep, read Walker’s book, tried to get more sleep and this led to more time awake, frustration, worry, sleep-related anxiety, and insomnia. …
Has Walker responded to that critique?
[1] https://service.randomhouse.de/paperback/Why-We-Sleep/Albrec...
Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Another thought I had: metabolism and longevity go hand and hand. I mean, I just read a brand new paper from George Church's Harvard lab, showing that they reversed several chronic ailments in mice by inserting FGF21, which regulates glucose levels. And sleep absolutely regulates metabolism. Personally, I'm keeping my ears perked up when it comes to metabolism/circadian rhythms/homeostasis, etc.
Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature review paper covering the genome wide studies on depression: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0450-5. Its almost not worth pitting a complex phenotype like depression against another complex behavior like depression. But what the hell, let's brush with broad strokes: the significant genetic variants associated with depression have to do with regulating homeostasis (eg sirtuins). So I would not be surprised if good sleep is at least correlated with low levels of depression.
Point 3: I know almost nothing about FFI, but we have kept mice awake, and they do eventually die. I'm pretty sure humans would die too, but ethics precludes us from performing such a study.
Points 4&5: This is just fussing about Walker's writing and WHO. I'll have to agree with Guzey that Walker's citations and consistency are often weak. And I honestly couldn't care less about WHO. But I'm pretty confident that sleep quantity has declined with time across the world. I remain curious about the connections between light and circadian rhythms (I think retinal cells go straight to the superchiasmatic nucleus, the circadian rhythm controller). Also, sugar is a thing in the modern world.
So yeah, I'm just frustrated by his nitpicking, and his seeming lack of appreciation for sleep as an open biological question. We don't know why we sleep, really. If anything, the title is the worst part of the book. But at least the contents respect the question. This criticism does not. Nonetheless, I am a sucker for obsessive bloggers (eg slatestar, gwern, cowen, etc), so I will definitely be checking out Guzey's other writing. It looks interesting.
However, what I took away from it was nothing about productivity, but rather how to live a good life. Habits 1-3, 5, and 7 are all solid advice that have broad application far outside of the narrow domains of the workplace. The mental model in Habit 1 about the "circle of influence vs. circle of control" has been one of the single most effective contributions to my mental health.
Dead Comment
But there's just something about Frankl's descriptions, at least for me. It personalized it in a way I had never really experienced before. That book horrified me in a way that none of the other material on the holocaust ever had.
Non-fiction: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Of all the books of the last ten years, I can't think of one that more transformed my understanding of (and compassion for) my fellow thinking, feeling, moralizing, tribal primates. https://righteousmind.com/
However, I feel like the author sometimes falls into the same biases/flawed thought patterns he spends the book describing. Because of this, I'd rate it as very good instead of great.