Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for mind games, plot twists, brain expanding books, and literally anything that transforms me into a smarter, wiser person. <comment><USER4> "Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches.

Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous.

What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not continue then as well (the classic teleporter question). But it doesn't stop here.

What if you destroy it, but it just happens to continue somewhere else? Then it should continue there as well. So if you think that teleportation would not mean death, then you kind of have to accept that if anywhere in the universe at any time the same pattern exists when you die, then you can't really die because you'll just continue on from there instead.

Not sure I accept it, but it's certainly mind-bending to think about!

<comment><USER5> It's either this or another Greg Egan book that has simulated people reprogramming their own consciousness. Changing their thought processes, personal motivations, and memories. I think he goes into some depth on how they can do that safely and what the implications are. One character programs himself to be obsessed with carpentry and spends lifetimes of subjective simulated time trying to craft the perfect table, but has a timer to turn off that motivation after some period of time. It's a fascinating idea that has stayed with me, and I think of it every time I see another depiction of a "brain in a computer". I'm disappointed that nobody else has tackled that idea, I think people are still getting used to the concept and it will be a few years before we see something like that in some more pop-culture sci-fi.

<comment><USER6> Diaspora includes a few examples of this as well. Mathematical discoveries can only be made in the "mines", and people install these mods to make them better at mining, after working through some of the beginner steps unaltered to see if they'd like it. There's also a mod that explicitly prevents you from ever uninstalling it; I don't remember what else it even did, it seemed to spread like a slow virus through the artistic communities in the simulation.

<comment><USER7> Was it forgetting - memories fading?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> • "Laws of Form" by George Spencer-Brown, a little book that describes how to bootstrap the Universe from nothing. Louis Kauffman [1] has a lot of papers/writeups on it, from knot theory to quantum physics. If you ever wanted to make a pancake truly from scratch, this is a place to start.

• "The Unconscious as Infinite Sets" by Ignacio Matte Blanco. Reformulates Freud in logico-mathematical terms and establishes a formal system (bi-logic) to describe unconsciousness phenomena: in case you ever wanted to apply category theory to study yourself.

• "The Protracted Game" by Scott Boorman. Interprets Maoist's revolutionary strategies during 1927 - 1949 period as a game of Go. Interesting both from historical, military, and game-theoretical perspective; raised an appreciation of Eastern wisdom and 'board games as a tool of thought' [2] for me.

• "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering" by W. J. King. Written in 1944, but the advice is still relevant, more so to the software engineering field. Should be at least skimmed at any part of your career.

• "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Alber Camus. Unequivocally answers the most important question there is — does life have meaning, and if not, should you kill yourself over it? I read it in my teens while wrestling with existential dread, and lived a somewhat happy and interesting life ever after.

[1]: [http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Form.html](http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Form.html)

[2]: There's also "Laws of the Game" by Eigen & Winkler that describes natural phenomena as glass-bead games with various rules.

<comment><USER8> Retroactively, I would also add "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari to this list, except that I haven't yet read the actual thing, but only dipped my toes into related studies, like e.g. "The Allure of Machinic Life" by John Johnston that traces the history of cybernetics, A-Life and AI fields and adds a Deleuzian spin on top.

This is the only case in my life where I wanted to _adopt_ author's philosophy and learn to see the world the way they do. The content is very interdisciplinary and heavily borrows from various fields (psychoanalysis, dynamic systems theory, biology, linguistics &c) and will surely appeal to a technically minded person.

<comment> dawg- [https://libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf](https://libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf)

Books like that, I think there is a lot of value in just diving in and seeing what happens. I would highly recommend it.

<comment><USER8> I think that's the main idea behind the book's rhizomatic structure, as authors put it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you want smaller, quicker payoffs (but in no way cheaper!), consider the anthologies of short stories by Ted Chiang. Most of them are 15-45 minutes to read, with a couple longer (1-2 hours).

I've read both "Stories of Your Life and Others" and "Exhalation" in the last month and I turned to my wife and said "that story just blew my mind" for probably 75% of the stories.

You can find a few online. Here is a very short but brain-tickling example: [https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679](https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679)

<comment><USER10> I read Stories of Your Life and Others, and felt he had some interesting ideas, but not very interesting characters, and pretty much all of his characters sounded like they had the same voice (Which, as a writer myself, I admit it can be difficult. I struggle with giving my characters distinct voices as well).

Made it hard for me to get emotionally invested in his stories, and I found them a bit of a slog to get through.

Not sure if I'll give his other books a read, but I might.

He has a background in Computer Science, by the way, for those that might be interested.

<comment><USER9> Give some of his newer stuff in "Exhalation" a try. He's improved with time. I seem to recall 'The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling' having some distinct characters, and also a really neat setting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life" by Rory Sutherland

Explains why we choose brands over cheaper alternatives, why we're willing to pay a lot more to lock in a deal, why we hate registering before buying the thing (but are more than happy to do so right after), why Sony removed the record button from the first Walkman, and much more.

This book forever changed the way I think about brands, and improved my design and problem-solving skills.

A couple of Rory's rules:

• The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.

• Test counterintuitive things only because no one else will.

A couple of "mind games" from the book:

• Merely adding a geographical or topographical adjective to food – whether on a menu in a restaurant or on packaging in a supermarket – allows you to charge more for it and means you will sell more.

• "There's your problem," I said. "It doesn't matter what something tastes like in blind tastings, if you put 'low in fat' or any other health indicators on the packaging, you'll make the contents taste worse."

[https://bookshop.org/books/alchemy-the-dark-art-and- curious-...](https://bookshop.org/books/alchemy-the-dark-art-and-curious- science-of-creating-magic-in-brands-business-and-life/9780062388414)

<comment><USER12> The food rule works for anything, but Detroit. [https://www.smbc- comics.com/?id=2774](https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2774)

<comment><USER13> Detroit-style deep dish is the best style of pizza, and nothing else is in the same league.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Social philosophy/psychology, or cultural anthropology, is mind-bending to me.

Erich Fromm's The Sane Society - on how society impacts people's mental health, and how to build towards a sane society

Fromm's The Art Of Loving - an analysis of different kinds of loves, trying to dispel pop culture's lies about love, and love is actually hard work

Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death - on how not our fear, but our complete denial of death existing leads to the weirdest outcomes in our society

Then there's political stuff -

Orwell's Essays, any large-ish collection. I find Orwell to be a much, much better non-fiction writer than fiction writer. Extremely insightful into political processes.

Robert Caro's books, perhaps the first The Years Of Lyndon B Johnson. Can't get better insights into how power works on a local and not-so-local level.

Popper's Open Society and its enemies, hard to summarise - a defense of Western society in light of the then-ongoing WW2. You probably saw the paradox of tolerance a few times pop up, that's from that book, among a ton of other stuff.

<comment><USER14> Oh if you can, try looking for similar recommendation threads from communities completely alien to you - law enforcement forums, midwife communities, car mechanics, biologists.

HN is very insular in its interests as you can see with many posts here repeating. Midwives' recommended books probably have a higher chance of truly bending your mind into novel directions.

<comment><USER15> Any good examples of "foreign interest" forums?

<comment><USER14> I reckon subreddits are a good start, even though their lists are always domain-specific too:

Biology: [https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/6jfscw/what_are_so...](https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/6jfscw/what_are_some_books_that_everyone_studying/)

Law enforcement: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/gc13w5/mus...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/gc13w5/must_read_books/)

Midwives: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Midwives/comments/32fw16/book_recom...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Midwives/comments/32fw16/book_recommendations_for_aspiring_15_yearold/)

Any of the Ask* subreddits usually have practitioners answer: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/bl759q/ant...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/bl759q/anthropology_of_religion_recommended_books/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Desert Solitaire" by Ed Abbey and "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. Both are wildly different but explore the question of how different the other forms of life on this planet are from ours. "Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?" By Franz de Waal et al explores this from a scientific perspective.

Abbeys about more, of course. He had that rare ability to turn his book into something that felt like a direct conversation with me, the reader. I read him in my 20s and his viewpoint definitely connects with someone wanting to examine and express his/herself first before society's overwhelming influence. He discusses trying to free himself from the conceptual confines of the human individual and societal experience while isolated in a national park. Quinn uses a hypothetical conversation between a gorilla and a person to highlight the fundamental us versus them approach humans take with the rest of earth. Then Franz de Waal really drives home that animals are likely to be much more mentally capable than we give them credit. They're good books if you want to know something more about the universe than what your human experience is.

Edit-corrected book title.

<comment><USER17> If you liked Ishmael, I recommend reading The Story of B. Its subject is very similar to Ishmael but I feel that it does a better job of portraying how the us vs them is woven into the very fabric of civilization. It's also a very entertaining read.

<comment><USER16> I read Story of B as well. But I don't have quite a clear enough memory of it to even try to summarize it as anything past a sequel. I'll go back to revisit them some day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I enjoyed Blindsight by Peter Watts. It explores several different interesting ideas.

For instance, what is the point of empathy/friendship/love in a technologically advanced society? These were very useful things for our ancestors to help each other battle the harsh environment, but we have mastered our environment, so why waste brain power on empathy now?

The Wikipedia summarizes the books discussion of conciousness very well:

"The novel raises questions about the essential character of consciousness. Is the interior experience of consciousness necessary, or is externally observed behavior the sole determining characteristic of conscious experience? Is an interior emotional experience necessary for empathy, or is empathic behavior sufficient to possess empathy?

<comment><USER19> With respect, if your takeaway from reading Watts is that we've "mastered" the environment, I implore you to read the Rifters series and/or his blog. That's about as far from his view as it's possible to get.

<comment><USER20> It's not so much "we the humans have mastered the environment" as, well, a generic sort of we. But yes, the notable thing about Watts is definitely not his sunny optimism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "To Mock a Mockingbird" by Raymond Smullyan. From Wikipedia:

> To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing > Adventure in Combinatory Logic (1985, ISBN 0-19-280142-2) is a book by the > mathematician and logician Raymond Smullyan. It contains many nontrivial > recreational puzzles of the sort for which Smullyan is well known. It is > also a gentle and humorous introduction to combinatory logic and the > associated metamathematics, built on an elaborate ornithological metaphor.

Here's an example puzzle from the first half (the second half deals with combinatory logic):

> Suppose I offer to give you one of three prizes-Prize A, Prize B, or Prize > C. Prize A is the best of the three, Prize B is middling, and Prize C is the > booby prize. You are to make a statement; if the statement is true, then I > promise to award you either Prize A or Prize B, but if your statement is > false, then you get Prize C-the booby prize.

> Of course it is easy for you to be sure to win either Prize A or Prize B; > all you need say is: "Two plus two is four." But suppose you have your heart > set on Prize A-what statement could you make which would force me to give > you Prize A?

Fun book.

<comment><USER22> Apart from playing twice, I can't think of a statement that could exclude you from choosing arbitrarily between A and B, since within the conceit of the problem there is no way to exclude B with a mere statement.

<comment><USER23> For this statement I will receive prize A or C.

<comment><USER24> You're not supposed to spoil it. The whole point of these puzzles is the joy and knowledge you gets from solving them on your own. Publishing the answers is selfish.

<comment><USER22> Well, I for one don't consider this a satisfying solution (you could argue it does not count as a solution at all). How is the host supposed to evaluate the future? As I said in another comment, for that the host either needs iteration or an oracle, and both of those are missing from the premise of the question. It's like asking riddle where the solution is "Use a time-machine" when no time-machine is mentioned in the riddle: it's indicative of a riddle so weak it's almost an insult.

<comment><USER23> I don't consider it a statement about the future but rather about the inevitable consequence whenever this game is played. Maybe it should be rephrased as: For this statement one will receive prize A or C.

@Carapace I find joy in discussing the validity of answers like this and such discussion is not possible without posting the answer first. I do feel sorry if I spoiled someone the joy of puzzling themselves though.

<comment><USER22> > _I don 't consider it a statement about the future_

Okay, so what does _one will receive_ mean, if it doesn't reference the future???

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy" by Thomas Sowell. I read this as a teenager with only limited exposure to economics and it cleared up many misconceptions I held.

"Psycho-cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz. A plastic surgeon shares his techniques for achieving your goals in life. 95% if not more of self-help books today borrow (consciously or not) ideas discussed in this book, and often discuss them with much less depth.

<comment><USER26> "Basic Economics" was also very effective for clearing misconceptions I held.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

This book makes every bit of life advice you receive afterwards feel shallow. It feels like a reference to western thought.

It's also very well translated and reads very easily, and is very short. I read about a chapter every morning when I feel motivated, and certain passages really stick in my head.

It also helps to read whenever you feel overcome with emotion because of something.

<comment><USER28> An essential part of the hustle: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U)

<comment><USER29> This is the best thing I've watched this week. xD

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was maybe the most important book I read as a teenager, and I still go back and reread it every so often. It should be required reading.

For fiction, "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, "100 Years of Solitude" by Marquez, and "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison (or really anything by Toni Morrison, it's all amazing).

Also, Thich Nhat Hanh's translation of the Heart Sutra, "The Other Shore", gave me a much deeper understanding of my meditative practice and the way I understand consciousness.

<comment><USER31> I'll second "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". I read it in high school and it blew my mind. Must read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anathem by Neal Stephenson features a bifurcated world where a scholar-monk- class of mathematicians lives in walled-off areas that mingle with the rest of the world only on fixed dates. Some every year, some every ten years, and others only every 100 years. There is a lot more to it, but I don't want to give anything away.

<comment><USER33> Anathem features an awesome world, but I wouldn't call the book mind-bending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Life changing books...

I read Decartes in high school during the teenage existential crises we all go through and it blew my mind. Opened me up to the power of thinking from first principles and a love of philosophy and questioning everything. Cogito, ergo sum!

"Atlas Shrugged" gets a lot of hate, but it's a phenomenally important book. It was one of those that completely consumed me during the read. I could not put it down – stayed up late, work up early, and rushed home from work to get back to it.

"Rework", "Getting Real", the other books by the old 37signals crew, and of course "The Lean Startup" really changed the way I thought about software development and business. I credit them for much of my startup/programming success.

Taleb's Incerto series changed how I thought about investing, risk, and life in general. "Fooled by Randomness" and "Antifragile" are especially good.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig takes you deep into the philosophy on what is 'quality'. Once you see it you can't unsee it.

A powerful excerpt from the book: 'So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces the right values, the right values produce the right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.'

<comment><USER35> Despite all the praise it got, I really struggled with that book. I hated it so much that I had to check if I didn't pick the wrong book by accident. I found that it's a very polarising book. It's life-changing for some, and garbage for others.

There were a few insightful passages, but most of the book was pretentious rambling. It was difficult to understand what the author was even trying to say, with his head so far up his butt. It has a promising beginning, but becomes increasingly dense and confusing.

Quality is the ability of a thing to do its job. Chasing the definition of that word doesn't warrant a spiral into insanity.

<comment><USER36> > It's life-changing for some, and garbage for others.

I feel this way about Catcher in the Rye. My English teacher recommended it to me obviously on the basis that I was an angsty teenager that would identify with Holden Caulfield. But what a pile of crap it is. I still want back the hours I wasted on reading that stupid boring book.

<comment> 52-6F-62 That's a weird recommendation. I think you might have viewed it differently as a bit of a retrospective or perspective piece.

I can't possibly so how the teacher thought suggesting that book to an angsty teen to be a good idea. That's the time kids need to have their world opened, not their angst re-affirmed. Very strange.

<comment><USER36> Thing is I was already reading some pretty bleak stuff at the time, e.g. Brave New World and 1984, and as you can probably imagine the trials of a mopey teenager didn't really impress much when put up against poor Winston and Room 101 etc.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Haha fair enough

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> House of Leaves is a great novel. Will feel like a completely fresh take on narrative form.

Infinite Jest is also great, if you haven't read it. It gets a lot of bad press mostly due to being fetishized by a particular type of insufferable person. The book has its flaws, but is a great piece of writing and (depending how old you are, where you are in life, etc) may offer a different lens. Also, the writing is excellent.

<comment><USER38> I didn't finish Infinite Jest. I found it kind of insufferable. I really don't want to detract from anyone who found it enjoyable; it's surely a monumental work. But personally it felt incredibly depressing and that made it hard to read.

The dialogues made it feel like experiencing isolation and disconnection from other people; the characters talk to each other, but don't listen or care for anyone but themselves or the ones/things they deify.

The thing is, I think that was kind of the point of the book (at least as far as I read). But I couldn't handle it. That, on top of the many paragraphs of needlessly esoteric language he peppers in, made me feel like I was reading a book written for someone else.

Should I go back and finish the book? What makes it compelling to others?

<comment><USER39> My favorite aspect of the book is the way in which it depicts "addiction" in its many forms such as being addicted to drugs, playing sports, consumer products or work. It makes you think hard about the elusive nature of happiness and fulfillment.

<comment><USER40> That was my primary takeaway as well. Some people I've talked to about it didn't quite get that theme from it, but I think it helps frame its point in a less scattershot way. It is still a concept I constantly think about, though it doesn't help me avoid the pitfalls much, which I think is also kind of the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So many good suggestions here! I'll try adding two more

[1] "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. It changed the way I look at my career and how I view my personal development.

[2] ADP 6-22 Army Leadership and the Profession by the US Army. Looking past the militaristic stuff, it made me change the way I see leader/subordinate relationships and how to start becoming a person others can depend on and look up to.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore- You/dp/14555091...](https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore- You/dp/1455509124)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Army-Doctrine-Publication- Leadership-...](https://www.amazon.com/Army-Doctrine-Publication-Leadership- Profession/dp/1689088931)

<comment><USER42> I just want to comment that the Army publication you listed is really good. While you can only learn so much about leadership from books, the military is one of the best organizations at explaining what leadership is. There is another pub from the Marines that is similar and equally high quality. I think it is called "Leading Marines" or something like that.

Also, FYI, all of these publications are free online. Here is the Army one you linked to: [https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN2003...](https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN20039_ADP%206-22%20C1%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Highly recommended for everyone: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahenman.

If you have difficulty interacting with people

1\. How to win friends and influence people (Easy read) 2\. Seven habits of highly effective people (Harder read)

To learn how to write well: On writing well

To understand how large products are made: Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT

<comment><USER44> I have a conflicting relationship with "How to Win Friends and Influence People," and maybe some of you may relate to this.

Disclaimer: I only read a small, initial part of the book, and I'll explain the reasons behind this.

For one, I liked the initial parts of it; for example, remembering first names is a nice and very attentive thing to do, and in general people appreciate it when I can remember their first name after meeting them a second and third time.

On the other side, I found it to be of a very manipulative nature (shouldn't be a surprise; the title contains an "influence people" part), which rubbed me the wrong way; the book presents some techniques that help you get "what you want," but are quite superficial and hollow, i.e., you only pretend to be interested. That's why I decided to stop reading the book.

The conflicting part in all this is the fact that I see this book recommended all the time (and it's one of the best-selling books of all-time), but I just cannot ignore its manipulative nature.

It might be that I'm simply not part of its target audience or that I'm misinterpreting the messages in the book.

Nonetheless, I'd be interested to read your (and other fellow HNers) comments on this book.

<comment><USER45> It's probably been 32 years since I read How to Win Friends, but my take on it was that it is like many things we learn throughout life - first we model, they we practice, finally we make it part of our nature, and eventually we achieve mastery.

I didn't come away with the impression that the techniques are intended to be used in a hollow, phony way, so much as to show the reader a set of steps to get started toward genuinely showing interest in other people.

Not everyone can jump right in to Siddhartha or Zen and the Art or some of these heavier books that might take people out of their default self- absorption towards greater awareness of other people and their needs, but Carnegie wrote something that is easy to access and get people started down a path.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Most likely no one is going to like this post. My father was a physicist and he had a large library of books. Growing up all of these books were over my head but I tried reading all of them. The more difficult the book the more determined I became to read and understand the content. I found this to be mind expanding. I began a life long quest to read the most difficult books and texts I could find. It sometimes takes several passes. Some things didn't make sense until years later. I recommend reading outside your comfort zone and above your comprehension. The book doesn't expand your mind it's the reading process and thinking about the reading that forces the mind to expand. I have done this for 50 years and I still do it every day It's not one book but the sum total of books that expand your mind. Read with curiosity and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. A man who reads one book lives once life while a man who reads a thousand books life experiences thousands of lives. I hope these word aren't wasted. I thought my fathers library was the library of Alexandria and it was until I got a library card.

<comment><USER47> This is a very specific question but... Stoner by John Williams is one of my favorite books. It was also more difficult for me to read than other books I typically pick up which are primarily sci-fi and NYT bestseller fiction books.

When I read the Wiki for Stoner years ago I saw this line, "Bryan Appleyard's review quotes critic D.G. Myers saying that the novel was a good book for beginners in the world of "serious literature"". I looked up D.G. Myers and to see if he had a list of serious literature or a twitter where I could ask about such a list only to find he passed away in 2014.

Does anyone know of such a list? Googling provides results but nothing... conclusive.

<comment><USER48> I take well known lists (e.g. Gates') with a grain of salt, but cross referencing with personal recommendations has worked well. I ended up getting a copy of _Stoner_ after it came up a few times in as many weeks, so it was handy last time I went on vacation.

I also usually search HN for threads like these when I'm looking for things to read. I'm fairly certain that's how I came across _Seveneves_.

<comment><USER47> Fantastic. That's two books I will look into.

I did a little searching this morning and did find D.G. Myers old blog where he posts a few of his favorite novels, including Stoner. Link here: [https://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favorite- martians.ht...](https://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favorite- martians.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I reread Moby Dick as an adult within the last couple years. Found it far more interesting than I did when I was young. The book plays on narration in far more complex ways than I remembered.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Seriously. Read it. The horrors of war leaked into your brain through a sci-fi novel. If you enjoy that, try Player Piano, a moral discourse on technology and its social effects. Even though it is old, the social complications are familiar.

To keep your brain busy, anything by Umberto Eco, but this would be my order: Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before.

</comment><comment><USER50> Asimov's _Foundation_ and _Robots_ series. Images and stories from those still pop into my head randomly decades later, and bits and pieces appear throughout pop culture. From the original trilogy up to _Foundation's Edge_ would be a good portion size.

<comment><USER50> _The World Beyond Your Head_ , Matthew Crawford, 2015.

Why and how to find focus in this age of distraction. Will give you a real appreciation for woodworking, etc.

<comment><USER50> _Stick and Rudder_ , Wolfgang Langewiesch, 1944.

Understanding how something like powered flight works—the combination of science, engineering, process, self-control, intuition, on and on—is highly transferable to nearly any other acquirable skill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _Mere Christianity_ , by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by- step approach.

 _The Elements of Style_ , by William Strunk and E. B. White. I liked writing since I learned how to. I didn't find this book until I was 17, and it unlocked me to write in a way that better helped others.

 _The Language Instinct_ , by Steven Pinker. I guess I like writing and language. Like C. S. Lewis, Steven Pinker has a way of writing about hard things that makes them easy to understand, even enjoyable. The subject matter is also news to most people, I think, who don't appreciate just how much that language is built in to the human mind from conception.

<comment><USER52> Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash.

Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them.

When White put out the second edition after Strunk died, he made up a bunch more rules, the went back and doctored Strunk's original text to follow his new rules.

But he didn't check his _own_ text. Typically he breaks his own rules on the same page where he is promoting them.

The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

<comment><USER51> > its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing

That's the opposite of its effect on me.

> The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to > write well. But you aren't good enough to know when."

I discerned no such put-down.

> In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and > his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys > them.

The gist of the book is the same as other books, such as The King's English, On Writing Well, and A Sense of Style. Stephen King praises the book in his own book, On Writing. I've also read a few articles on writing that say the same basic thing.

The gist of these books is to write in service of the reader (as opposed to your ego) and to work hard at it (as opposed to being lazy and just "letting it all hang out" from the first draft), as it is a craft, like carpentry. Specifically, try to avoid wasting words, try to use the best word at each point, and try to order your words (and sentences and paragraphs) in the best way for the reader's understanding.

There are some minor rules and preferences that perhaps Geoff Pullum is pouncing on, something like, "A clever horse is a good-natured one, not an ingenious one." I can see clearly that that is an archaism and take it for what it's worth. After all, the book is about 100 years old. But any writer should know that when you get down to that level of resolution, the detail shifts a bit in the quantum foam. Things on that level vary a bit from one decade to another, from one region to another. And language is like a craft, in that there are some rules that can be followed 90% of time, but it is not mathematics. You cannot distill a formula. I see Geoff Pullum taking it as black and white, but English does not submit to such simplification.

Perhaps Strunk was more black and white, but White seems a bit looser, and I think their combination balances each other out nicely. It reminds me that no rule is absolute. However, for the vast majority of writers, they would benefit from at least trying to follow a lot of them!

> The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You > cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

For 80% of the writing I read in books, magazines, articles, etc., they suffer from the kinds of problems addressed in the Elements of Style. There may be other kinds of problems in a minority of writing, but far and away most writing suffers heavily from wordiness, vagueness, clumsy construction. I won't fault someone for incorrectly calling a horse "clever," but now I see why most writing tires me out so much --- and I can rewrite it in my head to be clearer.

<comment><USER52> There are plenty of absolute rules in English. White didn't know them, and you don't know them, but neither of you ever breaks them, or is even tempted to.

If you need a book to tell you to use the best word, or to put your words in order, it means you need far more help than you can get from a book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I would recommend "the perennial philosophy", by Huxley [1]. Schrödinger recommends it in his "what is life" (another amazing piece).. you'll not be disappointed if you thrive for mind expanding literature! :)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Perennial_Phi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Perennial_Philosophy&oldid=942885963)

</comment><comment><USER54> I found Candide by Voltaire to be eye opening. I read a lot of philosophy and self help, which is a category you could put this book in to. Since it's fiction though, the message comes through more in the story than it does in the author banging you over the head with "you should".

</comment><comment><USER55> The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

The book is written to convince the reader that evolution is valid.

But to me, the shocking thing was to really understand the religious argument for the first time, and understand why evolution challenges that world view.

In a nutshell, there is a web of related arguments which support the belief that God exists. One of them is that the eye is so complicated, that it must have been designed from the beginning by an intelligent being. Therefore God exists.

But Darwin showed that many small random changes plus natural selection are sufficient to explain the eye's complexity.

Why was this shocking at the time?

Just imagine you are walking around with a vague gut feeling that God must exist every time you see a beautiful bird or a flower. You figure that something intelligent must have designed that beatiful, complex living thing. You see another complex wonder of nature, and feeling gets stronger. Perhaps it becomes the main reason that you believe that God must exist.

Then one day, wham! Darwin releases his book, and it becomes clear that there is a valid scientific explanation for the complexity of that flower which does not require a supernatural designer.

Instantly your whole world view collapses. There's nothing in the science that says that God does not exist. Science only says that other explanations are sufficient. And yet, just that is enough to collapse that entire line of thinking. There are still other arguments for the existence of God. But the one you felt most strongly is gone.

Reading the book gave me a detailed understanding of that religious line of reasoning, and what it might feel like to lose it. It gives me some understanding of why people, even today, have a desire to reject the scientific idea of evolution.

<comment><USER56> I suppose your praise is more due to Darwin's original book, although it is much less accessible nowadays - Dawkins does indeed explain it well. The thing that struck me was how Darwin's ideas achieved such quick adoption, even in that most pious of times, where to avow yourself an athiest was unthinkable. It's an idea, once you are exposed to it, is so immensely powerful and perhaps even to say in hindsight obvious - that the truth of it almost bowls you over. The eldritch horror it must have inspired in the religious mind at the time can only be imagined. And yet it could not be seriously challenged - <USER2> it was so clearly TRUE.

One of the most staggering intellectual achievements of mankind. Philosophers since Ancient Greek times had been speculating on the causes of being (some even came close to guessing something like evolution) but they were just that, guesses. Then finally we get Darwin, and bam, no guesses, here is the answer (I acknowlege several others got just pipped to the post on it). That such a simple idea lurked just out of our understanding all this time, but took such staggering genius to unlock...

Wow!

<comment><USER55> Darwin's book stayed very clearly away from any talk about religion.

Years later religious arguments against Darwin popped up.

Dawkins' book addresses these religious arguments head on.

<comment><USER57> I haven't read that particular book of Dawkins, but I have encountered a mathematical argument I find somewhat troubling, though I don't have the background to really examine it in depth.

It's discussed in this interview here:

[https://youtu.be/noj4phMT9OE](https://youtu.be/noj4phMT9OE)

Essentially the number of possible configurations of the sequence of a piece of genetic code required to produce the instructions for producing a usable protein are something like 10^77 to 1. The state space is filled with an astronomical amount of unusable junk.

The next part of the argument hinges on the Cambrian explosion. They claim that mathematically there isn't enough time for life produce enough trials to give rise to the amount of species seen during that period given the duration of the period and the sheer number of combinations life has to try in order to find viable ones.

They sort of say that Darwin was like Newton. A good enough explanation of a large portion of observable phenomenon, but it breaks down at the edges and a new theory is needed.

They seem to want to fill it with Intelligent Design. I'm an atheist myself, so I don't feel compelled to fill it with the god of the gaps, so to speak. But I'm finding it hard to accept Darwin as the whole answer.

Does Dawkins book address this? Is there any book that addresses this?

<comment><USER55> I dunno.

In the one Dawkins book I read, the mathematical part definitely gets addressed. It may change your mind about the mathematical part.

I once read elsewhere that almost all the specific details Darwin came up with have been overturned by other scientists. But the new scientific results prove evolution and natural selection even harder.

My own personal speculation is that there may be many simple proteins that have some type of use or another. I would be interested in reading about how they came up with that 10^77 number. Sounds high to me.

On the other hand, I've read scientists make comments similar to your comments. Not in papers, but in casual interviews. Some agree with you and say that even given the current theories, there just wasn't quite enough time on earth to create life from non-life.

It's not an accepted scientific theory at all. More like a crackpot idea that will probably never be proved or disproved. But take a look at the panspermia theory. Small seeds of some kind move from planet to planet. Maybe one landed on earth long ago? It's a crazy idea. But it does address the issues you brought up.

<comment><USER55> Have you looked at this four part article? I haven't read it yet.

[https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2019/08/a-respon...](https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2019/08/a-response- to-david-gelernters-attack-on-evolution/)

<comment><USER57> Ah this looks like the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks.

<comment><USER57> Hmm... So it comes down to 'what is the actual mechanism behind which novel proteins arise?'

Well that at least leaves me in a different position than I started. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Try Julian Jaynes book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Whether his conjectures are right or wrong, their scope is mind-blowing. Don't be put off by the title - it became a surprise hit as a popular science book.

<comment><USER59> Likewise Dennett's "Consciousness Explained." I don't agree with a lot of what he lays out, and it doesn't quite accomplish the title, but it challenges a lot of common intuitions about consciousness in a way I found productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> For Mind games, something from the _Culture_ series - _Use of Weapons_ which does have a nice twist.

For sheer scale and sensawunda - _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and _Deepness in the Sky_ by Vernor Vinge.

<comment><USER61> I concur on the Vinge picks. The Vinge story that really blew my mind was "Marooned in Realtime", which I contend is best read in the context of the other works in "Across Realtime":

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime)

For mind games, I submit "Kiln People" by David Brin. What if you could fork your consciousness into another body and rejoin periodically? "Kiln People" explores this idea in some remarkable ways.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96478.Kiln_People](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96478.Kiln_People)

<comment><USER62> I found Deepness in The Sky an incredibly frustrating read. I _really_ didn't enjoy the switching between perspective of human and alien. (Especially the personification)

I was able to get about a third of the way through the book because my friends kept saying it gets better... but it's a thick book and I just didn't get it as I kept chugging

If I'm reading fiction it's OK to put a book down. I ask you, dear internet stranger, what do you enjoy about these books?

<comment><USER60> I can't think of any way of commenting on what you said that isn't a spoiler - perhaps worth noting that the personification you object to turns out to be a pretty important thing in its own right.

Also, _focus_ has got to be one of the most terrifying concepts anyone has put into a SF book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> You might like the Gateless Gate by Mumon. [http://oaks.nvg.org/gate- struggles.html](http://oaks.nvg.org/gate-struggles.html)

Hui-Neng's "Your Minds Move"

 _The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks started an argument. One said the flag moved, the other said the wind moved; they argued back and forth but could not reach a conclusion.

The Sixth Patriarch Hui-Neng said, "It is not the wind that moves, it is not the flag that moves; it is your minds that move."_

Joshu sees the Hermits

 _Joshu went to a hermit 's cottage and asked, "Is the master in? Is the master in?"

The hermit raised his fist.

Joshu said, "The water is too shallow to anchor here," and he went away.

Coming to another hermit's cottage, he asked again, "Is the master in? Is the master in?"

This hermit, too, raised his fist.

Joshu said, "Free to give, free to take, free to kill, free to save," and he made a deep bow._

<comment><USER64> Ok, cute, but does it mean anything? Of course the wind moved the flag. Are they all ignorant of physics?

No of course not. Its some metaphysical plug about relationships or something. One of those 'one hand clapping' things. I guess the point is to get you to stop overanalyzing. Which I'm doing.

But no, I didn't get my mind blown by monks in semantic circles. I guess I'm not ready to be enlightened.

<comment><USER65> Lots of those stories come off as more wanky and esoteric than they're supposed to. That one... maybe not, but most are supposed to be approached with a lot more context than a Westerner with little exposure to Buddhism (and especially the history of and other stories about the monks involved in the stories) is likely to have, going in cold. They're not supposed to be nearly as confusing as they can seem (or, at least, should be differently-confusing) when one reads without some guiding commentary to fill in the gaps in knowledge one is expected to have before approaching them.

<comment><USER64> That sounds a lot like a post-facto apologist slant. Sure you can 'explain them' but everybody hears them where their mind is at now. And for most folks, especially junior monks just starting out, they might sound wanky too.

<comment><USER63> I think they are supposed to be 'esoteric and wanky' for the beginner, like 'mu' and 'one hand clapping' \- even for the eastern audience. The idea, if I understand it correctly, is to get your mind hung up on a solution until you either get frustrated, or find your way out of the conundrum.

I hope I didn't do any harm here. I was hoping to share some of what I thought was pretty mind bending.

<comment><USER65> Even for the first story in Gateless Gate it's probably intended that the reader know what "mu" means and the orthodox Zen Buddhist position on who/what does or does not have Buddha-nature—and WTF "buddha-nature" is—before tackling it. Those parts aren't supposed to be mysterious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> For science fiction, _Dune_ is a must, and _Children of Time_ is probably the most mind-bending sci-fi I've read since. Both create imaginary worlds that are so detailed and plausible that they make you see our world in a new light.

<comment><USER67> But take Dune with a grain of salt; I read them, but the books after the first get a bit, I dunno, wishy-washy? Vague? Philosophical? I wanted to like it because the universe it describes is compelling, but the stories themselves lose a lot of luster.

Interesting to see what they'll do in the upcoming movie / series, whichever it was though. It's great in terms of worldbuilding, and it's influenced a lot of other stuff (like Warhammer 50K).

<comment><USER68> Don't bother with the books past the first and maybe the second. _Dune_ itself should be treated as a standalone masterpiece of worldbuilding.

<comment><USER40> I liked some of the ones after the second more than the second. But I honestly wish I'd stopped at the first. It is such an amazing story that gives life to an incredibly interesting and well built universe. Then, having built that wonderful universe, the follow-on books got bored with it and decided to focus on ... fancy sounding bullshit, for lack of any better description. Going back to the first book, I see that the flaws were there already, but they were in service of building the world, while that relationship flipped afterward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> A piece of fiction that has never failed to make me think every time I read it, is: The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanislaw Lem.

One of the tenets of getting your mind bent is reading things that are antithetical to your own world view. For this reason I read and had my mind bent by Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind - <USER3> Hancock.

Finally, I offer The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber. I have read a lot about food, nature, etc. but Barber nails the heart of the problem with our current (really recent past, in light of the pandemic) food culture. From farms and restaurants to the consumers (we are not just eaters) he shows how there could be another way that is more sustainable, as well as being more delicious.

</comment><comment><USER70> In no particular order:

        Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (Keith Johnstone)
        The Master and His Emissary (Iain McGilchrist et al.)
        Emissary's guide to worlding (Ian Cheng)

Black Swan by NNT already recommended elsewhere in the thread.

I want to go off-topic and recommend a non-book, Learning to Fly by Missing the Ground[0] (Venkatesh Rao).

And further off the topic, the discussions in The Midnight Gospel were the closest to qualifying as mind-bending experience recently.

[0] [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/11/20/learning-to-fly-by- mis...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/11/20/learning-to-fly-by-missing-the- ground/)

<comment><USER71> The Midnight Gospel is insanely good. It's the best thing I've watched in a long time.

I'm a huge fan of Adventure Time so I was really excited when I heard about it, but the trailer is just full of gross imagery and I expected it to be just another stupid gross-for-gross-sake cartoon that I'd probably stop watching after a few episodes. So wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Ok, without wanting to sound like a crazy guy, this book has really had a large impact on me : [https://www.amazon.fr/Finding-Your-Own-North-Star- ebook/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.fr/Finding-Your-Own-North-Star- ebook/dp/B0019O6IXE/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=find+your+true+north&qid=1589275099&sr=8-1)

It's basically a method that helps you find what exactly get you on, what you get energy from, and how to reach it. Of course it requires a lot of introspection but the book helps you there.

It sounds cheesy I know, but that book had enough impact that it really changed the way I worked, and make sense of why I was so frustrated at times. Couple months after reading the book, the company I work with offered me a tailored job because I was finally able to clearly communicate what it is that was driving me.

<comment><USER67> A bit of err, self-actualization? Goes a long way. I've been in a similar point, eventually I was offered to go to a career coach. It's basically someone that challenges you about what you want to do, what you want to achieve. And in my case, identify that I'm a people-pleaser, I'd rather defer to others to tell me what to do rather than take my own initiative, because comfort zone, risk, etc.

<comment><USER72> Yes, pretty much really. Nothing you couldn't have done by yourself. The book is just helping you along the way to make you realize those things yourself. It sounds like you had a similar experience :)

It helped me a lot though. And I'm very surprised to see the amount of people around me that don't know why they are doing what they're doing. That often leads to a lot of frustration. :)

Good job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Many people think of themselves as rational and have mastered the basics (understand the scientific method, know how to systematically solve difficult problems, etc) but are still constantly fooled by their human, imperfect brains into irrational thoughts and actions - both in day-to-day life and when pondering larger questions (science, engineering, policy, philosophy). Many aren't aware (just as I wasn't) that there are many more levels of rational thinking to unlock, that mistakes and biases can be identified and reduced. The book is adapted from a series of blog posts so lacks a bit in coherence (can be hard to get into), but stick with it for a bit, and I guarantee the ideas presented will be well-worth it.

<comment><USER74> I'd recommend this one too.

There's a nice clarity to it and it's probably the most impactful book I can think of for improving your thinking long term.

For an example of the writing style: [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing- definitions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I had to read Flatland slowly, but I would definitely describe it as mind bending. Reading this book will literally change your perspective

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland)

</comment><comment><USER76> "Omnivore's Dilemma", Michael Pollan book changed the way I think about food.

"The Psychology of Everyday Things" by Don Norman, will change your mind about user interfaces.

"Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky to change the way you see the world.

<comment><USER77> I stumbled across Chomsky's "Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World" at my local library on the east coast while I was a senior in high school. When checking out the librarian seemed confused, "interesting," she said "this book doesn't appear to be in our system. It's your lucky day. You just got yourself a free book!"

That book impacted my life more than any other. It really opened my mind to an entire world of dissenting, radical thought that could be both studied, praised or rebuked. A true "The Giver" moment.

I have since moved to San Francisco - once a hot bed for the type of thought I accidentally came across all those years ago. About 6 months ago, while looking through my home library, I once again stumbled upon that book. I was curious, for the first time, who the publisher of this book was. What institution was so radical to give Chomsky a voice even still? And I discovered it was City Lights Publications, the publishing arm of the famous City Lights Bookstore here in San Francisco. Weird how the world works sometimes.

To all reading, if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, you must go to City Lights!

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> The Art of Electronics.

I can't say I've read it cover-to-cover, but it really is an excellent, approachable electronics resource for enthusiasts and professionals alike.

<comment><USER42> I took a course that used it in college. It is really excellent, but probably hard for a first exposure to electronics unless you are very committed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> After reading "The Machine that Changed the World," by Womack, Jones, and Roos, all product management paradigms besides Just-In-Time seem irredeemably sub-optimal, almost provably so. The book is about the Toyota Production System, and how Toyota's product management paradigm of JIT alone caused Toyota to become the largest car manufacturer in the world over Ford, GM and all the entrenched American mass producers.

<comment><USER10> Until a major event like a pandemic comes along, and shows that Just in Time can be a bit fragile in those circumstances.

[https://www.marketplace.org/2020/02/27/justintime- manufactur...](https://www.marketplace.org/2020/02/27/justintime- manufacturing-model-challenged-coronavirus/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Ecclesiastes. Short book of wisdom so jam-packed with truth I challenge anyone to read it and disagree with the message it shares. Always relevant but especially so in these challenging times.

<comment><USER81> And I saw that this, too, was meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault fundamentally changed the way I look at things like school and work. Essentially, they're systems of discipline and control masquerading as something very different. Skip all the Malcom Gladwell crap and read some real philosophy. It's hard but rewarding.

<comment><USER83> There are many people who would claim that he isn't a real philosopher ;) Don't skip Max Weber and Georges Canguilhem, two of his biggest influences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Anything by Hermann Hesse.

Not mind bending. No Twists. No roller coasters. Just a calm conversation with the author and yourself.

And yet, it had a profound impact on me.

One poem I revisit every once in a while: [https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=119749](https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=119749)

If you understand German, I do believe it needs to be read in its original tongue. The translations I found thus far were not entirely convincing.

<comment><USER85> I used to like Herman Hesse, and gradually realized the straight line from Hesse to Nazism. His distinct lack of human understanding is what bothers me at core. His female characters barely exist except as mirages in the eyes of men, and his male characters are little more than intellectualized brains. It's the type of book one likes as a teenager / young adult and realizes is BS later.

<comment><USER86> I've only read Siddhartha, and it didn't paint the author like you've done it.

Maybe I've completely misunderstood the book, but my key take away is that : true enlightenment (and by enlightenment you can say, true knowledge), only comes from life experience.

And that takes quite some human understanding, specially when we've grown to value information and theory, to the point where we build a perceived complete understanding of matters, only to later realize it's an illusion.

Things like talking about the concept of Love, Grief, Hate and any other complex emotions, end up falling short no matter how you read about them, either from a technical point of view, or simply from a character from a short story. You can't truly empathize until you've lived it.

Like it's not your knowledge to own unless you've experienced it, no matter what shape or form, and maybe that deserves some sort of respect.

Maybe that reflects on our lack of appreciation for a lot of things we take for granted.

Is it wrong that he wrote it through the lens of a intellectualized male character that didn't give enough focus on women? I don't know. It's his narrative after all.

<comment><USER85> I respect your view. I enjoyed reading Hesse when I did; read 3 of his books; SteppenWolf, Glass Bead Game, Siddhartha. There are many nice ideas in them. I simply don't adore his writings the way many do, however. My views changed as I changed.

Here's a quote from the New Yorker:

"Many young men, in particular, see a glamorous reflection of themselves in the typical Hesse hero—a sensitive, brooding man who cannot find a place for himself in ordinary society. This figure might live in India in the age of the Buddha, like Siddhartha, or in Germany in the Jazz Age, like Harry Haller, or in the Middle Ages, like Goldmund in "Narcissus and Goldmund." Whatever the setting, his path will generally feature the same landmarks. He will be plucked out of his childhood surroundings and sent to an élite school, where he will suffer deeply. He will rebel against conventional ideas of success and refuse to pursue any kind of career, combining downward mobility with spiritual striving."

Siddhartha, while an enjoyable read, confuses/"borrows" eastern religious concepts to turn it into "follow the beat of your own drum, man!".

This has real world consequences: Hesse justified his taking the "middle ground" between Nazism vs its opponents by his "politics of detachment".. you know, because he is above society, quoting from JewisPress.com:

"Hesse's failure to publicly condemn the Nazi Party and the fascist regime was due, in large part, to his "politics of detachment" – his policy of viewing the war fever infecting Germany from a distance and his general aloofness to the deadly struggle during the 1930s and 40s as he publicly sought to occupy the "middle ground" between the Nazis and exiled German writers.

Early in the war, Hesse published an essay in which he clearly applied his "middle ground" standard, expressing and anticipating German victory but also insisting that humane values be protected. Even this bland caveat earned him everlasting hostility from the German public."

I am not claiming Hesse was a Nazi, and privately he was more anti-Nazi than anything else. His wife was Jewish.

Hesse's heroes are more Ubermensch that view regular society as cattle, than harmless Hippies.

I also tend to think the US Hippie movement of the 60s as a philosophy of selfishness..(yes, I'm aware of anti-war origins etc.) so perhaps there's more to our disagreement. My politics lean left fwiw.. social democrat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Prose poems, short 1-2 page descriptions of fictional cities. It's a good gift to give and I like to pick it up at random, open to a random one, and sit with the imagery it conjures.

If I had a 'you could bring one thing to a deserted island' then that would be it.

<comment><USER88> I love this book and often read a random chapter just for inspiration. The cities described in the book are something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Two that did it for me:

\- The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. Really deepened my understanding of how Western and other cultures think about moral and ethical issues.

\- The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan. It's a feminist book that is very non-ideological, and helped me, as someone born in the 80's, appreciate some very real and practical issues that feminism has helped us address.

</comment><comment><USER90> All the things by Christopher Alexander(Start with timeless way...explore the pattern language...move on to Nature of order...then others.)

Zen and Lila by Pirsig

Beginning of Infinity by Deutsch.

<comment><USER91> I second Christopher Alexander of "Patterns" fame, but his "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" tops my list and is available as a pdf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Life changing more than mind bending: The Charisma Myth. Only reading it won't change anything, but start practicing the exercises and your whole life will change, and quickly. If you just want to get a taste, see below.

Three quick tips to gain an instant charisma boost:

1\. Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of your sentences.

2\. Reduce how quickly and how often you nod.

3\. Pause for two full seconds before you speak.

From this summary: [https://github.com/benigeri/books/blob/master/The%20Charisma...](https://github.com/benigeri/books/blob/master/The%20Charisma%20Myth%20by%20Olivia%20Fox%20Cabane.md)

Those tips are in the introduction of the book so you can see if it works for you and decide if you want to continue reading the rest.

Personally, when I started doing only those 3 things, weird things happened that completely changed the behavior of other people towards me and then how I felt about other people. Worth a try.

<comment><USER24> Ha! I saw that book at a book store, skimmed it, and laughed because the author (perhaps unknowingly) has actually written a manual of basic _spirituality!_

<comment><USER92> You are totally right. There are many different meditation exercises, ways to control anxiety and calm down, as well as mindfulness tips and tricks. In some ways it does point towards discovering your own path to happiness, by trying different things and seeing what works for you.

Given that humans are wired to be social and we pretty much all live in society, a lot of the things that afflict us have to do with the way we relate to others, which is exactly what the book is about :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Someone already mentioned "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", so I'll go with something I read last year, Carlo Rovelli's, "Reality is Not What it Seems."

I don't think I really ever grasped the concept of relativity fully until reading that book — at least the aspects of time. [edit: well, not "fully", I'm sure — but at least a lot more than I have in the past.]

At the same time I read the Dalai Lama's, "Universe in a Single Atom", which focuses on his love of science / physics, and was a very good pair to Rovelli's book. It made me really think about the role of subjectivity in terms of Relativity. It also made me think about life, and consciousness, broadly.

That led to the Dalai Lama's other book, "A Profound Mind", which helped me really understand the Buddhist concept of "Emptiness" for the first time.

</comment><comment><USER94> I'm surprised Sapiens isn't all over this page. I read it last year and I wish I'd read it twenty years ago. It really changed how I think of humanity, religion, ideology, law, civilization, corporations... It changed my whole world by changing how I think of the world.

</comment><comment><USER95> Nassim Taleb's books (Black swan, Antifragile, Fooled by Randomnesss)

Thinking Fast and Slow

The Organized Mind

The Vital Question by Nick Lane.

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

<comment><USER96> I thought Black Swan was fairly meaningless. It started to raise some interesting ideas about the effect of "black swan" events but then failed to give any insight into dealing with or preparing for those effects beyond vague generalities. I did learn how Taleb likes lifting weights and refuses to run for a bus though.

From what I've heard his other books are similar.

<comment><USER97> Yep. Better to read Asimov's foundation trilogy

<comment><USER95> i have never read these, but it looks like quite the commitment

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series)

why is this series so much better than Taleb's books?

<comment><USER97> The black swan theory, in his basic idea is theorized in the books.

It is a nice reading and you may very well just read the first trilogy to grasp it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Listen to an expert analysis of {insert random topic} (bonus points if you are not very familiar with the topic in question)

AlphaZero teaches Stockfish a lesson in the French Defense [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebzevCLGbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebzevCLGbQ)

Mississauga: Density Without Urbanism [https://granolashotgun.com/2014/01/15/77/](https://granolashotgun.com/2014/01/15/77/)

Masked 1: Rise to the Rubedo Stage [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWNPN6PtuUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWNPN6PtuUc)

</comment><comment><USER22> God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History. Stephen Hawking. I bought mine for cheap on alibris ([https://www.alibris.com/God-Created-the-Integers-The- Mathema...](https://www.alibris.com/God-Created-the-Integers-The-Mathematical- Breakthroughs-That-Changed-History-Stephen-Hawking))

From the blurb:

"...includes landmark discoveries spanning 2500 years and representing the work of mathematicians such as Euclid, Georg Cantor, Kurt Godel, Augustin Cauchy, Bernard Riemann and Alan Turing. Each chapter begins with a biography of the featured mathematician, clearly explaining the significance of the result, followed by the full proof of the work, reproduced from the original publication, many in new translations."

My absolute favorite is Descartes _Geometrie_. Reading the original humanizes him. He is at once humble and yet confident that he'd discovered something important. Today, we take Descartes ideas completely for granted, and even find them trivial, and yet to realize the immense shift in thinking it represented in his time, makes it all the more impressive. I would even argue that Descartes' ideas were more important than any save Euclid in forming the foundation of modern math and physics - he was the one that divorced the notion of "quantity" from "length of a line segment"! It's just so great to read the original.

Interestingly, Riemann got almost all of his papers included in this book, the most pages by far of any author. Clearly Hawking _loved_ Riemann - and no wonder. Riemann was the one who truly generalized geometry, and its interesting that his work in that area was mostly ignored until 50 years after it was published, when Einstein used it for General Relativity. He made enormous contributions to lots of other fields, too.

Oh, and it was really cool reading Boole's words, and recognizing that he was explicitly talking in terms of creating a calculus of thought!

So, yeah, I love this book because we often talk about "the shoulders of giants" but we rarely actually read them directly. And it's amazing, inspiring, and wonderful to relate to them!

</comment><comment><USER99> The Codex Seraphinianus. It's basically knowledge structure without content, because it is, by design, incomprehensible. Makes you think about hypothesis- making, information design, and simple intellectual humility.

</comment><comment><USER81> The Mulla Nasrudin books by Idries Shah. These tales, some of them very old, represent patterns that repeat again and again, in different guises in life. As you absorb them you start to recognize your own behavior patterns in response to analogous situations, which gives you the option of changing your response over time.

</comment><comment><USER100> "Origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind" by Julian Jaynes. Controversial, but interesting thesis nevertheless.

</comment><comment><USER101> Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I feel like it left me subtly but permanently changed, as if seeing through new differently tinted lenses.

<comment><USER42> I haven't read that one, but I read Mason & Dixon when I was in college. I knew just enough history and scientific trivia to know that Pynchon was playing a lot of highly intelligent games and to realize that a lot was flying over my head, but not enough to really appreciate the book. Would be interesting to revisit it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching" by Thich Nhat Hanh

Completely changed my world view. As someone who loves science, this book shows that Buddhism is not about belief but a way to look at the world. And that view might be closer to reality than the current one.

[https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Buddhas-Teaching- Transforming-L...](https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Buddhas-Teaching-Transforming- Liberation/dp/0767903692)

</comment><comment><USER103> A relatively unconventional choice but the highest-rated visual novel of all time, Muv-Luv Alternative, is insane. It is without any exaggeration the only piece of actually "life-changing" media that I've consumed. I felt myself to be mentally much more mature and tougher afterwards, and able to face challenges head-on instead of procrastinating or shirking away. It really is something that shakes you from your soul and leaves an everlasting emotional impact, which is very different from the non-fiction books (which are also indispensable of course).

I would summarize core ideas as "To live is to suffer, but you have to carry on no matter what. This is what everybody does." and "an ode to humanity", but it really is so hard to put the experience into words. You have to live it yourself.

Link on VNDB: [https://vndb.org/v92](https://vndb.org/v92) There are also various streamers who streamed the whole story on Twitch after its popularity blew up, e.g. [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/390581022](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/390581022)

</comment><comment><USER104> I think looking for memoirs by people who you see no common ground with and cant stand is a great way to do that.

</comment><comment><USER105> Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco. As with anything he wrote, the writing itself is amazingly good, but the thoughts really get to you, too.

</comment><comment><USER106> Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Picketty

Both dramatically formed by world view.

</comment><comment><USER107> "The First Principle" by Osho. About eastern meditation and the difficulty of achieving nirvana. A lot about the paradox of trying to achieve inner peace, but only actually being able to experience it when you don't try to obtain it.

"Philosophy and the Matrix". Part of a pop culture series that takes popular art and has different philosopher break down it into different philosophies. A good way to realize that the same work of art can mean vastly different things depending on the frame of reference.

"Tribe" by Sebastian Junger. The seemingly disconnect that people felt happier when they were experiencing a traumatic event, like war, mainly because they were relying on each other and counted on each other.

"The Social Leap" by William von Hippel. How we went from just another mid- sized ape on the plains of Africa to the most successful large mammal on the planet earth in a few million years. His theory is focused on the social adaptations of early hominids and how that affects us to this day.

</comment><comment><USER108> "The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith reveals the simple principles used by everyone from CEO's, politicians, and autocrats to gather and consolidate power, depending on as few people as possible.

The general population is rarely important in this process, and of course (if you are among those accreting power) you want keep them in the dark. The illusion of participation is very important to the institutionalization of power for yourself in any kind of system, especially ones that think they are democracies.

As might be expected, to the degree they are good at it, the less the governing class needs to concern themselves with good governance or policy. And again, in the "real" Gov 101 its rule #1 that the populace doesn't understand that.

Mind bending? I think so, but I appreciate even more as a mental/citizen level up.

These are the principles they should teach kids in government class in elementary school. History without understanding this is just a database of facts.

</comment><comment><USER109> "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. What an incredible book. Starts off following this pizza delivery driver then warps into this cyberpunk adventure with VR, ancient languages and wild characters.

</comment><comment><USER35> "The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck"

The free sample is enough to get the core message: the Konmari method can also apply to obligations, not just objects. It's not a fascinating book, just an interesting concept. Most of the book covers the exceptions and caveats of its own technique, a rare approach in this genre. Its premise is similar to Mark Manson's "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck", but without the aggressive self-help bro tone.

"No More Mr. Nice Guy"

This book is for nice guys who never get what they want. The answer isn't "be a selfish asshole for once", but "if you want something, ask for it" and "don't expect unsolicited generosity to be rewarded in specific ways". This book is a healthy fix to an unhealthy behaviour.

"Influence: Science and Practice"

The gang of four made a book about programming design patterns. Cialdini made a book about influence design patterns. It's easy to read, and full of examples.

</comment><comment><USER110> In addition to the classics of cognitive psychology (Kahneman, Taleb, et al.), I would also recommend books on psychological manipulation, religious cults, and con men. The following books offer a multi-disciplinary perspective on psychological techniques to improve awareness and exploit other people, both of which are essential to enhance your perception and protect yourself against fraud and manipulation.

Cialdini, Robert (2006) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Guinn, Jeff (2017) Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple

Ekman, Paul (2007) Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life

Kahneman, Daniel (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow

Mitnick, Kevin and William Simon (2002) Art of Deception

Navarro and Karlins (2008) What Every Body is Saying: Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1887) On the Genealogy of Morals

Rhodes, Richard (1986) Making of the Atomic Bomb

Sun Tzu (c. 400 BCE) Art of War

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2005) Fooled by Randomness

Wright, Lawrence (2013) Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief

</comment><comment><USER111> The archetypes and collective unconsious - carl jung

The origins and history of consciousness - mircea eliade

Cosmic symbolism in genesis - mattheiu pageau

If you want to get deep into opinions on making art, symbolism is a great rabbit hole.

<comment><USER112> Lobsters, man

<comment><USER111> It's not that simple, roughly speaking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> For serious thought: anything by Krishnamurti :) Jorge Luis Borges is the man for fiction.

<comment><USER66> For anyone looking for an intro to Borges I would recommend "The Garden of Forking Paths." It's a tight, exciting narrative that also explores his great themes.

[https://archive.org/stream/TheGardenOfForkingPathsJorgeLuisB...](https://archive.org/stream/TheGardenOfForkingPathsJorgeLuisBorges1941/The- Garden-of-Forking-Paths-Jorge-Luis-Borges-1941_djvu.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn't that kind of notable?

<comment><USER115> Oh man, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is AMAZING on so many levels.

A common thread with these books seems to be exploring consciousness and definitions of self.

As a bonus it does stuff I find more from women authors, like quietly question gender roles without making a scene about it, question slavery, ownership, etc.

Similar a bit to the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells but on a whole other level.

Its a wonderful trilogy of three books. Strongly recommend it.

I can also recommend N.K. Jemisin, not really mind bending, but very odd

Generally I dislike it when authors patronise me, banging my head against their genius, and I find women authors tend to do that less (Disclaimer to sensitive people : this is my personal opinion)

<comment><USER116> Can second both Ann Leckie (her new book "The Raven Tower" is also a great page-turner) and N.K. Jemisin (who did totally blow my mind with her Broken Earth Trilogy).

Ursula K. Le Guin also appears down below; The Left Hand of Darkness was a profound read.

<comment> some-username Also from Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed.

Not mind bending for someone who spent some time trying to imagine a anarchist society (but still quite enriching), but maybe for others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> Besides _Permutation City_ by Greg Egan, which has been mentioned several times already, I'd add _Glasshouse_ [1] by Charles Stross.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_\(novel\))

</comment><comment><USER118> Just published "The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions" by Jeffrey D. Sachs.

An economic history of the species, more academic than "Guns, Germs, and Steel", without the flashy zebra bites. Not as meta as "Sapiens".

Radicalizing, even if one believes one already knows.

</comment><comment><USER119> I really enjoyed this SciFi book - Dark Matter: A Novel

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101904224/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_HY...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101904224/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_HYRUEbPFE968B)

Another good one from the same author - Recursion: A Novel [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1524759783/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_G0...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1524759783/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_G0RUEb4MDKFSS)

</comment><comment><USER120> My Adorable Apotheosis: Don't Look Back, Pussycat. Kill! Kill! by Kirsten Hacker.

In keeping with the preposterous title, it uses sci-fi tropes to illuminate the ways in which the modern scientific community is heading in a preposterous direction.

It is sort of like the Princess Bride of sci-fi.

</comment><comment><USER121> Ted Chang Story of Your Life and Others. And his newest short story collection too, Exaltation.

Permutation City is also great, as mentioned by others.

</comment><comment><USER122> Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari. This is the second book in the very famous series Sapiens. The book explains how technology will effect our lives in the future in a way that is interesting, entertaining and above all, mind- boggling.

</comment><comment><USER123> The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick

</comment><comment><USER124> I found The Little Prince pretty mind bending.

</comment><comment><USER125> Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

Framework for a happy life in any context.

<comment><USER126> I was looking for someone to mention stoic literature!

For that matter I'd like to add another author - Michel de Montaigne and his Essays. It offers a very humane look inside his thoughts about the world and makes you think about your own life and how you look at it, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> I really enjoy books on neuroscience that change the way I think about perception.

Phantoms in the Brain by V S Ramachandran - a book about how the brain organises itself in bizarre edge cases. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes us Human. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes us Human by the same author is also worth reading.

Admissions by Henry Marsh - An experienced neurosurgeon's account of how his job has changed over the decades. Really interesting discussion of what's important and how people react in a real crisis.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks. More of a collection of interesting curiousities but does an amazing job of humanising the discussion of brain.

<comment><USER128> It's not a book, but a great infotainment lecture series by Robert Sapolsky (the intro to human biology course at Stanford, 2010)

[https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D)

And of course cites Sack, and a lot of amazing research/studies/results.

The caveat is that some results are not that solid, and he mentions priming, which we know does not replicate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> Skip all the pop science bullshit suggested below. That's almost entirely sugar water, and beyond that; most of it is actually actively wrong.

Read anything written by Ancient Greeks; Aristotle, the Iliad, Herodotus, Plato. There's a reason people still read these dead white guys, and there is a reason that peak times of excellence in Western Civilization have been peak Ancient Greeks. It will make your thinking three dimensional, and give you perspective as to the world you live in today as a software engineer.

<comment><USER130> Can't agree more. Though, Romans >> Greeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER131> VALIS by Philip K Dick. It explores the nature of reality through the lens of mental illness / madness.

<comment><USER132> Seconding this recommendation. The way the story was told became very surreal. It's an experience unlike any other that I've had while reading fiction.

<comment><USER24> FWIW, Dick claimed it was a record of communication with some cosmic intelligence named VALIS: Vast Active Living Intelligence System

Here's a thing TIL from the wikipedia entry:

> At one point, Dick claimed to be in a state of _enthousiasmos_ with VALIS, > where he was informed his infant son was in danger of perishing from an > unnamed malady. Routine checkups on the child had shown no trouble or > illness; however, Dick insisted that thorough tests be run to ensure his > son's health. The doctor eventually complied, despite the fact that there > were no apparent symptoms. During the examination doctors discovered an > inguinal hernia, which would have killed the child if an operation was not > quickly performed. His son survived thanks to the operation, which Dick > attributed to the "intervention" of VALIS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness both by Ursula K Le Guin

<comment><USER133> I've been deliberating over where to start with Le Guin. What would you suggest?

<comment><USER97> The Dispossessed is more political and philosopical. Left hand of darkness is about difference and prejudice.

I would also say that Dispossessed is more about love, Left Hand is about friendship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER134> Erich Fromm's "Escape from freedom". It is very well written and the subject matter is truly mind-bending: how can an educated people decide to throw their freedom away and give power to a dictator? E. Fromm was German psychologist, and jewish. He fled to America in the 1930s. He writes with a composite point of view, at the intersection of psychology, sociology, and philosophy, without getting stuck in a narrow analysis, and I think this is what makes this books and others by him so good.

</comment><comment><USER135> Peak Prosperity's "Prosper!" [0]. I learned about PP through their daily COVID-19 updates [1] and then watched their crash course (from 2014) [2]. They are currently giving the book away for free because of how much it relates to the current situation.

I'll be the first to tell you I started watching their "crash course" expecting it to be BS but it is very compelling and explored ideas that I knew about intellectually but had never thought all the way through. I HIGHLY recommend people check this out and if you think they are wrong or going to far please feel free to respond or email me (email in profile), I am 100% willing to be proven wrong. Anyways I've shared this with a couple of close friends and we have all agreed that we can't continue living the way we were before having watched/read it (crash course/book).

[0] [https://www.peakprosperity.com/freebook](https://www.peakprosperity.com/freebook)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaE...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaEkFimDeepqyWf)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_ofJoMx1rB6Z...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_ofJoMx1rB6Z0EA1OwAGDRdR)

</comment><comment><USER136> The Sefish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Lot of what I thought was question of morality and good vs evil turned out to be simply the question of rational strategies in given environment.

</comment><comment><USER137> "Why Nations Fail" offers a pretty compelling framework for why some countries are stronger than others. Changed my thinking on the role of government.

<comment><USER57> Blew my mind like no other book has. My favorite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> Some authours and books offer deep introspection of human lives, that you learn and realise things about yourself from reading them:

I got that feeling from reading Montaigne's Essays.

Anatomy of Melancholy by Burton and Samuel Johnson's essays also are effective in a similar vein.

Plutarch's Parallel Live's is the essential book on politics, after reading it, when you read the newspapers you get a feeling that there is nothing new under the Sun, in politics.

<comment><USER83> Yes, you can't beat the classic essayists. Sir Thomas Browne too. Melville draws a lot from these writers in Moby Dick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER139> No book has made me question the reality of my surroundings like Ubik by Philip K Dick.

<comment><USER140> I agree wholeheartedly. This is a great book that is truly terrifying because Dick is constantly subverting the characters' (and reader's) perceptions of reality. He does this to an even greater degree in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER141> C Radhakrishnan - Bhagavad Gita_ Modern Reading and Scientific Study.

Intellectually very challenging.

Even though it is a religious book for many people, it can be read as just a normal story.

It teaches one about how to live life, not by set of defined rules, but by providing a proper explanation and through understanding.

It's a book which is usually dated to 5000 years or 7000 years.

It`s a very well-balanced story, one can ignore parts which are not relevant to present society.

<comment><USER142> Might as well recommend the Holy Bible or the Koran. Also good books with good stories.

<comment><USER24> FWIW Buddhism is different from the "People of the Book" (Jews, Christians, Muslims all worship literally the same God.) Buddhism is not monotheistic.

(The resolution between these forms was given in South Park of all places: God appears on Earth and mentions in passing that He is Buddhist.)

\- - - -

Uh, heh, _Hinduism_ is also different from the "People of the Book", and from Buddhism. The _Gita_ is, of course, Hindu, not Buddhist. (I'm not sure how I got confused in the previous portion of this comment, sorry. No offense intended!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER143> Alexis de Tocqueville's, "Democracy in America" (1835,1840).

It was the first history/sociology book I read that I really enjoyed. I came away with a clarity that there is an essential character to American politics and discourse that has been constant throughout its history.

Decades later it is still one of the most clearly written books I've read. It reminds me of reading an elegant proof.

</comment><comment><USER144> _The Fountainhead_

Or anything Vonnegut or Philip K Dick

A personal "brain expanding" book for me was _The Miracle Planet_ but timing is everything, as an 8 year old who had only been reading children's books it taught me that you can read through anything with persistence

The Bible has a lot of mind games & plot twists. I read it as an atheist seeking better perspective on a couple thousand years ago

<comment><USER67> I can't take anyone reading Ayn Rand seriously anymore; it's what all the selfish right-wingers read and take as gospel, those that take a massive shit on everyone but themselves - Trump to name but one. And it's ironic because Rand herself was fervently atheist and hated conservatives as they turned to religion and nationalism in the 50's.

<comment><USER145> I found the stories in Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to be compelling enough that I could both empathize with (some of) the characters while at the same time disagree wholeheartedly with their choices.

They're good books for trying to find out _why_ you agree or disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER146> (in case of curiousity, all of these books are intended for mature adults)

Science Fiction:

Ursula le Guin - The Found and the Lost - this one will be higher impact if you're North American, but it works anywhere. Pretty much any of her books are mind bending and perspective opening. Not that they'd help become a better computer developer say - but you'd probably be a wiser person for the exposure.

C.J.Cherryh - Cyteen - on individual, on programming personality and more.

C.J.Cherryh - Voyager in Night. (on a perspective on alien thinking)

(author has a lot of excellent books as writes for an intelligent and well educated audience. I will note neither are easy reads and the second might be harder to get through)

Nonfiction:

T.E.Lawrence - 7 pillars of wisdom. (watching "Lawrence of Arabia" doesn't hurt either, they sync reasonably well). He was a deeply cynical atheist in a whole series of very violent episodes that shape life in the modern world more than you'd think. This one more for a perspective on history than changing one's own view of the world.

(edited for presentation only)

</comment><comment><USER147> Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

What it helped me see is that we aren't necessarily born with world class abilities but that we can achieve them by working hard. I know there have been criticisms about the methods Gladwell outlines towards achieving mastery but the basic message about working hard towards mastery is valid.

It completely changed my view on why people become Masters in their field.

</comment><comment><USER148> "Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery" by Imre Lakatos made me look at math like i never did before it

</comment><comment><USER149> Ishmael by Daniel Quinn Just a short conversation between a man and an ape that explains the unsustainable path our society has taken.

<comment><USER150> I'm so glad to see someone recommend this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER151> If you're into biology, Nick Lane's books will blow your mind. Two in particular I'd recommend:

1\. The Vital Question - An explanation of the genesis of complex life through bioenergetics. Explains why complex life is likely very rare in the universe.

2\. Power, Sex, Suicide - Why mitochondria are awesome, and also responsible for the emergence of sex, cancer, and mortality.

<comment><USER152> Don't forget Oxygen. Amazing book and my intro to Nick Lane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER153> Lots of great suggestions here! I'll add "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler" by Italo Calvino. It's the only book I've ever read in the second person, an amazing and successful experiment in form. I've never found anything else like it.

I'll second the suggestion for "The City & The City", another real mind- bender.

</comment><comment><USER154> Surprised not to see Liu Cixin mentioned yet?

The Three-Body Problem & The Dark Forest.

</comment><comment><USER13> _Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst_ , by Robert Sapolsky

 _Sapiens_ , by Yuval Noah Harari

 _Children of Time_ , by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 _The Road_ , by Cormac McCarthy ( _Blood Meridian_ is better, stylistically, but changed me less as a person)

 _The Alchemist_ and _The Fifth Mountain_ , by Paulo Coelho

 _The Little Prince_ , by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 _Tribe_ , by Sebastian Junger

</comment><comment><USER155> Smarter and wiser aren't synonyms :)

The best teachers (that could be books) will find you when you're ready. Other people's milestones are theirs, not yours. The best way to use this list is to pick a book by gut feeling. That said, I'll leave my candidate: "The Presence Process" by Michael Brown.

</comment><comment><USER133> Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut was probably the most recent one for me. I guess the book in its entirety is probably fairly mild by modern sci-fi comparisons, but without wanting to spoil anything there is a certain species in the book whose outlook on life immediately changed my perspective of reality.

<comment><USER156> I always preferred Cat's Cradle.

<comment><USER133> I read Slaughterhouse 5 first, so that might be why I prefer it, even though I really enjoyed Cat's Cradle. But beyond that, I felt that Slaughterhouse 5 tied into reality more for me. It just felt more relevant, if that makes sense, but it could totally just have been due to my mindset at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER157> "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" by Edwin A. Abbott.

> Written pseudonymously by "A Square", the book used the fictional two- > dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian > culture, but the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of > dimensions.

</comment><comment><USER158> Thank you for starting such an interesting thread. Going through all the comments a few days after the question was asked is very rewarding ! So many books marked as 'to read' :)

My contribution: If you're not familiar with Quantum Physics, do check out 'Through Two doors at once'. There were numerous instances while reading the book that I had to just put it down and think deeply - mostly philosophical thoughts around what we are and how magical nature is. The subject matter is very very approachable - even to someone like me who hasn't read a physics book in like a decade.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38527619-through-two- doo...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38527619-through-two-doors-at- once)

</comment><comment><USER159> Progress and Poverty. Henry George.

Outsold only by the bible in 1880s/1890s [1]

Especially if you live in SV, as it's the perfect demonstration of rich landlords and deep poverty, as "society" gets richer.

1: [https://progressandpoverty.org/](https://progressandpoverty.org/)

</comment><comment><USER160> I'd suggest [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach) . I was much younger when I first read it, but it blew my mind at the time.

</comment><comment><USER161> Food of the Gods by Terrence McKenna ([https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/111941/food-of- the-...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/111941/food-of-the-gods-by- terrence-mckenna/))

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan ([https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529343/how-to- chang...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529343/how-to-change-your- mind-by-michael-pollan/))

Fellowship of the River by Joe Tafur, MD ([https://www.drjoetafur.com/the- fellowship-of-the-river](https://www.drjoetafur.com/the-fellowship-of-the- river))

</comment><comment><USER162> For me, The Origin of Consciousness by Julian Jaynes. It has really caused me to look at the world through a new lens. While the book is Jaynes' idea, the evidence he provides is fascinating as are some of the competing views that have originated from this book.

</comment><comment><USER163> "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter It's presented in a very non conventional way, but teaches you to think about many problems in a more "first principles" way, and connects real world problems with more abstract idea. I have read it well into my CS career and it was still worth it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)

</comment><comment><USER164> Bernard Moitessier - Tamata Alliance

A life changing book!!! about sailing, freedom and Life.

[https://www.amazon.com/Tamata-Alliance-Bernard- Moitessier/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Tamata-Alliance-Bernard- Moitessier/dp/0924486775)

</comment><comment><USER165> When I was in high school, I read Goedel Escher Bach, and it made math come alive for me -- to see it as something beyond making physics work, even though I was also interested in physics. It's probably what caused me to choose math as my college major.

</comment><comment><USER166> "The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life"

It gives you an alternative perspective on art, school, charity, politics (including office politics), religion, and, well, yourself. This book will likely make you revise at least some of your beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER167> Rutger Bregman's "Utopia for Realists", changed my political outlook completely

</comment><comment><USER168> Check out _The Eden Express_ by Mark Vonnegut (son of Kurt Vonnegut). It is a memoir documenting the author's own psychotic breakdown. Reading this gave me insight into the human mind and what it's like when it goes off the rails.

You say "anything that transforms me into a smarter, wiser person" so I'll add Eliezer Yudkowsky's fanfic _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ ([http://www.hpmor.com/](http://www.hpmor.com/)) The whole HP universe is re- imagined, except Harry is smart, a scientist, and empowered with rationality. It is both entertaining and an introduction to the art of rationality.

<comment><USER169> Just finished HPMOR and loved every second of it. Truly an amazing piece of work, would definitely recommend. I do hope that i remember some of the methods of rationality mentioned in the book, but even beyond that it was just a plain good story.

If people are interestead in reading it, I would highly recommend the audio book/podcast, it's extremely well produced and features an insane amount of good voice acting [1]. Though I would definitely recommend _not_ listening to it in podcast player, and instead use one of the stitched together mp3s.

[1] [https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56](https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56)

</comment></comment><comment><USER170> Try "The End of Mr. Y" by Scarlett Thomas. It's quite a mind bender, literally. Great story.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Mr._Y](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Mr._Y)

</comment><comment><USER171> Some of my faves in this vein:

Stranger In A Strange Land

Solaris

The Fall

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Seveneves (a bit silly but definitely fun and will set you to thinking)

<comment><USER172> I adore _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ , but for Philip K Dick at his most mind-bending, I'd instead go for _Valis_

<comment><USER173> I love Valis and it's probably his most mind bending, but I wouldn't recommend starting there. That book works best when you've already been exposed to his bizarre mind-bending style, and also understand a bit of the context of Dick himself (since Valis is semi-autobiographical).

My recommendations are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly. And then reading a bit about Dick's life -- in particular, his experience with the "pink light", and his belief in the real life instantiation of VALIS. After that, the book Valis will make a lot more sense, but also be even more mind bending.

Dick likely suffered from some sort of undiagnosed mental illness. But having the discussion end there sort of discounts the core themes of his books -- mainly, the recognition of the paper-thin nature of reality, and the impossible task of ever knowing with a certainty the true state of things.

<comment><USER172> All good picks! I was thinking of mentioning _Ubik_ myself. I'd add _A Maze of Death_ also.

Thinking about it, yeah, _Valis_ is probably best saved for much later. That's the same order I read Dick, and knowing a bit of his background and having seen his recurring tropes in fictional form, it added a whole new dimension to see them crop up in... pseudo-autobiographical form? I'm not even sure what to call it!

<comment><USER173> > pseudo-autobiographical form? I'm not even sure what to call it!

For sure! Trying to describe what Valis actually is, is about as difficult as pinning down what reality in a PKD novel is.

The fact that PKD's real life experience basically turned into one of his own novels is something I find endlessly fascinating. And also kind of sad, since whatever mental health issues he was dealing with seemed to cause him quite a bit of pain. I have a copy of "The Exegesis of Philip K Dick", and while it's too tedious to just read cover to cover, I'll often just pop it open and read a few pages here and there. Really interesting stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER174> "A man's search for meaning" \- Viktor Frankl

This book has more profundity than anything I've ever read. The type of sentences which cause you to stop and think, woah, what did I just read. The type of sentences where it is obvious the author has understood something you don't, but not obvious exactly what. The type of sentence that is short and simple in what it says, but with great depth in its meaning.

I'm about done with this book and I already want to re-read it. I've decided I'll read it once every few years. To remind myself of the important parts of living. The parts that are easy to figure about going about living day to day.

</comment><comment><USER175> A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle [https://www.amazon.com/New-Earth-Awakening- Purpose-Selection...](https://www.amazon.com/New-Earth-Awakening-Purpose- Selection/dp/0452289963)

<comment><USER176> Agreed. Life-changing if you're in the right place for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER177> The Moral Animal I found kind of mind bending though perhaps a bit downbeat. The basic thesis is that we evolved to deceive ourselves in evolutionary helpful ways as if you say 'I'm great, I should be the leader' and are lying people will see through it but if you say that and really believe it, even if it's factually incorrect, then it has a better chance of working. See many political leaders for examples.

Something upbeat I came across recently was Naval Ravikant's ideas on philosophy happiness and how to get rich. Not a book but you can see him on Rogan 1309 and google the get rich tweets / podcasts.

</comment><comment><USER178> Aczel, Amir. The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Human Mind. New York, NY: Basic Books, (2000)

"Aczel's compact and fascinating work of mathematical popularization uses the life and work of the German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918) to describe the history of infinity--of human thought about boundlessly large numbers, sequences and sets." ([https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-56858-105-7](https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-56858-105-7))

This popularization makes an effort to explain truly mind bending ideas of infinity.

</comment><comment><USER91> "Hidden Order" by John Holland. I think of it as a programmers view of complex adaptive systems. There are many books about Emergent systems, CAS, etc. but this one changed how I think and how I see the world.

</comment><comment><USER179> Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram.

Ingram is one of the most advanced meditation practitioners in the west, and this book is a painstaking mapping of the development of attention. I've read nothing like it.

<comment><USER42> This book was really interesting, and ultimately made me decide meditation wasn't worth it for me. (I'm not saying it isn't worth it for others, just that the outcome of meditation that he describes doesn't seem like something I want).

<comment><USER180> Just out of curiosity, what was the purported outcome/why wasn't it worth it?

<comment><USER42> Basically he describes the process as one of continually looping through various mental stages as one progresses in their meditative practice. Many of these mental stages look like psychotic episodes to me and I worry that getting into the practice would preclude me from accomplishing other things that are more important to me.

Here is a decent overview of the book that goes into more detail: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review- mastering-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering- the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking"; it helped me and my girlfriend understand ourselves more and make me feel less out of place in the world, accepted, less anxious and insecure if you will. It tells you that you shouldn't be ashamed of stepping out of a party earlier for example, or find quiet spaces at events, etc.

It's one of those books that's full of anecdotes and padding out though, so if you want a summary the author's also made blog posts and a TED talk that summarize the subject well enough.

</comment><comment><USER181> The World Book Encyclopedia, complete with a two volume dictionary and an annual supplemental volume. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence buried in the many thousands of glossy, fine print pages. And the most awaited day of my summer was when the supplement finally appeared in the mail. I suppose the internet is now my adult substitute and have never really changed...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Encyclopedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Encyclopedia)

</comment><comment><USER182> Nausea, J.-P. Sartre

</comment><comment><USER24> If you really want to self-modify your programming I can recommend hypnosis. The books I recommend are: "TRANCE-formations" by Bandler and Grinder, and "Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?" by Heller.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21806109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21806109)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043783)

</comment><comment><USER183> Definitely "No more Mr. Nice Guy" from Dr. Robert Glover. If you're struggling in life buy this book today. It's that good.

If you just need a book to boost your courage read "The alchemist" from Paulo Coelho.

</comment><comment><USER184> A few that affected me and haven't already been mentioned (in no particular order)

Anything by John Twelve Hawks, but especially The Traveler: his works got me thinking about the role technology plays in the world and especially the balance among surveillance and privacy.

Pure by Linda Kay Klein: perhaps only interesting if you were raised in the Church's purity culture, but this also talks about the role religion plays in society as a whole.

14 Lessons in Yogi Philosophy: really opened my mind to Eastern ideas about living a spiritual life.

</comment><comment><USER185> _Art of Computer Programming_. Just as a book(s), it is a great book. I'm always a bit puzzled by the degree to which it's intended audience seems to avoid reading it.

<comment><USER186> I love the little quips that Knuth adds to his writings. There are little subtle things that have to be there to be funny and just below the surface meaning of the text, because taken literally they would be absurd. I remember seeing a couple in there and a couple in his book Concrete Mathematics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER187> Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts

They permanently changed how I think about cognition, consciousness and how fragile and small a thing conscious life is and that we have to protect it.

</comment><comment><USER188> Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation by Meister Eckhart and translated by Raymond Bernard Blakney: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6885348-meister- eckhart](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6885348-meister-eckhart)

Other notable authors, titles, and subjects, some that others have already mentioned: Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, Khalil Gibran, sufism, The Philokalia, etc.

</comment><comment><USER189> The Bible is a trite answer, but a true one.

I would add "The City And The City" by China Miéville. A delightful read and it changed the way I look at the world a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER190> Orwell's 1984 and Camus' Outsider, read in tandem.

</comment><comment><USER191> Parsed as much as I could to make a slightly more formatted list. Stars are the ones I was drawn to most. Sorry if I accidentally missed a rec or cut stuff out.

[https://www.notion.so/moderndesert/List-from-Hacker-new- chan...](https://www.notion.so/moderndesert/List-from-Hacker-new-change-your- life-books-f4ad60b29da34d7395a779d9bc60728e)

</comment><comment><USER192> I don't think any book has had an immediately noticeable effect, but looking back to books I read years ago I can to some degree tell which ones are still resonating.

The Demon Haunted World (Carl Sagan) — although I was already a skeptical thinker, this book opened me up to how critical thinking can enhance your spiritual side as well as your intellectual side.

Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter) — this book added color to a lot my intuitions about the deeper connections of patterns we see throughout reality.

Truth & Power (Michel Foucault) — I'm not a fan of most so-called continental philosophy, but Foucault's ideas about cultural structures has always stuck with me.

The Allegory of the Cave (Plato; section in The Republic) — classic; some might say the basic idea underpinning all philosophical and scientific inquiry.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ludwig Wittgenstein) — I'll admit I never quite understood this book from reading it, but it definitely changed how I thought about philosophy, consciousness and spirituality.

Charles Sanders Peirce essays — it's been a long time, so I don't remember the specific texts, but he did fascinating work in semiotics. One essay in particular was critical in how I think about communication and consciousness.

Fact, Fiction, Forecast (Nelson Goodman) — Goodman is brilliant and is great at relaying philosophical problems as puzzles. He's a great writer and turns the problem of induction on its head in this one.

Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco) — I don't read a lot of fiction, but this book is amazing. There's a lot of history, so you may need to keep an encyclopedia nearby, but this one will really get you thinking about how the autonomy of memes. Probably quite relevant at the moment.

Any number of books and essays by great analytic philosophers: Saul Kripke, W.V.O. Quine, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Carl Hempel, John Campbell, David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, Dan Dennett, David Lewis, etc.

</comment><comment><USER193> \- _The Men Who Folded Himself_ is a book about a time traveler that falls in love and has sex with himself in several distinct time periods.

\- _All You Zombies_ is a short story that makes use of one of the most ingenious and mind-bending time travel conundrums to reflect on the nature of personal identity.

\- _The Door Into Summer_ is about the effects of suspended animation on personal relationships.

\- Anything written by Philip K. Dick.

</comment><comment><USER194> Technopoly by Neil Postman Industrial society and it's future by Theodore Kaczynski

Both these books drastically changed my perception of technology. The role we think it has and the effects and consequences it does have.

The main take away is that a technology contains an implicit bias that is absorbed by the user. More plainly put "to someone with a hammer, everything is a nail" applies to all technology.

<comment> daniel-thompson For those who don't know, Theodore Kaczynski is the Unabomber. He killed 3 people and injured 23 others with a mail-bombing campaign. Ideas are ideas, but maybe take with a grain of salt anything said by a guy who advocates for his beliefs using physical violence.

<comment><USER194> Always take information with a grain of salt. Kaczynski was not all there and is a murderer.

The first half of the manifesto is a fairly piercing critique of industrial society. Most of the ideas are not really original. Interesting questions are raised, the call to violence is nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER195> Guns, Germs and Steel.

Actually, any well researched history book. View on the world gets changed drastically, and usually for better.

<comment><USER196> 'Why nations fail' is about the same subject and much better supported, incase you are interested.

<comment><USER57> The opening chapter is even a direct challenge to Diamonds book!

The rest is a really wild ride through history. Fascinating read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER197> Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Democracy: The God That Failed

This is a seriously mind bending book. You will never again see the world the same way. Not an easy book to read though. You will need to follow the references (and they are many), as otherwise you will refuse to believe what you are reading. Also, it is not a "pleasant" book to read. The author is not a great writer, only a great scholar.

</comment><comment><USER198> Slightly dated at this point but Illuminati Trilogy

</comment><comment><USER199> I confess 'mind games' and 'plot twists' don't correlate to my personal notions of wisdom. Googling 'books wisdom' turns up a lot. My one sentence bit of wisdom is currently from Charlie Munger: "I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do."

</comment><comment><USER200> "How Not to Die" by Michael Greger describes how a good plant-based diet can prevent and even reverse various common diseases

</comment><comment><USER201> How I found freedom in an unfree world. By Harry Browne and pretty much all of his other books

A guide to the good life, the ancient art of stoic joy

</comment><comment><USER202> In these anxious, depressing times it helps to have a cognitive toolkit of techniques that can be applied to irrational thinking that influences feelings. "Feeling Good", by David Burns, can help you create such a toolkit. This book is a self-therapy guide presented in a very user-friendly style. Wisdom will follow.

</comment><comment><USER203> To venture into the more poetic/artistic realm, I really recommend Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It's quite short, but so layered that I actually have a hard time describing it.

Framed as a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, the book is a series of vignettes describing fantastical cities Polo has visited in his travels.

</comment><comment><USER204> Resurrection by Harry Stottle:

[https://www.fullmoon.nu/Resurrection/PrimarySpecies.html](https://www.fullmoon.nu/Resurrection/PrimarySpecies.html)

It's a play made for radio about a scientist who brings his father back to life (digitally) as the first test of "resurrection" technology.

</comment><comment><USER205> "The Ethics of Ambiguity" by Simone de Beauvoir helped pull me out of a pretty debilitating bout of nihilism.

</comment><comment> alexanderthe- I recommend Plutarch's Lives, I own the Oxford World's Classics translations of 'Roman Lives' and 'Greek lives' and the stories told between the two alone allow to you build a mental model of the nature of mankind, the rise and fall of empires, and the "vicissitudes of fortune".

</comment><comment><USER206> "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" by Mohsin Hamid.

The book goes through the second person point of view of a young boy born into a village outside of a major Asian city. Each chapter is a time jump to a different point of their life. I believe I heard of this from an interview with Marc Andreessen.

</comment><comment><USER207> Charles Perrow, "Normal Accidents". Nominally about safety in large-scale complex engineered systems, and it's very good on that topic, and/but in doing so, touches on how scale and social factors interact with engineering details, which affects a lot more than safety.

</comment><comment><USER208> "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewan will fundamentally change your understanding of American history.

<comment><USER112> There's a lot of books like this. I think the one that affected me most was Overthrow, America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. It really made me start looking at foreign policy more seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER209> [0] - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - and most by Annie Dillard, An American Childhood is also of note. She has a very good way with details.

0 - [https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061233326](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061233326)

</comment><comment><USER210> Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

Maybe not mindbending, but a must read for us engineers prone to burning the midnight oil.

<comment><USER211> Careful with this one, the content is controversial and considered unscientific: [https://guzey.com/books/why-we- sleep/](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/)

<comment><USER212> To be fair to the author you should also post the link to Walker's response to these questions and more:

[https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we- sleep-...](https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep- responses-to-questions-from-readers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER213> "20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" or " Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect" both By Ian Stevenson.

I'm a heavy duty skeptic but these books pushed me over the edge away from scientific materialism towards a broader view of reality where consciousness survives death.

Excellent Well executed research.

</comment><comment> caleb-allen The Little Schemer, by Felleisen and Friedman.

Entertaining style, and amazing at conveying very complex ideas. I had understood recursion for years prior, but this really showed me what it was to truly "think" in recursion, and to understand the Y Combinator and its significance.

</comment><comment><USER214> I am a strange loop by Douglas Hofstader. Very clear thinking and awesome thought experiments

</comment><comment><USER215> [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Self-Deception- Getting-O...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-Out- Box/dp/1609989708)

life changing, I reread it every now and then

</comment><comment><USER216> I highly recommend Information - A Very Short Introduction by Dr. Luciano Floridi. Dr. Florida's book is a tremendously important guide to the strange new world opening up in front of us. I'm sure it will become a classic.

</comment><comment><USER217> The Trial -- Kafka

</comment><comment><USER218> My favorite go to books:

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie 10% happier by Dan Harris Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

</comment><comment><USER219> The Egg is a (very) short story that I've often found myself thinking about.

[http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)

</comment><comment><USER220> Design of Everyday Things. All about how we design the things we interact with, and how the design of something can influence your ability to understand it or use it, down to the most basic things like doors and handles.

</comment><comment><USER221> I would suggest Shadows of forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.

</comment><comment><USER222> Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari

Will forever change how you look at humanity, society, and technology. Lot's of eye openers and in general it causes you to shift your frame of reference entirely.

</comment><comment><USER223> For a more modern and youthful perspective, I'd recommend "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino. It really dives into how chaotic world of internet and media has influenced younger generations.

</comment><comment><USER224> The Mythical Man-Month

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

Parkinson's Law, and Other Studies in Administration + The Peter Principle

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

</comment><comment><USER225> Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber

The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts

The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas

The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter by Rupert Spira

Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram

</comment><comment><USER226> Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

</comment><comment><USER227> Blindsight from Peter Watts

</comment><comment><USER228> Infoquake by David Louis Edelman and the trilogy it belongs to would be right up HN's alley IMO. It's fun techie sci-fi. Some of the ideas can really make you think about reality.

</comment><comment><USER229> If you read these three Agatha Christie novels you'll never think about mysteries, in any form, the same way again.

I recommend this order:

The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd

And Then There Were None (also titled Ten Little Indians)

Murder on the Orient Express

</comment><comment><USER230> The Master and the Emissary by Iain McGilchrist

Read the reviews on Amazon to see what it's all about

I read it a few years ago and I've read quite a few books that changed how I view the world but none as much as this book

</comment><comment><USER231> "Breaking Open the Head", by Daniel Pinchbeck

"DMT: The Spirit Molecule", by Dr. Rick Strassman

"The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge", by Jeremy Narby

"The Law", by Frederic Bastiat

</comment><comment><USER232> Ubik by Phillip K Dick.

I'm kind of shocked that it wasn't cited already.

</comment><comment><USER126> Really anything by Robert Fulghum. Granted, this books are not mind mending but when I read them I was relatively young and their authenticity left a lasting impression on me.

</comment><comment><USER233> For someone with ADHD, "outwitting the devil" had a very strong effect on me.

I know public sentiment for Napoleon Hill is not positive overall, but I definitely recommend this one.

</comment><comment><USER234> Lazarillo de Tormes:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes)

</comment><comment><USER235> Annie Dillard, _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_ and _Holy the Firm_. Dillard has a way with words that is both eloquent and a little violent, and she influenced how I write just as much as Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_.

Douglas Hofstadter's _Godel, Escher, Bach_ for its captivating presentation of some very complicated ideas (at least to the 17 year old kid who read this for the first time). This book was published around the time that I was growing from hobby programming to writing software as a career, and it exposed me to non-trivial proofs, LISP, and recursion in general.

Vernor Vinge's _The Peace War_. It's a bit stupid, but . . . I want to make the tech in this book become reality :-) Bobbles are sheer fantasy, of course, but the Tinker tech stack would be a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER236> _The Beginning of Infinity_ , by David Deutsch. It talks about the kinds of ideas that lead to progress vs stagnation at the level of individuals and societies.

</comment><comment><USER237> Clearly there is only one real answer to this question...

...The Necronomicon!

</comment><comment><USER238> Waking Up by Sam Harris

Sam is a neuroscientist and meditation devotee who offers a cunning and life- altering exposé on the mysteries around consciousness and the investigations and learnings therein. One mind-bender from the book: some people have undergone a procedure to separate the left and right sides of the brain as treatment for rare disease. Following this procedure, the left and right sides can independently answer questions (sometimes simultaneously) posed by researchers, frequently offering conflicting answers. Interestingly, the right brain alone cannot speak but can answer questions by drawing or choosing letters/cards. Thus, it would appear that following the procedure, each side of the brain is conscious, yet unaware of the consciousness inside the other side.

</comment><comment><USER239> Maybe try something/anything by Douglas Hofstadter. 'Godel, Escher, Bach' gets most of the attention, but I also found 'The Mind's I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul' (with Daniel Dennett), and 'Metamagical Themas' fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER240> Thus spoke zarathustra. If it isn't clicking within the first 25-50 pages, come back to it after you've become a bit disillusioned with humanity :)

</comment><comment><USER224> Also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123088)

</comment><comment><USER241> Amartya Sen: Development as freedom. Gives perspective what is needed for a country to develop to (and stay) a good place to live for the citizens.

</comment><comment><USER242> perhaps blasé, but the Tao. it is as simple as it is unknowable, from the highest levels of philosophy down to action-items in your everyday life. the Tao that can be described is not the true Tao, so you must search yourself :)

to simply be smarter (but maybe not wiser), the art of learning by josh waitzkin. if you are interested in optimizing anything, why not learn how to optimize optimization?

<comment><USER243> I wonder if the Tao is so profound as it is interpreted in the West, because the understanding of the text, much lies on the nature of the Chinese language, which is much more about concepts, than about words. For example, the 'the Tao that can be described' part in Chinese consists of only three characters, which when transliterated would read 'way can speak', where for both 'way' and 'speak' the character for tao is used. The remaining part of the sentence also only uses three characters, if I am not mistaken 'not constant(timeless, eternal) way'. See for example: [https://www.tao-te- king.org/](https://www.tao-te-king.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER244> The first time I read Talebs Black Swan was pretty mind bending. It's a intriguing mix of philosophy, history and the application of probabilistic thinking.

It's also a great aggregator book. It introduced me to the works of Kahneman, Tetlock, Poincare and Mandelbrot.

<comment><USER245> Read "fooled by randomness" if you haven't already. I much preferred it to his later work, and it introduced me to Popper (who was someone that 3 years of philosophy at university somehow managed to skip) who you might also enjoy.

<comment><USER246> I tried to read this but just could not get over his writing style. It just felt so self-indulgent and took forever to get to the point. I have no idea why it's recommended so highly.

<comment><USER247> I don't know why it is, but I suspect it's the same reason people listen to Nate Silver

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER248> Neuromancer by Gibson, Black Oceans by Jacek Dukaj.

</comment><comment><USER249> "The Illuminated Mind", supposedly. But I've just started reading it.

It's a guide to meditation, without the religious parts.

</comment><comment><USER250> For me that was 'The Infinite Book' by John D. Barrow. I read it at a very young age and changed my brain completely.

</comment><comment><USER251> _Prometheus Rising_ by Robert Anton Wilson

</comment><comment><USER252> New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson (relatively new) and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

</comment><comment><USER253> For me, the following are near the top:

"The Opposable Mind", by Roger Martin

"Antifragile" by Nassim Taleb

"The Conscious Universe" by Dean Radin

<comment><USER254> I'll caution readers here against Conscious Universe as pseudoscience rubbish.

<comment><USER253> It gets a lot of flak, but I've never met a critic who could pile more peer reviewed studies against its premise than I could pile in its favour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER255> The Teachings of Don Juan - Carlos Castaneda

<comment><USER256> I first read The Art of Dreaming. Then I started with The Teachings of Don Juan and read all of the 10+ books in the series. I also read the book that was written by the women from his party. Really enjoyed all of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER257> The Three Body Problem and its two sequels.

<comment><USER258> I just finished devouring these as they were posted in the last similar thread I saw on HN.

Can never really look at the stars or think of space the same again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER259> Any intro to philosophy book, e.g. "Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy" by Simon Blackburn

</comment><comment><USER260> Mark Manson's books:

\- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F * ck

\- Everything Is F * cked

They have absolutely changed my life. I can't recommend them enough.

</comment><comment><USER261> "Mindset", Carol Dweck. Or her more scholarly one on same topic, "Self- theories"

</comment><comment><USER262> Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

</comment><comment><USER263> book suggestions are like opinions: everyone has a few ... fwiw here books which I re-read more than twice:

1) Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society (La Technique)": [https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...](https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety)

2) Jacques Ellul "Propaganda" [https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512](https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512)

3) Robert Cialdini "Influence" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Theory_of_infl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Theory_of_influence) <\- could probably be described as a modern / dark adversarial take in "how to make friends and influence people" and should be read with Kahneman & Tversky's books/papers.

4) James C. Scott "The Art of Not being Governed" [https://libcom.org/files/Art.pdf](https://libcom.org/files/Art.pdf)

5) Dickens "Hard Times" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Times_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Times_\(novel\)) <\- for it's description of the effects on peasant communities during industrialization, which is also a theme in "La Technique" above

6) George Orwell "Down and Out in London and Paris" [https://archive.org/details/DownAndOutInParisAndLondonGeorge...](https://archive.org/details/DownAndOutInParisAndLondonGeorgeOrwell1933/mode/2up)

7) M. Scott Peck "The Road Less Traveled" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Traveled)

8) Introducing Psychology of Relationships - A Practical Guide by John Karter [https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Psychology- Relationships-...](https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Psychology- Relationships-Practical-Guide/dp/1848313594)

9) Lion Feuchtwanger "Goya" [https://www.amazon.com/Goya-Lion- Feuchtwanger/dp/8476408838](https://www.amazon.com/Goya-Lion- Feuchtwanger/dp/8476408838)

10) Thomas Ligotti "The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror" [https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race- Contriv...](https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race- Contrivance/dp/0984480277)

11) Plato "The Republic": [https://archive.org/details/PlatoRepublic/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/PlatoRepublic/mode/2up)

12) Lewis Mumford "The Story of Utopias": [https://archive.org/details/storyutopias00mumfgoog/page/n9/m...](https://archive.org/details/storyutopias00mumfgoog/page/n9/mode/2up)

13) the major works of: Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Foucault, Chomsky, Zizek

Short:

\- Peter Wessel Zapffe "The Last Messiah": [https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah](https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah)

\- Lion Feuchtwanger "Power": [https://archive.org/details/powerbookbylionf00zieliala/page/...](https://archive.org/details/powerbookbylionf00zieliala/page/n2/mode/2up)

\- Samuel Becket "Waiting for Godot": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot)

\- Fyodor Dostoevsky "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man": [https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Ridiculous-Man-Fyodor- Dostoyevs...](https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Ridiculous-Man-Fyodor- Dostoyevsky/dp/1419160222)

</comment><comment><USER264> The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho and Psychology of Intelligence Analysis by Richards J. Heuer Jr.

</comment><comment><USER265> The Magus, John Fowles

Dune (all 6)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

Manufacturing Consent

The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan

If This Is a Man, Primo Levi

Light, M. John Harrison

<comment><USER266> All 6 Dune books? The first one was a masterpiece but the rest are not as widely praised.

<comment><USER267> Personally, I love the first four books, although the be warned they take a different tone than from the first book. The last two are good, but Heinlein passed away after writing the sixth book. I believe his son tried to continue the series, but I haven't read past that.

I highly recommend reading at least the first four books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER268> I would recommend Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter if you haven't already read it.

<comment><USER269> TBH I have attempted to read it many times but escapes my feeble mind. GEB is one of those books ...

<comment><USER270> You could have a look at 'The Mind's I' [1]. Its a collection of short essays edited by Hofstadter and Dennett.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER271> \- Meditations on Quixote and the Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset \- Iliad by Homer

</comment><comment><USER272> Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It was a wild ride. Permanently raised the bar for fiction for me.

<comment><USER273> this book continues to represent one of my highest ideals. monastic orders that may form in the possibility of eventual hackstability

</comment></comment><comment><USER274> The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. Don't know how, but his words just made my brain buzz.

</comment><comment><USER275> Michael Pollan's "How To Change Your Mind"

Jocko Willink's "Extreme Ownership"

</comment><comment><USER276> The Dispossesed.

Collective activity, ie the bedrock of humans human-omg, has not looked the same since

</comment><comment><USER277> Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius

</comment><comment><USER278> Any books by Fritjof Schuon, René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, or Titus Burckhardt.

</comment><comment><USER279> The Tibetan Book of the Dead

</comment><comment><USER280> The God Delusion by Dawkins perhaps. I was agnostic before, atheist after.

</comment><comment><USER281> Silas Marner by George Elliot. Changed the way I parent my children.

</comment><comment><USER57> Mind bending books?

Non-fiction: The Brain That Changes Itself

Fiction: The Way of The Peaceful Warrior

</comment><comment><USER282> Accelerando by Charles Stross: Be there to receive a phone call from a sentient hive lobster consciousness that escaped from the lab, and watch the singularity happen in a hilarious and mind bending fast take off.

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge: explore the far future in a space opera dreamed up by a computer science professor turned sci-fi author. This book literally inspired the first IoT sensor "motes" created, and we haven't come close to achieving the vision he explores just as texture in this rich book with fascinating characters. Not my favorite wordsmith, but one of my favorite idea-smiths.

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter: create a new mathematics from the axioms up, while strolling along with a wise tortoise and a hare who share fascinating ideas and connections from art and music to number theory, incompleteness, and consciousness.

</comment><comment><USER283> At random

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand. Love her or hate her, she makes you think.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things - This is a great book about building businesses, and business in general.

Capital in the 21st Century - One of the greatest books about economics and capital written ever - let alone in the last decade.

The Intelligent Investor - This is Buffet's favourite book, and regardless of how many times I read it, I still learn more. One can never digest it in full.

Predictably Irrational - This excellent tome makes behavioural economics digestible outside of economics. It's enlightening, though provoking, and turns several accepted truths on its head, purely by being written at all.

Nexus (Ramez Naam) - This science fiction book explores transhumanism and would it could mean in the near future. It's both light and pulpy, but at the same time makes you think about the outcomes of technological progression.

<comment><USER284> I read _Atlas Shrugged_ without any preconceptions (I didn't know who Ayn Rand was, and Libertarianism wasn't nearly as trendy back then). I was taken in by the story of how everything fell apart, but was completely turned off by her solution—creating a "utopia" is quite easy when you only allow in a select few and have unlimited free energy. It struck me as the Libertarian equivalent of _The Jungle_: tell a compelling narrative of how society is (or can be) broken, and then destroy the credibility you've built by presenting your ideological vision while completely ignoring potential pitfalls.

<comment><USER283> This is exactly what I love about that book. To many it's a bible of libertarianism. To many it's everything that's bad about it. Either way I find it definitely encourages debate and thinking - much more than her other works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER285> The innovator's dilemma

Systemantics

A farewell to entropy

The nature of technology - what it is and how it evolves

On being wrong

</comment><comment><USER286> "Only Forward" by Michael Marshall Smith. Unexpected.

</comment><comment><USER287> How do I know which recommendation has been voted the highest?

</comment><comment><USER288> \- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

\- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

</comment><comment><USER115> * (Theory) Surfing Uncertainty by Andy Clark

Basically a unified theory of consciousness. 100% must read.

* (Theory) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

A bit long winded but it really changes the way you think about the voice in your head, about consciousness in general. Pairs well with Surfing Uncertainty

* (Self Help) Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Really wakes you up to the domination language that rules our interactions and provides an alternative framework. Its even great if you don't plan on implementing NVC, just to understand what non nonviolent langue is. Pairs well with Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness for understanding how language formed our minds and our societies.

* (Theory) The Force of Nonviolence Judith Butler Wakes you up to the highly dominant and persistent narrative of violence. Provides frameworks for something else. If this doesnt blow your mind im not sure what will.

* (Theory)Staying with the Trouble by Donna J. Haraway The name says it all. Ways to stop trying to wipe the slate clean, to start from scratch, but instead to "stay with the trouble" and make new things WITH. Wakes your mind up to disrupting in whole new ways.

* (Theory) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein Another book that helps you see the world through different eyes, or even if I dare, to see the world more clearly. Pairs nicely with the unnecessarily long winded "Fall" by Neal Stephenson for understand a post truth world, specifically the idea of "Edit Streams"

* (Scifi )The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton This one game me a framework for science and spirituality to coincide

* (Scifi ) Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Questions everything, blows your mind on multiple levels.

* (Self Help) She Comes First by Ian Kerner Wakes you up to the massive comfort imbalance in sex between genders and provides simple ways to help fix it (for heterosexual)

</comment><comment><USER289> Italo calvino,On a winter's night, a traveller.

</comment><comment><USER290> Bernardo Kastrup's - Why Materialism Is Baloney

</comment><comment><USER291> Cracking the coding interview :)

<comment><USER195> Very interesting reply.

And coming to think of it, there are couple of books that changed my life similarly (reading them for interview); though by themselves they may not merit to be in my permanent collection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER292> Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl.

</comment><comment><USER293> The Disappearance of the Universe, Gary Renard

</comment><comment><USER294> "Debt" and "bullshit jobs", both by David Graeber.

The first book really tears apart several of the "foundations" of economics. For instance, the creation of money as portrayed by Adam Smith? It's a myth, and no single place like he described ever existed.

Bullshit jobs is about the myriad bullshit managerial jobs we have and how we really shouldn't have them. It's capitalism, it's supposed to be efficient and yet, when he published a piece about bullshit jobs in an obscure anarchist magazine in 2013, it made so much impact The Economist wrote a response!

</comment><comment><USER295> The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. It describes what science believes life to be, and it can be very upsetting. Understanding it, however, made me a more confident and happier person than I was before.

<comment><USER296> I found this book completely degrading, even to the point of nauseating .. it discounts tens of thousands of years of human experience with describing itself, producing a taxonomic monster that is of very little actual use to the common man beyond providing a convenient excuse for ones failings and for the nature of humankinds more banal spirit.

Science can be repressive. Dawkins is a classic example of the iron fist in a velvet glove, imho. He justifies monstrosity with a technical crutch, and whether it is 'true' or not, at the end of this book I just felt like dirt.

/just_like_my_opinion_man

<comment><USER295> I appreciate your opinion. I think the book gives a very convincing explanation on how evolution works and how it shaped what we call "life". I do not remember Dawkins degrading human achievements in that book, so you might be referring to talks and lectures after the book was written. On the contrary, consider the following quote from the book:

> "If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our > children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological > nature. "

Let me quote another favourite author of mine on the same topic:

> "There's Nature, and she's going to come out the way She is.", Feynman.

<comment><USER296> Indeed there is alignment, as one of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite authors brings to bear:

"You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER297> Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick

</comment><comment><USER298> William Saroyan, The Human Comedy. Yup,, that's the one. Explains more about the human condition than any other literature that I have encountered.

</comment><comment><USER186> The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill.

</comment><comment><USER299> Jed McKenna - Spiritual Enlightenment

</comment><comment><USER300> "The Magus" by John Fowles

<comment><USER152> What did you like about it? I read it a few years ago and found some of the period attitude hard to appreciate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER301> I haven't seen it mentioned yet: Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter - this book was a game changer for me - I read it in college over a partiularly rainy spring break and its content has changed the way I think about just about everything.

Systems Thinking: A Primer by Donella Meadows is also an incredibly thought- provoking non-fiction book, that really makes you think about the world and the systems we create differently.

</comment><comment><USER302> "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K Le Guin is a classic science fiction novel written in 1974 about political philosophy and its relation to individuals' personal lives. The book's genius is in describing capitalism through the eyes of a protagonist for whom it is unfamiliar and literally alien.

It changed the way I think about how society today is structured and showed me that something different is possible.

</comment><comment><USER132> "I Am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. It explores an idea of consciousness as being a side effect over neurological loops becoming recursive. It also gets into the idea that your conscious mind can partially blend into another's. He does this by talking about his feelings of day to day life after his wife passed away. There's a dense math chapter, but the rest is pleasantly written

</comment><comment><USER303> Sholzenitzen's Gulag.

Twains Pudd'head Wilson and "The Corruption of Hadleyburg"

Ayn Rand et al "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal"

Peter Kropotkin "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution"

Tannehill, Morse "The Market for Liberty"

Albert J. Nock "Our Enemy the State"

Stephan Wolfram "A New Kind of Science"

</comment><comment><USER304> Anything by E Michael Jones

</comment><comment><USER305> "Maps of Meaning" by Jordan Peterson (yeah, that JP): a extremely interesting textbook-length treatment on cultural meaning and narrative. I found it a little hard to get through the learning curve on the jargon in the print form, but I could tell it had some really interesting ideas so I got the audio version and fully enjoyed it. It was a thoroughly mind-bending look at the meaning and power of shared cultural myths and human myths which transcend culture. It ended up with a fascinating analysis of (even to the point of being a partial rehabilitation of) Jungian psychoanalytic frameworks and pre- scientifc Alchemy. Maps of Meaning was a book that I immediately wanted to re- read as soon as I finished it, because I could tell there was a lot that I missed the first time.

Another recommendation is "Quantum Genesis: Speculations in Modern Physics and the Truth in Scripture" by Stuart Allen. QG is a relatively deep pop sci look at physics, computation, and several related fields where the author points out that the original translation of the creation myth in Genesis 1 matches up extremely well with a modern understanding of quantum physics and simulation theory. (disclosure: a family member is the author).

</comment><comment><USER306> Cosmos by Carl Sagan

</comment><comment><USER307> Never split the difference (Chris Voss): incredible book about dealing with people, after reading you end up seeing most interactions with other humans as negotiations with "black swans" hidden in your conversations.

Thinking Fast and Slow. (Recommended in other responses but I'd have to second this one. Incredible for reasoning about your own reasoning).

What the Buddha Taught: (Walpola Rahula): a short intro to Buddhism. There are some really powerful ideas from this age old religion, that can definitely help you think about your own happiness and what material possessions actually give you.

The Innovators Dilemma: a must read for startup founders, I think it's the best model for thinking about technology and why startups and adoption often fails.

Atlas shrugged (Ayn Rand): completely transformative book for looking at our world, America particularly. Th perspective it gives you may not be in the best, or most human way, but I've found no other book that forces you to empathize with capitalism like this one.

<comment><USER186> Never Split the Difference is an amazing book. I use what I learned from that everyday, and I've coached people (successfully) to get out of bad situations with management using those techniques. It is literally one of the most helpful books I ever read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER308> \- "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter \- "Foucalt's pendulum" by Umberto Eco. \- "A Perfect Vacuum" by Stanislaw Lem. \- "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.

</comment><comment><USER309> Godel Escher Bach by Hofstadter. I was never even close to the same afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER310> Labyrinths of Reason, William Poundstone The Ghost in the Atom, P.C.W Davies The View from the Center of The Universe, Abrams and Primack Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz

</comment><comment><USER311> Tao Te Ching

</comment><comment><USER312> Gödel, Escher, Bach: by Douglas Hofstadter.

Surely expanded my brain. But then again I was 16 and stuck on a train for 3 days and it was my only entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER313> Homestuck.

</comment><comment><USER314> debt, the first 5000 years

</comment><comment><USER315> 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

</comment><comment><USER316> beyond good and evil

</comment><comment><USER317> Godel, Escher, and Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter

</comment><comment><USER77> Hmmm. Great question. What was the most "mind bending" moment in cinema? The ending to The Sixth Sense or the trial and conviction of Harvey Weinstein? When I think of mind bending I think of the thoughts and ideas that break one out of a previous believed framework of thinking. Things that have a lasting impact on how they see and view the world.

"The Bible" (New International Version)

"Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman

"Imperial Ambitions" by Noam Chomsky

"Evolution and Religion: A Dialogue Book" by Michael Ruse

"The Value of Free Thought" an essay by Bertrand Russel

"The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism" by Daniel Bell

"Stalking the billion-footed beast" an essay by Tom Wolfe

"Propaganda" by Edward Bernays

"Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe

"Walden" by Henry David Thoreau

"30 Satires" by Lewis H. Lapham

"Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut

Above, in chronological order, are the books that changed my life. It is weird looking at that list, as each book is tied to such a fundamental shift in my life. They each taught me about something fundamentally new and different. Faith, spirituality, economics, thought, power, society, nature, technology. It should appear obvious by looking at the list, there are plenty of opposite pairs, dipole books if you will, present. Bending one's mind has multiple phases, first when one goes from knowing nothing to knowing something. Depending on what was learned, this can definitely be mind bending. But not everyone rides the second phase, going from knowing something to learning that it wasn't the whole thing, or wasn't the only way to interpret such a thing, or wasn't entirely correct, or perhaps, in our largely subjective world, is not true at all.

Certain books can only speak to certain people at certain times of their life. It's just the beauty of the whole thing. And to the core of this thread, one actually has to believe something, truly and passionately, in order for them to then have their world view bent and turned on its head. This is the hardest lesson that many won't really ever opt to face. The core of truth, learning, and wisdom comes when you finally read (and thus think) something that takes a belief you previously held as passionately true, unalterably true, core-to- identity true, and made you wrestle with the reality that it may, perhaps, not be. That's the biggest mind f __* of them all.

One's entire worldview is constructed of things they believe. But those things you believe come, for some more than others, from what one read, purposefully or not. Seek books that challenge what you believe and enjoy the ride.

</comment><comment><USER318> Lying by Sam Harris

</comment><comment><USER319> > I'm looking for mind games, plot twists, brain expanding books, and > literally anything that transforms me into a smarter, wiser person.

It's hard to tell whether you want a mystery/thriller book or a book on logic or a self help book. If you want to be more intelligent or aware of culture, then read the bible. You'll be surprised how almost everything you read, watch or listen to is tied to the bible. Almost every book listed in this thread will have references to the bible. You really can't be culturally intelligent without having read the bible - at least in the US or Europe. If you want a mystery, can't go wrong The Name of the Rose. Also, a book isn't going to transform you into a smarter, wiser person. The countless shelves of self-help books should be evidence enough.

Also, I love this quote from einstein:

"Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life."

<comment><USER152> > It's hard to tell whether you want a mystery/thriller book or a book on > logic or a self help book.

Then we can throw over what we like and see what sticks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER320> I will take the bullet and suggest Ayn Rand's Fountainhead.

If you are a teenager it will definitely make you think and likely leave an impact on you. It's not a typical novel, more like philosophical ideas presented in the form of a novel. Ideal characters placed in real life. You will also understand why the world is divided into Ayn Rand lovers and haters.

It questions how the world works, how it should work, how people live their lives, and how they should live their lives, etc, etc.

Warning you, it's not filled with plots twists.

<comment><USER111> Is the book better than the movie? I just watched the 1949 film last night. It seems complete, does it miss any details?

<comment><USER320> I haven't got around watching the movie yet, is it any good? I will give it a try.

<comment><USER111> It's similar to your description of the book, ideal characters doing ideal things. Some scenes feel like they could be trimmed down and convey the same information. The web of characters gets more rewarding to watch past the halfway line as the conflicts start to blossom. The film builds over time and comes to a powerful and satisfying end.

The 1940s emphasis on tall verticality in its art style is on full display. The strict adherence to command in speech seems foreign to me, not having been through the fighting forties.

Yeah its good. Cant say it will have any surprises left for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's my list:

* Read any book you want

* Don't read books that you don't want to

* Get on with your life

</comment><comment><USER321> Wolfram, A new Kind of Science. Could re-define fundamental physics and computing.

</comment><comment> t-writescode Thinking Fast and Slow. I recommend this to absolutely everyone. It's a huge study on how everyone thinks, even when they think they're above thinking like that. Truly amazing!

<comment><USER322> Is the whole book actually worth reading? I mean the concept is very simple (although extremely important) and can be explained concisely in a couple of minutes - why a 500-pages book?

<comment><USER59> A lot of the book is going through various types of specific bias (e.g. anchoring, sunk-cost), and going over the way in which it was studied and shown to exist. I see this as valuable as because, as you say, accounting for irrationality is important, and having an indepth account of exactly how bias arises is key to internalizing the reality that we are all prone to succumbing to these errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER323> Ok this is actually more along the lines of "Mind bending books to write and never be the same as before", as in I wrote it and has certainly had that kind of impact. I wrote a collection of essays documenting various interests like machine learning and entrepreneurship. An ongoing project, currently on book four. It's a lot of fun! "From the Diaries of John Henry", available online at [https://www.turingsquared.com](https://www.turingsquared.com)

</comment><comment><USER324> That's quite a personal experience, I think.

For me, the books which had the most impact on my life were those which were exploring systematically something I had a confuse idea of and seemed rather unorthodox. When you get that feeling that "oh great, if I'm insane, I'm not alone", it immediately organizes your thought process and allows you to go further.

Of course, there is always the risk of an "echo chamber" effect, but on the other hand, there are some ideas that you can't get if you're not in a given predisposition, so better maximize the usefulness of your reading time (and explore introduction to alien ideas through lighter sources, like small articles).</comment>