SARS-CoV-2-specific immunity in Covid-19 and SARS cases, and uninfected controls - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z <comment><USER3> Derek Lowe's latest commentary on SARS-COV-2 immunity and this paper specifically:

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/15/ne...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/15/new- data-on-t-cells-and-the-coronavirus)

</comment><comment><USER4> I know that as somebody who isn't a scientist, i'm not the intended audience for pre-print articles in scientific journals.

would anybody mind providing a summary of conclusions for the general audience here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Derek Lowe's blog (linked by jhayward, thanks) has a good rundown of the recent T Cell research and what it means in general: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/15/ne...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/15/new- data-on-t-cells-and-the-coronavirus)

But, he (and the paper authors!) seem to skim right over what might be the most important conclusion:

> Recognition of the nsp7 and nsp13 proteins is prominent, _~as well as the N > protein~_. And when they looked at that nsp7 response, it turns out that the > T cells are recognizing particular protein regions that have low homology to > those found in the "common cold" coronaviruses – but do have very high > homology to various animal coronaviruses.

This "NP" or "nucleocapsid protein" has high homology to "common cold" _human_ betacoronaviruses (OC43 and HKU1), so this basically means that previous exposure to these colds should confer some degree of immunity to SARS-CoV-2. The novel result that everyone seems to be dwelling on is interesting too, it raises the possibility that coronaviruses are transmitted from animals to humans more often than had been previously thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember at the start of this an infectious diseases professor commented how if you had the antibodies already against CoV you'd be fine, but if you had only _half_ , you were at a _significantly_ higher risk of death.

I guess the immune system can misidentify as well--I bet we haven't taxonomized everything fully yet so eventually we'll have a new name for what immunity is required.

<comment><USER6> Sorry can you rephrase?

What do you mean by half?

<comment><USER5> I have no clue! I just heard this a while back on some random video three months ago from an infectious diseases professor. My knowledge of biology is very low, I really shouldn't be speculating publically, I thought it was less controversial knowledge. I've probably just phrased it badly or remembered it in too simple of a manner due to my lack of background here.

I think half is a simplification, it must mean that if you have the wrong type or quantity or some combination thereof, but again I'm guessing and not an expert or even a professional.

<comment><USER7> The closest thing I can think of is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody- dependent_enhancement...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody- dependent_enhancement#Potential_linkage_between_pathophysiology_of_COVID-19_and_ADE).

There's no way in which having real antibodies, but a reduced amount of them, would be worse than not having antibodies, but the following is very possible:

> It is likely that in older people the production of antibodies is slower and > by the time the antibodies are developed in the titer that is sufficient to > neutralize the virus, the virus changes its antigenic determinants. In this > case, immuno-dominant neutralizing antibodies might start forming unstable > complexes with the new form of the virus and start to infect > monocytes/macrophages causing ADE. This process can trigger generalized > infection of immune cells in multiple organs and cytokine storm

<comment><USER5> It's possibly by type and not mass, ie, one of each type of antibody versus various strains of COVID. I think that would make the most sense to me given the conclusion--if you don't have the right antibodies but have some you may be more susceptible to some strains and less susceptible to other strains. I will see if I get the time to find the original source.

<comment><USER7> Yeah that still doesn't make sense haha. It's not really a different strains thing. But if you read about ADE you'll see that, I don't understand it perfectly but more or less you have a partial match which seems to make the immune system turn on itself. (I butchered that but it's been a long day...)

<comment><USER5> Well it could be based on ADE--certain strains of coronavirus antibodies will help other strains replicate. In any case, I do remember quite clearly "half" but it was towards a very lay audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately, it doesn't go into detail where exactly these samples come from.

It's seems plausible that animal coronaviruses induce an immune response in humans that can later help against SARS-CoV-2. If so, there should be a correlation between animal contact and COVID-19 severity.

<comment><USER7> No need to bring in animals to explain this. There are a handful of human coronaviruses - I think 4 that are not SARS-related, but I'm on mobile so will have to dig up the study later.

Besides, once a virus jumps from an animal it either becomes a human virus (capable of spreading), or somehow is a one-off virus that can jump from animal->human but not subsequently to another human. If the latter, that effect is so negligible it would not explain 20-50% of SARS-CoV-2-naive individuals having t cell reactivity.

—-

While I'm at it, just a reminder to all that SARS-2 _overall_ is a fairly mild virus, and the level of hysteria and death-inducing counterproductive response (lockdown, suspension of elective surgeries like Newsom did for a month here in California) is completely divorced from the fundamentals of this virus.

Also a reminder that unlike flu, SARS-2 primarily kills the very old / very unhealthy, whereas flu kills the very young and the very old. Thus when you run the math on population dynamics / herd immunity, the recurring yearly deaths will be vanishingly low (unlike flu) and thus amortized across years, SARS-2 is even leas deadly than the current numbers imply.

This is because once it has passed through the population, the set of SARS- CoV-2 naive individuals becomes dominated by new entrants to the world (babies/toddlers) who essentially have 0 risk of dying from COVID (it's basically a rounding error). Thus while SARS-CoV-2 is and will remain endemic (circulating in the population), it will barely kill anyone once the current world population is largely exposed to it.

—

Finally, a reminder that mentioning stuff like the above tends to result in censorship from social media platforms, which combined with the incredible bias of "news" organizations like CNN etc, means that those who are plugged into the matrix will never encounter real information about this threat. And surprisingly (although in retrospect it shouldn't have been surprising to me), there are a lot of people on HN that have dranken that very kool-aid and thus will reactively downvote or even flag commenters who present their beliefs (however founded or unfounded) about the true danger of this virus versus its purported impact.

Also, since I'm already ranting, I just want to throw out that the narrative around "long-term damage" (often stated to be lifelong) is completely unfounded and contradicted by the research we already have about SARS-1, which is SARS-2's much more deadly yet much less popular older brother.

<comment><USER9> Regarding the "long-term damage"... here's a post that goes into that aspect. There are sources. Saying it's unfounded shows who is pushing a "narrative".

[https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality- shu...](https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality-shut-down- the-United-States/answer/Franklin-Veaux)

These numbers and the permanence of the effects may be off, but hardly unfounded.

The issue I have with pushing the idea that it's a mild virus, despite loads of evidence it's far more dangerous than the seasonal flu, is that it results in less societal countermeasures.. prolonging this for all of us, and endangering those at-risk or with at-risk family members.

Keep in mind that going to the hospital can be financially ruinous.

Please wear a mask, don't throw parties, and consider your fellow members of society.

PS. quoting sources is a good way to share real information, outside of "the matrix".

<comment><USER7> I am happy to provide sources; as I explained elsewhere, I've had a crazily high number of encounters where I provide a bunch of sources and then get flagged or downvoted etc, which is very demoralizing so I've gotten into the habit of waiting until people bite to pull out sources.

Let me start by out-lining my beliefs about long-term damage or the other classic complications of blood clotting, stroke, or pediatric multi- inflammatory syndrome:

(1) Any time the body enters a state of pathological cytokine release syndrome, basically any runaway inflammatory cascade, a lot of really bad shit happens. Blood clotting, strokes, etc. What's important to understand is that (a) this is not at all unique to COVID, we see it with flu and any of the other dozen classes of virus that can make you sick, and (b) statistically, they happen in incredibly small numbers.

(2) Medium-term damage in the sense of your lungs taking a month or rarely, even longer, to recover absolutely can happen, we see it with SARS-1. But at the 1 year mark, for example, people's lungs look totally normal. I tend to use SARS-1 infections as a model for what _severe_ COVID-19 (caused by SARS-2 just as a reminder) looks like. So I think SARS-1 gives us a great upper bound.

There is a narrative specifically that people who don't have bad symptoms will have hidden long term damage, that's just complete bullshit and there isn't much for me to debunk. As far as the real severe COVID-19 cases that do have some type of complication, again they might have damage for a few months, certainly not beyond the 1 year mark.

Let's talk about strokes. The "strokes in young people narrative" (which I can't resist mentioning was heavily pushed by CNN, who as you can tell I have an incredible disgust for, because until this year I truly didn't realize how far they had fallen) AFAICT stems entirely from this series of case studies:

["Large-Vessel Stroke as a Presenting Feature of Covid-19 in the Young"]([https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009787](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009787)) - April 28, 2020

Normally with scientific stuff, what happens is that news orgs take the study, misrepresent/oversimplify the conclusions and twist its meaning. Well, that did happen to an extent here, but actually the actual title of the article ends with "in the Young". Now, maybe there's some medical definition of young that I am not aware of, but this study does not look at young people, it looks at _non-elderly_ people. So, in my opinion, there are a lot of scientists that are basically editorializating their own work. In other words, there is a large faction of people so incredibly concerned about COVID-19 that their bias is seeping into their scientific work. Anyway, I actually love this paper, because of the buried lede about lockdown/hysteria actually making things worse, which the authors seemingly tried to not draw attention to.

* "Social distancing, isolation, and reluctance to present to the hospital may contribute to poor outcomes. Two patients in our series delayed calling an ambulance because they were concerned about going to a hospital during the pandemic."

* (for those concerned about stroke in the young, note the occurrence is rare in those without comorbidities. And "young" here means "not old" [youngest was 33, oldest was 49, 3/5 had serious risk factors])

My commentary: So, the first irony is that people who _actually had COVID-19_ , and had it severely enough that they _literally ended up developing strokes_ , were afraid to seek medical attention for quite some time, _because they didn 't want to catch COVID-19_. My interpretation is that the media hysteria, etc has/had hit such a point, that even though they were probably feeling sick and like total garbage, they thought to themselves "well, this is bad, but not as bad as COVID-19 is from what I've heard". (Yes, this is me reading WAY between the lines so feel free to disagree, but I just had to point out the delicious irony).

The second irony is that, as they say, social distancing and isolation may have contributed to poor outcomes. Personally I believe this is self-evident, but take it as you will.

Finally, the title says "young" but the youngest was 33 and oldest was 49. I would think young would at the most mean people in their 20's.

\--

Before I go back to long-term damage, since the prior study touched (however briefly) upon possible externalities of lockdown, I also wanted to point out the obvious impact on mental health:

["Patients with mental health disorders in the COVID-19 epidemic"]([https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-03662030090-0/fulltext)) - Published April 01 2020:

* "Third, the COVID-19 epidemic has caused a parallel epidemic of fear, anxiety, and depression. People with mental health conditions could be more substantially influenced by the emotional responses brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic, resulting in relapses or worsening of an already existing mental health condition because of high susceptibility to stress compared with the general population."

* "Finally, many people with mental health disorders attend regular outpatient visits for evaluations and prescriptions. However, nationwide regulations on travel and quarantine have resulted in these regular visits becoming more difficult and impractical to attend."

I'll let those bullets speak for itself.

\--

> despite loads of evidence it's far more dangerous than the seasonal flu

Can you give me some ballpark numbers here? My estimates are that the IFR is maybe 3x the flu, although I think it would be lower if we weren't cooking the books as far as deaths go (note: my argument does not hinge upon the assumption that deaths are overstated/misclassified, indeed I believe if deaths were 5x as high relatively speaking as they currently are, that lockdown/etc would still be horribly counterproductive)

As I stated in my parent comment, though, once you amortize across multiple years, even with a 3x IFR of the flu, COVID-19 will kill _far_ less than any individual strain of Influenza.

Also, briefly:

> [https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality- > shu...](https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality-shu..).

The question says 1% mortality, "mortality" is vague but note that the IFR is much likelier to be .3%. And the IFR actually makes it sound worse because we have evidence now that many people basically can't get infected or are highly resistant to it without ever having been exposed (see the submission we're discussing).

> is that it results in less societal countermeasures.. prolonging this for > all of us, and endangering those at-risk or with at-risk family members.

Actually, the societal countermeasures you are referring to, insofar as they actually work, _are_ the source of this thing being prolonged. The way to not prolong it is not to artificially interfere with the spread of SARS-2 in the general population, which is the position I advocate for full-stop. (I used to be a bit more like "okay well maybe banning large gatherings makes sense", but the more evidence stacks up the more I'm convinced that we should not accept _any_ mandatory countermeasures, period)

> Keep in mind that going to the hospital can be financially ruinous.

Of course it can be. I also urge you to keep in mind that the vast majority of people will never go to a hospital for COVID-19. And indeed that many hospitals around the country have been nearly empty due to a combination of fear of going to the hospital (which has been huge) and suspension of elective surgeries, leading to an unprecedented scale _down_ of our medical capacity via furloughs.

\---

Back to the quora link - sorry for jumping around like a maniac here BTW - <USER2> just links to a lot of scientific-sounding news articles. It doesn't actually link to real papers, and the reason for that is because when you look at the actual statistics we have, it becomes pretty apparent that these are just what happens with "cytokine storm" (a better term for this is "pathological cytokine release syndrome" and thus I use that term), etc. It happens very rarely, but it does happen. There's nothing super unique about it with COVID-19, as far as I can tell thus far.

I owe you a few studies about these effects occurring in Influenza and other illnesses as well, I know I have them buried in my clipboard history or a stray sublime tab, so I'll try to circle back here in a bit with those. But hopefully I gave you enough to chew on / fight back on for now.

<comment><USER9> > I owe you a few studies

As do I. It's been a day at work, I'll see if I can dig into this soon.

In the meantime, thanks for the thoughtful response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First of all, here's the full text in-case anyone isn't aware:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z_reference....](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z_reference.pdf)

Before the actual paper, some review.

REVIEW SECTION 1

Coronavirus is a family of viruses, viruses being basically pieces of genetic material that swim around, inject their DNA into other cells, which makes the cells produce more copies of themselves until thousands of baby viruses explode out of the cell, killing it and moving on to the next cell.

COVID-19 is the condition that results from infection with SARS-CoV-2, which is a novel coronavirus that almost certainly emerged sometime in 2019. Think HIV/AIDS: HIV is the virus, AIDS is the disease, same with SARS-2 vs COVID-19.

SARS-CoV-2 while technically novel, is incredibly close related to what we now call SARS-CoV-1, which we used to just call "SARS". SARS-1 was incredibly deadly, but the pandemic fizzled out, presumably because it is quite deadly/quite symptomatic and AFAIK there isn't pre-symptomatic transmission.

SARS-CoV-2 structurally is very similar, sharing the same characteristic spike protein, and targetting the same ACE2 receptor which is expressed differentially in different tissue types. But SARS-CoV-2 is like a refined version of SARS-1, it "learned" from SARS-1's mistakes. So, it appears to be adapted to spread quite well, possibly because of cool things it does with interferon-mediated early course immunosuppression, which lets it spread for a few days before you show symptoms. It's also _much_ less deadly than SARS-1.

Now, to craft the "optimal" pandemic virus, you want something that spreads easily, has a long incubation time, and isn't too deadly (otherwise it fizzles out by killing its hosts before they spread sufficiently). So in that sense, SARS-2 is perfectly crafted to kill a bunch of people. But please don't fall into fear-mongering, it doesn't kill nearly as many people as most have been led to believe. In my opinion it's really quite a mild virus _overall_ , but some people can have severe COVID-19 which presents very similarly to a more run-of-the-mill SARS-1 infection (remember the original SARS is very deadly, so run-of-the-mill != no-big-deal).

REVIEW SECTION 2

We've talked about SARS-1 and SARS-2, but let me briefly butcher the immune system (I can already hear the immunologists stampeding towards me in the distance).

Your immune system's job is to distinguish self from non-self, (or more accurately, "non-self that is actually a threat" since you can have bacteria/etc that are not pathogenic/pathological). When it identifies a target, it has a lot of cool ways to kill it, but the specifics of neutrophils and antibodies, etc are out of scope.

For now, take it as given that your immune system can detect and kill pathogens.

Once it has fought off an infection, you will likely have antibodies, which are little heat-seeker-missiles that are primed to detect and neutralize the pathogen in question. (Note there's also T-Cell immunity which operates perhaps orthogonally to antibody immunity. This paper talks about T-Cell immunity).

Assuming you produced antibodies, eventually your active circulating antibodies will fade. This takes several weeks-a few months for SARS-1, and seems to hold for SARS-2, although I believe antibody prevalence is correlated with disease severity.

So eventually you have no more circulating antibodies. Contrary to what doomers will tell you, that's not a bad thing, it's inefficient to perpetually maintain antibodies. So instead your body maintains a living library of the pathogens it has previously encountered.

I'd encourage anyone to read about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunological_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunological_memory). I'll summarize briefly.

(1) After infection, even when antibodies fade, you still have circulating Memory B Cells which persist across _decades_ , waiting for exposure to the previously-fought-off pathogen at which they ramp up antibody production, leading to a faster, more strong response that results in lower peak viral load, presumably lower transmissibility/symptoms/etc. So, eventually it's possible to get reinfected as far as antibody immunity is concerned, but it takes quite awhile and when it does happen it's not nearly as bad.

(2) There's also memory T Cells, which are similar except instead of relying on antibodies, they work with T cells, with basically directly kill pathogens rather than indirectly produce the antibodies with neutralize the pathogen.

Okay, now it's time for

THE ACTUAL PAPER

The first finding is not surprising at all to anyone who has been reading research, but probably surprising to everyone else (read: almost everybody): if you've been previously exposed to SARS-1, you have memory T cells which persist long-term and will happily attack SARS-2.

Remember when I said SARS-CoV-2 was a novel virus? Well, it was, but it was also incredibly similar to SARS-CoV-1. So, technically it's novel but in real terms it's only a little bit novel, so previous SARS-1 infection is protective.

Well, that's cool, but most of us have never been exposed to SARS-1. But many of us have been exposed to one of the handful of other _human coronaviruses_ that we know about.

The somewhat shocking (maybe not shocking to those who have been reading about immunology for years) revelation in this paper is this:

> Surprisingly, we also frequently detected SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells in > individuals with no history of SARS, COVID-19 or contact with SARS/COVID-19 > patients (n=37).

In other words, people never exposed to either of the two SARS viruses showed immune activation against SARS-2, meaning that they are either completely or partially immune to SARS-2.

Why? Because they've almost certainly been exposed to some of the other human coronaviruses, which basically cause common colds. (Side note: For almost everybody SARS-2 is not any different from the common cold. It's quite rare to have severe SARS-2, but those that do get it experience very bad effects, since their immune system is basically ravaging their entire body)

\---

So the TL;DR: any model that has assumed that everyone can get infected is completely wrong and will massively overestimate the ultimate death of letting SARS-2 rip through the population.

Many people will never be able to get SARS-2 because they've already fought off similar-enough human coronaviruses. (BTW, coronaviruses are very distinctive in structure so that is likely why our immune systems exhibit this cross-reactivity)

Implications: (Warning: Strong opinion) As a result any cost/benefit tradeoffs of, say, lockdown, based off those models was off by a huge factor. The good news is, that even with the assumption that everyone was susceptible (capable of being infected), it was still really obvious to anyone with the capacity for rational thinking that containment/lockdown was a terrible idea, so these findings don't really change too much on that front, it just makes it even more overwhelmingly obvious that we collectively lost our shit and chopped off a limb in response to a papercut. So, instead of us (meaning, everywhere except Sweden) being super duper wrong, we now have good evidence that we were actually unimaginably, insanely wrong, to a degree that will be studied by subsequent scientists for decades as an example of where social contagion, groupthink and censorship led to one of the most damaging events in modern human history. Woot!

<comment><USER10> The rest of your comments aside, which I don't have evidence to address, "it was still really obvious to anyone with the capacity for rational thinking that containment/lockdown was a terrible idea" is just absolutely, patently untrue (if taken at face value and not just as a snipe). In fact, I'd say that _most_ people I know with the "capacity for rational thinking" — including scientists, doctors, and amateur COVID researchers who dig through the scientific literature every day — would strongly agree with some form of lockdown.

I am immediately suspicious of "everyone has gone mad except me" arguments, and I'd posit that "worldwide hysteria" just isn't a thing that happens without good reason.

<comment><USER7> > I'd posit that "worldwide hysteria" just isn't a thing that happens.

Well, we have well-understood cases of more localized hysteria, like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania).

Worldwide mania is just an extension of that. Since I believe that literally social media / the internet / other aspects of modern technology have allowed the propagation of mind-viruses to a degree never seen before, I truly believe that it is simply a state of mass collective delusion.

> "it was still really obvious to anyone with the capacity for rational > thinking that containment/lockdown was a terrible idea" is just absolutely, > patently untrue (if taken at face value and not just as a snipe).

Okay, you are right and I let my frustration be visible there, I agree that it is not a fair characterization. More accurately, I feel that people who came down on the pro-lockdown side _have the capacity_ for rational thinking and yet _were /are not using that capacity_ insofar as COVID-19 is concerned.

> I am immediately suspicious of "everyone has gone mad except me" arguments

You should know that I am too. I spent quite some time trying to figure out what obvious thing I was missing.

Well, I think enough evidence is in at this point, if you're willing to look at it. The truth is that otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable people can very easily fall into states of delusion. It's no secret that as humans we are endowed with an incredible set of cognitive distortions, that presumably had adaptive value at one point, but now hamper efforts towards rationality.

If you've ever taken the time to synthesize a body of research into a coherent whole - not necessarily writing an actual paper etc, but just trying to iterate and construct a really good mental model - then you know what an enormous amount of careful thought, effort, and intelligence it requires. It's simply not easy to do, thus I think that the majority of doctors really just regurgitate the things they learned in med school, the majority of scientists do their version of that, the majority of software engineers just make whatever hacky change they need to get their feature out without thinking about the whole system (often because the system is crushingly complex, etc).

So when I look at what our "leaders" and public health officials have done, I see a total failure to take that mentality, a total failure to see what was really there in front of them. And I don't necessarily blame them; it's well known that an environment of sleep deprivation and stress cripples the capacity for cognitive flexibility.

Anyway, to conclude, you are right that my characterization was unfair. I do stand by the notion that they behaved irrationally, but not because of some fundamental lack of ability to be rational, but simply because truly being rational takes an incredible amount of careful attention. (And obviously, none of us, myself included, are truly rational, but what I mean is, are you near that asymptote or are you off in the woods somewhere ranting about how it's too unsafe to open up our schools, etc)

<comment><USER11> You might find this interesting:

> IFR takes into account both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases and may > therefore be a more directly measurable parameter for disease severity for > COVID-19.

The latest CDC estimates an IFR of 0.65%

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning- scena...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning- scenarios.html)

I'll let you do the math on how many are estimated to die without mitigation.

And for a lot of those who don't succumb to COVID-19, here are the extra- pulmonary effects:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0968-3/figures/2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0968-3/figures/2)

Spreading the idea that shutting down was unwise is incredibly irresponsible.

<comment><USER7> > Spreading the idea that shutting down was unwise is incredibly > irresponsible.

Nonsense. I would argue that spreading the idea that shutting down was a good thing is and was incredibly irresponsible, but the difference is I don't believe in suppressing other peoples' ideas. But pro-lockdowners seem to love it. For the same reason they like the lockdown: it's a mentality that stems from a love of compulsion and control, and a sharp anxiety about living a full life.

> I'll let you do the math on how many are estimated to die without > mitigation.

I don't advocate against mitigation (nursing homes, etc), but I advocate against containment full-stop.

Anyway, I have done the math. In fact, I've done the math with an IFR of .9% and assuming 82% of the population got infected (see Ferguson's paper).

2.2 million deaths. That's what the worst case scenario was.

And on balance, it was worth it.

What do I think the actual number is? Well, I'd use a new upper bound of maybe 600,000 - which BTW is around the number of cardiac deaths per year in the US. Amortized across 5 years, it becomes even less shocking.

These are upper bounds, btw. I think the actual number could be lower, but I don't bank on it. Unfortunately, given the way we classify deaths, it will be very difficult to find out what the "real" death toll was looking back.

<comment><USER11> Without shutting down it wouldn't be amortized.

You'd effectively have millions of additional deaths from lack of hospital capacity, more than doubling the yearly death rate. And additionally you'd have millions of more people with debilitating complications from all causes.

That's absolute insanity. You're devaluing life. Stop it. It's frankly scary to think you're out there.

<comment><USER7> > Without shutting down it wouldn't be amortized.

Huh? No it wouldn't. Read my other comments in the thread, the point is that after it works its way through the population, the set of SARS-CoV-2-naive individuals becomes dominated by new entrants to the world (babies/toddlers), who don't die from COVID-19.

So over a period of 5 years, the average yearly death will be this year's deaths / 5\. That doesn't hold in the same way for the Flu since it does kill babies.

> You'd effectively have millions of additional deaths from lack of hospital > capacity

This is just false. I can't really debunk it because you didn't make an actual argument, so let's leave it at that.

> And additionally you'd have millions of more people with debilitating > complications from all causes.

Huh? Are you saying complications from COVID-19 itself, or are you saying non- covid reasons which would get neglected due to lack of medical care?

> That's absolute insanity. You're devaluing life. Stop it. It's frankly scary > to think you're out there.

No, I actually value life, which is why I understand how precious it is, and what a cruel thing it is to do to subject an entire planet to a regime of isolation and fear. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I also believe that lockdown leads to more mortality than doing nothing, so even if you don't care about wellbeing and just want to myopically look at lives saved, I'm arguing that lockdown is worse on both counts.

<comment><USER11> You cannot argue that there wouldn't be more infections if we hadn't shut down.

That is, if we hadn't shut down, we'd have exponentially more infections right now.

There are deleterious effects to shutting down. But your theory that shutting down has lead to more deaths is absurd.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite non-fiction books of all time? - <AUTHOR> What are the best non-fiction books you have read that expanded your views, hobbies, interests etc. <comment><USER4> \- "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" \- probably the most influential book I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of LessWrong essays on science and rationality.

\- "On Intelligence" and "I am a Strange Loop" \- how mind works.

\- "Rework", "Zero to One", "Start Small, Stay Small" \- insightful startup advice.

\- Fun autobiographies: Ghost in the Wires (Kevin Mitnick), iWoz (Steve Wozniak), Catch me if you can (Frank Abagnale), Just for Fun (Linus Torvalds), Elon Musk, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

\- How companies work: Creativity Inc (Pixar), In the Plex (Google)

\- On writing: Art of fiction/nonfiction by Ayn Rand, Story by Robert McKee, Save the Cat, Step by Step to Standup Comedy.

\- Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel investing, by Jason Calacanis).

Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]:

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Complete%20Essays.epub?dl=0)

[2] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of%20Scott%20Alexandria%20-%20Scott%20Alexander.epub?dl=0)

<comment><USER5> The Selfish Gene has been the most influential book on my life. Especially when Dawkins makes the point about pre-darwininan philosophy needing rethinking. His point being that natural selection/evolution is such a profound notion that it should be embedded into the underpinnings of philosophy itself.

<comment><USER6> You know, when I first saw (many years ago) an animation of DNA replication my first though was: hey, this looks like code. Imagine my suprise seeing this Dawkins fellow comparing DNA to code in the beggining of the "The Blind Watchmaker". Great minds... something something.

<comment><USER7> Hah, I remember learning about how DNA works in secondary school. You know, there's this "reading frame" that reads "triplets of nucleotides"... just like a CPU reading machine instructions! Might have had something to do with me reading an intro book to x86 ASM at that time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please don't... every time a thread like this shows up on HN, I end up impulsively buying some of the recommended books. I'm usually very happy about the purchase, though. :).

Humor aside; not sure if favourite of all times, but definitely impacted my thinking a lot:

\- "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" \- [https://intelligence.org/rationality- ai-zombies/](https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/) \- read this when it was still a bunch of posts by 'Eliezer on LessWrong. It cleaned up my thinking quite a bit, and introduced to couple new ideas from economics, sociology and epistemology.

\- SICP, obviously.

\- "How to Win Friends and Influence People", and "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" \- from the father of the whole genre of self-help/personal development, and one whose books are still probably the only good ones in this genre, Dale Carnegie. They explain exactly what it says in their titles.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Sapiens - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens)

2\. The Gene: An Intimate History - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276428-the- gene](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276428-the-gene)

3\. I Contain Multitudes - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29083367-i-contain- multi...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29083367-i-contain-multitudes)

4\. Stuff Matters - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19553030-stuff- matters](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19553030-stuff-matters)

5\. Rework - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6732019-rework](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6732019-rework)

<comment><USER6> Sapiens is an okay book, but it's all over the place. On one hand it kinda says that in many regards we have hypothesis at best (ie we don't know) to follow it with [sometimes] wild theories. There is no way you can cover as much ground as the author wanted in a book this size. It got diluted and turned into the classic "X best seller" crap.

<comment><USER9> I listened to the audiobook but never understood the hype behind it. Seemed like bunch of speculation akin to Malcom Gladwell books.

<comment><USER6> That's the classic recipe for a "best seller". A lot of hype and polish but of little substance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. The sheer breadth of the ideas covered in this book is breathtaking, and there are some truly mind-bending ideas explored in this book. If you're looking for a good general science book I highly recommend this one.

Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. Few thinkers have thought about this issue as deeply as Bostrom, and it was fascinating to hear his thoughts on AI.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Pretty traumatic read but essential if you really want to understand a dark and overlooked chapter of American history

<comment><USER11> I would love to hear more commentary on Bostrom. From the parts I've heard (in podcasts - still haven't read the book), it is a lot of talking about technology that is nowhere near where we are today, and thus (to me), a waste of time. But I am open to being convinced otherwise...

<comment><USER12> The prologue to Superintelligence was written with just for you. It is available here:

The Unfinished Parable of the Sparrows [https://blog.oup.com/2014/08/unfinished-fable-sparrows- super...](https://blog.oup.com/2014/08/unfinished-fable-sparrows- superintelligence/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recently read Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari and it nearly broke my mind. It was on Obama and Bill Gates' reading lists that year and it is phenomenal. It's like one of those books that took some ideas I had been kicking around for years and blew the whole thing wide open.

If you want to get a taste, go look up 'The Legend of Peugot' from the book.

There was also a sale on the ebook for $3 on Amazon this weekend -- not sure if it's still going.

<comment><USER9> > it nearly broke my mind.

Can you perhaps mention some examples?

<comment><USER14> There are a lot of fantastic ideas (whether one agree or not with the author) in this book. 2 that come to my mind:

\- we tend to think that our species was a result of evolution - a concept that's somehow nice and smooth. In reality, the author argues, at each step of the evolution, the 'better' species simply exterminated the previous one. Think about that ! We (or our ancestor) just exterminated those poor Neanderthals that we so fondly think of now

\- when he describes a corporation and applicable law (I think it's about Peugeot) comparing the lawyers to shamans. It really makes you realizes how most things and laws of what govern our world are just pure invention and it's very similar to religion actually

<comment><USER12> So, it's Nacirema: The Book?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Story of Civilization - Will and Ariel Durant

Reading this so far has been one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my life. If you are interested in how philosophy, religion, and civilization has emerged and grown in our species, than you will be constantly delighted while reading this. The Durants are equal to none.

<comment><USER16> It is a bit unfortunate that the Durants crammed all non-Western history in a single volume while devoting ten to European history, but it was a product of its time. Still, it is certainly well written and few historians attempt this sort of "complete" history these days.

<comment><USER17> True... it's an amazing volume on western philosophy but fails to adequately look at philosophy from other cultures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not really a book, but...

The Berkshire-Hathaway shareholder letters are very entertaining and informative, and reading Warren is probably the best way to deeply understand the last ~40 years of US business climate.

[http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html)

<comment><USER14> Oh I can only agree ! Each year I'm eagerly waiting for it.

To complement, I would add two books from Buffett and Munger:

\- "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life" by Alice Schroeder

\- "Poor Charlie's Almanack" by Charlie Munger - a fantastic read

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 1\. Born a Crime (audiobook) by Trevor Noah is an entertaining yet thought- provoking listen

2\. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (just gives a different perception to success all together, at least did for me)

3\. Mastery (Robert Greene) - can be dismissed as Anecdotes but really powerful ones

4\. Deep Work (Cal Newport) - a guy who doesn't like to be on social media and I found reading about him and stumbled upon this and it's absolutely an insightful read

5\. The subtle art of not giving a f __k - This is a short, beautiful and an amazing read even if you aren 't looking for self improvement

</comment><comment><USER20> Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb has implications that I find impact very disparate areas. It's hard work in places though.

The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann is a wonderfully readable and accessible intro to complexity, which again is a topic that seems to crop up all over the place.

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine cites a shedload of research to dispel gender-related myths. It should be taught in schools, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER21> John Seymour's self sufficiency books.

Haven't been able to put it all into practise, but they opened my eyes to what's possible, and provided some motivation to make the best use of the space we've got.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Bomber Command_ by Max Hastings. This book explained the change in Allies attitudes around bombing during WWII from "only barbarians bomb civillians" to the mass fire bombing of heavily populated cities. It was also eye-opening to read about the massive death rate in bomber command. [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military- Classic...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military- Classics/dp/0330513613/)

 _The Art of Electronics_ , and especially the student manual that accompanies it. I read these a long time ago, and at the time it was a pretty good introductionto electronics, especially if you bought some cheap second hand test equipment and had a few breadboards and components to do the lab work. I'm not sure if it's aged well. There are a bunch of people on HN who still do electronic work who could recommend better newer books.

<comment><USER7> > _I 'm not sure if it's aged well. There are a bunch of people on HN who > still do electronic work who could recommend better newer books._

Not a professional in this area, but between various HN comments I've read and YouTube channels like EEVblog, I've seen the third edition of this book recommended multiple times as _the_ best book. It's actually sitting on my to- buy list because of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "when breath becomes air" by Paul Kalanithi. Influenced me a great deal & one of my all time fav reads. A short excerpt : [https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i- go.html](https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i-go.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> The Warren Commission Report.

Originally suggested by Werner Herzog as the most thrilling book ever written. It's ludicrously detailed. Absolutely riveting and thrilling. Opened my eyes to how a story can be constructed around a single moment and elucidated by a huge investigation.

</comment><comment><USER25> A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson -- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21.A_Short_History_of_Ne...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21.A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything)

First half of the book changed my life, and second half is merely good. I wrote a full review [0], and eight years later, that first half has become one of my favorite reads ever.

[0]: [http://www.spaceponies.com/review-of-a-short-history-of- near...](http://www.spaceponies.com/review-of-a-short-history-of-nearly- everything-by-bill-bryson.html)

<comment><USER26> Oh yes! A Short History of Nearly Everything is really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it (Bill Bryson can write funnier than anyone I've read, apart from P.G. Wodehouse). I would just add a caveat that I read it first in junior high and it blew my mind. Maybe for someone who is read up a bit more, it might not be as mindblowing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _The Secret of Our Success_ on the co-evolution of humans and human culture.

 _The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution_ on what are states, where do they come from, and how do they work?

 _The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life_ is just what it says on the tin.

 _The Strategy of Conflict_ is the original book on game theory which stands up pretty well.

 _Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts_ on the modern science of what we know about what consciousness is.

<comment><USER28> I'm a third of the way through the Vital Question - absolutely amazing read so far. The concept of eukaryotes' high energy per gene opening up the doors for all of this marvelous complexity is so simple and powerful. Can't wait to keep reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It may be interesting at the end of this thread to take an inventory of the publishing dates of listed books. Will most be modern? Will many come from learned past of our elders?

It is hard for me to select a favorite. However as a voracious reader there is only one author for whom I have found myself re-reading his books multiple times: Robert Sarah.

He has published two books:

The Power of Silence (extended reflection on silence and the human condition) God or Nothing (autobiography + reflections on current affairs)

</comment><comment><USER30> _Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World_ [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1780747411/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1780747411/)

 _Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East_ [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195313984/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195313984/)

 _The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the Economy Bigger_ [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691136408/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691136408/)

 _The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced_ [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CG3JMD0/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CG3JMD0/)

 _The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature_ [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670031518/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670031518/)

</comment><comment><USER31> "Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity" is a short book that anyone that has any interest in Ray Bradbury's work or in fiction writing should read.

"The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg and "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini are both books that showed how and why you often act against your best interest.

</comment><comment><USER32> Gun germs and steel

The Innovator's Dilemma

Thinking Fast and Slow

Godel Eschel Bach

Hard Things about Hard Things

</comment><comment><USER33> "Soft skills" are typically the hardest.

The Power of Vulnerability: Brene Brown

Non-Violent Communication: Marshall Rosenberg

The Secrets of Consulting: Gerald Weinberg

</comment><comment><USER34> The MIT Press books are good and cover a range of subjects: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/topics](https://mitpress.mit.edu/topics)

Some are pretty short reads as well. I just read "Information and Society" and enjoyed it.

</comment><comment><USER35> GK Chesteron's Orthodoxy: [http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images.html](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> Just one interesting point from Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, published in 1973, was that post-industrial society would require a vast network connecting everyone, and thing, together.

</comment><comment><USER37> Offhand...

1\. 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', R. Rhodes

2\. 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', C. Murray, C. Cox

3\. 'The Prize', D. Yergin

4\. 'Are Your Lights On?', D. Gause, G. Weinberg

5\. 'Becoming A Technical Leader', G. Weinberg

</comment><comment><USER38> Endurance by Alfred Lansing - It's a well-written book about the incredible story of Earnest Shackleton's attempt to be the first team to cross Antarctica by land.

</comment><comment><USER39> Command And Control, by Eric Schlosser. A history of America's nuclear weapons program and it's many near-disasters.

Raven, by Tim Reiterman. Biography of Jim Jones by one of the journalists who'd reported the story the longest.

Liquid Intelligence, by Dave Arnold. Everything you need to know to understand cocktails and make good ones.

On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee. An exhaustive reference on the history and science of food and ingredients. Every page has something surprising and useful.

</comment><comment><USER40> In no particular order.

Empires of Light, by Jonnes. Titan, by Chernow. The Wright Brothers, by McCullough. His Excellency, by Ellis. The Wizard of Menlo Park, by Stross. I Invented the Modern Age, by Snow. Dealers of Lightning, by Hiltzik. Margin of Safety, by Klarman. Masters of Doom, by Kushner. Andrew Carnegie, by Nasaw. Infidel, by Hirsi Ali. Buffett, by Lowenstein. Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Hafner. Shoe Dog, by Knight. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Rhodes.

</comment><comment><USER41> The Power Broker and all volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro. The best books I've ever read. I effectively re-read them all every year or two.

</comment><comment><USER42> The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fc*k by Mark Manson

</comment><comment><USER43> Daring Greatly by Brene Brown This book has had a profound impact for years now on how I look at myself and those around me. I never saw shame as it's own entity beforehand and simply thought it was part of culture and the way things are. Now I see it as something to avoid like the plague for the sake of myself and those around me.

</comment><comment><USER44> One, Two, Three: Absolutely Elementary Mathematics by David Berlinski

Often gets low ratings because people mistake it for an educational book. It's a mix of history, biographies and verbal exposition on the development of mathematical theorems, with a good poetic slant. Reminds me I really need to look into his other books, his writing is scarily good.

</comment><comment><USER45> Tokyo Vice by Jake Adlestein [1]

It's the story of a foreigner working as a serious reporter in Japan. He finds that the US government has been essentially selling organs to the Yakuza crime lords. No, really!

1: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307475298](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307475298)

<comment><USER46> You might like this one, not sure how much of it is true and how much is made up

[https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John- Perkins...](https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John- Perkins/dp/0452287081/)

<comment><USER47> I found that a fun read. No idea how much of it is real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Blanchard, Devaney and Hall, "Differential Equations". The first math textbook I found that you can actually _read_.

Oppenheim, Willsky, and Nawab, "Signals and Systems". The foundational modern text for signals processing; Fourier analysis becomes a fundamental way of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER49> 1\. - 5. "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" by Manuel De Landa

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88941.A_Thousand_Years_o...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88941.A_Thousand_Years_of_Nonlinear_History)

</comment><comment><USER50> Views: _Last chance to see_ , by Douglas Adams.

Not only does he talk about Animals the average human never gets to see, it's also full of weird insights because of his often rather unique perspective on things. Plus, it's Adams, so it's _very_ entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER51> 1\. The psychick bible by Genesis Breyer P. Orridge. 2\. Breakthroughs in science by Isaac Asimov

</comment><comment><USER52> What is a Dog? [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo183782...](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo18378250.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods)

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by James Owen Weatherall [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13356644-the- physics-of-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13356644-the-physics-of- wall-street)

Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines (1953) by B. V. Bowden. [http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/10719/Faster-Than- Tho...](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/10719/Faster-Than-Thought-A- Symposium-on-Digital-Computing-Machines-1953/)

</comment><comment><USER53> Handbook of Filter Synthesis by Zverev. It's out of print, but gives a nice tour of the field with good references. Beautiful charts and tables.

Design of Crystal and Other Harmonic Oscillators by Parzen delighted me with its practical depth and detail.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Selfish Gene - <USER2>

Freedom from the Known - <USER3>

For decades I've been plagued by 'what is one supposed to do in life' question, I've been restless for years.

These two books gave me atleast a logical framework to understand my frustrations.

</comment><comment><USER54> I really enjoy anything from John McPhee, especially Coming Into The Country.

<comment><USER55> I'm planning on starting The Founding Fish this evening, a recommendation from a friend. It will be my first McPhee book and I'm very much looking forward to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I liked the Art of War in high school. Feel like it helped me a lot with stuff like negotiating salary in my early years.

Later -- The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione -- same topic as Art of War I'd say.

</comment><comment><USER57> In no particular order:

• Sapiens

• Thinking Fast and Slow

• The Mind Illuminated

• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

<comment><USER58> Very interesting that you point to a Meditation book (The Mind Illuminated) and a Stoic book (A Guide to the Good Life).

I've read both, and I like both philosophies. While they both share similarities (non attachment, living in the present), it seems that in Vipasana you wouldn't try to get rid of a bad thouhgt by using your rationality. You would just observe it.

While Stoicism demands engaging rationality to overcome the emotion or bad thought.

Have you thought on how to reconcile the two? This is something I've been pondering for a while.

<comment><USER57> I think early Buddhism and Stoicism can be cobbled together into a workable philosophy, and I think Vipassana is also complementary with a number of Stoic practices.

Like you've identified, a recurring apparent disagreement between the two philosophies is how to relate to positive and negative phenomena: In the stoic view, positive phenomena should be enjoyed, but we should be clearly aware that they're impermanent so that we're not disappointed when they inevitably end. Likewise, we should bear negative phenomena with the knowledge that we could always be experiencing something even more negative.

In Buddhism, there's also guidance for relating to positive and negative phenomena in a different way, but it doesn't appear to agree with the Stoics. In Buddhist thought, we should use concentration careful attention to our inner experience to cultivate equanimity toward both positive and negative phenomena while growing a deep sense of inner fulfillment.

I don't think these are actually that different: in both philosophies, the end state — whether that of a Buddhist arhat or a Stoic sage — is to be pretty much happy with whatever's going on, and the path is essentially to become aware of the bad in the good and the good in the bad. Really, I think the main difference is that the Stoic philosophy is phrased and framed in a more accessible way, but the practices complement each other well.

Concretely, imagine your dog is sick and will probably die. Stoicism tells you to appreciate every moment you have left with your dog but to vividly imagine your experience of him dying to lessen the blow when he does, and to prepare yourself for (and convince yourself of!) that eventuality. Buddhism would suggest you meditate on the mental talk, mental imagery, and emotional body sensations associated with your experience of the trauma. These are, in my mind, complementary ways to cultivate equanimity, and are even better used together than separately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I really enjoyed Never Split the Difference. It has helped me with negotiation in life.

I enjoyed 4 Hour Work Week when I first read it. I am still trying to create a profitable side hustle.

</comment><comment><USER60> _The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk and E. B. White

 _The Language Instinct_ by Steven Pinker

 _The Problem of Pain_ by C. S. Lewis

 _The Mac Is Not a Typewriter_ by Robin Williams

 _Getting Real_ by 37 Signals

</comment><comment><USER61> "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson

</comment><comment><USER62> All these had a huge impact on me. The descriptions are inadequate, I've just tried to mention the subject matter.

Deborah Tannen, _You Just Don 't Understand_ \- how males and females talk different languages.

Lakoff & Johnson, _Metaphors We Live By_ \- how our language and thoughts are built from a fabric of conceptual metaphors. _Philosophy In The Flesh_ is about the conceptual metaphors that philosophy is built from.

Jonathan Glover, _Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century_ \- WWI, WWII and other wars, nazism, communism etc

Plutarch's _Lives_ \- biographies and stories from famous ancient Greeks and Romans. Amazing how little's changed.

Lin Yutang, _The Importance of Understanding_ \- introduced me to ancient Chinese philosophers. _The Importance of Living_ \- introduced me to ancient Chinese writers, poets and the Chinese way of life.

Hofstadter, _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ \- read it when I was 14, and I was into music, art and programming, so it blew my mind.

Susan Faludi, _STIFFED_ \- men, work, jobs, masculinity, 20th C

Walter Lippmann, _Public Opinion_ \- media, war, propaganda, democracy

Noam Chomsky's political books

E.F. Schumacher, _Small is Beautiful_ \- the world, development, government, planning, organization, humanity, sustainability

J.R. Saul, _Voltaire 's Bastards_ \- power, history, democracy, technocracy, reason, rationality, history from late 18th C until today.

Raymond Williams, _Culture and Society 1780-1950_ \- the anti-industrialist tradition, politics, culture, society and the new language describing these things

Clifford Pickover, _Computers, Patterns, Chaos, and Beauty_ \- programming, mathematics, art, fractals, dynamical systems etc

Ben Zander, _The Art of Possibility_ \- hard to explain, kind of advanced self-help, the magic of changing attitudes, expectations, habits.

My favourite non-fiction books of all time, though, are the essays of Emerson, Hazlitt, RL Stevenson, GK Chesterton, Santayana, Bertrand Russell. And the books of Nietzsche, SARK and Robert Fulghum.

</comment><comment><USER63> \- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

\- Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

\- Language, Truth, and Logic by A. J. Ayer

\- Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows

Books that serve as investment philosophy guides for those who've developed a habit of saving money but are looking for the "next step" in building more wealth. From the mind of one of the greatest investors of all time:

\- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (get the annotated version with an epilogue written by Warren Buffett!)

\- The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America

A book that discusses what matters most in your life from a resource- allocation, measurable results standpoint (family, etc.):

\- How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen

A book I read 10 years ago that forever changed the way I manage productivity and organization both at work and in my personal life:

\- Getting Things Done by David Allen

Books that show that our universe is just as crazy, if not crazier, than science fiction:

\- Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy

\- Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels

\- ..and so on with intersecting topics!

Not to mention, I love trying to have as deep an understanding as I can by reading highly technical textbooks on cosmology, gravitation, and quantum physics.

</comment><comment><USER64> haven't read a ton of nonfiction, but these were good

\- Thinking fast, and slow

\- 7 habits of highly effective people

\- Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

\- Getting Things Done

\- Choose Yourself

</comment><comment><USER47> I enjoyed all these. All of them are worth a read.

Business / Tech Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is. Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, Now! Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing. Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime- From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Badass: Making Users Awesome. Social Engineering in IT Security: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques. How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Global War for Internet Governance. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. The Soul of A New Machine. Hot Spots: Why Some Companies Buzz with Energy and Innovation - And Others Don't. A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer. Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron. The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing. What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network. The Undersea Network (Sign, Storage, Transmission). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly. Zero Bugs and Program Faster. Official Criticism Manual: Perfecting the Art of Giving and Receiving Criticism. Hacking Wireless Access Points: Cracking, Tracking, and Signal Jacking. Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, Set...Test! Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. The Accidental Project Manager. Building Successful Communities of Practice. Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories. More Fearless Change: Strategies for Making Your Ideas Happen. Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems that People Can Use. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. The Well: The Epic History of the First Online Community. Programmers at Work.

Science The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy Darwin's Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Hidden Figures Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Knocking On Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate our Universe Sightlines An Ocean of Air: A Natural History of the Atmosphere Snowball Earth: The Story of the Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life as We Know it Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error: The Meaning of Error in an Age of Certainty Mycophilia Packing for Mars: The Curious Science Of Life In Space No Logo King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry The Ghosts Of Evolution Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, And Other Ecological Anachronisms Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA Growing Up Boeing: The Early Jet Age Through the Eyes of a Test Pilot's Daughter Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 bath Toys Lost at Sea Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science

World / Politics / Other Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power The New Jim Crow The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion The irregulars : Roald Dahl and the British spy ring in wartime Washington Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing The Gift of Fear

</comment><comment><USER65> 1\. The power of now

2\. Models

3\. The 4-hour workweek

<comment><USER27> I read Models after a good review of it[1]. It was only sort of useful for my 36 year old self but it would have been immensely useful to me at 16.

[1][https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/models-a- summ...](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/models-a-summary/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> 1984

<comment><USER26> While I tend to agree that aspects of 1984 have been and continue to be seen time and again in societies around the world......the work itself is fiction. The OP asked for non-fiction books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Sapiens

</comment><comment><USER68> The Bible

<comment><USER69> The OP specifically asked for non-fiction.

<comment><USER62> That's a bit snarky. Most of it was written as non-fiction. Your descendant will be denouncing a 21st C physics book on HN as fiction in 500 years time. I guess you haven't read, for example, Proverbs (just a load of great proverbs) or Ecclesiastes (very dark view of life - nihilistic, sceptical, world-weary) - they're great stuff. (disclosure: total atheist)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> An assortment: "The Silent Language" by Edward T. Hall. Hall was an anthropologist attached to the University of New Mexico. He and his research partner, linguist Norman Trager, were doing research in comparative culture. Hall realized they would need a comprehensive theory of culture to describe what they were comparing and provide ways to compare them. Hall's model was "culture as communication", and the results were presented in the book above. His key point was that most of culture was like the iceberg - 90% of it is processed on an unconscious reflex level. We are no more aware of most of our culture than a fish is of the water it swims in. We only _become_ aware when we are set down in a culture that does things differently than ours. The Silent Language is about how we use space. The followup "The Hidden Dimension looks into how different cultures use _time_. _Many_ things fell into place when I read Hall.

"Games People Play" by Eric Berne. Berne was a psychiatrist and founder of the discipline of Transactional Analysis. Games People Play was a PopSci bestseller when first published, which was odd because it's a highly technical volume written for other psychiatrists. His thesis was that most human behavior could be viewed as games, and most of what we did were ways of structuring time. Follow up with his "What Do You Say After You've Said Hello?" and "Beyond Games and Scripts". Hall's work above did much to explain teh behavior of societies. Berne's work does much to explain the behavior of people _in_ societies.

"The Anatomy of Criticism" by Northrop Frye. Frye was a Professor of English at Toronto University. He had completed a study of William Blake called "Fearful Symmetry", and was attempting to do a study of Spencer's Faery Queen. But he found himself trying to make sense of various terms used in literature, and the result became a work of pure theory, unconnected with any specific works. He refers to poetry and poetics, but his canvas is broader. Part of his problem was that there was no general term in English for a work of prose fiction. It's a set of four essays, covering Historical Criticism, Ethical Criticism, Archetypal Criticism, and Rhetorical Criticism, but makes clear that while each form is valid in its own terms, none fully described literature, and a more synoptic view was required.

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn Kuhn's work challenged the accepted notions of scientific progress, and the notion of steady accumulation. His thesis was that the real progress came from notions that lay outside accepted theories, and provided new paradigms by which reality might be understood, and faced all the resistance transformative ideas face from entrenched doctrine until they are demonstrated to be correct.

"Management: Tasks, Practices, Responsibilities" by Peter F. Drucker. Drucker was our present generation's primary primary theorist and consultant on the practice of management, and just what management was and what mangers did. This work was probably his magnum opus, where he pulled together the ideas he'd formulated elsewhere into a coherent whole. It's a liberal education not only in management, but in the nature and structure of market based economies.

"The Making of Economic Society" by Robert F. Heilbroner. This is probably the best single volume overview I'm aware of on economics and economic history, beginning with just what an economy is, and the changing conception of economics through history, with the transition from Traditional through Command to Market economies and the issues involved with each. Many animated discussions I see online about economics make me say "Those words don't mean what you think they do. Please read Heilbroner, and come back when you have. Then we might at least be talking about the same things."

"The Problems of Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell. Russell is concerned with knowledge, and how we know what we know. He asks "Is there any knowledge in the world so certin that no reasonable man could doubt it?", and concludes that it's one of the most difficult questions that can be asked. When we understand the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we are launched on the study of philosophy, which is concerned with precisely such questions. If philosophy is of interest, this is a superb place to start.

"Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" by R. H. Tawney. Economies don't exist in vacuums. The are aspects of the societies in which they exist, and reflect the values of those societies. Religion has been a critical part of the value systems of societies for as long as there have been societies, and religious notions on what sort of behavior is acceptable affect the structure of economies by determining what sort of transactions are permissible. Tawney is specifically concerned with religious thought in England affecting social organization and economic issues in the period immediately preceding the Reformation and the two following centuries, but while his focus in England, his description of the way in which Christian religious doctrine changed gradually to make a capitalist economy possible in England, the underlying processes could be applied through Europe in general. Read this as a companion to Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", originally written in German and concerned with the Netherlands and Germany.

"Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy" by Joseph A. Schumpeter. Schumpeter was an Austrian economist, a contemporary of John Maynard Keynes, and (briefly) Austria's Finance Minister in the 1920's. Like Keynes, he considered himself influenced by Marx. But unlike many others, he believed Marx "asked all the right questions, and got all the wrong answers". Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy was Schumpeter's (often delightfully snarky) attempt to understand what Marx got wrong and why. It's a useful brainwash after you've spent any time reading MArx or other folks who consider themselves Marxists, and provides a needed sense of perspective.

There's more, but I have to stop somewhere...</comment>


Lisp Quickstart - <AUTHOR> https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/lisp/LispTutorial.html <comment><USER2> Past discussion with author's comment at top, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13948966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13948966)</comment>


Bill Gates and Steve Jobs wanted to sue Sun - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1595733/bill-gates-steve-jobs-tried-sue-sun

<comment><USER2> No new information in this article. Its just a rehashing of Jonathan Schwartz's blog entry: [http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good- artis...](http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy- great-artists-steal/)

<comment><USER3> This is one really good reason why google should have gone after sun. 8 billion for the patent portfolio of Sun is a bargain. It might not be IBM's patent chest but it's pretty darn big too and varied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe Microsoft approached Sun about licensing for OpenOffice as a preemptive strike about the .NET patent infringement, and got exactly what they wanted.

</comment><comment><USER5> ... says former Sun exec who no longer works there.

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like a group of bullies in a schools playground.

</comment><comment><USER6> "there's no defence like an obvious offense" -- Sweet!

</comment><comment><USER7> Makes them sound like a bunch of squabbling children.

<comment><USER8> With billion dollar toys that they will take and go home with if you don't play the way they want.

<comment><USER9> This makes patents sound like what they are. Legalese ammunition.

 _Sun had a treasure trove of some of the Internet's most valuable patents - ranging from search to microelectronics - so no one in the technology industry could come after us without fearing an expensive counter assault. And there's no defence like an obvious offence_

Read the original blog post posted elsewhere in these comments. The Inquirer doesn't deserve more hits for this.

<comment><USER10> Patents are just ICBMs in the cold war between large corporations. Each corporation stockpiles enough of them that any legal threat will end in mutually assured destruction of all parties involved.

The Inquirer is a terrible rag, as well. They not only copy Schwartz's blog post, they interpret it in cringeworthy ways. Sorry, Steve Jobs had not been "using concurrence so long he forgot what it was called." Concurrence just had graphical effects similar to Keynote, and Schwartz was reminding Jobs that Apple's products had infringed on Sun's patents as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Now that Oracle has these patents, what might we expect to see happen?</comment>