Ask HN: Good books? - <AUTHOR> I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged, which I thought was a fantastic book.  I'm reading Another Roadside Attraction now on the recommendation of a friend, but I think I want to read some non-fiction next, or at least eye-opening fiction.  I'm thinking about some Bertrand Russel, Richard Feynman, or books on philosophy, human behavior, or economics.
What are some good books that you've read that are ground breaking, thought provoking, or changed the way you think/look at things?
ps: you can check out my shelf at shelfari.com/herms <comment><USER4> If you liked "Atlas Shrugged", you will love "East of Eden" by George Steinbeck. It has some passages on self-determination that puts anything found in Rand to shame. It's a tome, and it starts slow - do yourself a favor and make it through the introduction of one of the villains, Kathy (chapter 8 or so). It doesn't slow down after that.

"The Watchmen" by Alan Moore. It may be a graphic novel, but the issues it raises on ethics and morality are chilling. I still think about the ending every now and then, and I haven't read it in over a year.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. In addition to the primary themes on class, race, and the killing of innocents, it has an interesting thread on living with your own moral code.

"Catch 22" by Joseph Heller. Ostensibly a satire of the military, this is a good self-reflection on the American soul (circa 1961).

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!". The life of a Nobel winning physicist and renowned professor doesn't have to be boring.

"Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer. The premise is too complicated to describe here, but it really delves into the cruelty and self- protectionism of the human heart. Plus, its hysterical!

"Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Describes the horror of war and the effect it has on the rest of your life.

"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" by Gabriel Garcia Marques. Tells the story of a murder that everyone in town knew would happen, but nobody tried to stop.

<comment><USER5> Surely You're Joking is amazing. It's one of those books I can't get enough of, and I reread it several times. I wish I had such an interesting life.

<comment><USER6> "Classic Feynman" is a compilation of Surely You're Joking and "What do you care what other people think?" plus some extra material. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything_. It's a history of human reasoning, tracking the emergence of science into what we know today. Fills in a lot of meaningful gaps you may have forgotten from your various science courses, while providing the human side of major advances (rivalries, disappointments, hoaxes, all of it).

Science from a new perspective is excellent, but it's also such an interesting window on the many people who have struggled against really difficult problems to move humanity forward.

Also, make sure you go play Bioshock (the first one) for a sobering counterpoint on Randian thought. Atlas Shrugged is awesome, until you remember that you can't trust any group of people to maintain their rational behavior in the face of personal gains. Great story, and it'll drag you back from Randroid town (it did me, anyway). Either way, the kid in me would still love to have dinner in Galt's Gulch.

If you'd like to read eye-opening fiction, I heartily recommend _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ , by Robert Heinlein. It's an incredible exploration of what it is to be free and how modern societies evolve at the expense of their citizens' personal liberties. One of the most thought-provoking pieces of fiction I've ever read, and lots of fun character-wise as well. (Incidentally, Heinlein was a fan of Ayn Rand, so if you liked Atlas Shrugged, you may find this even more interesting.)

<comment><USER8> Another lovely counterpoint to Ayn Rand is "Sewer Gas and Electric" by Matt Ruff. It is absurdist science fiction that is hilarious and full of fascinating characters.

I really enjoy Atlas Shrugged as well, I've read the whole book twice, actually. But I don't believe it is a good code to live by. My favorite quite about her books comes from The Daily Show. On the back of America The Book there is a fake blurb from Rand: "just like one of my books, reading this book will make you an asshole for two weeks."

Her books are seductive because they intentionally oversimplify life. Her characters are not realistic and are completely binary. Everyone is either a superhero or a weasel. This makes for entertaining reading, but not much else.

Read "Crossing to Safety" by Wallace Stegner. It is a brautiful book about an intense relationship forged between two couples. It's my favorite thing I've read recently.

<comment><USER9> I loved that Rand "quote" too, when I saw it.

Reading Atlas Shrugged made me an asshole for at least 2 weeks - I remember some stormy arguments with my flatmates over drinks.

As polemic it's amazing; as a moral code it's callous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who is very libertarian-inclined but hated Atlas Shrugged? Instead of creating characters that are human (with flaws, weaknesses, subject to emotional reactions) but that manage to "win" by sticking to some ideal, she creates characters that are the personification of that ideal, completely out of touch of reality.

I mean, not even Greek gods were perfect if you know basic mythology. Yet, you want me to believe that Hank Rearden will just give up "his true love" just because he sees value in Galt? And what happens with Rearden's _self- interest_? (as in, I want the girl, dammit!)

Acting out of self-interest in only valid when dealing with money? Stupid!

Besides, talking about the "Philosophy of Ayn Rand" is no different than talking about the "Theology of L. Ron Hubbard."

<comment><USER11> Rand claims that the characters were intentionally portrayed that way:

"My characters are persons in whom certain human attributes are focused more sharply and consistently than in average human beings"

I agree with you on the Rearden vs Galt issue though...that doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER12> I believe it does, in the context of the story.

1) Hank Reardon wouldn't tolerate a life of (self) deception; knowing Dagny wanted Galt, and accepting that truth, was the only internally consistent course available.

2) Hank Reardon loved and respected Galt. If he had to give up Dagny to be able to continue to be a part of Galt/D'Ancona/Dagny's life, then his rational response was to do that.

3) Hank Reardon embodied the self-confidence that allowed him to see Dagny's preference for Galt was not a rejection of Hank, nor did that diminish Hank Reardon (e.g. your value isn't shaped by others).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" by Sam Harris is a new release which falls into the category of philosophy, remarks on human behavior, and is bound to reference Bertrand Russell.

Harris, who has trained both as a philosopher and a neuroscientist, argues against the popular notion that science can have little or nothing to say about morality. Necessarily, he confronts related ideas like moral questions having no objectively right answer and science and religion being "nonoverlapping magisteria". Basically, he says that all moral questions must relate to maximizing the wellbeing of conscious creatures, and that what increases or decreases a creature's wellbeing can be studied scientifically at the level of the brain.

I just started reading it. Even if I'm not yet sure that I'm going to be completely convinced of the claim that "science can determine human values," I'm finding Harris to be a very clear thinker, as well as an amusing writer.

If you want a taste of his ideas and style, you can watch his TED talk, "Science can answer moral questions."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww>

[http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine- Valu...](http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine- Values/dp/1439171211/) (It isn't available from Amazon until October 5; I bought my copy in a bookstore.)

<comment><USER14> I am a extreme advocate for science and a complete atheist, but completely disagree that any of the points he brings up in his TED talk actually support his thesis. I think he is confounding being able to discover logical fallacies in existent (moral) arguments with the possibility for innate derivation or at least making a very large leap of faith. I remain unmoved from the notion pure science is strictly observational and every single decision for prescriptive action is, at its core, a value judgement.

The core question for most prescriptive action is often simply determining the limits of the self, that is, how do we delimit the boundary between the self vs. the other, and what are the bounds that we choose to extend empathy to?

Is the near-self or that which empathy extends to everything that biologists have classified as homo sapien? Is it confined to ourselves and a handful of close friends? Is the boundary defined at humans sharing similar values, goals, and culture? Is it extended to all animals with a central nervous system? How can we determine what this value ought to be scientifically?

"The seperation between science and human values is an illusion, and actually quite a dangerous one at this point"

This seems to ignore historically that, more often than not, science is used as ex post facto justification. Darwinism and natural selection is a true scientific observation with mountains of supporting evidence. It was also later adopted as a central logical doctrine for the most abhorrent policies of Nazism. A logical argument for eugenics could be made, but remains abhorrent because in Nazism, the near-self vs other distinction drops off in a freefall across subsets of humanity. This contrasts strongly with today's average definition of near-self considered to be the set of all that is homo-sapien.

The set, degree, and unit by which we extend empathy in the self vs. other distinction IS the core of human values and he does not offer a derivation.

I suppose I should reserve final judgement until I investigate his book you mentioned more thoroughly.

<comment><AUTHOR> From watching the video of him at TED, I don't think he got to expound on his ideas to the extent that they'd be done justice. The God Delusion does a fantastic job of showing how morality can be entirely derived from science, logic, and reason. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're looking for something different then check out The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It's is an eye-opening book in a very nontraditional sense.

You may remember Pausch as the computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who was told that he had but a few months left to live (cancer). This book doesn't stray from its topic: "What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?" If you're looking for motivation and an "out of the box" approach to analyzing daily life then this is it.

Here's the book: [http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy- Pausch/dp/140132325...](http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy- Pausch/dp/1401323251)

Here's the famous speech: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo>

<comment><USER16> I didn't know he wrote a book about it, thanks. I've watched the speech a few times and it is excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since you mentioned 'eye-opening fiction' I give you my wholehearted recommendation for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

Don't be misled by the 'fanfic' tag, it's a mere shell for a very deep piece of work, endorsed by Eric S. Raymond and David Brin. Many have accused the author for slipping in a lot of his own voice, calling it his own 'Atlas Shrugged', but seeing as you liked that, I think you'll find this a pleasure, too.

</comment><comment><USER18> Has no one recommended Musashi? Really? Here's a writeup I did in another comment -

\--

If you're talented and get frustrated with stupid people, you have to read "Musashi" by Eiji Yoshikawa. I mean, you _have_ to.

Musashi was one of the greatest (maybe the greatest) swordsman of all time. He invented a Japanese longblade/shortblade mixed style of swordsmanship, at one point fighting himself out of an ambush when he was attacked by over 30 men. He was undefeated in over 60 duels, including defeating arguably the second best swordsman in Japan at the time while fighting with a wooden oar he carved into a rough swordlike shape.

Here's Musashi's Wikipedia page:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi>

The book by Eiji Yoshikawa is historical fiction - it's period accurate and follows all of Musashi's most well known story. It fills in some other details we don't know of Musashi's life - how he might have trained, some minor scuffles with bandits of the day, and it added a love story.

The book is exceptional. Musashi has immense amounts of raw talent, but is in conflict with himself in the world, arrogant, keeps getting into problems and trouble until he comes to more mastery and wisdom. Seriously, I read a lot, and this is hands-down my favorite book of all time. It's a hell of an enjoyable read, really pleasant and beautiful, fun and adventurous, but also filled with deep wisdom. It's a great swashbuckling story, but also teaches you about thinking critically, tactics, strategy, training, tradeoffs, and so on. Just a masterpiece. Easily the most influential book of my life.

No affiliate link:

<http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Eiji-Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572>

<comment><USER19> Second that, great historical fiction. Yoshikawa's other book, Taiko, is equally good.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I quite like Taiko as well. It's more dry and expansive - it covers a few leaders throughout an era, as opposed to Musashi that has one main character and 2-3 important supporting characters.

Did you know any Japanese history before reading Taiko? I did, and enjoyed it a lot. I wonder if it'd be too much for someone with no historical background before reading it though? It covers _a lot_ of ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most books by Hermann Hesse, really... Narziss&Goldmund changed my perspective on life. If you have anything artistic in you, it's a must-read. Steppenwolf, Siddharta and the Glass Bead Game are other must-reads.

Gabriel Garcia Marques, One hundred years of solitude.

Practically all of Jorge Luis Borges' short stories. Mind-bending.

Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Michael Ende's Never Ending Story.

Enjoy!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hesse has come highly recommended. I added several of his books to my list of must-reads. I did a little research on Borges and think I'll have to read some of those stories. I think Unbearable Lightness of Being was recently adapted into a movie, as I didn't know it was a book. Will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Trying to confine myself to books I haven't seen others mention:

"Guns, Votes, and Democracy" is a wonderful book about democracy in the third world and is both insightful and surprisingly readable.

"The Retreat to Commitment" is the only philosophy book I'd actually recommend.

"The Design of Everyday Things" is a book for anyone who makes or uses things.

"The Transparent Society" is a thought provoking book on the future of privacy.

"The Mystery of Capital" is a book on the importance of non-corrupt government in successful capitalism, a good point of view to have in addition to Rand.

"The Strategy of Conflict" on how to use game theory in the real world, and negotiations especially.

</comment><comment><USER22> See here: [http://jseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me- that-...](http://jseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is/) for a list of influential books on me. I actually have a half-written post on books I wish I'd read when I was younger; here it is:

1\. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

2\. The Guide to Getting It On by Paul Johannides [sp?]

3\. The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffrey Miller

4\. Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham

5\. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

6\. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

In all cases, I think these books profoundly shaped how not only I think, but I think others can learn to think too. All suddenly revealed new connections and ideas about the world I'd never experienced or expected to experience before.

Granted, no book can be removed from its context, and its possible that if I'd read some of the books above as a younger person I wouldn't have been ready to appreciate them. But Flow seems by far the most valuable of the choices listed above because it engulfs more of the content of the others than any other choice.

Steven Berlin Johnson's new book Where Ideas Come From looks promising: [http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come- Innovation/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come- Innovation/dp/1594487715?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957) .

<comment><USER23> I'll have to second #3, the Mating Mind. It put a lot of stuff about dating into context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hermann Hesse's novel "The Glass Bead Game".

Ostensibly it's about this sophisticated game played in a monastery that abstracts over the sum of human knowledge. To me it presented a very potent argument for the value of academia in a commercially-driven world.

If nothing else, it nicely counterbalances the monomaniacal ambition and stress of tech startup land in a way that us geeks can appreciate.

<comment><USER25> The Glass Bead Game is mostly about useless academics that play a useless game and are remote from reality.

The main character tries to find true meaning, then dies a sudden death, unfit for life when confronted with it.

<comment><USER24> And Ulysses is about a man taking a walk...

It's that perception of 'useless' that The Glass Bead Game addresses for me, at a personal level. YMMV.

<comment><USER25> The glass bead game is never really described in the book. It does not serve any real purpose. It is just an academic exercise with no grounding in reality. The players are academics who don't have to earn anything. The state pays for them. Even among other academics it is not clear if the glass bead game is useful. The main character feels this emptiness and tries to escape from that. The end is typical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am a total whore for historical fiction:

'Shogun' by James Clavell was the first book I read that had me glued to it for hours and hours at a time. Tai Pan is also a classic.

I also found the original three Courtney books by Wilbur Smith (starting with 'The Sound of Thunder') were a guilty pleasure. They are pure trash, with thin characters and a predictable plot but epic adventure nonetheless.

More recently I've topped off the 'Emperor' series (chronicling Julius Ceasars life) and have started the 'Conqueror' series (same thing, but its about Genghis Khan). Both by Conn Iggulden.

Not quite at the same literary level as some of the other suggestions here but I was wondering if I was the only one.

<comment><USER27> If you liked Shogun you should read his book King Rat. One of my top 10!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If I were to name one, it would be "The Black Swan", by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

You hear all the time about how unlikely it is for someone to succeed as a startup. Or how the Democrats have a 65% chance of winning. Or even how statistically speaking, it's safer to fly than to drive.

After going through that book, my perception on randomness was changed forever.

<comment><USER29> Have you read the Taleb's previous book, "Fooled by Randomness"? I was completely blown away by it. I didn't find "Black Swan" to be anywhere near as interesting, but that could just be because I read it second.

<comment><USER28> Yup, I did read his Fooled by Randomness before I read this one. That one blew me away too. The Black Swan succeeded in in being even more impressive though, and I think it covered quite a bit of new ground.

The Black Swan is longer, and has a bit more technical coverage. I liked that, but I've heard from others that it gets in the way of the main point about how to deal with randomness.

Regardless, both books are insanely good. Worth the time and money for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Want to blow your mind?

Fiction Keep an open mind, and a sense of wonder when you read these for max effect!

Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. I was hooked at "The big yellow ships hung in the air just the way bricks don't."

Dune - what does scarcity do to a society?

Isaac Asimov - Robot series. Foundation series. All of his short stories, esp. The Last Question, Nightfall.

A.C. Clarke - 2001 - series, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise

The Little Prince, The Count of Monte Cristo, Catch-22, Siddhartha, Ender's Game, Sundiver, Wodehouse.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Fooled By Randomness" by Taleb is one of my favourite books of all time! I found it really eye-opening.

I'm currently reading "Outliers" by Gladwell, and it's a great read! I'll probably try and pick up a copy of his "Tipping point" next.

Another good psychology/behaviour/economics book is "Freakonomics", and it's sequel "SuperFreakonomics". Both interesting reads. If you haven't read "Fooled by randomness" yet though I'd definitely recommend that first!

<comment><USER31> I am also reading Fooled by Randomness right now, enjoying it a lot. Black Swan was good. I didn't like outliers very much. Tipping Point and Blink were more interesting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Non-fiction: "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini

Fiction: "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell

I'm going to assume that you've read Crytonomicon and Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson, but if not... they are #1 on any list.

<comment><USER33> Snowcrash is fun but doesn't have anyhere near the depth of his later books. Cryptonomicon is fantastic, you shouldn't let the first one of the System of the World put you off, and I love Anathem. Unfortunately Neal Stephenson is terrible at ending books; but the journey is def. worth it.

<comment><USER34> I gave up on System of the World after it turned out not to be a trilogy after all. Anything else by Stephenson I obsess over, though. Anathem was basically a religious experience for me and I read it straight through twice - <USER2> I only do about once a decade.

I might be ready for a fourth reading now.

<comment><USER35> Anathem was absolutely fantastic. It's the only book I have re-read in the past 15 years.

<comment><USER32> This is an exciting thread for me because you folks are the first people I've talked to that didn't hate it, and I've been somewhat afraid to take it off my shelf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have recently gotten into long-form magazine articles, and I encourage you to check out Kevin Kelly's list:

<http://www.kk.org/cooltools/the-best-magazi.php>

Plus <http://longform.org/> and <http://givemesomethingtoread.com/> are both excellent.

Neal Stephenson's "Mother Earth, Mother Board: Wiring the Planet" in particular was formative for me as a teenager.

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html>

</comment><comment><USER36> Alan Kay's reading list: <http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp>. I think you can find what you are looking for. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt is one of those perfect little books that can greatly expand your world view in one night. I highly recommend it. ([http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest- Understa...](http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest- Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286148767&sr=1-1))

Also, I second Walden by Thoreau and suggest you read the Fountainhead. The Fountainhead isn't quite as blunt as Atlas Shrugged, but I find it a lot more life affirming and positive.

</comment><comment><USER38> Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Amazing book on the meaning of life from the founder of logotherapy (therapy based on helping clients to find meaning in their life) who is also a holocaust survivor.

The first 2/3 of the book is an autobiography about his experiences in the concentration camps and the psychological mindset of the prisoners. The last 1/3 takes his experiences and outlines the basis for which logotherapy lies. Reading it was a profound experience. It's the kind of book that you will think back to a few times a month for the _rest of your life_.

<comment><USER39> The last line here is not hyperbole. It changes you, plain and simple, to read this mans experiences and their translation into a form of therapy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Economics:

The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Ebb and Flow of History. David Hackett Fisher.

This book is incredibly, incredibly prescient. Written in 1997, almost predicts the current financial situation. If you want to have an idea where, based on 1000 years of history, our economy and the state of the world is going, then you should read it. It didn't change my perspective (I called the crash of 2008-2009 a few months before it happened) but it really gave me a firmer understanding behind why I was correct to have felt like that was going to happen. It's also a page-turner. Fisher is an incredibly good writer and wrote a fascinating picture of revolutionary america in "Paul Revere's Ride".

[http://www.amazon.com/Great-Wave-Revolutions-Rhythm- History/...](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Wave-Revolutions-Rhythm- History/dp/019512121X)

Malcolm Gladwell's books are good, too, but my position on them is that the insight is all stuff you should have figured out - sometimes you just need gentle reminding. I noticed outliers and tipping point on your shelf, those will go very very far in helping you come up with entrepreneurial strategies. Outliers got me off my butt and got me programming android (I hadn't touched computer programming in 4+ years)... I would suggest popping the gladwells to the front of your queue.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you like Feynman, definitely read James Gleick's biography of him, Genius.

I actually didn't like Gleick's other books very much, but Genius is beautiful. I went from thinking I'd major in English to majoring in Physics after reading it back in high school.

And for general sheer amazingness, I always tell people to read Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. It's like reading Shakespeare; the first 50 pages will take a while, but then you'll get used to the style and realize it's the coolest thing you've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER42> One of my all time favorites is Zen and the art of motorcyle maintenance.

<comment><USER43> Agreed. This book changed my life like very few others have. It completely defies categorization and whatever you're expecting it to be, it isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> People nicely covered it here. A few other additions:

(a) Why is Sex Fun ([http://www.amazon.com/Why-Sex-Fun-Evolution- Sexuality/dp/046...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-Sex-Fun-Evolution- Sexuality/dp/0465031269)): covers the history of human sexuality

(b) The Prophet: <http://www.katsandogz.com/gibran.html>

(c) Demon Haunted World by Sagan [http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World- Science-Candle-Dar...](http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science- Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469) is a nice place to explain the method of science

(d) Sleepwalkers ([http://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-History-Changing- Universe...](http://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-History-Changing-Universe- Compass/dp/0140192468)) gives you an idea of how we humans,err,sidetrack and ultimately come to explaining the universe

That should be enough for this summer

</comment><comment><USER45> If you are interested in finding great new books, you could sign up with the service I created: <http://anynewbooks.com>. It's not exactly a recommendation service, but it's useful to spot interesting new titles that come out regularly.</shameless-plug>

</comment><comment><USER46> A while back I read _The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work_ by Alain de Botton, and enjoyed it immensly. de Botton has a real philosophical bent, and profiled a number of different occupations, and makes a lot of really insightful observations about the modern workforce. Can't recommend it highly enough.

</comment><comment><USER16> Check out: <http://fivebooks.com/>

"Every day an eminent writer, thinker, commentator, politician, academic chooses five books on their specialist subject. From Einstein to Keynes, Iraq to the Andes, Communism to Empire. Share in the knowledge and buy the books."

</comment><comment><USER47> I apologise that I'm not going to mention any specific books that I really recommend, but this seems like a good place to mention how great audio books can be. I love reading, but dont have anywhere near the time I used to these days to do it. I discovered audio books about 2 years ago whilst driving my young children to school. Its a 1-hour round trip, so for 30 minutes I'm in the car on my own. I've really enjoyed listening to business biographies (Richard Branson) through to books that I have been a bit sceptical about but have still picked up some good tips (4-hour work week). If you have a commute or a time when you're regularly able to listen to an audio book I thoroughly recommend them. It's very difficult to read whilst driving (!) so the audio book works well for me

<comment><AUTHOR> I always was against them until I decided to grab a few on a whim to take on a solo drive to Orlando (16 hrs each way). I was surprised how easy to follow it was and really enjoyed it. I generally have thisweekin.com shows on while I work, so I tried to listen to one while working -- major fail, I couldn't concentrate. I drive an hour to work every day though, so I'll have to give it a shot then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Karl Popper's 'The Open Society and Its Enemies'.

From the outside Popper's book looks as just a simple attack on Plato, Hegel and Marx, however at it's core is one of the greatest defenses of democracy, liberalism, and rational thought ever written. As you read it, you'll find even though the failed political and economic philosophies of Hegel, Marx, and Plato have very few followers in modern politics today. The methodologies they used, to "discover" their philosophies, still remain and are utterly rampant across the whole political spectrum.

I hope you enjoy Popper as I did when I first read him. The book was like an inflection point for me, before it I was someone else, after it I was changed forever. Only great books can do something like that and this is one of them.

</comment><comment><USER49> <http://sivers.org/book>

Always find something useful for me there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Gravity's Rainbow (Pynchon)

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Rilke)

The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (Hobsbawm)

Bhagavad Gita

Upanishads

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders (Whyte)

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein)

edit: added 2 more & author names

<comment><USER50> I love the Bhagavad Gita. I just wish Hindus actually followed what it said...

That being said my additions to the mix are:

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Dhammapada

Tipitaka (<http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/index.html>)

Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault

Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff

<comment><USER14> I've listened to a couple recorded lectures by Lakoff before and enjoyed them, I'll have to add Philosophy in the Flesh to my reading list, thanks.

<comment><USER50> I took a Metaphors class with him. One of my more influential professors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you're looking for a list of books with an entrepreneur focus, there's a good list over on Quora: <http://www.quora.com/What-books-should- entrepreneurs-read>

</comment><comment><USER52> I recently read Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", which is amazing and dense and hilarious. Highly recommended, but it's not an easy read, so be forewarned. It's short enough that you can easily power through it on a plane ride or whenever you have downtime.

A little while back, i started reading DFW's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," a collection of shortish essays. DFW's writing is a bit like Douglas Adams where you really start to think and write like he does if you're not careful.

Both Pynchon and Wallace though, have a ridiculous command of the english language, so it makes for really engaging but sometimes challenging reading.

Have fun!

</comment><comment><USER53> Someone mentions Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" below - which is very good. However, can I strongly recommend his book "Collapse" - which is rather thought provoking.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed)

On a related note, a novel that looks at some interesting very long lived organizations and has some interesting philosophical components I'd recommend Neal Stephenson's Anathem:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem>

<comment><USER54> I loved G,G&S, but found Collapse disappointing in comparison. There was a lot of unnecessary personal gushing about his home state which had no contribution to the work and undermined the credibility of the argument. It picks up after that though. It's a much more political and argumentative book than G,G&S, and seems to force a view on the reader (a view I happen to agree with, but still felt uncomfortable with the amount of persuasion in there).

<comment><USER53> YMMV - I rather liked the very personal descriptions of Montana. By comparison I found G,G&S rather dry.

<comment><USER54> I suppose that makes it a matter of taste. I like my science books to be impersonal, and my political books to be personal. I tend to dislike it when one crosses into the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> "God's Debris" by Scott Adams. Yes the Dilbert guy. It's available for free download <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gods_Debris>.

<comment><USER43> Fixed wiki with a simple redirect.

You're welcome :)

<comment><USER55> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Reading first and second Dune trilogy would give you a lot of what you are asking for.

Also I would recommend reading Alamut from Vladimir Bartol.

For more serious works - I would offer Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy.

</comment><comment><USER57> "Will to Power" by Friedrich Nietzsche, who you'll probably love if you like Rand.

"A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari. A psychedelic philosophy of complexity. Not exactly an airtight philosophical system, but it will blow your mind several times per page.

"Being & Time" by Martin Heidegger. An intense, logical investigation of individual existence. A deeply nuanced philosophical take on death, being, and temporality. This is the book to grapple with your inevitable annihilation.

<comment><USER58> _"Will to Power" by Friedrich Nietzsche, who you'll probably love if you like Rand._

Read The Gay Science first. Will to Power is a posthumous publication of, essentially, Nietzsche's notes. It's not clear he ever meant to publish it and it doesn't really present a cogent statement of his beliefs.

I do think you'll like Nietzsche if you like Rand though. They're probably equally mercurial and narcissistic. At least Nietzsche's a little more rigorous (which isn't saying much, Rand is like Fisher Price philosophy).

 _"Being & Time" by Martin Heidegger. An intense, logical investigation of individual existence. A deeply nuanced philosophical take on death, being, and temporality. This is the book to grapple with your inevitable annihilation._

Arguable. It depends on whether or not you're reading it as a serious philosophical work or to see Heidegger's perspective. Phenomenology doesn't have a whole lot of respect amongst most modern philosophers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The Great Books of the Western World:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Worl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World)

</comment><comment><USER60> _Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious_ by Gerd Gigerenzer. Ignore the breezy Gladwellesque title, it's much better than that and touches on philosophy, human behavior and economics. He presents an alternative view of the same sorts of phenomena that Kahneman & Tversky's work in behavioral economics, about which I might say more but my nephew is tugging at my sleeve.

</comment><comment><USER61> Here is a list of books that I made a while ago by looking at the top recommended books from various places.

<http://niyazpk.tadalist.com/lists/1629487/public>

The list contains fiction as well as non-fiction. My pick: Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts - One of the best books I read last year (fiction).

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice list! Several of those were on my "to read" list or I've already read.

You should consider signing up at shelfari. It's a cool site for tracking the books you've read, own, want to read, etc. You can also maintain a nice list and share with others. From a developers standpoint, it's pretty cool too, with a nice UI, some cool features, and a decent revenue model (Amazon affiliate).

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Read George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Whether or not you are into fantasy, it's a must read series, not to mention it's been picked up as an HBO series too. Everybody I've recommended it to has loved it, regardless of their opinions about Fantasy (going on 20+ people now). Just read it!

</comment><comment><USER63> These books, although some now I might not endorse some of their teaching but they have help me to see the world in a different light:

The Mystery Method - Erik Von Markovik[Social Engineering at its best]

Rich Dad Poor Dad: Guide to Investing - Robert Kiyoski

The Thoughtworks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation (Pragmatic Programmers)

Bible - First class book in teaching how to behave towards others, especially proverbs.

Tao Te Ching - For this two verse you should read it: "When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other"

Cyropaedia - "Along with the The prince this book was required reading by all former statesmen."

</comment><comment><USER64> For fiction, I recommend Lolita, The Count of Monte Cristo and Voltaie. That is a nice entertaining mix.

</comment><comment><USER65> Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers, by Will Durant. Written in the 30s, it covers some philosophers who would not be considered influential today, and doesn't do justice to the 20th century. But it's a relatively easy read, and clarified some guys I either didn't read or didn't appreciate in my freshman great books seminar.

Walden and Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau. Ah, the wisdom. Likewise The Essential Gandhi, by Mahatma Gandhi. Haven't read all of it or even as much as I should, but his autobiography of his early years and experiments with truth are the story of a great soul.

The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Various attempts to reconcile the mind-body dichotomy and build a science of cognition.

Human behavior

The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal, by Desmond Morris. If you ask people why they act the way they do, they will probably talk about rational, moral, idealistic justifications... but if you were a primatologist, what would you say about why humans act the way they do? Morris, a zoologist familiar with great apes, describes how human behavior may owe much to ape biology and society as well as to big brains and rational and spiritual pretensions.

Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective by Peter L. Berger. Humans don't really have the capacity to create new behaviors on the fly when faced with new situations, or to respond in real time to new behaviors in others. Instead people internalize roles and scripts that they act out in daily life with small variations, interpret others' actions in light of performances they have seen before, and collectively build shared narratives in a 'social construction of reality'.

How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Thomas Gilovich. A grand tour of the fallibility of homo economicus, and reality torturing heuristic shortcuts that lead us astray.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini. How markets, salesmen, lawyers, small children and other devious hucksters take advantage of our decisionmaking shortcuts for fun and profit.

Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben- Shahar. Came upon these after reading about his lectures, the most popular at Harvard. A lot of very sound advice to have a more positive outlook. I wish this influenced me more LOL. But applying it is no mean feat. Dan Gilbert also has Stumbling on Happiness, but haven't read that, and Gretchen Rubin, niece of Robert, has a bestseller - happiness is turning into a self-help fad and industry, but it seems empirically based and common sensical.

Economics

The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek. A powerful case against government overreaching and socialism. Focuses on the long run dynamism, information efficiency and evolutionary adaptability of markets which is lost when governments attempt to tame their shorter term inequities. Capitalism and Freedom is also strong, but Friedman, while brilliant, was somewhat more ideological, simplistic and one-sided.

Fortunes Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street, by William Poundstone. Ties together the common quests of pioneers of information theory, investors, and degenerate gamblers and mobsters.

Fiction

The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham. A case study of ways in which different types of motivation can dominate different people in constructive and destructive ways.

The Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott. In each chapter, a different character relates a Rashomon-like point of view of a shocking crime, and through them a mystery is explained, and a complex portrait of India's many faces is revealed.

I have a soft spot for satirical Brit-novels, like Vanity Fair, The Way We Live Now, and Wodehouse.

Biography

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein. An insightful biography of the greatest living investor, or maybe of all time.

Gates, by Manes and Andrews, is also very good.

Science

Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, by Gary Zukav, and The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra, on the unbearable elusiveness of reality. If a particle is just a probability density function of potential interactions with other particles, does the substance of reality reside in the particle, or in the interaction?

Grammatical Man : Information, Entropy, Language and Life, by Jeremy Campbell. Is the substance of reality matter or information, or are they the same? If biology is applied chemistry, which is applied physics, which is applied mathematics, maybe mathematics is the study of formal systems, which is a subset of things that can be computed and decided, ie computer science, which is a subset of things can be expressed and communicated, ie information theory.

The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics by Roger Penrose, a massive grand tour of scientific knowledge and big questions of the late 20th century. When you get done with that, go for the sequel, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe... I haven't yet, but good luck!

<comment><USER64> The Naked Ape is a fantastic read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> 1) If you like Atlas Shrugged, then maybe you will like "For a new liberty" by Murray Rothbard (the founder of anarcho-capitalism movement): <http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp>

That's a deduction of libertarian principles from non-aggression axiom and application of that principles to current problems.

2) If you are interested in philosophy, then read "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russel. Unfortunately It's written from the socialists point of view, but if you ignore Russels' left views, it's an excellent introduction to the history of philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER40> "The meaning of it all: thoughts of a citizen-scientist". Probably worth reading more than any academically lionized philosopher.

"From Heaven Lake" is a really good non-fiction book that reads like a fiction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Feynman was a fascinating and brilliant man. I've been reading a lot about him online, watching some videos on youtube, and reading through his quotes. I definitely need to pick up some of his books. I'll check out From Heaven Lake too. Thanks!

<comment><USER40> This is a really great video to watch. It's worth watching once or twice a year to remind onself to be humble. And it's particularly apt this week!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Non-fiction

\- 'The Selfish Gene' - Richard Dawkins

Grokking the concept changed the way I thought about life forever.

\- 'Quantum Reality' - Nick Herbert

One of the best introductory level books on quantum physics mysteries. No nonsense.

\- Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

The book that introduced me to Kant, Hume and philosophy of science. Just for that, I'm forever indebted to it.

Some favorite fiction books -

\- Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson Loved 'Snowcrash' too.

\- 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' - Robert Heinlein

\- Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera, Somerset Maugham

</comment><comment><USER68> I had heard much about this book earlier :Guns, Germs and Steel ,

But only recently did I watch a documentary (hmm, probably on hulu.com) which was completely based on that book.

VERY GOOD.

</comment><comment><USER69> One I consistently recommend is "Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear" by Dan Gardner, it's a fantastic insight into how we approach risk both individually and as a society.

It can be pretty revelatory.

[http://www.amazon.com/RISK-SCIENCE-POLITICS-DAN- GARDNER/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/RISK-SCIENCE-POLITICS-DAN- GARDNER/dp/0753515539/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286102938&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment> alan-crowe The Age of Wonder: How the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science. by Richard Holmes.

Biographies of top hackers from 1769 to 1840.

</comment><comment><USER70> On the philosophical side, I sugget "Existentialism Is a Humanism" by Sartre: it explains in a clear and simple way the idea of Existentialism, which is a great philosophy based on strong principles, and a key idea in the modern philosophical debate. It somehow changed my life, and made me think a lot more about life principles that can actually guide one's life.

<comment><USER71> Couple that with Camus' The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus and you've got enough satisfying "thinking material" for a nice long while.

One more suggestion for fiction: Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. This will _FOREVER_ change your perspective on hardship while giving one a fantastic appreciation for living. I'm always giving copies of this rare gem as a gift and I have heard nothing but rave reviews from those who have been touched by its power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I'd suggest "Gone with the Wind", an ultimate classic. It is tagged as epic romance but I personally feel that it is more than just romance. It has changed a few perspectives of mine and I couldn't get off the story for nearly 3 months. I really enjoyed the book.

If you've enjoyed "Atlas Shrugged, which I'm planning to read, try reading "The Fountain Head" by the same author.

</comment><comment><USER73> Somebody mentioned The Sirens of Titan (Vonnegut) in the comments below. I've gotta second that recommendation. It's Vonnegut's first novel, and probably not his best, but it's certainly my favorite.

If you resonate at all with Vonnegut's humor and pathos, then please oh please grab a copy of Sirens. I'm tired of being the only one at the dinner table who's read it!

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm not sure if this is non-fiction enough for you but, Tony Robbins, "Awaken the Giant Within" is one of my favorites. It is a good self help type book. It comes in Kindle too. [http://www.amazon.com/Awaken-Giant-Within-Immediate- Emotiona...](http://www.amazon.com/Awaken-Giant-Within-Immediate- Emotional/dp/0671791540)

</comment><comment><USER75> I have recently finished reading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." I highly recommend it. At over 1200 pages it is not a quick read, however all of it was worth it.

I recommend setting it beside your computer, and every evening reading a few pages and then looking up on wikipedia all the names and other terms.

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm currently reading Full Tilt - a thrilling personal account of an amazing Irish woman's bicycle journey from Europe to India in 1963. Highly recommended.

<http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/163921.Full_Tilt>

</comment><comment><USER77> Richard Feynman (you mentioned him) - Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman

Thorstein Veblen (econ; one of the most cynical econ books I've ever read--in a good way) - The Theory of the Leisure Class

Norbert Weiner (philosophy, robots) - The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://shelfari.com/herms>

</comment><comment><USER78> I can't believe that in a thread about good books with 135 comments nobody has mentioned The Brothers Karamazov.

Especially since the bherms mentioned Atlas Shrugged, I think BK would be a great book to explore humanity illuminated in a much different way.

</comment><comment><USER79> Peter F. Hamilton trilogies are astounding eye openers.

Safehold Series by David Weber is worth the time

</comment><comment><USER80> The Moral Animal - by Robert Wright

It delves into evolutionary psychology to explain human morality. I especially liked the discussion on monogamy (the parental investment theory).

A few more recommendations:- Godel, Escher, Bach Human Knowledge - <USER3> Russell

</comment><comment><USER81> Society of Mind. by Minsky. his book changed my perspective on how the mind operates.

</comment><comment><USER82> The Emperor Of Scent - Chandler Burr

I never appreciated my sense of smell until this book.

[http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-Scent-Perfume-Obsession- Myster...](http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-Scent-Perfume-Obsession- Mystery/dp/0375507973)

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually have two friends who lack a sense of smell. It's something you really take for granted, but I spent a day just trying to imagine all the smells I smell and what the act of smelling those things did for me. Pretty eye opening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I would also add "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach. Its a simple and inspiring story about a bird who tries to question the very simple facts and norms of life established by generations before.

<comment><USER84> The theme of positivism in this book inspires me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I read a lot of biographies. It's interesting how you start seeing the common denominators between great men when you do. Especially 'Alexander of Macedon' by Peter Green is a riveting read.

<comment><USER86> That's easily one of the best biographies I've read. It's up there with Martin Gilbert's biography of Churchill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Do make space for Alvin Toffler - starting with "Future Shock" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock>

</comment><comment><USER87> Two great books that really impacted me, both about the horrors of bad research:

"Good Calories, Bad Calories", by Gary Taubes, on nutrition and health.

"The Blank Slate", by Steven Pinker, on human nature.

</comment><comment><USER88> "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand my bible.. you definitely love it if you like Atlas Shrugged.. same author and same philosophy.. more centered towards one protagonist.

</comment><comment><USER89> Robert Anton Wilson: The Illuminati Trilogy (rethink your thinking)

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (very spiritual in its own way, but highly entertaining)

</comment><comment><USER90> I can't recommend any book. Lately when I am reading a book I need a way of elaborating my thoughts other than reading in a linear way.

I find so many ideas and branching points that I want to explore while reading that I can't follow the author path.

Perhaps in the future books with be self-developing, that is you don't go from one page to the next one, you can ask a question and the book develop a new chapter, so the book for the future will be more about communication and less about a monologue.

Could HN be like a book? is there a central point from which all derive, a source to construct knowledge and get information?

</comment><comment><USER91> One of the best books I have read recently is Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Amazing story mixed with history and inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER27> Fiction Enders game Rendezvous with Rama Hunger Games The old man and the sea

Non Fiction Rework Wiseguy Sun Tzu The art of war

</comment><comment><USER92> Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Explains an ethical viewpoint in a very clear style. Changed the way I think about human progress.

</comment><comment><USER93> In non-fiction I found _"The Alchemist"_ by Paulo Coelho to be excellent and thought provoking.

</comment><comment><USER94> Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian, All The Pretty Horses, etc. His writing is incredible.

</comment><comment><USER95> Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus Trilogy", "Prometheus Rising".

Aleister Crowley's "Book of lies"

</comment><comment><USER96> Daemon and Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez. Everyone on HN would love it I think.

</comment><comment><USER97> The Wisdom Of Insecurity by Alan Watts

^ it's tiny, easily the best book I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://goodreads.com> is suppose to help you solve the problem of "What should I read next?"

</comment><comment><USER98> the Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. We all create alter-egos that cover for our worst sins.

</comment><comment><USER99> Here's a few I've really liked that have a broader subject matter than only what you asked for. I figure that if you like to read you'd like these books.

 _\--- NON-FICTION ---_

Darkness Visible

A Mathemematician's Apology

Omnivore's Dilemma

Fermat's Enigma

The Code Book

Born to Run

Judgement of Paris

Siddhartha

Killing Pablo

The Victorian Internet

Lone Survivor

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman

Papillon

Into Thin Air

Born on a Blue Day

Touching the Void

Got Fight

The Conquest of Happiness

 _\--- FICTION ---_

Switch Bitch

Lost Horizon

The Cuckoo's Egg

The Simlarillion

The Time Traveler's Wife

The Alchemist

The Count of Monte Cristo

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Neverwhere

My Uncle Oswald

Stories of Your Life and Others

Invisible Cities

Life of Pi

Atlas Shrugged

 _\--- WALL STREET / FINANCE ---_

When Genius Failed

Liar's Poker

Buffett (Lowenstein)

Bull!

Black-Scholes and Beyond (textbook)

Fixed Income Securities (textbook)

The Road to Serfdom

The Smartest Guys in the Room

Fortune's Formula

The Fourth Turning

Inside the House of Money

 _\--- ENTREPRENEURSHIP / COMPUTERS (non-textbook) ---_

Masters of Doom

It's Not About the Bike

Dot. Bomb

Founders at Work

The PayPal Wars

Coders at Work

The Mousedriver Chronicles

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

The Soul of a New Machine

Startup

The Hypomanic Edge

Small Giants

Small is the New Big

Four Hour Work Week

The Boy who Harnessed the Wind

Four Steps to the Epiphany

Pour your Heart into it

Beyond Software Architecture

Setting the Table

 _\--- DESIGN / UX ---_

On Writing

The Design of Everyday Things

Understanding Comics

The Elements of Typographic Style

Don't Make me Think!

A Pattern Language

 _\--- PROGRAMMING ---_

Programming Pearls

Effective Java

The Algorithm Design Manual

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

The Pragmatic Programmer

Refactoring

Java Concurrency in Practice

Java Puzzlers

Expert C Programming

 _\--- COOKING ---_

The Secrets of Cooking Revealed

Cooking for Geeks

The Bread Baker's Apprentice

The Brewmaster's Table

 _\--- MISC ---_

Robot Building for Beginners

Mountaineering - The Freedom of the Hills

A First Course in Coding Theory

The Computational Beauty of Nature

Total Control

The Ashley Book of Knots

Make: Electronics

</comment><comment><USER100> The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes, is the best book I've read this year. It profoundly changed the way I look at things. I also found Sperm Wars to be very enlightening, ditto Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.

</comment><comment><USER101> If you want to read some eye opening fiction then I would recommend cory doctorows three books, Little Brother, Makers and For The Win. I know it is stacked in the young adult fiction section but it still is good read for anybody.

<something irrelevant> I am shocked that in 26 comments till now nobody has mentioned Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstater. Apart from everything else it has accomplished it is always the best seller in the "Nobody reads but everybody recommends" category, or at least the close second or draw to Art Of Programming by Knuth. </something irrelevant>

<comment><USER43> Good point about GEB. I actually read this when I was about 17-18 and it had a very profound effect on me and my understanding of computers and the mind. That said, I'm not sure I could get through it now (>10 yrs later). I think a lot of books need to be read at the right time in ones' life to be properly appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> The 100 greatest books of all time everyone must read [http://bighow.com/news/the-100-greatest-books-of-all-time- ev...](http://bighow.com/news/the-100-greatest-books-of-all-time-everyone- must-read)

</comment><comment><USER103> Finite and Infinite Games</comment>


What's on the stack? - <AUTHOR> http://experiments.oskarth.com/unix02

<comment><AUTHOR> It took me a while to understand how the stack works on a low-level, so I wrote this. I hope someone finds it useful, and if you found something confusing please let me know and I'll try to clarify!

The second part in this series, _What is a shell and how does it work?_ , was posted on HN here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9794081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9794081)</comment>


MailChimp Launches Simple Transactional Service on Top of Amazon SES - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-launches-transactional-email-service-on-top-of-amazon-ses/ <comment><USER2> Holy shit. There goes any reluctance I had to building on top of SES. Your move, Sendgrid.

<comment><USER3> For what its worth, doesn't appear to be as easy as SendGrid, in that they only require SMTP settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I appreciate the transparency of this post.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is quite a day for news from MailChimp. We had already decided to go with MailChimp for our bulk email needs and have been on the fence about Amazon SES vs SendGrid. But with us already leaning toward Amazon SES, this pretty much just seals the deal.

</comment><comment><USER6> The real value of this is in the integration of unsubscribe lists and reporting on opens, CTRs, bounce rates etc... well played!

</comment><comment><USER7> Can you use mailchimp to send dynamic emails with their API? For example, from a PHP script when a new user joins your site?

<comment><USER8> Yes, using their pseudo-transactional campaigns. I'm using it right now on multiple sites. Which makes me wonder why they decided to build on SES, they've already got the functionality there...

<http://blog.mailchimp.com/transactional-email-support/>

<comment><USER2> Probably because they were _pseudo_ -transactional.

<comment><USER9> Copying this from my blog comment answering the same question...

Pseudo-transactional campaigns are very "pseudo". MailChimp campaigns require static predefined content. If you actually wanted to vary the content from recipient to recipient, you need to find a way to stuff the dynamic content into merge fields as you send which can cause latency and concurrency issues.

Also, since pseudo-transactional campaigns uses our sending infrastructure tuned for large bulk mailing, the delivery times are somewhat longer (on the order of minutes) for pseudo-transactional campaigns, vs seconds for STS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Building atop your competitors. Nice tactic.</comment>


Forbidden Spheres - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/08/29/forbidden-spheres/ <comment><USER2> I had a similar experience at [ a large company ] I used to work for. Had a French Press sitting out on my desk, was quite a bit cheaper than getting coffee in the cafeteria. Came in one morning, it was gone and had been replaced with a nasty note from security. Coffee makers were a banned item (due to fire hazard), so that meant that the French Press (as well as pour overs) were also banned, as they are used to make coffee. Rumor has it that they would also confiscate single-serve coffee pouches too.

<comment><USER3> Makes you wonder about what they put in the coffee from the cafeteria. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The money quote:

"Secrecy is contagious: If something is secret, and something else touches it, it too becomes secret. Secrecy becomes a disease. Everything around the secret issue becomes secret, so the trial became a secret, so I became a secret."

(Best read in context because it's actually a quote within a quote, but that gets cumbersome to replicate in an HN comment.)

<comment><USER5> I heard the same thing about async code...

</comment></comment><comment> david-given I'd also encourage people to read David Langford's book, _The Leaky Establishment_ , which is definitely not in any way based on his experiences working at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, aka the UK's atom bomb factory, in the 1980s; it says so right in the dedication at the front:

[http://ansible.uk/books/leaky.html](http://ansible.uk/books/leaky.html)

It tells the story of how our hero smuggles a discarded filing cabinet home with him one day, only to discover that someone has popped a plutonium warhead into the bottom drawer while he wasn't looking; he spends the rest of the book trying to smuggle it back in again.

Spheres play a key role.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am not sure if it's secrecy or safety. Tr sorry about the orange aside, it seems the concern is less about whether an outsider would see a sphere and know that it is cricitcal to the design, and more that a scientist might leave an important model or an actual plutonium put out where it shouldn't be, and now only another scientist can tell that it's out of place. Seems reasonable to say "anything that looks like a plutonium pit should stay locked up or an alarm should be raised."

</comment><comment><USER7> The application to spheres and the possibly apocryphal story of the orange is bordering on the absurd, and is amusing, for sure. But the prospect of having the Soviets pull ahead in the nuclear race kind of put a damper on people's sense of humour in those days.

But that said, these policies are about eliminating the grey zones enabled by imperfect and inconsistent application of human judgement, and are alive and well today in practically every organisation that even vaguely deals with sensitive material: The clean desk policy. Because sensitive material would be written on paper, any paper is considered sensitive by default. It's obviously entirely impractical for security staff to go through all the paper on your desk and validate that they only contain "safe" content, and frankly, it's a fairly high cognitive load to constantly evaluate that for yourself for every sheet of paper. So the policy is that everything is removed at the end of the day, and it's easy for everybody to understand.

The same again for physical security. Everybody wears their badge visibly all the time. Yes, it's obvious that you work here, and the guard knows you and you've said good morning to each other every day for four years, but by making the policy apply to everybody all the time, you remove the grey zones where a bad actor exploits a security guard's lapse in judgement: did you really leave your badge in the pocket of your other coat, or were you just fired in the other building? 99.99% of the time you really did forget it, but it's the other 0.01% we have security for in the first place.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The interesting part for me is how individually rational decisions can have weird consequences. The culture of secrecy infecting everything else.

Also, the conspicuous absence of spheres would tell someone that spheres are critical to weapons design.

<comment><USER8> I thought about the conspicuous absence a bit and decided I probably would not notice the absence.

Unless I worked at a baseball factory or something where the absence truly would be conspicuous.

<comment><USER9> ...unless you overheard an in-joke about how oranges are contraband.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah, so much absurd-calling in the comments here; but then, have you seen the _certainly totally innocent_ butterfly drawings made by one bright young man Baden-Powell? My, oh my, now those butterflies have some weird resemblance to maps of our fortifications; but we _wouldn 't ban butterfly pictures in our compound_, just because they resemble our secrets, that would be absurd, wouldn't it?

[http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-founder-of-the- boy-...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-founder-of-the-boy-scouts- hid-maps-in-insect-drawings)

For me, knowing this, suddenly the article about spheres makes me much more uncertain about who's really right here.

(That said, the comment by derekp7 ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13033511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13033511)) makes a really good point of highlighting a particular aspect of legalese creep in this context.)

</comment><comment><USER11> The danger of course is that if all spheres are forbidden, their very lack can leak the fact that they are significant to an adversary. Especially when they are something commonplace like a sphere.

A parallel problem appeared in stealth ships (at least early ones -- somehow the Zumwalt is supposedly stealthy too). Apparently although they didn't show up on radar, neither did the "chop" of the waves where the ship should be. Source: Ben Rich's book on the Skunk Works.

<comment><USER12> > _something commonplace like a sphere_

How commonplace are spheres exactly? If I take a look around the office, the closest thing that isn't a ball bearing in some chair or whatever that I would find is an apple.

<comment><USER11> The article mentioned an orange being deemed classified once it entered the facility, as well as ashtrays (I can guess that a closed ashtray would prevent spills and keep air currents from moving ashes out of the ashtray, though perhaps it was simply an esthetic thing). It wasn't remarkable to see a globe (world maps) in those days either -- not common, but not a surprise when you did see one). Looking around the kitchen I'm in I just see fruit and loose tennis and lacrosse balls.

It's a no win situation for the security staff: someone could make a couple of marks on an orange, or just use it as an aide-memoire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't tell any spherical cow jokes once you cross the line of demarcation.

<comment><USER13> You have two spherical cows. You forget to put them in your safe and within an hour, one is taken by security and "safely detonated" and the other is accidentally placed into a nuclear weapon, turning the weapon into a moosive failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I've asked some contacts I have at Livermore if they had such a policy out > there, and they said they hadn't heard of one.

Either that or the policy is a secret and they're not allowed to tell anyone about it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder whether anyone ever suggested that the complete _absence_ of any vaguely-spherical object visible on the campus would itself communicate the importance of the spherical shape. If there's a spy who's able to see what's left out on desks, the fact that people are being threatened for anything visible of a certain shape is probably enough to let the spy deduce what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think there's an interesting parallel between this and debugging. For example, change all your test data numbers into pairs except for one. Now all impair sums will include that number.

Though I have to say I'm a bit confused about the sphere example here. A sphere is a sphere is a sphere right? What's the classified bit that they're trying to hid? The exact dimensions?

<comment><USER17> AFAIK, Nuclear weapons basically revolve around creating a critical mass of radioactive material. The issue is that a critical mass is actively trying to push itself apart (because it's obviously exploding). So the idea is that you get your mass, wrap it in a sphere of explosives that will detonate and keep the critical mass contained for slightly longer, which will result in a larger explosion.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design#Implosio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design#Implosion- type_weapon)

<comment><USER15> The implosion design is more about offering a way to turn a non-critical mass into a critical mass on demand, since you don't want the thing going off the instant you finish manufacturing it.

The "problem" (scare quotes because, really, something being less efficient than it could be at wiping out a city in a single go is hard to frame as a problem) of the bomb blowing itself apart before most of the fissile material has a chance to undergo fission is believed to be solved by other methods.

<comment><USER18> Yes. The essential mechanism of a fission bomb is the formation of a critical mass within ~ a millisecond's time. Form the critical mass too slowly, and you get massive heat and radiation, but no explosion. Thus the standard cylindrical design with half a critical mass at each end, sitting in front of charges. Detonate both charges at once, slam the two halves together, boom. Crude but effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Imagine this problem, you have a bunch of scientists, trained PhD's, suddenly working at a top secret high security job. These are not professional military or security folks, their previous job was most likely in a university doing research and teaching 20 year old students.

How do you get these scientists to understand and take on the appropriate kind of thinking and way of acting that the security risks of this job requires? How can you be sure they get it and are paying attention to detail?

I realize to some this might feel like it's beyond common sense and going too far. And maybe it is. But it kind of reminds me of the Van Halen contracts where they banned brown M&M's. Of course it is not about the brown M&M's. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen#Contract_riders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen#Contract_riders)

</comment><comment><USER20> Original article is from 2012, but still of interest.

Sigh. What next? Forbidden numbers? ;)

<comment><USER21> Forbidden numbers are indeed a thing [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_number)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you capture and manage ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Currently I use a Google Spreadsheet and share ideas with friends via email or over coffee. I'm wondering what tools others use to manage this process. <comment><USER2> Trello It's Kanban style layout allows you to see set it up so that you can see progress laid out in a column style format (ie To Do, Doing, Done - at the simplest level).

Plus it's free - the price is right!

You can also link from Trello to whatever you want - so if you have a Google Doc with more detail for example, you can just link to that from the summary in Trello.

Hope that helps. Happy to answer more questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> In depth knowledge of the problem matters with an ideas list. ... When I was doing my PhD, I had lots of ideas, but limited knowledge of the subject (Logistics) and limited knowledge of what needs to be in a thesis. So my lists of ideas were child like. They had little value. I soon moved on. After I had done lots of reading about logistics and what people expect to find in a thesis my ideas changed. I had a list of ideas that were connected to knowledge of the problem. It was very easy to rank the ideas and work out what gets done next and throw out the rubbish. The list of ideas were not some random guess, but informed and clear. These days I try to ensure my list of ideas is based on indepth knowledge and if not, then the top item is "get some indepth knowledge". This tends to mean the other items in my list have no value a all.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm developing a web app that does this: [https://flownote.io](https://flownote.io)

You can have a tree structure of notebooks and share your notes via email.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've tried a few systems and apps, but time and again I find myself coming back to a notebook and a pen.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hackpad is pretty sweet.

</comment><comment><USER7> Notes app</comment>


Ruby on Rails v. Django - <AUTHOR> http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails,+django&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 Discuss. <comment><USER2> This is interesting enough data, but it doesn't really prove anything. As you can see, the turn "django" was at the 1.0 mark before it even really started, so you have to take that into account when looking at the numbers.

Even with that correction, it does seem to put Django in a slight lead, but it also shows that it has had a much steadier growth (assuming jazz references would have stayed steady and all new growth is related to the framework).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. Here is the California only version, which is a bit cleaner:

[http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails,+django&...](http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails,+django&date=all&geo=usa.ca&ctab=0&sort=0&sa=N)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else notice that all the news links which appeared on that page were for Django terms which had nothing to do with the framework. Ruby on Rails is a solid search term, Django is a bit vague it seems.</comment>


The Internet goes nuts when you use "her" to refer to a generic programmer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hoffm/why-her-559bb1f34b8 <comment><USER2> Before reading this, I had no idea that that Twitter frequenters characterized the entire Internet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Zzzzzzz!</comment>


Write Markdown in any text field on the web - <AUTHOR> http://markdown-here.com/

<comment><USER2> I like the idea but that purple/pink color scheme is a little off-putting.</comment>


The annoying boxes puzzle: solution - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/math/logic/annoying-boxes-solution.html

<comment><USER2> That is not a logic puzzle [1], even though the author claims it is; it's a silly outcome that is easily achieved when one breaks how logic puzzles are presented and solved.

It's more of a bait-and-switch.

Here is a famous logic puzzle, often called a Knights and Knaves style puzzle [2]: Knights always tell the truth, Knaves always lie.

"John and Bill are standing at a fork in the road. John is standing in front of the left road, and Bill is standing in front of the right road. One of them is a knight and the other a knave, but you don't know which. You also know that one road leads to Death, and the other leads to Freedom. By asking one yes–no question, can you determine the road to Freedom?"

Here's a "solution" in the style of the author: "There is no solution, because the road to 'Freedom' is under construction, and the detour leads through 'Death.' Hahaha! Gotcha!"

It's a non-solution, and not a logic puzzle any more.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_puzzle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_puzzle) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Knaves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Knaves)

<comment><USER3> But the difference is that in this puzzle you can deduce that something is wrong by just using logic: In the absence of any hints, you'd just consider everything true. This obviously does not lead to a solution, as the red box states that one box lies. When you come to this point, you might wonder why you were trusting the boxes in the first place and reconsider your assumptions, i.e. not putting any trust in what the boxes say. After this step you realise that there suddenly is not enough information to determine which box the treasure is in.

The difference between the blog post and your example is that in your example there's nothing that makes you recheck your assumptions. A puzzle in the style of the author's would be:

Knights always tell the truth, Knaves always lie.

John and Bill are standing at a fork in the road. John is standing in front of the left road, and Bill is standing in front of the right road. John says: "One of us is a knight and the other a knave". You also know that one road leads to Death, and the other leads to Freedom. Bill says: "My road leads to freedom".

<comment><USER4> If you attacked that formulation with the normal assumptions for logic problems, the answer would be the same. If you break the assumption that you can trust all logical statements in the problem, regardless of their origin, then you could get a solution like "John is a dick and tells a mixture of truth and lies as he sees fit just to mess with you". But you could get that solution with any problem where the source of information is an entity in the problem itself, which is why we tend to assume that isn't the case.

<comment><USER5> That's entirely wrong. The whole point of the article is that there are two distinct types of information present in all problems of this type: information _about_ the problem (which the author calls certification, and which is assumed to be true), and then information presented in the problem, which - in almost every problem I've ever seen of this type - has statements that aren't true in it.

        > "If you break the assumption that you can trust all
        > logical statements in the problem"

That is never the assumption - you are normally told explicitly that you can trust some and not others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is secretly a lesson about comments in legacy code.

<comment><USER7> You just transformed the puzzle from "annoying" to "can teach a worthwhile lesson" for me.

Edit: This message can be made more clear with a slight change to the puzzle.

There are two methods, foo and bar. One returns what you desire.

        /** Exactly one of the comments is true */
        function foo();

        /** @returns what you desire */
        function bar();

Can you figure out which method returns what you desire?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Imagine oneself playing a game of Simon Says, where we don't know who Simon is or which bits he's actually saying, he in fact sounds exactly like everyone else giving us instructions: we can choose to believe what we want about the actions we are told to make, but an adversarial Simon can always contradict us. It's not a game I'd enjoy playing nor a lesson I think I benefited from very much...

</comment><comment><USER9> Ugh, it is annoying. And the author is a bit of jerk (Read it and you'll see what I mean.)

<comment><USER10> I think he did me a favor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What bothers me about mjd's explanation of "Why doesn't every logic puzzle fall afoul of this problem" is:

> > Portia explained to the suitor that of the three statements, at most one > was true.

> Notice that the problem condition gives the suitor a certification about the > truth of the labels, on which he may rely.

(the first sentence is quoted, approvingly, from a puzzle by Gardner, and the second explains why it saves that puzzle). Sure, there is a certificate _provided in the problem_ ; but why may we trust Portia's certification, any more than we may trust the labels on the boxes? It seems that one needs either

\- an annoying intra-textual infinite regress: "Portia said this, and Balthazar said that Portia was telling the truth, and Stephano said that Balthazar was telling the truth, …" (which still doesn't really address the trust problem, just moves it infinitely far); or

\- a _meta_ -textual reassurance: "Given that at most one of the three statements is true, which of the caskets should the suitor choose?"

(EDIT: Oops, mdpopescu ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837257](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837257)) made this point much more succinctly several hours ago.)

<comment><USER12> I think you are right, and the solution is a meta-textual reassurance, specifically of the form: " _if_ one of the statements is true, _then_ which casket should the suitor choose?"

<comment><USER11> I agree, although note that Gardner actually sneaks in the subtly different statement "at _most_ one of the statements is true." Of course, even here one has to be careful: do we require that the problem say "if at most one of the statements is true, _and the previous description of the problem is correct_ , then …"? If not, what allows us to trust the previous description?

One can re-phrase every logic puzzle ever as "Assuming that `P` is true, what can you deduce about `Q`?"; or one may assume that a logic puzzle of the form "`P` is true. What can you deduce about `Q`?" is really shorthand for the former. I don't begrudge mjd for pointing out this shorthand, but I do think that his description of the 'solution' (to the meta-problem, not the actual puzzle he poses) is facile at best, and creates bigger problems at worst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, how could there be enough info to solve any problem if we can't trust the information at all? I mean bot boxes could be open, with the treasure being in green box at all but it could be all dream! The treasure was in red box all the time. Kinda stupid.

<comment><USER6> The problem inherently indicated that the labels were untrustworthy. It was impossible for them both to be true, because one explicitly stated that only one was true. I see no reason to trust the red label more than the green label, so at that point, it should be clear that neither can be trusted.

It's interesting in that people seem to trust meta-statements like the red label's more than they trust basic statements like the green label's.

<comment><USER14> > It's interesting in that people seem to trust meta-statements like the red > label's more than they trust basic statements like the green label's.

That are the rules of puzzles.

<comment><USER15> Only when such statements are made by the narrator, not the puzzle artifacts themselves. The whole point of these sorts of puzzles is that the labels can't all be relied upon, yet some people think the red label can be, for some reason.

<comment><USER11> The problem is that mjd himself, when discussing "Why don't all logic puzzles fall afoul of this problem", says that the statement

> Portia explained to the suitor that of the three statements, at most one was > true.

in a Gardner puzzle is evidence enough that we may trust that "of the three statements, at most one was true". Here, Portia is a character in the puzzle; why should we trust her any more than we should labels on boxes or (in the set-up of the puzzle) statements on caskets? If we have to distrust _everything_ about the problem, then it seems to me that it runs into exactly the problem shultays ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837381)) mentions.

(EDIT: I think that mdpopescu ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837257](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837257)) said it better.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The actual scenario he presents with the physical boxes is not consistent, as the truth value of the label on the red box cannot be decided. i.e. Its value is the opposite of its value. This is a troll question.

<comment><USER17> Of course it's consistent: it actually exists.

There is no paradox. It's clearly obvious that you can choose either box to put the treasure in. It's also clearly obvious that sticking labels on the boxes doesn't alter that, _no matter what they say_.

You just got fooled by the puzzle. It's not a big deal.

<comment><USER16> Sorry for assuming the problem would adhere to standard expectations. By breaking the typical rules of a logic puzzle, the interesting aspects are replaced with groan-worthy ones.

<comment><USER18> That's true only if your interest is limited to the mechanical rules of logic derivation. For those of us interested in the relations between symbols and meaning, the puzzle is fascinating.

> Sorry for assuming the problem would adhere to standard expectations. That > was the solution to the puzzle - realizing that this was an invalid > assumption, given the formulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr: The problem didn't actually state that the labels mean anything!

<comment><USER20> Yes. Normally, problems give you information so that you can do something with it. Otherwise, even if the author says later on:

 _Notice that the problem condition gives the suitor a certification about the truth of the labels_

the problem author can always cop out and say "yes, but the certification itself was meaningless!".

If I take the labels to their face value, the treasure cannot be in the green box because the red label doesn't have a truth value. (If it's true, then there are _two_ true labels, therefore it must be false. But if it's false, there is only one true label, so the red one is true.)

<comment><USER21> It's more interesting than that. If you take the labels at their face value, evaluating the red label either causes itself to be correct (flip-flop), or causes itself to be incorrect (#REF!), based on the state of the world.

        treasure in green | treasure in red | green label   | red label
        </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>-----
        no                | no              | false         | flip-flop
        no                | yes             | false         | flip-flop
        yes               | no              | true          | #REF!
        yes               | yes             | misquantified | #REF!

<comment><USER22> i'm so confused. the red label doesnt convey any information yet it rules out the ability that the green label is true.

so how can the green label still be true?

or is the author saying that the symbols on labels dont mean anything? if he says that, it's tautological. what can we get from discussion if we dont conventionally put meaning in symbols? are what we typing now in all these comments also jibberish??

<comment><USER23> The contents of the green box make the labels paradoxical; but it's OK because paradoxes exist.

Consider a paradox such as "This sentence is false". There's a problem with deciding if it's true or false. Countless articles and books have been written about it, and there exist different ways of dealing with this "difficulty". However, nothing prevents you from actually writing these letters on a piece of paper, and nothing prevented me from typing them a few seconds ago. The puzzle we're talking about makes the same point in a more amusing fashion.

<comment><USER22> hm, isnt that obvious? if it's just "we do whatever we want regardless of whatever", then we dont need to go that far: elaborating a nonsense puzzle to prove nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> With logic problems the assumption is that logical information is always relevant to the solution, no matter what the source of the information is. It's interesting to have that assumption challenged though.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emiMj8cCL5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emiMj8cCL5E) and the extra footage is another demonstration on how the solution can change if you don't start with the normal "logic puzzle" assumptions.

<comment><USER24> the difference here is that the label on the green box is explicitly "challenged" by the label of the red box. the step is to realize that both labels should be challenged (i.e if the label on the green box doesn't have to be true, the label on the red box doesn't have to be true)

<comment><USER4> I'm not convinced the fact one label "challenges" the other should change how you attack the problem. I think you have to be able to apply the same reasoning to the following problem:

        James says he is shorter than Alex.
        Jane says she is shorter than James.
        Alex says he is taller than James.
        Can you figure out who is the shortest?

Going by the authors premise that only things in the puzzle statement can be taken to be truthful, you can't figure out who is the shortest because they could all be lying. It's formulated exactly the same as the problem in the post, it just doesn't have a potential contradiction to lead you down the path to realising you're not meant to be assuming the logical statements are involved in the solution.

<comment><USER18> If one of the possible answers is "There's not enough information to decide", that's a good hint that something weird may be going on and you should double- check your assumption of "everybody is telling the truth".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the problem I'm having with it is that it's presented as a logic puzzle, but I'm not sure I'd classify it that way.

It seems more of a comprehension test to me, as the trick is both to see that the questions is a "Can you figure out the answer?" rather than "What is the answer?" and to realise that at no point does he say that either label is correct.

<comment><USER5> If you've ever done any GMAT-type questions, this is an absolutely classic example of a data-sufficiency question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is the implication, since the question was asked, that enough information is presented to get to a solution. Else, why would the question be asked, unless to fool. In which case, he did a fancy equivalent of "it' a prank it's a prank".

<comment><USER27> _There is the implication ... that enough information is presented to get to a solution_

In general I agree with you.

HOWEVER, in this case, one of the choices is explicitly "There is not enough information to determine the answer". Given that choice is explicitly presented, it's not a prank. IMO.

<comment><USER11> > HOWEVER, in this case, one of the choices is explicitly "There is not enough > information to determine the answer". Given that choice is explicitly > presented, it's not a prank. IMO.

That's an interesting perspective, but can it really be that the correct answer to the question depends on the options one is given? That is, would the same puzzle, with that choice deleted, have a different answer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> haha indeed an "annoying" trick. we're so conditioned to reading phrases like "exactly one of the labels is true" as meta-information that we forget it's a "box label".</comment>