Language in Thought and Action, by S. I. Hayakawa. It goes without saying that this book is highly recommended. To those who’ve read the sequences, and have therefore had just a bite of the hearty meal, you should really get it. An anecdote about how I came to find this gem:
My grandfather is a retired linguist, and in his library, in a house I grew up in, he keeps, and still has, a gigantic collection of books. A member of that distinguished class of “books older than me”, this book is a part of his linguistics collection, and I didn’t even know he had it until a few weeks ago when I was having a conversation with my uncle in said library. The title jumped out at me, and I haven’t been this happy about finding a book in that room since I found my mother reading Kahneman.
Linguistics are interesting, and this book is a classic of the field, but could you explain why you think it is so great? Haven’t read the book yet, but I’m interested to know if I should give it some extra priority in my reading queue.
Louder than Words by Benjamin K. Bergen is a new (published October 2012) book on embodied cognition that summarizes research supporting the idea that we understand language by mentally simulating the events described, using the same parts of the brain that perceive such events.
I’m in the middle of the book right now; it’s a quick read. I haven’t read any of the original research, so it’s difficult for me to comment on the book’s quality. I don’t necessarily recommend the book, but it seemed like the sort of thing LW should know about if no one’s mentioned it already.
I finished Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise; I liked it. Very accessible view into the world of predicitions in very different field (earthquakes, poker, elections, stock market, …). Nice book to introduce people into quite a few of the LW-themes. One weakness I found that while Silver got to interview Donald Rumsfeld, he succeeds in not getting anything interesting out of him.
Also, I finally finished Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, a great book that discusses many of our cognivitive biases. A whole subgenre of irrationality-pop-psy has arisen in the last few years, but this is really the book that makes much of those superfluous. Book gets a bit tedious in the end, but I’d still consider it near-mandatory reading for people interested in LW-themes.
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker
You’ve likely heard of this; if you haven’t you absolutely must at least watch bis TED talk or find an article summary. I’ll add my high recommendation.
Weakly recommend:
The ancestor’s tale
Richard Dawkins
I got what I wanted from this, which was better knowledge of the phylogenetic tree. Still, it wanders around quite a lot, and it makes it seem like he doesn’t really understand the probability models being used for the sequence-based evidence that’s challenging a lot of the old assumptions.
Micro-motives and macro-behaviour
Thomas Schelling
I really only bought this because The Art of Strategy wasn’t in the Kindle store. It’s an okay set of game theory/group dynamics teasers to sharpen your intuition, but far from essential.
If therefore philosophy were to succeed in creating a system such that… it stood out clearly when a question is not justified, so that the drive towards asking it would gradually die away, [then] philosophy would become worthy of the name of queen of the sciences.
The Problem of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer. reviewamazong. Best book on political philosophy I’ve read. Clear writting style, doesn’t appeal to massive conjunctive reasoning—unlike much philosophy. Even mentions GiveWell.
The only one I’m interested in is the one without a review. What didn’t you like about Legal Systems Very Different From Ours (or were the others exceptionally good?)?
Legal Systems was extremely derivative (I knew pretty much everything Friedman was writing about) and failed, I thought, to derive the insightful comparisons and contrasts I expected of Friedman.
Well, you can always read it yourself, it’s online. Unless you know as much as I do about Saga Iceland law and American Amish/Mennonite communities etc, you probably would get more out of it.
Nonfiction Books Thread
Language in Thought and Action, by S. I. Hayakawa. It goes without saying that this book is highly recommended. To those who’ve read the sequences, and have therefore had just a bite of the hearty meal, you should really get it. An anecdote about how I came to find this gem: My grandfather is a retired linguist, and in his library, in a house I grew up in, he keeps, and still has, a gigantic collection of books. A member of that distinguished class of “books older than me”, this book is a part of his linguistics collection, and I didn’t even know he had it until a few weeks ago when I was having a conversation with my uncle in said library. The title jumped out at me, and I haven’t been this happy about finding a book in that room since I found my mother reading Kahneman.
Your family is awesome.
Linguistics are interesting, and this book is a classic of the field, but could you explain why you think it is so great? Haven’t read the book yet, but I’m interested to know if I should give it some extra priority in my reading queue.
Louder than Words by Benjamin K. Bergen is a new (published October 2012) book on embodied cognition that summarizes research supporting the idea that we understand language by mentally simulating the events described, using the same parts of the brain that perceive such events.
I’m in the middle of the book right now; it’s a quick read. I haven’t read any of the original research, so it’s difficult for me to comment on the book’s quality. I don’t necessarily recommend the book, but it seemed like the sort of thing LW should know about if no one’s mentioned it already.
I finished Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise; I liked it. Very accessible view into the world of predicitions in very different field (earthquakes, poker, elections, stock market, …). Nice book to introduce people into quite a few of the LW-themes. One weakness I found that while Silver got to interview Donald Rumsfeld, he succeeds in not getting anything interesting out of him.
Also, I finally finished Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, a great book that discusses many of our cognivitive biases. A whole subgenre of irrationality-pop-psy has arisen in the last few years, but this is really the book that makes much of those superfluous. Book gets a bit tedious in the end, but I’d still consider it near-mandatory reading for people interested in LW-themes.
Strongly recommend:
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Steven Pinker
You’ve likely heard of this; if you haven’t you absolutely must at least watch bis TED talk or find an article summary. I’ll add my high recommendation.
Weakly recommend:
The ancestor’s tale Richard Dawkins
I got what I wanted from this, which was better knowledge of the phylogenetic tree. Still, it wanders around quite a lot, and it makes it seem like he doesn’t really understand the probability models being used for the sequence-based evidence that’s challenging a lot of the old assumptions.
Micro-motives and macro-behaviour Thomas Schelling
I really only bought this because The Art of Strategy wasn’t in the Kindle store. It’s an okay set of game theory/group dynamics teasers to sharpen your intuition, but far from essential.
Worlds Of Their Own: A Brief History of Misguided Ideas: Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Energy Scams and the Velikovsky Affair—a collection of skeptical works from the ’70s-’90s. Old-style skepticism, but he’s quite kind to his subjects—interviews with Velikovsky, flat earthers, free-energy cranks. Not so kind to creationists, particularly Duane Gish. Has an excellent chapter describing the pseudoscientific method in detail, which I need to summarise.
Debunking Economics, by Steve Keen.
I’ve been reading parts of Pseudo-Problems: How Analytic Philosophy Gets Done.
It introduced me to this nice Boltzman quote:
The Problem of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer. review amazong. Best book on political philosophy I’ve read. Clear writting style, doesn’t appeal to massive conjunctive reasoning—unlike much philosophy. Even mentions GiveWell.
Descending order:
Takeda, The Notenki Memoirs: Studio Gainax and the Men Who Created Evangelion, (review)
Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (review)
Manzi, Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society (review)
Friedman, Legal Systems Very Different From Ours
The only one I’m interested in is the one without a review. What didn’t you like about Legal Systems Very Different From Ours (or were the others exceptionally good?)?
Legal Systems was extremely derivative (I knew pretty much everything Friedman was writing about) and failed, I thought, to derive the insightful comparisons and contrasts I expected of Friedman.
Very disappointing. I have been looking forward to this book since he mentioned he might write it (years ago). Thanks.
Well, you can always read it yourself, it’s online. Unless you know as much as I do about Saga Iceland law and American Amish/Mennonite communities etc, you probably would get more out of it.
I can recommend The True Believer.