Wow, can’t wait for the unknown gems this discussion will bring up!
Anyway, some of my own; these are all non-fiction.
Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene is such a magnificent book, introducing all the
wonderful solutions that evolution has come up with, and the insight that the
battle for the ‘survival of the fittest’ takes place at the level of
individual genes (or is at least a powerful model for understanding things)
Jared Diamonds’ Guns, germs and steel which suggests that there are
non-racial/non-ethnic reasons for the differences in wealth and power amongst
various regions in the world. I think the writer’s claims go a bit further
than his evidence warrants, but nevertheless a good way to look into this
field, and provides a lot of food for thought
As mentioned already, Hofstadters Gödel/Escher/Bach and The Mind’s I
(bundle of essays of various writers, redacted together with Daniel Dennett)
are playing with all these interesting concepts like conciousness, AI, meta,
self-reference.
Also Richard Feynman’s work is fantastic—the auto-biographic (You must
be joking, Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think) are
inspiring. I plan on going through some of his real physics works (like the
Feynman lectures on Physics). Just seeing some of the interviews on Youtube
show how well Feynman is able to make both complex and simple things understandable, at all levels; such a towering intellect.
For computer science stuff, earlier I mentioned
SICP, which I am currently re-reading.
Then, Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming; I have read much too little
of it, but it’s such a rewarding experience to (slowly!) go through a few
pages and finally the ‘click’ of understanding. I plan to read more of
this. Knuth is truly the master of the field of programming and algorithms,
and while reading it, I can almost feel how it sharpens my brain.
Finally, a lot of bad things can be said about pop-psy, but I really liked
Dan Ariely’s books (Predictably irrational and The upside of
irrationality) that show where the classical picture of people being
rational, homo economicus, has its limitations, and all the weird biases
we have. He has someinteresting TED-talks as well.
Voted up for The Selfish Gene. I really like the way Dawkins looks at the world. It’s a good illustration that innovation can be very low-tech—he got a revolutionary idea just by reading about birds and monkeys and thinking a little bit.
I highly recommend Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. From a rationalist perspective, it is enlightening for its strong scientific approach to history—a refreshing change from school history textbooks which are written like an exceptionally dry novel, with a single canonical narrative.
Collapse is good as well, yes. The only small issue I had with GG&S is how it goes a bit too eagerly from a plausible cause for differences in the world to ruling out any other, say ethnic or cultural influences. The writer may or may not be right about that, but it seemed he was a bit too committed to what he wanted to show. Anyway, only a small thing, the book is great still.
For a lot of examples, have a look at the Wikipedia article on Easter Island. Though the evidence he gave seemed incredibly strong, apparently it’s quite disputed that they suffered a pre-colonization collapse at all.
With regards to Collapse: Err, really? A fair number of Diamond’s points are outright false; for example, his timing of the colonization or (and therefore the arrival of rats to) Easter Island is completely wrong- and, if I recall correctly (it’s been a few years since I read Collapse), Diamond explicitly pointed out that the age of the (single, unique) site he was relying on to date the arrival was in question, before dismissing the critics without an argument.
I heard an interview with Ariely that was quite good. It appears that he agrees with the LW consensus on heuristics & biases, only he has a severely annoying habit of defining “rationality” too narrowly, as naive self-centred cost-benefit analysis. It really irks me when people conflate the two.
I would recommend listening to the TED talks linked over “Predictably Irrational”. I feel like the books don’t really go into much more detail if you grok the talks—a couple new experiment anecdotes is about it.
SICP, Selfish Gene, Feynman esp. Lectures on Physics are all great.
TAOCP—I’ve read 1 volume only. It’s unfortunate that he used assembly code rather than psuedocode. The material he’s recently released on permutations/combinations/partitions/etc. is beautiful. I expect there are better, more concise surveys available now, but I doubt anyone will beat the quantity and quality of his problems (with solutions).
GEB was entertaining. I’ve been meaning to reread it to see if it still impresses me or if it’s really just virtuoso hand-waving.
Mind’s I didn’t leave much of an impression on me.
Wow, can’t wait for the unknown gems this discussion will bring up!
Anyway, some of my own; these are all non-fiction.
Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene is such a magnificent book, introducing all the wonderful solutions that evolution has come up with, and the insight that the battle for the ‘survival of the fittest’ takes place at the level of individual genes (or is at least a powerful model for understanding things)
Jared Diamonds’ Guns, germs and steel which suggests that there are non-racial/non-ethnic reasons for the differences in wealth and power amongst various regions in the world. I think the writer’s claims go a bit further than his evidence warrants, but nevertheless a good way to look into this field, and provides a lot of food for thought
As mentioned already, Hofstadters Gödel/Escher/Bach and The Mind’s I (bundle of essays of various writers, redacted together with Daniel Dennett) are playing with all these interesting concepts like conciousness, AI, meta, self-reference.
Also Richard Feynman’s work is fantastic—the auto-biographic (You must be joking, Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think) are inspiring. I plan on going through some of his real physics works (like the Feynman lectures on Physics). Just seeing some of the interviews on Youtube show how well Feynman is able to make both complex and simple things understandable, at all levels; such a towering intellect.
For computer science stuff, earlier I mentioned SICP, which I am currently re-reading.
Then, Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming; I have read much too little of it, but it’s such a rewarding experience to (slowly!) go through a few pages and finally the ‘click’ of understanding. I plan to read more of this. Knuth is truly the master of the field of programming and algorithms, and while reading it, I can almost feel how it sharpens my brain.
Finally, a lot of bad things can be said about pop-psy, but I really liked Dan Ariely’s books (Predictably irrational and The upside of irrationality) that show where the classical picture of people being rational, homo economicus, has its limitations, and all the weird biases we have. He has some interesting TED-talks as well.
Voted up for The Selfish Gene. I really like the way Dawkins looks at the world. It’s a good illustration that innovation can be very low-tech—he got a revolutionary idea just by reading about birds and monkeys and thinking a little bit.
I highly recommend Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. From a rationalist perspective, it is enlightening for its strong scientific approach to history—a refreshing change from school history textbooks which are written like an exceptionally dry novel, with a single canonical narrative.
Collapse is good as well, yes. The only small issue I had with GG&S is how it goes a bit too eagerly from a plausible cause for differences in the world to ruling out any other, say ethnic or cultural influences. The writer may or may not be right about that, but it seemed he was a bit too committed to what he wanted to show. Anyway, only a small thing, the book is great still.
For a lot of examples, have a look at the Wikipedia article on Easter Island. Though the evidence he gave seemed incredibly strong, apparently it’s quite disputed that they suffered a pre-colonization collapse at all.
link
I agree.
GG&S has crossed the line from “exploring possibility” to “fanatical propaganda.”
I realize he just wanted to rebut The Global Bell Curve, but it’s poorly done.
Collapse, on the other hand is great, especially if you read it in conjunction with its clear inspiration, Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons”
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
With regards to Collapse: Err, really? A fair number of Diamond’s points are outright false; for example, his timing of the colonization or (and therefore the arrival of rats to) Easter Island is completely wrong- and, if I recall correctly (it’s been a few years since I read Collapse), Diamond explicitly pointed out that the age of the (single, unique) site he was relying on to date the arrival was in question, before dismissing the critics without an argument.
I heard an interview with Ariely that was quite good. It appears that he agrees with the LW consensus on heuristics & biases, only he has a severely annoying habit of defining “rationality” too narrowly, as naive self-centred cost-benefit analysis. It really irks me when people conflate the two.
I would recommend listening to the TED talks linked over “Predictably Irrational”. I feel like the books don’t really go into much more detail if you grok the talks—a couple new experiment anecdotes is about it.
If you’re going to read Diamond, I recommended also reading The Ultimate Resource by Julian Lincoln Simon.
SICP, Selfish Gene, Feynman esp. Lectures on Physics are all great.
TAOCP—I’ve read 1 volume only. It’s unfortunate that he used assembly code rather than psuedocode. The material he’s recently released on permutations/combinations/partitions/etc. is beautiful. I expect there are better, more concise surveys available now, but I doubt anyone will beat the quantity and quality of his problems (with solutions).
GEB was entertaining. I’ve been meaning to reread it to see if it still impresses me or if it’s really just virtuoso hand-waving.
Mind’s I didn’t leave much of an impression on me.