Ask HN: What are some books that changed how you think?
I'm looking for some interesting books to read to give me some perspective. What books have you read that changed the way you think about career/life in general.
22 comments
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell[1]
It made me realize that the people who exceed in some field aren't only smart: they also rely a lot on their experiences. For example, most hockey players are born in the first part of the year. Why? The deadline for young hockey leagues is January 1st.
Or take Bill Gates. His mom started a programming club for his school, back before computers were easily accessible, meaning he had programmed a ton by college.
Or take the Beatles. In their early years, before they were famous, they played daily 8 hour shows.
I've found other people like this: Bode Miller (a great skier) had parents that owned a ski hill, and lived at the area. He grew up on skis.
Malcolm Gladwell mentions a "10,000 Hour Rule." Once you do something for 10,000 hours, you're an expert at it. You see this even in college classes: students who don't try don't do well. Students who do try get good grades.
So when people say, "Oh, you're so smart!", I replace it with, "You've had the experiences you need." Yes, you do need to be smart, but that's not where the base comes from.
[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
It made me realize that the people who exceed in some field aren't only smart: they also rely a lot on their experiences. For example, most hockey players are born in the first part of the year. Why? The deadline for young hockey leagues is January 1st.
Or take Bill Gates. His mom started a programming club for his school, back before computers were easily accessible, meaning he had programmed a ton by college.
Or take the Beatles. In their early years, before they were famous, they played daily 8 hour shows.
I've found other people like this: Bode Miller (a great skier) had parents that owned a ski hill, and lived at the area. He grew up on skis.
Malcolm Gladwell mentions a "10,000 Hour Rule." Once you do something for 10,000 hours, you're an expert at it. You see this even in college classes: students who don't try don't do well. Students who do try get good grades.
So when people say, "Oh, you're so smart!", I replace it with, "You've had the experiences you need." Yes, you do need to be smart, but that's not where the base comes from.
[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
You'll learn about the several "weapons of influence" many people have used and still use on you (and you use on people) sometimes without even knowing. It also gives you great insight into sales.
I highly recommend it for a technical person.
You'll learn about the several "weapons of influence" many people have used and still use on you (and you use on people) sometimes without even knowing. It also gives you great insight into sales.
I highly recommend it for a technical person.
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Those are the two to start with.
If you like those, check out some of her nonfiction books: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (these are but a few - Rand wrote a long series of nonfiction books).
Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith (a philosophy professor at UT-Austin) is excellent because it unpacks Ayn Rand's ethical system in an academic style. Finally, Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand gives a comprehensive view of Rand's entire philosophy.
Light reading (not by Objectivist authors, and not in any particular order):
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson
What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
If you like those, check out some of her nonfiction books: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (these are but a few - Rand wrote a long series of nonfiction books).
Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith (a philosophy professor at UT-Austin) is excellent because it unpacks Ayn Rand's ethical system in an academic style. Finally, Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand gives a comprehensive view of Rand's entire philosophy.
Light reading (not by Objectivist authors, and not in any particular order):
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson
What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
Many of the ones I would list have been said before so I'll not list them, but I would also add.
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - at it's core I felt it was about systems and how we can never truly eliminate or remove them from our lives but only replace them with other ones. A hard lesson for me to learn but I feel it really changed the way I look at the world.
The Book of Five Rings - it's a book written by a masterless samurai duelist about his thoughts on dueling. But there was one statement in it that changed how I looked at everything, he basically broke down how we shouldn't have favored tools but rather use the ones that are best suited for the task at hand. Which had a profound impact on me.
there are more but I'll need time to think about it some more
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - at it's core I felt it was about systems and how we can never truly eliminate or remove them from our lives but only replace them with other ones. A hard lesson for me to learn but I feel it really changed the way I look at the world.
The Book of Five Rings - it's a book written by a masterless samurai duelist about his thoughts on dueling. But there was one statement in it that changed how I looked at everything, he basically broke down how we shouldn't have favored tools but rather use the ones that are best suited for the task at hand. Which had a profound impact on me.
there are more but I'll need time to think about it some more
Aaaah, a couple of ones that jump to mind:
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I prefer the latter, but they're both great books. I discovered Rand later in life, after a lot of my beliefs were probably already pretty well locked in, but her outlook certainly resonates with me, and the inspiration I found in her books helps nudge me in the direction of truly to live my life more fully as my life, not someone else's idea of what my life should be.
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins. I was already a borderline atheist anyway, although I tended to use the term agnostic to avoid arguing with friends & family, considering that I live in the Bible Belt. But Dawkins' book showed me a counter argument to the "irreducible complexity" argument that made sense on a very fundamental level, and IR was one of the last things that kept even a vestige of "mystical" thought alive in me. After reading this book, I felt very comfortable in being an atheist, and I also decided to quit dodging the issue and start telling people that I'm atheist, whether they like it or not. Also, see above: I'm not interested in living a life that's about trying to please other people. I get one crack at this, and it's fairly short. This is my life, damnit.
The World Is Flat - Thomas Friedman. Considering that I was already a libertarian leaning, pro free-markets / free-trade type, you might think that his book would have had little impact on me. But it actually made me a lot more aware of the various implications (pro and con) of globalization. Largely, though, it reinforced my thinking that globalization is - over the long term - a mostly good thing. It will hurt some individuals in the short-term, but it also creates a lot of opportunities.
But beyond all those, the one book that I consider the single most life-changing book of all... the book that I'd probably refer to as my Bible if I didn't get a bit queasy about even making that joke:
The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I had some ideas I was working on, and some plans to do a startup a while back. But I really had NO idea of the process of going from "an idea" to "a company" much less a profitable, growing, scalable company.
Reading TFSTTE felt like "taking the Red pill". Now I see the path from "idea" to "company" far, far more clearly than I ever did before. And while it's no guarantee of success, the process that Steve lays out feels like the closest thing you could get to a "paint by numbers" approach to building a business. We've been working through the Customer Development Methodology for a while now, and I'm pretty sold on it's value. And we haven't even always done it right (for various reasons).
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I prefer the latter, but they're both great books. I discovered Rand later in life, after a lot of my beliefs were probably already pretty well locked in, but her outlook certainly resonates with me, and the inspiration I found in her books helps nudge me in the direction of truly to live my life more fully as my life, not someone else's idea of what my life should be.
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins. I was already a borderline atheist anyway, although I tended to use the term agnostic to avoid arguing with friends & family, considering that I live in the Bible Belt. But Dawkins' book showed me a counter argument to the "irreducible complexity" argument that made sense on a very fundamental level, and IR was one of the last things that kept even a vestige of "mystical" thought alive in me. After reading this book, I felt very comfortable in being an atheist, and I also decided to quit dodging the issue and start telling people that I'm atheist, whether they like it or not. Also, see above: I'm not interested in living a life that's about trying to please other people. I get one crack at this, and it's fairly short. This is my life, damnit.
The World Is Flat - Thomas Friedman. Considering that I was already a libertarian leaning, pro free-markets / free-trade type, you might think that his book would have had little impact on me. But it actually made me a lot more aware of the various implications (pro and con) of globalization. Largely, though, it reinforced my thinking that globalization is - over the long term - a mostly good thing. It will hurt some individuals in the short-term, but it also creates a lot of opportunities.
But beyond all those, the one book that I consider the single most life-changing book of all... the book that I'd probably refer to as my Bible if I didn't get a bit queasy about even making that joke:
The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I had some ideas I was working on, and some plans to do a startup a while back. But I really had NO idea of the process of going from "an idea" to "a company" much less a profitable, growing, scalable company.
Reading TFSTTE felt like "taking the Red pill". Now I see the path from "idea" to "company" far, far more clearly than I ever did before. And while it's no guarantee of success, the process that Steve lays out feels like the closest thing you could get to a "paint by numbers" approach to building a business. We've been working through the Customer Development Methodology for a while now, and I'm pretty sold on it's value. And we haven't even always done it right (for various reasons).
Permission Marketing - Seth Godin, made me think about what he calls interruption marketing.
Purple Cow - Seth Godin, made me think about standing out.
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries, really changed the way I think about... Well, nearly everything that costs effort.
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins, good theory about why God most probably doesn't exist.
The magic of reality - Richard Dawkins, great story about evolution, religion, etc.
A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson, brilliant book. Perfect summary of our scientific advancements during the last centuries. He made me think about possible natural disasters.
Purple Cow - Seth Godin, made me think about standing out.
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries, really changed the way I think about... Well, nearly everything that costs effort.
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins, good theory about why God most probably doesn't exist.
The magic of reality - Richard Dawkins, great story about evolution, religion, etc.
A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson, brilliant book. Perfect summary of our scientific advancements during the last centuries. He made me think about possible natural disasters.
Talent Is Overrated - Geoff Colvin ( Theory from Anders Ericsson )
The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Introvert Advantage - Marti Olsen Laney
The Mindful Way Through Depression - Mark Williams et al.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Introvert Advantage - Marti Olsen Laney
The Mindful Way Through Depression - Mark Williams et al.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Just read "Never eat alone" and it has changed my thinking significantly.
- Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (a fun read. Pretty insightful. One of the best books about success, I think.)
- The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil (opened my mind to what the world could be)
- The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil (opened my mind to what the world could be)
The Way of The Superior Man
The Art of Learning
As a Man Thinketh
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Think and Grow Rich!
Psycho-Cybernetics
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
The Art of Learning
As a Man Thinketh
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Think and Grow Rich!
Psycho-Cybernetics
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
(http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/)
The intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham. Read it.
"Seeing like a state" by James Scott
"Riches for the poor: The Clemente Course in Humanities" by Earl Shorris
"Riches for the poor: The Clemente Course in Humanities" by Earl Shorris
The New Digital Age - Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen
Why We Do What We Do - Edward Deci
The Talent Code - Daniel Coyle
Why We Do What We Do - Edward Deci
The Talent Code - Daniel Coyle
I really enjoyed A Guide to the Good Life (on Stoicism) by William B. Irvine
A book that helped change the way I think is What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001646...
http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...
by Keith R. Stanovich. I'll quote here from a review of the book I wrote for friends on an email list about education of high-IQ children, and sum up an answer to your question in my last paragraph:
"For many kinds of errors in cognition, as Stanovich points out with multiple citations to peer-reviewed published research, the performance of high-IQ individuals is no better at all than the performance of low-IQ individuals. The default behavior of being a cognitive miser applies to everyone, as it is strongly selected for by evolution. In some cases, an experimenter can prompt a test subject on effective strategies to minimize cognitive errors, and in some of those cases prompted high-IQ individuals perform better than control groups. Stanovich concludes with dismay in a sentence he writes in bold print: 'Intelligent people perform better only when you tell them what to do!'
"Stanovich gives you the reader the chance to put your own cognition to the test. Many famous cognitive tests that have been presented to thousands of subjects in dozens of studies are included in the book. Read along, and try those cognitive tests on yourself. Stanovich comments that if the many cognitive tasks found in cognitive research were included in the item content of IQ tests, we would change the rank-ordering of many test-takers, and some persons now called intelligent would be called average, while some other people who are now called average would be called highly intelligent.
"Stanovich then goes on to discuss the term 'mindware' coined by David Perkins and illustrates two kinds of 'mindware' problems. Some--most--people have little knowledge of correct reasoning processes, which Stanovich calls having 'mindware gaps,' and thus make many errors of reasoning. And most people have quite a lot of 'contaminated mindware,' ideas and beliefs that lead to repeated irrational behavior. High IQ does nothing to protect thinkers from contaminated mindware. Indeed, some forms of contaminated mindware appeal to high-IQ individuals by the complicated structure of the false belief system. He includes information about a survey of a high-IQ society that find widespread belief in false concepts from pseudoscience among the society members."
So Stanovich, based on the studies he cites in his book, concludes that the cognitive strategy of being a cognitive miser (using the minimal amount of information and thinking possible, even if it is too little) is such an inherent part of the human condition that external incentives and societal processes of decision-making are necessary to overcome that weakness. He has a fair amount of optimism about filling mindware gaps through educational processes that would train more thinkers in correct reasoning (as, for example, the kind of statistical training that some but not all hackers receive during higher education). He suggests that actively counteracting contaminated mindware (which is something I have a penchant for doing here on HN) is considerably more difficult, because it is precisely high-IQ individuals who are best able to defend their irrational beliefs.
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001646...
http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...
by Keith R. Stanovich. I'll quote here from a review of the book I wrote for friends on an email list about education of high-IQ children, and sum up an answer to your question in my last paragraph:
"For many kinds of errors in cognition, as Stanovich points out with multiple citations to peer-reviewed published research, the performance of high-IQ individuals is no better at all than the performance of low-IQ individuals. The default behavior of being a cognitive miser applies to everyone, as it is strongly selected for by evolution. In some cases, an experimenter can prompt a test subject on effective strategies to minimize cognitive errors, and in some of those cases prompted high-IQ individuals perform better than control groups. Stanovich concludes with dismay in a sentence he writes in bold print: 'Intelligent people perform better only when you tell them what to do!'
"Stanovich gives you the reader the chance to put your own cognition to the test. Many famous cognitive tests that have been presented to thousands of subjects in dozens of studies are included in the book. Read along, and try those cognitive tests on yourself. Stanovich comments that if the many cognitive tasks found in cognitive research were included in the item content of IQ tests, we would change the rank-ordering of many test-takers, and some persons now called intelligent would be called average, while some other people who are now called average would be called highly intelligent.
"Stanovich then goes on to discuss the term 'mindware' coined by David Perkins and illustrates two kinds of 'mindware' problems. Some--most--people have little knowledge of correct reasoning processes, which Stanovich calls having 'mindware gaps,' and thus make many errors of reasoning. And most people have quite a lot of 'contaminated mindware,' ideas and beliefs that lead to repeated irrational behavior. High IQ does nothing to protect thinkers from contaminated mindware. Indeed, some forms of contaminated mindware appeal to high-IQ individuals by the complicated structure of the false belief system. He includes information about a survey of a high-IQ society that find widespread belief in false concepts from pseudoscience among the society members."
So Stanovich, based on the studies he cites in his book, concludes that the cognitive strategy of being a cognitive miser (using the minimal amount of information and thinking possible, even if it is too little) is such an inherent part of the human condition that external incentives and societal processes of decision-making are necessary to overcome that weakness. He has a fair amount of optimism about filling mindware gaps through educational processes that would train more thinkers in correct reasoning (as, for example, the kind of statistical training that some but not all hackers receive during higher education). He suggests that actively counteracting contaminated mindware (which is something I have a penchant for doing here on HN) is considerably more difficult, because it is precisely high-IQ individuals who are best able to defend their irrational beliefs.
Fascinating - sounds like the description Charlie Munger gives to his process. With less jokes :-)
Watership Down
It turned a lot of notions on their heads and made for an interesting read.
It turned a lot of notions on their heads and made for an interesting read.
True Life in God
http://www.tlig.org/
http://www.tlig.org/
Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That was my mass-market pop introduction to assets over liabilities, paying yourself first, and building value (long-term and tangible) over submitting to short-term lazy don't-rock-the-boat thinking.
The Stranger, Catch-22, Cat's Cradle
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars