
Bret Victor's favourite books - neel8986
http://worrydream.com/#!/Links
======
nairteashop
I really like "Reading Tip #1" in the "Links 2013" page, reproduced below:

It's tempting to judge what you read:

 _I agree with these statements, and I disagree with those._

However, a great thinker who has spent decades on an unusual line of thought
cannot induce their context into your head in a few pages. It’s almost
certainly the case that you don’t fully understand their statements.

Instead, you can say:

 _I have now learned that there exists a worldview in which all of these
statements are consistent._

And if it feels worthwhile, you can make a genuine effort to understand that
entire worldview. You don't have to adopt it. Just make it available to
yourself, so you can make connections to it when it's needed.

~~~
emilga
> _I agree with these statements, and I disagree with those._

I find both of these reactions to be equally subversive. Whenever I find
myself _agreeing_ with something, I'm unwilling to poke around for holes in
arguments or question the accuracy of facts presented. Similarly, whenever I
_disagree_ with something, I'm unwilling to concede the strong points of an
argument or approach the problem from the presented perspective.

To minimize the effects of these emotional reactions, it helps making my
judgments as granual as possible. (Don't judge the person: judge each
individual action separately. Don't judge actions, judge consequence and
intention separately, etc.)

Furthermore, to minimize the polarizing effects of true-false dichotomies, I
instead assign ratings (1-6) for a statement's probability of being true.

For opening myself to contradicting world views, it helps to ask _what would
have to change in the world for this statement to be true?_. Instead of
forward-reasoning, where you admit your world view and reason forwards to
correct conclusions, this mental trick fixes the conclusion and makes you
reason backwards towards hypothetical worlds and asks you to identify their
properties. It's then easier to diff your view against the proposed worlds and
shift your beliefs accordingly.

~~~
iliis
Tha reasoning backward trick sounds very interesting. Certainly a cool idea I
have to try!

Also, it sounds you might be interested in LessWrong.com - if you haven't
stumbled upon it yourself already.

------
tootie
I thought Godel, Escher, Bach was a total snooze. It was like 800 pages of
Hofstadter trying to prove he was clever.

~~~
al-king
If you're not into his style, GEB can be a bit perverse, but Hofstadter is
genuinely excited by the ideas (and the games and wordplay he uses to convey
them). If you look at the sum of his work, its tone comes across as pretty
humble - humble for himself, that is; not apologetic for the ideas.

His latest with Emmanuel Sander, "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel
and Fire of Thinking", is comparatively much more straightforward and less
obfuscated, and still fascinating.

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spikels
Not sure Howard Zinn's "A People’s History of the United States" is a good
pick unless you are already very well versed in history (and many other
subjects) and know what to ignore. While an interesting read he takes a
strongly biased point of view and many of its claims have not stood the test
of time (e.g. Rosenberg's atomic spying). So you may learn may things but many
of them will be false.

~~~
mikevm
I agree with you. I thought I was buying that book to read about US history,
but it's more of an alternate US history for those who already know US history
pretty well. His writing style also annoyed me very much as he'd jump from
timeframe to timeframe which makes it hard for you to follow.

------
hf
Undoubtedly these excellent books call for a unique presentation. I, however,
would like to see simple text-only list companion to go along with it. Turns
out, this is not just a matter of grep'ing through the source: the only actual
"text" are the link URLs.

I wrote a script[0] to create the list for amazon links at least:

    
    
        # Script redacted - I think HN isn't happy
        # with my scraping.  Fair enough.
    

The list contains 44 entries -- to much to post here, I'm afraid.

[0] Using the `mojo` cli tool for ad-hoc HTML parsing from
[http://mojolicio.us/](http://mojolicio.us/)

~~~
nickloewen
Here's the beginning of the list[0] ('Design' and 'Engineering') in plain text
(Markdown), using the "I can just type it out faster than I can try to parse
it" approach. I'll do more later, maybe.

The 'unique presentation' also seems to mean no alt-text (bad) and no title-
text (disappointing)...

[0]: [http://pastebin.com/9NKtqJSw](http://pastebin.com/9NKtqJSw)

Edit: Added a little more[1]. Maybe someone else will add some while I go
write an exam :)

[1]: [http://pastebin.com/J0vi5uvJ](http://pastebin.com/J0vi5uvJ)

~~~
hf
While by no means as well-formatted, the following list contains the output of
my now-redacted script:
[http://pastebin.com/NT2TKRTM](http://pastebin.com/NT2TKRTM)

------
stiff
Hamming's "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" is available online as a
series of video lectures:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30)

------
gavinh
Isn't there some book about not displaying all of your website's text in
images?

~~~
shiven
Could never view that site on my iPhone (4S/iOS7.1). Mobile Safari crashes
within a few seconds! Bad design from _my_ 'user' perspective.

------
Uncompetative
In July 2012, it was announced that active development on Fortress would cease
after a brief winding-down period, citing complications with using Fortress's
type system on existing virtual machines.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_\(programming_language\))

[https://blogs.oracle.com/projectfortress/](https://blogs.oracle.com/projectfortress/)

[https://java.net/downloads/projectfortress/reference.pdf](https://java.net/downloads/projectfortress/reference.pdf)

I'm just putting this here as Bret Victor's link no longer works.

------
seanjensengrey
This should be on this list [http://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-It-Modern-
Heuristics/dp/3540...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-It-Modern-
Heuristics/dp/3540224947) single best technical book I have ever read.

Also, if you ever need to give a gift, [http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Turing-
Omnibus-Excursions/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Turing-Omnibus-
Excursions/dp/0805071660)

------
hmgibson23
Literature is notably absent...

~~~
drcode
Yeah, for some reason it is culturally unacceptable in our society to claim
that fiction literature is unimportant.

We live in a society where it's fine to make shocking arguments about just
about anything, but if anyone were to dare argue "What Dostoyevsky and
Shakespeare had to say is pretty irrelevant and uninteresting at this point"
they are a social pariah.

~~~
williamcotton
You've touched on something incredibly deep here.

Fact and fiction are one and the same in storytelling, that is, in the
conveying of ideas from one person to another.

A mathematical system of symbolic logic is just a strange loop. It is a
fiction. It is rooted in nature, in the world that we observe, but so is a
poem.

There's been a trend since the Enlightenment to split the world in to RATIONAL
SCIENCE and OTHER THINGS. The goal was mainly to finally remove all of the
religious mumbo-jumbo and superstition from the realms of science. In the
process however, we ignored our qualities of perception and language. Not only
is the majority of what is important and true in our lives expressed through
words and feelings but it also colors every aspect of mathematics and science.
It basically took those fields eating their own tails to realize the ultimate
folly of their philosophical pursuits.

Thoughts like these are often misinterpreted as attacks on reason and
rationality. They are merely illustrations of the limitation of pure reason, a
topic that has been broached by the great thinkers time and again. The lessons
never seem to sit. Language and metaphor are constantly shifting yet our
written records are set in stone, destined for misinterpretation.

But life without folly, without mystery, what life is that?

------
oh101
$13,000 for used copy of Art of Doing Science and Engineering

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/9056995006/ref=tmm_hr...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/9056995006/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&sr=8-1&qid=1397381213)

~~~
mikevm
Or $25 for a Kindle edition: [http://www.amazon.com/Art-Doing-Science-
Engineering-ebook/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Doing-Science-Engineering-
ebook/dp/B000P2XFPA)

------
jimhart3000
Aside from the comics, no fiction. That makes me sad.

------
zenbowman
In case someone is looking for Hamming's Art of Science and Engineering book:

[http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-
TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn...](http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-
TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEngineering.pdf)

And the entire series of lectures is on youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30)

------
bachback
he would likely enjoy Lawvere's conceptual mathematics.

~~~
nextos
This is a very interesting book, but I'm curious as to why you make such
statement?

------
thisisparker
Outside of the comics section, this includes virtually nothing written by
women. May be that there's lots of good and important stuff out there Bret is
missing.

------
joshdance
I really enjoy Bret Victor's work, but I found the UX of the favorite books
site really hard to navigate and enjoy.

------
codecondo
This looks like something for the bookmarks, and that's exactly where I've put
it now, thanks!

------
midgetjones
Bret Victor is a wonderful man.

------
lispm
Why is he using links to Amazon? Any reason why Amazon is preferred over other
book stores? Is he getting an money from Amazon?

How about supporting smaller local book stores, instead of making billionaires
richer?

~~~
d0m
>> Any reason why Amazon is preferred over other book stores?

Personally, for the reviews, the price and the very fast workflow from "What's
this book about, is it good?" to "It's on its way".

>> Is he getting an money from Amazon?

Hopefully.. why not?

>> How about supporting smaller local book stores, instead of making
billionaires richer?

In _my_ book stores, there are unfortunately very few books about business and
technology. I don't buy from amazon "to make the billionaire richer" but just
because they're great at what they do.

~~~
lispm
There are community sites for reviews.

I have several books stores in my town where I can order these books. Even
online.

No need to support ONE particular book store.

~~~
xkarga00
Do these several book stores in your town send books overseas? Are their
prices (including packaging and shipping cost) reasonable? Do they provide a
site where i can find reviews about books i am interested in while ordering?

