
Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Eight Books Everyone Should Read - kumarski
http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sci/neil-degrasse-tyson-suggests-books-intelligent-person-read.html
======
tcskeptic
What a ponderous, pretentious load. This strikes me very much as a list of
"Books I want everyone to know that I think everyone should read" which is
very different from the stated title. Is Origin Of Species really a better
choice than almost anything on the topic by Dawkins or Gould for the general
purpose of "[learning] of our kinship with all other life on Earth"?

~~~
Happyhippy
They are selections for everyone, including 'beginners' which I assume is the
reason he selected them. They would have very little quoting other sources
with little explanations why.

Not a bad selection imo, though I would have thrown in the Torah/Koran as well
as the bible to inform you of all the major religions and differences. And
maybe remove Art of War for a maths primer like Euclid's Elements or somthing.

~~~
LeafStorm
Just a note: the Torah is a subset of the Tanakh, which is itself a subset of
the Bible. (Christians refer to the Torah as the Pentateuch and the Tanakh as
the Old Testament.)

~~~
gyardley
Sure, although if you want to read the Torah / Tanakh as Jews understand it, I
wouldn't just pick up a Bible. Assuming you don't read Hebrew, I'd get the New
Jewish Publication Society translation.

------
derrida
I've read some of those books cover to cover (Art of War, the Prince) &
other's I've glazed over because they were, well, boring & laborious & I don't
believe anybody should be recommending them as things to read for enjoyment
(Origin of the Species or The Bible, for instance). So here's my list of 8 for
things that you'll probably never finish, but extract huge value from anyway.

-Richard Feynman _Lectures on Physics_ \- religion

-Donald Knuth _Art of Computer Programming_ \- I can fuck around with manuals, other text books, but when I come to read the explanation of a particular concept in TAOCP, I always realise "this is the path of least resistance to understanding X" & then that scares me, because there is so much to know & it's really hard to understand _anything_ well.

-William James _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ For those that deny the possibility of spiritual experience within a naturalistic world view. A lot of atheism that is public today misses _empathy_ with religious experience.

-Martin Gardner's articles

-Douglas Hofstadter - _Godel, Escher, Bach_ & _Le Ton Beau De Marot_ \- for those that enjoy spending all day thinking about logic & languages (hello programmers) these two books are romantic pulp - you know you shouldn't be reading them, they are so hopelessly impractical, lofty & philosophical.

-Friedrich Nietzsche - _The Gay Science_ \- because it will infuriate people who are adverse to the sort of thinking you see in the humanities and they deserve to be enraged by this book. If you have an ethical system, think you can tell good from bad, right from wrong, read this book. Acid for the normative.

\- C.S.Peirce's notebooks - This hasn't been published in its completeness but
deserves to be (I just hope saying this here doesn't mean I'll never be able
to find a copy of some of his notes again). Another tragic of history that has
been looked over in much the same manner as Tesla. Peirce figured out
electrical gates could be used to implement boolean logic 50 years before
Shannon, axiomatised the natural numbers before Peano, made the distinction of
cardinal and ordinal before Cantor & nobody knows who he fucking was because
he was a chemist. What else is in his books that we haven't managed to
recognise the significance of yet?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
The Bible, boring? I mean, it drones on with boring passages sometimes, but
the stories are far from boring. I'd say terrifying, sickening, tragic at
times.

I'll bump your Feynman Lectures (watch the videos), and add everything else
(his books). Even laypersons can understand him.

Feynman wrote some lectures on computation too which has some gems in it.
[http://books.google.com/books/about/Feynman_Lectures_On_Comp...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Feynman_Lectures_On_Computation.html?id=HAitoCyzAXIC)

I will try your William James The Varieties of Religious Experience. I feel it
is one of the problems that works against a wider adoption or acceptance of
atheism that there is no "community"

I keep trying to finish Pepy's Diary, but so far I've failed.
<http://www.pepysdiary.com/>

With regard to The Prince, I was advised that there are many translations and
most are not done well. YMMV. Unfortunately, I can't remember which one my
philosopher friend recommended.

~~~
Lambdanaut
The "x begat y, and y begat z" chronologies that go on for hundreds of years
can get pretty tedious.

The sub-books that involve lists of Jewish laws can be a little dull too,
though some of the laws I'll admit are pretty funny.

------
yk
This is a horribly list to read, albeit a very nice list to put in to the
front of a book shelf. Most importantly, if one reads only one book on any
given subject, then one will only hear of one point of view. A problem that is
made worse by selecting classics, which are usually written to make a point
instead of summarizing the broader debate. The most obvious example from this
list is probably _Origin of Species,_ a work where Darwin did not talk about
the evolution of man, because he did not wanted to be drawn into a theological
debate.

Additionally the classics carry context, which may or may not be obvious. Here
the most obvious example from the list is Adam Smith, who did not write about
abstract global markets, as the term is used today, but he did write about a
collection of market stalls. Similarly, his thought about government and
regulation was informed by his times, the first edition appeared in 1776, the
same year as the declaration of independence and thirteen years before the
French revolution. So Adam Smith did never write about a modern nation, with
formal representation and a process for the transition of power, but he did
write about a late feudal society, in which the political power was held by an
unchecked former warrior elite.

[ The above does not mean that I am against reading classics, in fact quite
the opposite. The problem is just, that trying to get an important idea x,
then you should probably read "A modern introduction to x," not the classical
book where it first appeared, in an convoluted way embedded into some
discussion at that time.]

------
msvan
I'll go ahead and claim that most of these books are pretty dry these days.
Historically significant, yes, and everyone should definitely know of them and
what they're about. But reading them probably won't make much of a difference
to your life. The same information can be found in other places these days, in
forms that are more comfortable for the brain to digest.

~~~
passionfruit
Reading large works like these may stimulate your thinking much more than
getting the same information in a shorter format.

~~~
derrida
I think msvan may have been referring to books too. For instance: _Origin of
the Species_ spends a great deal of time presenting evidence for why evolution
should be believed. At the time this was of course necessary to convince all
of the skeptics. Now, it can be sort of dry. Dry as in "not stimulating". It's
much more interesting to follow a book that deals with things that are
controversial _today_. Reading Dawkins for instance is likely to push some
buttons even in those who accept evolution. It's also arguable that this sort
of thing isn't science, it's just philosophy (the idea of the Meme, for
instance) and if it is philosophy, how can we separate the philosophical
import of evolution from the science of evolution.

Yes, saying this is likely to rile up some Dawkins defenders, but then I've
proven my point, the issues it discusses are not dry the way that pages and
pages of evidence presented for an argument you already accept the conclusion
of is.

But I shouldn't really speak, I barely read these days.

------
russellallen
You too should read $classic-tome to learn $trite-lesson.

~~~
tossacct
Just because it is trite doesn't mean it is not right: because even a stopped
clock is right twice a day.

------
ekianjo
"The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook) – “to learn that capitalism is an
economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”" : Someone must have had
problems understanding Capitalism, it seems.

~~~
hackerboos
>Someone must have had problems understanding Capitalism, it seems

An obtuse comment considering he's a leading scientist.

To call capitalism an 'economy of greed' isn't without merit. After all raw
capitalism is about survival of the fittest where only the strong survive and
the weak perish, if it were not for the philanthropy of others.

I think the great thing about reading Adam Smith is how seriously
misunderstood his works are. For example, people cite Adam Smith as one who
believed in no social safety net, taxes and zero regulation.

This is simply not true and if you think it is you should go back and read the
book that you clearly have not read.

~~~
ekianjo
Adam Smith is not the only person to read to understand Capitalism. No need to
be pretentious.

> An obtuse comment considering he's a leading scientist.

So what? Since when being recognized in one field makes you competent in
another? A widespread fallacy.

~~~
hackerboos
You were being obtuse because since his opinion differs from yours he must
have had problems 'understanding' capitalism.

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah, because Capitalism is a system that has put millions/billions of people
out of misery and starvation throughout the world (and you can see that,
proven again when Communist China started to inject some capitalism in its
economy in the 1990s), and summarizing is as simply "greed" just does not do
much justice to it.

~~~
unalone
> because Capitalism is a system that has put millions/billions of people out
> of misery and starvation throughout the world

And meanwhile, it has systematized the misery and starvation of millions and
billions of people itself, while – cruelly – being so opportunistic, so
seemingly advantageous to the resourceful individual, that it teaches us to
despise those who suffer, to see them as somehow beneath us. The contempt that
was once the property of those few at the very, very top has become
democratized, so that we may all join in in feeling it.

I'm not purely anti-capitalist, but your dismissal of the possibility that
capitalism could have possibly done anything as horribly wrong to the world as
its critics claim is pretty one-dimensional itself. There's a good argument to
be made that capitalism hand-in-hand with the mass-production mindset of the
Industrial Revolution led to a society in which the value of individuals is
reduced rather than enhanced, and that this is one of the central crises of
the 20th and early 21st centuries. Your abrupt dismissal of that possibility
doesn't make it go away; it just makes you seem like you don't know what
you're talking about.

~~~
ekianjo
> Your abrupt dismissal of that possibility doesn't make it go away; it just
> makes you seem like you don't know what you're talking about.

Yet you write this on a computer, a smartphone or a tablet, which has been
provided to you at a very low, affordable price thanks to this capitalistic
model you seem to despise. And you are the one who is accusing me of not
knowing what I am talking about.

~~~
unalone
Yeah, see, this is the sort of argument that even freshmen College Democrats
think isn't worth arguing.

Yeah, my computer's a result of that capitalistic model. That computer was
made in a factory that attracted a lot of controversy for having working
conditions so poor that employees literally killed themselves. That factory is
the result of a line of thinking that dates back to Henry Ford, which is:
let's find _exactly_ the price that we can pay people to get them doing
monotonous, soul-deadening work for eight to sixteen hours a day without them
walking out. And the more these factories become the norm, the less we'll have
to pay, because the fewer other places they can go.

What amuses me about this is that I am _not_ a radical critic of capitalism.
As far as people who think capitalism's less than perfect goes, I am so far
along being okay with capitalism that my radical friends make fun of me for
it. Your treating me like I'm some idiot who doesn't know the first thing
about history suggests you haven't had many conversations about this, because
trust me, nothing I'm saying is controversial in the least.

The way I see it, capitalism is a very sensible model for creating new things,
for innovating, for encouraging systematic change in the directions of
optimization and consumer satisfaction. But this model is only as effective,
basically, as the freedoms which you're given within it – same as any system,
right? In capitalism, the biggest threat is basically that those with the
means of production and wealth hold all the reins, and they can inflict
horrible suffering upon lots of people without punishment. I'm not just
talking about paying people cruel wages to work at factories – I'm talking TV
networks producing terrible bottom-of-the-rung shows, and opposing competition
from cable networks who'd like to offer quality programming. Or a music
industry that is so determined to squeeze as much money as possible out of
super-celebrity bands that it's hurt the ability of smaller, local bands to
support themselves. The scale at which mass production operates is literally
inhuman: that is, it is so large that we are mentally incapable of processing
it without a whole lot of effort. And because of that, it's led to a lot of
nastiness that's hurt a bunch of people, not even because the people
inflicting the pain are evil, but because they can't comprehend the extent of
their actions. And, of course, they have incentives to look only at the good
their actions create, and not at all at the bad – much like you with your
silly "YOU USE COMPUTERS TOO" argument.

Now, the reason I'm not a radical anarchist like some of my friends is that I
feel people attempting to revise capitalism can still achieve something from
within the system. I also think that capitalism is better enough than the old
alternatives that its shittiness can be, not forgiven, but understood within
the greater historical context. My radical friends would disagree with this:
they'd argue that enough freedom was lost in the 20th century that we're worse
off now than ever before. I suspect they're wrong. They'd also argue that
capitalism cannot be fixed without outright revolution – I disagree with that
too. But I think it's pretty obvious that "capitalism unto itself" is an
outdated economic model with some blatant flaws, and that we'll see the world
slowly adopting more humane systems. And again, this is not a controversial
thought except among those who've rationalized the deaths and sufferings of
all the people who go into making this comfortable system for we lucky few.

I'm conflicted about how stuck I am with the system that currently exists,
about how little alternative I have. I hope that tech manufacturers figure out
a way to offer me good products with much less human suffering behind their
manufacturing; I'd pay a premium for that, in fact. And capitalism allows for
that too, so I can criticize the state of our capitalist world today without
rejecting capitalism outright and going to live in the woods. I like
civilization. I just happen to think that capitalism is not quite so civilized
as you'd like to believe it is for convenience's sake.

------
kyro
Agree with other comments here. I've flipped through Wealth of Nations, Origin
of Species and others and couldn't keep my focus tethered down.

So let me ask you this: What are the top 10 essential reads of today for
helping one develop a critical mind and a better understanding of the world
around them?

~~~
martinced
This thread is filled with the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy and it's
sad, so I can see where your question is coming from.

I personally like to read books from people who predicted things before they
happened and try to understand their mindset.

Understanding finance...

One may not like its writing style but Nicolas Nassim Taleb's "The Black Swan"
helped me understand how finance was indeed the crumbs of capitalism that
Buffet hates.

Understanding economy...

Another one I love --but it's in french-- is Charles Gave. That economist
(definitely not mainstream) did write, in 1999, that the introduction of the
common currency in Europe (the Euro) would lead to: "Too many houses in Spain,
too many industries in Germany and too many public servants in France. That
Spain was going to state default, followed by Greece".

So he got the order wrong about Greece (which already default a first time and
which is going to default again) and Spain, but besides that he was spot on.

And you cannot say: "If you take enough economists, one of them is going to
predict the future". Because here the prediction was way too precise to be
sheer luck. He did explain the precise mechanisms that would lead to that
situation (and he did bet his money accordingly and made millions).

Basically after reading that you understand how wrong the Keynes school is and
how Krugman totally lost it (yeah, let's mill a $1 trillion coin... Why not
mill 26 of them and be done with the public debt right!?).

There are going to be more state defaults in Europe (it's not even opened up
for debate), starting with Greece which is going to default again. There's
going to either severe inflation or partial state default in the U.S. too
unless public spendings are dramatically brought down. No way out.

I'd suggest not to read from people explaining the past or the present. It's
not interesting. It's more interesting to take out older writings explaining
what's going to happen in the future and why. People able to do that are the
most critical thinkers ever.

These writers often use an aggressive tone but you have to bear with it: these
people are right and they know it and hardly anyone is listening to them.

~~~
yk
> Basically after reading that you understand how wrong the Keynes school is
> and how Krugman totally lost it (yeah, let's mill a $1 trillion coin... Why
> not mill 26 of them and be done with the public debt right!?).

I would suggest you read some Krugman ( or Keynes), the entire point of the $1
trillion as opposed to $26 trillion is, that the government owes roughly $1
trillion to itself. So you do not change anything, the coin is just to get
around a law that is there to pretend that money is essentially the same stuff
for a government as it is for a private citizen.

------
Tichy
Apart from what others said, I'd like to point art that The Art Of War is not
really about killing, it clearly states that the best victory is the one won
without fighting.

~~~
qznc
I agree. Likewise, I learned very different lessons from those books. For
example, Machiavelli's Prince is a set of anecdotes on how to acquire power.
If that is for good or evil, is up for interpretation [0].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_Th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_The_Prince_as_political_satire_or_as_deceit)

------
jtokoph
It's good to see the bible on that list. I should get around to reading it.

~~~
mylittlepony
Why is it good? Only Christians should read it (to become atheists). For
anyone else, I think it's a waste of time.

~~~
lolcraft
The Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes are the shit, though.

But honestly, yeah, the Bible is the poorest written fiction I've ever not
finished reading. It's not even worth the paper as a religious reference,
surprisingly. Maybe reading something like Norman Cohn's "The Pursuit of the
Millenium" would be more useful for someone wanting to understand (more
deeper) christianity, though it's quite a heavyweight. And I understand
Feuerbach's "Essence of Christianity" is a classic, though I'm yet to read it.

~~~
unalone
If you're going to read the Bible for pure enjoyment, _please_ avoid the King
James. Versions exist which are indeed enjoyable to read, yet faithful enough
to the original texts that you get something interesting out of them.

I think my favorite anecdote about the importance of translation comes from
Jack Miles and is about the Book of Job. Translated the King James way, at the
end of Job God reveals himself and Job says something like, "I know that you
can do all things, and that I am an ignorant muddler before you. Now that I
can see you truly, I despise myself and repent." So the story ends, basically,
with Job saying that God is too big and awesome for him to comprehend, and
that he is not worthy, he is not worthy!

But Miles argues that the original passage is cleverer and more word-play-y
than the popular translation gives it credit for. He puts forth a far more
fascinating translation, which paraphrased is something like: "You know you
can do anything. Nobody can stop you. You think I'm ignorant, and scold me for
talking of things beyond my comprehension. But now that I have seen you for
myself, I shudder in sorrow for mortal clay." He judges God and _finds him
wanting._ And God restores his money and good health, and then for the rest of
the Old Testament, he falls silent. Nobody else speaks with God throughout
that chronological narrative.

When God does show up again, it's as Jesus – a vessel through which God can
experience human suffering for himself and try to redeem it, rather than
merely judging it. And as Christ he allows himself to undergo even worse pain
than he inflicted upon Job, in the hopes that mankind might one day rise above
that suffering.

The Bible is a much smarter and better book than it's given credit for, both
by atheists and Christians alike. In the hands of somebody insightful and
informed, it is wise as fuck, and thought-provoking as anything. (It's no
Bhagavad Gita, but then nothing's as wonderful as the Bhagavad Gita.) In the
hands of somebody either trying to read it as a narrative that will somehow
explain the existence of God, or, worse, as a series of rules for living that
God gave us, it's dull and ponderous, but don't let the yahoos ruin a good
thing. The day we respect the Bible as the slippery and subtle book that it is
is the day religious fundamentalism will no longer have an excuse for being.

~~~
gyardley
Really? The King James Version of the Bible has the most beautiful language of
the batch and will help you understand much about modern literature. Compare
that to something like the somewhat-more-accurate but dry-as-dust New Revised
Standard Version, or the informal horrorshow of things like The Message -
neither of which has anything like your Jack Miles anecdote. What version
would you recommend?

I'm a little biased here, but if you want to explore the religious content of
the Bible, just chuck out the Bible and go to Jewish commentaries on the Torah
and Tanakh. Plaut's 'The Torah: A Modern Commentary' and Lieber's 'Etz Hayim'
are good places to start.

------
dbecker
The vast majority of comments here (and, I would guess most non-commenting
readers) think this list is pretentious BS.

Though it's a tangent: I'm curious about why it has received this many
upvotes?

~~~
unalone
Hacker News's upvote-only policy for stories means that unless a story is
flagged so much mods remove it, it will hit the front page so long as a
significant minority of users thinks it's interesting. There's no "critical"
crowd control of users saying "No, this isn't worth my time, back down you
go."

Sometimes this is good, and allows controversial opinions to hit the top of
HN; other times we get the Reddit effect, and short, fluffy pieces rise to the
top instead of longer posts that might take longer to read, assess, and
upvote.

I find the set-up kind of ironic, because when I first joined HN I was a
college freshman who posted some fairly fluff things I'd written in the hopes
that people would read it and get to know me. Now that I'm working on more
interesting things, I don't think I'll be bothering to submit them here,
simply because I doubt they're quite easy enough to receive votes. All in all,
I don't think it's that the system's broken – like I said, this allows
controversial pieces to still hit the top – but it's a downside to the way HN
handles voting that cannot easily be avoided.

------
baby
What is really awesome is that all those books are offered for free! Anyone
has a better format to read "Newton's Principia : the mathematical principles
of natural philosophy" ?

~~~
Someone
To start with, I think he should have linked to
<http://archive.org/details/newtonspmathema00newtrich>, not to their .txt
link.

It also is on
[http://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Mathematical_Principl...](http://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_P.html?id=Tm0FAAAAQAAJ&redir_esc=y),
but 'not yet available in your country' for me, so I don't know whether that
is good.

There is a free ePub on the iBookstore in the original Latin (also a paid one
in English)

If you read anything by Newton, I would advise Opticks, by the way, to learn
that, even for geniuses, it is all hard work to get there (TL;DR version: he
did not order his lenses on the Internet and needed the sun (in England) for
lots of his experiments)

------
abootstrapper
I'm ok with this list of books, but the whole "you should read this to learn X
point of view" is obnoxious. How about I read it and derive my own point of
view from the book!

------
stcredzero
_> most of the time humans are Yahoos._

A human's relationship to being a yahoo is like a car's relationship to
running off the road. Right now, deliberate steering is required. Also, it
seems that one day soon, this will be automated.

------
noblethrasher
Basically he's saying that everyone should have a history minor.

~~~
noblethrasher
The downvoting is suprising.

I have a history degree and that list more or less represents some of the
required reading for an undergraduate history program.

------
JulianWasTaken
Blogspam.

I agree with most of the comments that this was a rather lackluster list, but
the actual link is
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degras...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c38vowu?context=2)

~~~
aurelianito
This "blogspam" has the added value of links pointing to ebooks, so you are
able to read them now. I prefer it to the original reddit comment.

------
hexonexxon
should've made it 9 books

Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Ralston
Saul a critical essay of how the age of reason was distorted to trample all
over modern democracy

~~~
jacques_chester
Which sounds a bit like a riff off Hayek, who riffed off a long and
illustrious line of skeptics of rationalism.

------
Allower
Neil DeGrasse Tyson has got to be the most artificial 'Smart' guy the media
had put forward since Carl Sagan.

~~~
Allower
I should continue, Both Carl and Neil are delightful men, they inspire an
interest in the world that surrounds us in a way that few are capable of. I
simply see a degrade in their value once they attempt to push one dogma or
another.

