
Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before? - behnamoh
I&#x27;m looking for mind games, plot twists, brain expanding books, and literally anything that transforms me into a smarter, wiser person.
======
bemmu
"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The
Matrix, except taken up a few notches.

Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it
continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being
unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels
continuous.

What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not
continue then as well (the classic teleporter question). But it doesn't stop
here.

What if you destroy it, but it just happens to continue somewhere else? Then
it should continue there as well. So if you think that teleportation would not
mean death, then you kind of have to accept that if anywhere in the universe
at any time the same pattern exists when you die, then you can't really die
because you'll just continue on from there instead.

Not sure I accept it, but it's certainly mind-bending to think about!

~~~
farnsworth
It's either this or another Greg Egan book that has simulated people
reprogramming their own consciousness. Changing their thought processes,
personal motivations, and memories. I think he goes into some depth on how
they can do that safely and what the implications are. One character programs
himself to be obsessed with carpentry and spends lifetimes of subjective
simulated time trying to craft the perfect table, but has a timer to turn off
that motivation after some period of time. It's a fascinating idea that has
stayed with me, and I think of it every time I see another depiction of a
"brain in a computer". I'm disappointed that nobody else has tackled that
idea, I think people are still getting used to the concept and it will be a
few years before we see something like that in some more pop-culture sci-fi.

~~~
NoodleIncident
Diaspora includes a few examples of this as well. Mathematical discoveries can
only be made in the "mines", and people install these mods to make them better
at mining, after working through some of the beginner steps unaltered to see
if they'd like it. There's also a mod that explicitly prevents you from ever
uninstalling it; I don't remember what else it even did, it seemed to spread
like a slow virus through the artistic communities in the simulation.

~~~
whtrbt
Was it forgetting - memories fading?

------
9214
• "Laws of Form" by George Spencer-Brown, a little book that describes how to
bootstrap the Universe from nothing. Louis Kauffman [1] has a lot of
papers/writeups on it, from knot theory to quantum physics. If you ever wanted
to make a pancake truly from scratch, this is a place to start.

• "The Unconscious as Infinite Sets" by Ignacio Matte Blanco. Reformulates
Freud in logico-mathematical terms and establishes a formal system (bi-logic)
to describe unconsciousness phenomena: in case you ever wanted to apply
category theory to study yourself.

• "The Protracted Game" by Scott Boorman. Interprets Maoist's revolutionary
strategies during 1927 - 1949 period as a game of Go. Interesting both from
historical, military, and game-theoretical perspective; raised an appreciation
of Eastern wisdom and 'board games as a tool of thought' [2] for me.

• "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering" by W. J. King. Written in 1944, but the
advice is still relevant, more so to the software engineering field. Should be
at least skimmed at any part of your career.

• "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Alber Camus. Unequivocally answers the most
important question there is — does life have meaning, and if not, should you
kill yourself over it? I read it in my teens while wrestling with existential
dread, and lived a somewhat happy and interesting life ever after.

[1]:
[http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Form.html](http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Form.html)

[2]: There's also "Laws of the Game" by Eigen & Winkler that describes natural
phenomena as glass-bead games with various rules.

~~~
9214
Retroactively, I would also add "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari to
this list, except that I haven't yet read the actual thing, but only dipped my
toes into related studies, like e.g. "The Allure of Machinic Life" by John
Johnston that traces the history of cybernetics, A-Life and AI fields and adds
a Deleuzian spin on top.

This is the only case in my life where I wanted to _adopt_ author's philosophy
and learn to see the world the way they do. The content is very
interdisciplinary and heavily borrows from various fields (psychoanalysis,
dynamic systems theory, biology, linguistics &c) and will surely appeal to a
technically minded person.

~~~
dawg-
[https://libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf](https://libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf)

Books like that, I think there is a lot of value in just diving in and seeing
what happens. I would highly recommend it.

~~~
9214
I think that's the main idea behind the book's rhizomatic structure, as
authors put it.

------
gamegoblin
If you want smaller, quicker payoffs (but in no way cheaper!), consider the
anthologies of short stories by Ted Chiang. Most of them are 15-45 minutes to
read, with a couple longer (1-2 hours).

I've read both "Stories of Your Life and Others" and "Exhalation" in the last
month and I turned to my wife and said "that story just blew my mind" for
probably 75% of the stories.

You can find a few online. Here is a very short but brain-tickling example:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679](https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679)

~~~
cableshaft
I read Stories of Your Life and Others, and felt he had some interesting
ideas, but not very interesting characters, and pretty much all of his
characters sounded like they had the same voice (Which, as a writer myself, I
admit it can be difficult. I struggle with giving my characters distinct
voices as well).

Made it hard for me to get emotionally invested in his stories, and I found
them a bit of a slog to get through.

Not sure if I'll give his other books a read, but I might.

He has a background in Computer Science, by the way, for those that might be
interested.

~~~
gamegoblin
Give some of his newer stuff in "Exhalation" a try. He's improved with time. I
seem to recall 'The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling' having some distinct
characters, and also a really neat setting.

------
ltiger
"Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands,
Business, and Life" by Rory Sutherland

Explains why we choose brands over cheaper alternatives, why we're willing to
pay a lot more to lock in a deal, why we hate registering before buying the
thing (but are more than happy to do so right after), why Sony removed the
record button from the first Walkman, and much more.

This book forever changed the way I think about brands, and improved my design
and problem-solving skills.

A couple of Rory's rules:

• The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.

• Test counterintuitive things only because no one else will.

A couple of "mind games" from the book:

• Merely adding a geographical or topographical adjective to food – whether on
a menu in a restaurant or on packaging in a supermarket – allows you to charge
more for it and means you will sell more.

• "There's your problem," I said. "It doesn't matter what something tastes
like in blind tastings, if you put 'low in fat' or any other health indicators
on the packaging, you'll make the contents taste worse."

[https://bookshop.org/books/alchemy-the-dark-art-and-
curious-...](https://bookshop.org/books/alchemy-the-dark-art-and-curious-
science-of-creating-magic-in-brands-business-and-life/9780062388414)

~~~
user_0x
The food rule works for anything, but Detroit. [https://www.smbc-
comics.com/?id=2774](https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2774)

~~~
torstenvl
Detroit-style deep dish is the best style of pizza, and nothing else is in the
same league.

------
a_bonobo
Social philosophy/psychology, or cultural anthropology, is mind-bending to me.

Erich Fromm's The Sane Society - on how society impacts people's mental
health, and how to build towards a sane society

Fromm's The Art Of Loving - an analysis of different kinds of loves, trying to
dispel pop culture's lies about love, and love is actually hard work

Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death - on how not our fear, but our complete
denial of death existing leads to the weirdest outcomes in our society

Then there's political stuff -

Orwell's Essays, any large-ish collection. I find Orwell to be a much, much
better non-fiction writer than fiction writer. Extremely insightful into
political processes.

Robert Caro's books, perhaps the first The Years Of Lyndon B Johnson. Can't
get better insights into how power works on a local and not-so-local level.

Popper's Open Society and its enemies, hard to summarise - a defense of
Western society in light of the then-ongoing WW2. You probably saw the paradox
of tolerance a few times pop up, that's from that book, among a ton of other
stuff.

~~~
a_bonobo
Oh if you can, try looking for similar recommendation threads from communities
completely alien to you - law enforcement forums, midwife communities, car
mechanics, biologists.

HN is very insular in its interests as you can see with many posts here
repeating. Midwives' recommended books probably have a higher chance of truly
bending your mind into novel directions.

~~~
minhazm423
Any good examples of “foreign interest” forums?

~~~
a_bonobo
I reckon subreddits are a good start, even though their lists are always
domain-specific too:

Biology:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/6jfscw/what_are_so...](https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/6jfscw/what_are_some_books_that_everyone_studying/)

Law enforcement:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/gc13w5/mus...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/gc13w5/must_read_books/)

Midwives:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Midwives/comments/32fw16/book_recom...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Midwives/comments/32fw16/book_recommendations_for_aspiring_15_yearold/)

Any of the Ask* subreddits usually have practitioners answer:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/bl759q/ant...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/bl759q/anthropology_of_religion_recommended_books/)

------
ianai
“Desert Solitaire” by Ed Abbey and “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn. Both are wildly
different but explore the question of how different the other forms of life on
this planet are from ours. “Are we smart enough to know how smart animals
are?” By Franz de Waal et al explores this from a scientific perspective.

Abbeys about more, of course. He had that rare ability to turn his book into
something that felt like a direct conversation with me, the reader. I read him
in my 20s and his viewpoint definitely connects with someone wanting to
examine and express his/herself first before society’s overwhelming influence.
He discusses trying to free himself from the conceptual confines of the human
individual and societal experience while isolated in a national park. Quinn
uses a hypothetical conversation between a gorilla and a person to highlight
the fundamental us versus them approach humans take with the rest of earth.
Then Franz de Waal really drives home that animals are likely to be much more
mentally capable than we give them credit. They’re good books if you want to
know something more about the universe than what your human experience is.

Edit-corrected book title.

~~~
bcassedy
If you liked Ishmael, I recommend reading The Story of B. Its subject is very
similar to Ishmael but I feel that it does a better job of portraying how the
us vs them is woven into the very fabric of civilization. It's also a very
entertaining read.

~~~
ianai
I read Story of B as well. But I don’t have quite a clear enough memory of it
to even try to summarize it as anything past a sequel. I’ll go back to revisit
them some day.

------
CapmCrackaWaka
I enjoyed Blindsight by Peter Watts. It explores several different interesting
ideas.

For instance, what is the point of empathy/friendship/love in a
technologically advanced society? These were very useful things for our
ancestors to help each other battle the harsh environment, but we have
mastered our environment, so why waste brain power on empathy now?

The Wikipedia summarizes the books discussion of conciousness very well:

"The novel raises questions about the essential character of consciousness. Is
the interior experience of consciousness necessary, or is externally observed
behavior the sole determining characteristic of conscious experience? Is an
interior emotional experience necessary for empathy, or is empathic behavior
sufficient to possess empathy?

~~~
walleeee
With respect, if your takeaway from reading Watts is that we've "mastered" the
environment, I implore you to read the Rifters series and/or his blog. That's
about as far from his view as it's possible to get.

~~~
andrewflnr
It's not so much "we the humans have mastered the environment" as, well, a
generic sort of we. But yes, the notable thing about Watts is definitely not
his sunny optimism.

------
cstrahan
"To Mock a Mockingbird" by Raymond Smullyan. From Wikipedia:

> To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing
> Adventure in Combinatory Logic (1985, ISBN 0-19-280142-2) is a book by the
> mathematician and logician Raymond Smullyan. It contains many nontrivial
> recreational puzzles of the sort for which Smullyan is well known. It is
> also a gentle and humorous introduction to combinatory logic and the
> associated metamathematics, built on an elaborate ornithological metaphor.

Here's an example puzzle from the first half (the second half deals with
combinatory logic):

> Suppose I offer to give you one of three prizes-Prize A, Prize B, or Prize
> C. Prize A is the best of the three, Prize B is middling, and Prize C is the
> booby prize. You are to make a statement; if the statement is true, then I
> promise to award you either Prize A or Prize B, but if your statement is
> false, then you get Prize C-the booby prize.

> Of course it is easy for you to be sure to win either Prize A or Prize B;
> all you need say is: "Two plus two is four." But suppose you have your heart
> set on Prize A-what statement could you make which would force me to give
> you Prize A?

Fun book.

~~~
javajosh
Apart from playing twice, I can't think of a statement that could exclude you
from choosing arbitrarily between A and B, since within the conceit of the
problem there is no way to exclude B with a mere statement.

~~~
qznc
For this statement I will receive prize A or C.

~~~
carapace
You're not supposed to spoil it. The whole point of these puzzles is the joy
and knowledge you gets from solving them on your own. Publishing the answers
is selfish.

~~~
javajosh
Well, I for one don't consider this a satisfying solution (you could argue it
does not count as a solution at all). How is the host supposed to evaluate the
future? As I said in another comment, for that the host either needs iteration
or an oracle, and both of those are missing from the premise of the question.
It's like asking riddle where the solution is "Use a time-machine" when no
time-machine is mentioned in the riddle: it's indicative of a riddle so weak
it's almost an insult.

~~~
qznc
I don't consider it a statement about the future but rather about the
inevitable consequence whenever this game is played. Maybe it should be
rephrased as: For this statement one will receive prize A or C.

@Carapace I find joy in discussing the validity of answers like this and such
discussion is not possible without posting the answer first. I do feel sorry
if I spoiled someone the joy of puzzling themselves though.

~~~
javajosh
> _I don 't consider it a statement about the future_

Okay, so what does _one will receive_ mean, if it doesn't reference the
future???

------
bluejay2
"Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy" by Thomas Sowell. I read
this as a teenager with only limited exposure to economics and it cleared up
many misconceptions I held.

"Psycho-cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz. A plastic surgeon shares his techniques
for achieving your goals in life. 95% if not more of self-help books today
borrow (consciously or not) ideas discussed in this book, and often discuss
them with much less depth.

~~~
sdfin
"Basic Economics" was also very effective for clearing misconceptions I held.

------
whytai
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

This book makes every bit of life advice you receive afterwards feel shallow.
It feels like a reference to western thought.

It's also very well translated and reads very easily, and is very short. I
read about a chapter every morning when I feel motivated, and certain passages
really stick in my head.

It also helps to read whenever you feel overcome with emotion because of
something.

~~~
starpilot
An essential part of the hustle:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U)

~~~
Quinnium
This is the best thing I've watched this week. xD

------
mtalantikite
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” was maybe the most important book I read as a
teenager, and I still go back and reread it every so often. It should be
required reading.

For fiction, “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy, “100 Years of Solitude” by
Marquez, and “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison (or really anything by Toni
Morrison, it’s all amazing).

Also, Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of the Heart Sutra, “The Other Shore”,
gave me a much deeper understanding of my meditative practice and the way I
understand consciousness.

~~~
chrischattin
I'll second “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”. I read it in high school and it
blew my mind. Must read.

------
sova
Anathem by Neal Stephenson features a bifurcated world where a scholar-monk-
class of mathematicians lives in walled-off areas that mingle with the rest of
the world only on fixed dates. Some every year, some every ten years, and
others only every 100 years. There is a lot more to it, but I don't want to
give anything away.

~~~
tryauuum
Anathem features an awesome world, but I wouldn't call the book mind-bending.

------
chrischattin
Life changing books...

I read Decartes in high school during the teenage existential crises we all go
through and it blew my mind. Opened me up to the power of thinking from first
principles and a love of philosophy and questioning everything. Cogito, ergo
sum!

"Atlas Shrugged" gets a lot of hate, but it's a phenomenally important book.
It was one of those that completely consumed me during the read. I could not
put it down – stayed up late, work up early, and rushed home from work to get
back to it.

"Rework", "Getting Real", the other books by the old 37signals crew, and of
course "The Lean Startup" really changed the way I thought about software
development and business. I credit them for much of my startup/programming
success.

Taleb's Incerto series changed how I thought about investing, risk, and life
in general. "Fooled by Randomness" and "Antifragile" are especially good.

------
mjberg01
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig takes you deep
into the philosophy on what is 'quality'. Once you see it you can't unsee it.

A powerful excerpt from the book: 'So the thing to do when working on a
motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does
not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done
successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces
the right values, the right values produce the right thoughts. Right thoughts
produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material
reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.'

~~~
nicbou
Despite all the praise it got, I really struggled with that book. I hated it
so much that I had to check if I didn't pick the wrong book by accident. I
found that it's a very polarising book. It's life-changing for some, and
garbage for others.

There were a few insightful passages, but most of the book was pretentious
rambling. It was difficult to understand what the author was even trying to
say, with his head so far up his butt. It has a promising beginning, but
becomes increasingly dense and confusing.

Quality is the ability of a thing to do its job. Chasing the definition of
that word doesn't warrant a spiral into insanity.

~~~
growlist
> It's life-changing for some, and garbage for others.

I feel this way about Catcher in the Rye. My English teacher recommended it to
me obviously on the basis that I was an angsty teenager that would identify
with Holden Caulfield. But what a pile of crap it is. I still want back the
hours I wasted on reading that stupid boring book.

~~~
52-6F-62
That's a weird recommendation. I think you might have viewed it differently as
a bit of a retrospective or perspective piece.

I can't possibly so how the teacher thought suggesting that book to an angsty
teen to be a good idea. That's the time kids need to have their world opened,
not their angst re-affirmed. Very strange.

~~~
growlist
Thing is I was already reading some pretty bleak stuff at the time, e.g. Brave
New World and 1984, and as you can probably imagine the trials of a mopey
teenager didn't really impress much when put up against poor Winston and Room
101 etc.

~~~
52-6F-62
Haha fair enough

------
Lavery
House of Leaves is a great novel. Will feel like a completely fresh take on
narrative form.

Infinite Jest is also great, if you haven't read it. It gets a lot of bad
press mostly due to being fetishized by a particular type of insufferable
person. The book has its flaws, but is a great piece of writing and (depending
how old you are, where you are in life, etc) may offer a different lens. Also,
the writing is excellent.

~~~
ckosidows
I didn't finish Infinite Jest. I found it kind of insufferable. I really don't
want to detract from anyone who found it enjoyable; it's surely a monumental
work. But personally it felt incredibly depressing and that made it hard to
read.

The dialogues made it feel like experiencing isolation and disconnection from
other people; the characters talk to each other, but don't listen or care for
anyone but themselves or the ones/things they deify.

The thing is, I think that was kind of the point of the book (at least as far
as I read). But I couldn't handle it. That, on top of the many paragraphs of
needlessly esoteric language he peppers in, made me feel like I was reading a
book written for someone else.

Should I go back and finish the book? What makes it compelling to others?

~~~
lowdanie
My favorite aspect of the book is the way in which it depicts “addiction” in
its many forms such as being addicted to drugs, playing sports, consumer
products or work. It makes you think hard about the elusive nature of
happiness and fulfillment.

~~~
sanderjd
That was my primary takeaway as well. Some people I've talked to about it
didn't quite get that theme from it, but I think it helps frame its point in a
less scattershot way. It is still a concept I constantly think about, though
it doesn't help me avoid the pitfalls much, which I think is also kind of the
point.

------
tpaschalis
So many good suggestions here! I'll try adding two more

[1] "So Good They Can’t Ignore You" by Cal Newport. It changed the way I look
at my career and how I view my personal development.

[2] ADP 6-22 Army Leadership and the Profession by the US Army. Looking past
the militaristic stuff, it made me change the way I see leader/subordinate
relationships and how to start becoming a person others can depend on and look
up to.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-
You/dp/14555091...](https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-
You/dp/1455509124)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Army-Doctrine-Publication-
Leadership-...](https://www.amazon.com/Army-Doctrine-Publication-Leadership-
Profession/dp/1689088931)

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I just want to comment that the Army publication you listed is really good.
While you can only learn so much about leadership from books, the military is
one of the best organizations at explaining what leadership is. There is
another pub from the Marines that is similar and equally high quality. I think
it is called "Leading Marines" or something like that.

Also, FYI, all of these publications are free online. Here is the Army one you
linked to:
[https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN2003...](https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN20039_ADP%206-22%20C1%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf)

------
enitihas
Highly recommended for everyone: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahenman.

If you have difficulty interacting with people

1\. How to win friends and influence people (Easy read) 2\. Seven habits of
highly effective people (Harder read)

To learn how to write well: On writing well

To understand how large products are made: Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race
to Create Windows NT

~~~
giu
I have a conflicting relationship with "How to Win Friends and Influence
People," and maybe some of you may relate to this.

Disclaimer: I only read a small, initial part of the book, and I'll explain
the reasons behind this.

For one, I liked the initial parts of it; for example, remembering first names
is a nice and very attentive thing to do, and in general people appreciate it
when I can remember their first name after meeting them a second and third
time.

On the other side, I found it to be of a very manipulative nature (shouldn't
be a surprise; the title contains an "influence people" part), which rubbed me
the wrong way; the book presents some techniques that help you get "what you
want," but are quite superficial and hollow, i.e., you only pretend to be
interested. That's why I decided to stop reading the book.

The conflicting part in all this is the fact that I see this book recommended
all the time (and it's one of the best-selling books of all-time), but I just
cannot ignore its manipulative nature.

It might be that I'm simply not part of its target audience or that I'm
misinterpreting the messages in the book.

Nonetheless, I'd be interested to read your (and other fellow HNers) comments
on this book.

~~~
poulsbohemian
It's probably been 32 years since I read How to Win Friends, but my take on it
was that it is like many things we learn throughout life - first we model,
they we practice, finally we make it part of our nature, and eventually we
achieve mastery.

I didn't come away with the impression that the techniques are intended to be
used in a hollow, phony way, so much as to show the reader a set of steps to
get started toward genuinely showing interest in other people.

Not everyone can jump right in to Siddhartha or Zen and the Art or some of
these heavier books that might take people out of their default self-
absorption towards greater awareness of other people and their needs, but
Carnegie wrote something that is easy to access and get people started down a
path.

------
Bandrsnatch
Most likely no one is going to like this post. My father was a physicist and
he had a large library of books. Growing up all of these books were over my
head but I tried reading all of them. The more difficult the book the more
determined I became to read and understand the content. I found this to be
mind expanding. I began a life long quest to read the most difficult books and
texts I could find. It sometimes takes several passes. Some things didn't make
sense until years later. I recommend reading outside your comfort zone and
above your comprehension. The book doesn't expand your mind it's the reading
process and thinking about the reading that forces the mind to expand. I have
done this for 50 years and I still do it every day It's not one book but the
sum total of books that expand your mind. Read with curiosity and an
unquenchable thirst for knowledge. A man who reads one book lives once life
while a man who reads a thousand books life experiences thousands of lives. I
hope these word aren't wasted. I thought my fathers library was the library of
Alexandria and it was until I got a library card.

~~~
Taylor_OD
This is a very specific question but... Stoner by John Williams is one of my
favorite books. It was also more difficult for me to read than other books I
typically pick up which are primarily sci-fi and NYT bestseller fiction books.

When I read the Wiki for Stoner years ago I saw this line, "Bryan Appleyard's
review quotes critic D.G. Myers saying that the novel was a good book for
beginners in the world of "serious literature"". I looked up D.G. Myers and to
see if he had a list of serious literature or a twitter where I could ask
about such a list only to find he passed away in 2014.

Does anyone know of such a list? Googling provides results but nothing...
conclusive.

~~~
rch
I take well known lists (e.g. Gates') with a grain of salt, but cross
referencing with personal recommendations has worked well. I ended up getting
a copy of _Stoner_ after it came up a few times in as many weeks, so it was
handy last time I went on vacation.

I also usually search HN for threads like these when I'm looking for things to
read. I'm fairly certain that's how I came across _Seveneves_.

~~~
Taylor_OD
Fantastic. That's two books I will look into.

I did a little searching this morning and did find D.G. Myers old blog where
he posts a few of his favorite novels, including Stoner. Link here:
[https://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favorite-
martians.ht...](https://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favorite-
martians.html)

------
greyhair
I reread Moby Dick as an adult within the last couple years. Found it far more
interesting than I did when I was young. The book plays on narration in far
more complex ways than I remembered.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Seriously. Read it. The horrors of war
leaked into your brain through a sci-fi novel. If you enjoy that, try Player
Piano, a moral discourse on technology and its social effects. Even though it
is old, the social complications are familiar.

To keep your brain busy, anything by Umberto Eco, but this would be my order:
Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before.

------
Kaibeezy
Asimov’s _Foundation_ and _Robots_ series. Images and stories from those still
pop into my head randomly decades later, and bits and pieces appear throughout
pop culture. From the original trilogy up to _Foundation’s Edge_ would be a
good portion size.

~~~
Kaibeezy
_The World Beyond Your Head_ , Matthew Crawford, 2015.

Why and how to find focus in this age of distraction. Will give you a real
appreciation for woodworking, etc.

~~~
Kaibeezy
_Stick and Rudder_ , Wolfgang Langewiesch, 1944.

Understanding how something like powered flight works—the combination of
science, engineering, process, self-control, intuition, on and on—is highly
transferable to nearly any other acquirable skill.

------
combatentropy
_Mere Christianity_ , by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style
of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by-
step approach.

 _The Elements of Style_ , by William Strunk and E. B. White. I liked writing
since I learned how to. I didn't find this book until I was 17, and it
unlocked me to write in a way that better helped others.

 _The Language Instinct_ , by Steven Pinker. I guess I like writing and
language. Like C. S. Lewis, Steven Pinker has a way of writing about hard
things that makes them easy to understand, even enjoyable. The subject matter
is also news to most people, I think, who don't appreciate just how much that
language is built in to the human mind from conception.

~~~
ncmncm
Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash.

Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in
an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people
insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You
will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know
when." In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of
White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind
obeys them.

When White put out the second edition after Strunk died, he made up a bunch
more rules, the went back and doctored Strunk's original text to follow his
new rules.

But he didn't check his _own_ text. Typically he breaks his own rules on the
same page where he is promoting them.

The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You
cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

~~~
combatentropy
> its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing

That's the opposite of its effect on me.

> The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to
> write well. But you aren't good enough to know when."

I discerned no such put-down.

> In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and
> his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys
> them.

The gist of the book is the same as other books, such as The King's English,
On Writing Well, and A Sense of Style. Stephen King praises the book in his
own book, On Writing. I've also read a few articles on writing that say the
same basic thing.

The gist of these books is to write in service of the reader (as opposed to
your ego) and to work hard at it (as opposed to being lazy and just "letting
it all hang out" from the first draft), as it is a craft, like carpentry.
Specifically, try to avoid wasting words, try to use the best word at each
point, and try to order your words (and sentences and paragraphs) in the best
way for the reader's understanding.

There are some minor rules and preferences that perhaps Geoff Pullum is
pouncing on, something like, "A clever horse is a good-natured one, not an
ingenious one." I can see clearly that that is an archaism and take it for
what it's worth. After all, the book is about 100 years old. But any writer
should know that when you get down to that level of resolution, the detail
shifts a bit in the quantum foam. Things on that level vary a bit from one
decade to another, from one region to another. And language is like a craft,
in that there are some rules that can be followed 90% of time, but it is not
mathematics. You cannot distill a formula. I see Geoff Pullum taking it as
black and white, but English does not submit to such simplification.

Perhaps Strunk was more black and white, but White seems a bit looser, and I
think their combination balances each other out nicely. It reminds me that no
rule is absolute. However, for the vast majority of writers, they would
benefit from at least trying to follow a lot of them!

> The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You
> cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

For 80% of the writing I read in books, magazines, articles, etc., they suffer
from the kinds of problems addressed in the Elements of Style. There may be
other kinds of problems in a minority of writing, but far and away most
writing suffers heavily from wordiness, vagueness, clumsy construction. I
won't fault someone for incorrectly calling a horse "clever," but now I see
why most writing tires me out so much --- and I can rewrite it in my head to
be clearer.

~~~
ncmncm
There are plenty of absolute rules in English. White didn't know them, and you
don't know them, but neither of you ever breaks them, or is even tempted to.

If you need a book to tell you to use the best word, or to put your words in
order, it means you need far more help than you can get from a book.

------
jecoz
I would recommend "the perennial philosophy", by Huxley [1]. Schrödinger
recommends it in his "what is life" (another amazing piece).. you'll not be
disappointed if you thrive for mind expanding literature! :)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Perennial_Phi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Perennial_Philosophy&oldid=942885963)

------
JohnDeHope
I found Candide by Voltaire to be eye opening. I read a lot of philosophy and
self help, which is a category you could put this book in to. Since it's
fiction though, the message comes through more in the story than it does in
the author banging you over the head with "you should".

------
kangnkodos
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

The book is written to convince the reader that evolution is valid.

But to me, the shocking thing was to really understand the religious argument
for the first time, and understand why evolution challenges that world view.

In a nutshell, there is a web of related arguments which support the belief
that God exists. One of them is that the eye is so complicated, that it must
have been designed from the beginning by an intelligent being. Therefore God
exists.

But Darwin showed that many small random changes plus natural selection are
sufficient to explain the eye's complexity.

Why was this shocking at the time?

Just imagine you are walking around with a vague gut feeling that God must
exist every time you see a beautiful bird or a flower. You figure that
something intelligent must have designed that beatiful, complex living thing.
You see another complex wonder of nature, and feeling gets stronger. Perhaps
it becomes the main reason that you believe that God must exist.

Then one day, wham! Darwin releases his book, and it becomes clear that there
is a valid scientific explanation for the complexity of that flower which does
not require a supernatural designer.

Instantly your whole world view collapses. There's nothing in the science that
says that God does not exist. Science only says that other explanations are
sufficient. And yet, just that is enough to collapse that entire line of
thinking. There are still other arguments for the existence of God. But the
one you felt most strongly is gone.

Reading the book gave me a detailed understanding of that religious line of
reasoning, and what it might feel like to lose it. It gives me some
understanding of why people, even today, have a desire to reject the
scientific idea of evolution.

~~~
feintruled
I suppose your praise is more due to Darwin's original book, although it is
much less accessible nowadays - Dawkins does indeed explain it well. The thing
that struck me was how Darwin's ideas achieved such quick adoption, even in
that most pious of times, where to avow yourself an athiest was unthinkable.
It's an idea, once you are exposed to it, is so immensely powerful and perhaps
even to say in hindsight obvious - that the truth of it almost bowls you over.
The eldritch horror it must have inspired in the religious mind at the time
can only be imagined. And yet it could not be seriously challenged - because
it was so clearly TRUE.

One of the most staggering intellectual achievements of mankind. Philosophers
since Ancient Greek times had been speculating on the causes of being (some
even came close to guessing something like evolution) but they were just that,
guesses. Then finally we get Darwin, and bam, no guesses, here is the answer
(I acknowlege several others got just pipped to the post on it). That such a
simple idea lurked just out of our understanding all this time, but took such
staggering genius to unlock...

Wow!

~~~
kangnkodos
Darwin's book stayed very clearly away from any talk about religion.

Years later religious arguments against Darwin popped up.

Dawkins' book addresses these religious arguments head on.

~~~
james_s_tayler
I haven't read that particular book of Dawkins, but I have encountered a
mathematical argument I find somewhat troubling, though I don't have the
background to really examine it in depth.

It's discussed in this interview here:

[https://youtu.be/noj4phMT9OE](https://youtu.be/noj4phMT9OE)

Essentially the number of possible configurations of the sequence of a piece
of genetic code required to produce the instructions for producing a usable
protein are something like 10^77 to 1. The state space is filled with an
astronomical amount of unusable junk.

The next part of the argument hinges on the Cambrian explosion. They claim
that mathematically there isn't enough time for life produce enough trials to
give rise to the amount of species seen during that period given the duration
of the period and the sheer number of combinations life has to try in order to
find viable ones.

They sort of say that Darwin was like Newton. A good enough explanation of a
large portion of observable phenomenon, but it breaks down at the edges and a
new theory is needed.

They seem to want to fill it with Intelligent Design. I'm an atheist myself,
so I don't feel compelled to fill it with the god of the gaps, so to speak.
But I'm finding it hard to accept Darwin as the whole answer.

Does Dawkins book address this? Is there any book that addresses this?

~~~
kangnkodos
I dunno.

In the one Dawkins book I read, the mathematical part definitely gets
addressed. It may change your mind about the mathematical part.

I once read elsewhere that almost all the specific details Darwin came up with
have been overturned by other scientists. But the new scientific results prove
evolution and natural selection even harder.

My own personal speculation is that there may be many simple proteins that
have some type of use or another. I would be interested in reading about how
they came up with that 10^77 number. Sounds high to me.

On the other hand, I've read scientists make comments similar to your
comments. Not in papers, but in casual interviews. Some agree with you and say
that even given the current theories, there just wasn't quite enough time on
earth to create life from non-life.

It's not an accepted scientific theory at all. More like a crackpot idea that
will probably never be proved or disproved. But take a look at the panspermia
theory. Small seeds of some kind move from planet to planet. Maybe one landed
on earth long ago? It's a crazy idea. But it does address the issues you
brought up.

~~~
kangnkodos
Have you looked at this four part article? I haven't read it yet.

[https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2019/08/a-respon...](https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2019/08/a-response-
to-david-gelernters-attack-on-evolution/)

~~~
james_s_tayler
Ah this looks like the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Hmm... So it comes down to 'what is the actual mechanism behind which novel
proteins arise?'

Well that at least leaves me in a different position than I started. Thanks.

------
Wildgoose
Try Julian Jaynes book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind". Whether his conjectures are right or wrong, their scope is
mind-blowing. Don't be put off by the title - it became a surprise hit as a
popular science book.

~~~
AQuantized
Likewise Dennett's "Consciousness Explained." I don't agree with a lot of what
he lays out, and it doesn't quite accomplish the title, but it challenges a
lot of common intuitions about consciousness in a way I found productive.

------
arethuza
For Mind games, something from the _Culture_ series - _Use of Weapons_ which
does have a nice twist.

For sheer scale and sensawunda - _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and _Deepness in the
Sky_ by Vernor Vinge.

~~~
marktangotango
I concur on the Vinge picks. The Vinge story that really blew my mind was
"Marooned in Realtime", which I contend is best read in the context of the
other works in "Across Realtime":

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime)

For mind games, I submit "Kiln People" by David Brin. What if you could fork
your consciousness into another body and rejoin periodically? "Kiln People"
explores this idea in some remarkable ways.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96478.Kiln_People](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96478.Kiln_People)

~~~
freeqaz
I found Deepness in The Sky an incredibly frustrating read. I _really_ didn’t
enjoy the switching between perspective of human and alien. (Especially the
personification)

I was able to get about a third of the way through the book because my friends
kept saying it gets better... but it’s a thick book and I just didn’t get it
as I kept chugging

If I’m reading fiction it’s OK to put a book down. I ask you, dear internet
stranger, what do you enjoy about these books?

~~~
arethuza
I can't think of any way of commenting on what you said that isn't a spoiler -
perhaps worth noting that the personification you object to turns out to be a
pretty important thing in its own right.

Also, _focus_ has got to be one of the most terrifying concepts anyone has put
into a SF book.

------
state_less
You might like the Gateless Gate by Mumon. [http://oaks.nvg.org/gate-
struggles.html](http://oaks.nvg.org/gate-struggles.html)

Hui-Neng's "Your Minds Move"

 _The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks started an argument. One
said the flag moved, the other said the wind moved; they argued back and forth
but could not reach a conclusion.

The Sixth Patriarch Hui-Neng said, "It is not the wind that moves, it is not
the flag that moves; it is your minds that move."_

Joshu sees the Hermits

 _Joshu went to a hermit 's cottage and asked, "Is the master in? Is the
master in?"

The hermit raised his fist.

Joshu said, "The water is too shallow to anchor here," and he went away.

Coming to another hermit's cottage, he asked again, "Is the master in? Is the
master in?"

This hermit, too, raised his fist.

Joshu said, "Free to give, free to take, free to kill, free to save," and he
made a deep bow._

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ok, cute, but does it mean anything? Of course the wind moved the flag. Are
they all ignorant of physics?

No of course not. Its some metaphysical plug about relationships or something.
One of those 'one hand clapping' things. I guess the point is to get you to
stop overanalyzing. Which I'm doing.

But no, I didn't get my mind blown by monks in semantic circles. I guess I'm
not ready to be enlightened.

~~~
karatestomp
Lots of those stories come off as more wanky and esoteric than they're
supposed to. That one... maybe not, but most are supposed to be approached
with a lot more context than a Westerner with little exposure to Buddhism (and
especially the history of and other stories about the monks involved in the
stories) is likely to have, going in cold. They're not supposed to be nearly
as confusing as they can seem (or, at least, should be differently-confusing)
when one reads without some guiding commentary to fill in the gaps in
knowledge one is expected to have before approaching them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That sounds a lot like a post-facto apologist slant. Sure you can 'explain
them' but everybody hears them where their mind is at now. And for most folks,
especially junior monks just starting out, they might sound wanky too.

~~~
state_less
I think they are supposed to be 'esoteric and wanky' for the beginner, like
'mu' and 'one hand clapping' \- even for the eastern audience. The idea, if I
understand it correctly, is to get your mind hung up on a solution until you
either get frustrated, or find your way out of the conundrum.

I hope I didn't do any harm here. I was hoping to share some of what I thought
was pretty mind bending.

~~~
karatestomp
Even for the first story in Gateless Gate it's probably intended that the
reader know what "mu" means and the orthodox Zen Buddhist position on who/what
does or does not have Buddha-nature—and WTF "buddha-nature" is—before tackling
it. Those parts aren't supposed to be mysterious.

------
jgwil2
For science fiction, _Dune_ is a must, and _Children of Time_ is probably the
most mind-bending sci-fi I've read since. Both create imaginary worlds that
are so detailed and plausible that they make you see our world in a new light.

~~~
Cthulhu_
But take Dune with a grain of salt; I read them, but the books after the first
get a bit, I dunno, wishy-washy? Vague? Philosophical? I wanted to like it
because the universe it describes is compelling, but the stories themselves
lose a lot of luster.

Interesting to see what they'll do in the upcoming movie / series, whichever
it was though. It's great in terms of worldbuilding, and it's influenced a lot
of other stuff (like Warhammer 50K).

~~~
pjc50
Don't bother with the books past the first and maybe the second. _Dune_ itself
should be treated as a standalone masterpiece of worldbuilding.

~~~
sanderjd
I liked some of the ones after the second more than the second. But I honestly
wish I'd stopped at the first. It is such an amazing story that gives life to
an incredibly interesting and well built universe. Then, having built that
wonderful universe, the follow-on books got bored with it and decided to focus
on ... fancy sounding bullshit, for lack of any better description. Going back
to the first book, I see that the flaws were there already, but they were in
service of building the world, while that relationship flipped afterward.

------
JeffDClark
A piece of fiction that has never failed to make me think every time I read
it, is: The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by
Stanislaw Lem.

One of the tenets of getting your mind bent is reading things that are
antithetical to your own world view. For this reason I read and had my mind
bent by Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind - Graham
Hancock.

Finally, I offer The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan
Barber. I have read a lot about food, nature, etc. but Barber nails the heart
of the problem with our current (really recent past, in light of the pandemic)
food culture. From farms and restaurants to the consumers (we are not just
eaters) he shows how there could be another way that is more sustainable, as
well as being more delicious.

------
goblin89
In no particular order:

    
    
        Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (Keith Johnstone)
        The Master and His Emissary (Iain McGilchrist et al.)
        Emissary’s guide to worlding (Ian Cheng)
    

Black Swan by NNT already recommended elsewhere in the thread.

I want to go off-topic and recommend a non-book, Learning to Fly by Missing
the Ground[0] (Venkatesh Rao).

And further off the topic, the discussions in The Midnight Gospel were the
closest to qualifying as mind-bending experience recently.

[0] [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/11/20/learning-to-fly-by-
mis...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/11/20/learning-to-fly-by-missing-the-
ground/)

~~~
kgwxd
The Midnight Gospel is insanely good. It's the best thing I've watched in a
long time.

I'm a huge fan of Adventure Time so I was really excited when I heard about
it, but the trailer is just full of gross imagery and I expected it to be just
another stupid gross-for-gross-sake cartoon that I'd probably stop watching
after a few episodes. So wrong.

------
jlengrand
Ok, without wanting to sound like a crazy guy, this book has really had a
large impact on me : [https://www.amazon.fr/Finding-Your-Own-North-Star-
ebook/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.fr/Finding-Your-Own-North-Star-
ebook/dp/B0019O6IXE/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=find+your+true+north&qid=1589275099&sr=8-1)

It's basically a method that helps you find what exactly get you on, what you
get energy from, and how to reach it. Of course it requires a lot of
introspection but the book helps you there.

It sounds cheesy I know, but that book had enough impact that it really
changed the way I worked, and make sense of why I was so frustrated at times.
Couple months after reading the book, the company I work with offered me a
tailored job because I was finally able to clearly communicate what it is that
was driving me.

~~~
Cthulhu_
A bit of err, self-actualization? Goes a long way. I've been in a similar
point, eventually I was offered to go to a career coach. It's basically
someone that challenges you about what you want to do, what you want to
achieve. And in my case, identify that I'm a people-pleaser, I'd rather defer
to others to tell me what to do rather than take my own initiative, because
comfort zone, risk, etc.

~~~
jlengrand
Yes, pretty much really. Nothing you couldn't have done by yourself. The book
is just helping you along the way to make you realize those things yourself.
It sounds like you had a similar experience :)

It helped me a lot though. And I'm very surprised to see the amount of people
around me that don't know why they are doing what they're doing. That often
leads to a lot of frustration. :)

Good job!

------
wdrw
Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Many people think of themselves as rational and have mastered the basics
(understand the scientific method, know how to systematically solve difficult
problems, etc) but are still constantly fooled by their human, imperfect
brains into irrational thoughts and actions - both in day-to-day life and when
pondering larger questions (science, engineering, policy, philosophy). Many
aren't aware (just as I wasn't) that there are many more levels of rational
thinking to unlock, that mistakes and biases can be identified and reduced.
The book is adapted from a series of blog posts so lacks a bit in coherence
(can be hard to get into), but stick with it for a bit, and I guarantee the
ideas presented will be well-worth it.

~~~
fossuser
I’d recommend this one too.

There’s a nice clarity to it and it’s probably the most impactful book I can
think of for improving your thinking long term.

For an example of the writing style:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-
definitions)

------
newhackgoofin
I had to read Flatland slowly, but I would definitely describe it as mind
bending. Reading this book will literally change your perspective

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland)

------
neves
"Omnivore's Dilemma", Michael Pollan book changed the way I think about food.

"The Psychology of Everyday Things" by Don Norman, will change your mind about
user interfaces.

"Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky to change the way you see the world.

~~~
marnett
I stumbled across Chomsky’s “Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post
9/11 World” at my local library on the east coast while I was a senior in high
school. When checking out the librarian seemed confused, “interesting,” she
said “this book doesn’t appear to be in our system. It’s your lucky day. You
just got yourself a free book!”

That book impacted my life more than any other. It really opened my mind to an
entire world of dissenting, radical thought that could be both studied,
praised or rebuked. A true “The Giver” moment.

I have since moved to San Francisco - once a hot bed for the type of thought I
accidentally came across all those years ago. About 6 months ago, while
looking through my home library, I once again stumbled upon that book. I was
curious, for the first time, who the publisher of this book was. What
institution was so radical to give Chomsky a voice even still? And I
discovered it was City Lights Publications, the publishing arm of the famous
City Lights Bookstore here in San Francisco. Weird how the world works
sometimes.

To all reading, if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, you must go to
City Lights!

------
donquichotte
The Art of Electronics.

I can't say I've read it cover-to-cover, but it really is an excellent,
approachable electronics resource for enthusiasts and professionals alike.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I took a course that used it in college. It is really excellent, but probably
hard for a first exposure to electronics unless you are very committed.

------
ipnon
After reading "The Machine that Changed the World," by Womack, Jones, and
Roos, all product management paradigms besides Just-In-Time seem irredeemably
sub-optimal, almost provably so. The book is about the Toyota Production
System, and how Toyota's product management paradigm of JIT alone caused
Toyota to become the largest car manufacturer in the world over Ford, GM and
all the entrenched American mass producers.

~~~
cableshaft
Until a major event like a pandemic comes along, and shows that Just in Time
can be a bit fragile in those circumstances.

[https://www.marketplace.org/2020/02/27/justintime-
manufactur...](https://www.marketplace.org/2020/02/27/justintime-
manufacturing-model-challenged-coronavirus/)

------
jamesgadea122
Ecclesiastes. Short book of wisdom so jam-packed with truth I challenge anyone
to read it and disagree with the message it shares. Always relevant but
especially so in these challenging times.

~~~
breakattn
And I saw that this, too, was meaningless.

------
syndacks
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault fundamentally changed the way I look
at things like school and work. Essentially, they're systems of discipline and
control masquerading as something very different. Skip all the Malcom Gladwell
crap and read some real philosophy. It's hard but rewarding.

~~~
noema
There are many people who would claim that he isn't a real philosopher ;)
Don't skip Max Weber and Georges Canguilhem, two of his biggest influences.

------
gherkinnn
Anything by Hermann Hesse.

Not mind bending. No Twists. No roller coasters. Just a calm conversation with
the author and yourself.

And yet, it had a profound impact on me.

One poem I revisit every once in a while:
[https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=119749](https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=119749)

If you understand German, I do believe it needs to be read in its original
tongue. The translations I found thus far were not entirely convincing.

~~~
dkural
I used to like Herman Hesse, and gradually realized the straight line from
Hesse to Nazism. His distinct lack of human understanding is what bothers me
at core. His female characters barely exist except as mirages in the eyes of
men, and his male characters are little more than intellectualized brains.
It's the type of book one likes as a teenager / young adult and realizes is BS
later.

~~~
libertine
I've only read Siddhartha, and it didn't paint the author like you've done it.

Maybe I've completely misunderstood the book, but my key take away is that :
true enlightenment (and by enlightenment you can say, true knowledge), only
comes from life experience.

And that takes quite some human understanding, specially when we've grown to
value information and theory, to the point where we build a perceived complete
understanding of matters, only to later realize it's an illusion.

Things like talking about the concept of Love, Grief, Hate and any other
complex emotions, end up falling short no matter how you read about them,
either from a technical point of view, or simply from a character from a short
story. You can't truly empathize until you've lived it.

Like it's not your knowledge to own unless you've experienced it, no matter
what shape or form, and maybe that deserves some sort of respect.

Maybe that reflects on our lack of appreciation for a lot of things we take
for granted.

Is it wrong that he wrote it through the lens of a intellectualized male
character that didn't give enough focus on women? I don't know. It's his
narrative after all.

~~~
dkural
I respect your view. I enjoyed reading Hesse when I did; read 3 of his books;
SteppenWolf, Glass Bead Game, Siddhartha. There are many nice ideas in them. I
simply don't adore his writings the way many do, however. My views changed as
I changed.

Here's a quote from the New Yorker:

"Many young men, in particular, see a glamorous reflection of themselves in
the typical Hesse hero—a sensitive, brooding man who cannot find a place for
himself in ordinary society. This figure might live in India in the age of the
Buddha, like Siddhartha, or in Germany in the Jazz Age, like Harry Haller, or
in the Middle Ages, like Goldmund in “Narcissus and Goldmund.” Whatever the
setting, his path will generally feature the same landmarks. He will be
plucked out of his childhood surroundings and sent to an élite school, where
he will suffer deeply. He will rebel against conventional ideas of success and
refuse to pursue any kind of career, combining downward mobility with
spiritual striving."

Siddhartha, while an enjoyable read, confuses/"borrows" eastern religious
concepts to turn it into "follow the beat of your own drum, man!".

This has real world consequences: Hesse justified his taking the "middle
ground" between Nazism vs its opponents by his "politics of detachment".. you
know, because he is above society, quoting from JewisPress.com:

"Hesse’s failure to publicly condemn the Nazi Party and the fascist regime was
due, in large part, to his “politics of detachment” – his policy of viewing
the war fever infecting Germany from a distance and his general aloofness to
the deadly struggle during the 1930s and 40s as he publicly sought to occupy
the “middle ground” between the Nazis and exiled German writers.

Early in the war, Hesse published an essay in which he clearly applied his
“middle ground” standard, expressing and anticipating German victory but also
insisting that humane values be protected. Even this bland caveat earned him
everlasting hostility from the German public."

I am not claiming Hesse was a Nazi, and privately he was more anti-Nazi than
anything else. His wife was Jewish.

Hesse's heroes are more Ubermensch that view regular society as cattle, than
harmless Hippies.

I also tend to think the US Hippie movement of the 60s as a philosophy of
selfishness..(yes, I'm aware of anti-war origins etc.) so perhaps there's more
to our disagreement. My politics lean left fwiw.. social democrat.

------
ghotli
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Prose poems, short 1-2 page descriptions of fictional cities. It’s a good gift
to give and I like to pick it up at random, open to a random one, and sit with
the imagery it conjures.

If I had a ‘you could bring one thing to a deserted island’ then that would be
it.

~~~
lappet
I love this book and often read a random chapter just for inspiration. The
cities described in the book are something else.

------
bkandel
Two that did it for me:

\- The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. Really deepened my understanding of how
Western and other cultures think about moral and ethical issues.

\- The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan. It's a feminist book that is very
non-ideological, and helped me, as someone born in the 80's, appreciate some
very real and practical issues that feminism has helped us address.

------
skilesare
All the things by Christopher Alexander(Start with timeless way...explore the
pattern language...move on to Nature of order...then others.)

Zen and Lila by Pirsig

Beginning of Infinity by Deutsch.

~~~
talkingtab
I second Christopher Alexander of "Patterns" fame, but his "Notes on the
Synthesis of Form" tops my list and is available as a pdf.

------
ta1234567890
Life changing more than mind bending: The Charisma Myth. Only reading it won't
change anything, but start practicing the exercises and your whole life will
change, and quickly. If you just want to get a taste, see below.

Three quick tips to gain an instant charisma boost:

1\. Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of your sentences.

2\. Reduce how quickly and how often you nod.

3\. Pause for two full seconds before you speak.

From this summary:
[https://github.com/benigeri/books/blob/master/The%20Charisma...](https://github.com/benigeri/books/blob/master/The%20Charisma%20Myth%20by%20Olivia%20Fox%20Cabane.md)

Those tips are in the introduction of the book so you can see if it works for
you and decide if you want to continue reading the rest.

Personally, when I started doing only those 3 things, weird things happened
that completely changed the behavior of other people towards me and then how I
felt about other people. Worth a try.

~~~
carapace
Ha! I saw that book at a book store, skimmed it, and laughed because the
author (perhaps unknowingly) has actually written a manual of basic
_spirituality!_

~~~
ta1234567890
You are totally right. There are many different meditation exercises, ways to
control anxiety and calm down, as well as mindfulness tips and tricks. In some
ways it does point towards discovering your own path to happiness, by trying
different things and seeing what works for you.

Given that humans are wired to be social and we pretty much all live in
society, a lot of the things that afflict us have to do with the way we relate
to others, which is exactly what the book is about :)

------
gdubs
Someone already mentioned “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, so I’ll
go with something I read last year, Carlo Rovelli’s, “Reality is Not What it
Seems.”

I don’t think I really ever grasped the concept of relativity fully until
reading that book — at least the aspects of time. [edit: well, not “fully”,
I’m sure — but at least a lot more than I have in the past.]

At the same time I read the Dalai Lama’s, “Universe in a Single Atom”, which
focuses on his love of science / physics, and was a very good pair to
Rovelli’s book. It made me really think about the role of subjectivity in
terms of Relativity. It also made me think about life, and consciousness,
broadly.

That led to the Dalai Lama’s other book, “A Profound Mind”, which helped me
really understand the Buddhist concept of “Emptiness” for the first time.

------
more_corn
I'm surprised Sapiens isn't all over this page. I read it last year and I wish
I'd read it twenty years ago. It really changed how I think of humanity,
religion, ideology, law, civilization, corporations... It changed my whole
world by changing how I think of the world.

------
misiti3780
Nassim Taleb's books (Black swan, Antifragile, Fooled by Randomnesss)

Thinking Fast and Slow

The Organized Mind

The Vital Question by Nick Lane.

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

~~~
chimprich
I thought Black Swan was fairly meaningless. It started to raise some
interesting ideas about the effect of "black swan" events but then failed to
give any insight into dealing with or preparing for those effects beyond vague
generalities. I did learn how Taleb likes lifting weights and refuses to run
for a bus though.

From what I've heard his other books are similar.

~~~
drstins_n
Yep. Better to read Asimov's foundation trilogy

~~~
misiti3780
i have never read these, but it looks like quite the commitment

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series)

why is this series so much better than Taleb's books?

~~~
drstins_n
The black swan theory, in his basic idea is theorized in the books.

It is a nice reading and you may very well just read the first trilogy to
grasp it.

------
mintym
Listen to an expert analysis of {insert random topic} (bonus points if you are
not very familiar with the topic in question)

AlphaZero teaches Stockfish a lesson in the French Defense
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebzevCLGbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebzevCLGbQ)

Mississauga: Density Without Urbanism
[https://granolashotgun.com/2014/01/15/77/](https://granolashotgun.com/2014/01/15/77/)

Masked 1: Rise to the Rubedo Stage
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWNPN6PtuUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWNPN6PtuUc)

------
javajosh
God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History.
Stephen Hawking. I bought mine for cheap on alibris
([https://www.alibris.com/God-Created-the-Integers-The-
Mathema...](https://www.alibris.com/God-Created-the-Integers-The-Mathematical-
Breakthroughs-That-Changed-History-Stephen-Hawking))

From the blurb:

"...includes landmark discoveries spanning 2500 years and representing the
work of mathematicians such as Euclid, Georg Cantor, Kurt Godel, Augustin
Cauchy, Bernard Riemann and Alan Turing. Each chapter begins with a biography
of the featured mathematician, clearly explaining the significance of the
result, followed by the full proof of the work, reproduced from the original
publication, many in new translations."

My absolute favorite is Descartes _Geometrie_. Reading the original humanizes
him. He is at once humble and yet confident that he'd discovered something
important. Today, we take Descartes ideas completely for granted, and even
find them trivial, and yet to realize the immense shift in thinking it
represented in his time, makes it all the more impressive. I would even argue
that Descartes' ideas were more important than any save Euclid in forming the
foundation of modern math and physics - he was the one that divorced the
notion of "quantity" from "length of a line segment"! It's just so great to
read the original.

Interestingly, Riemann got almost all of his papers included in this book, the
most pages by far of any author. Clearly Hawking _loved_ Riemann - and no
wonder. Riemann was the one who truly generalized geometry, and its
interesting that his work in that area was mostly ignored until 50 years after
it was published, when Einstein used it for General Relativity. He made
enormous contributions to lots of other fields, too.

Oh, and it was really cool reading Boole's words, and recognizing that he was
explicitly talking in terms of creating a calculus of thought!

So, yeah, I love this book because we often talk about "the shoulders of
giants" but we rarely actually read them directly. And it's amazing,
inspiring, and wonderful to relate to them!

------
legerdemain
The Codex Seraphinianus. It's basically knowledge structure without content,
because it is, by design, incomprehensible. Makes you think about hypothesis-
making, information design, and simple intellectual humility.

------
breakattn
The Mulla Nasrudin books by Idries Shah. These tales, some of them very old,
represent patterns that repeat again and again, in different guises in life.
As you absorb them you start to recognize your own behavior patterns in
response to analogous situations, which gives you the option of changing your
response over time.

------
glandium
"Origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind" by Julian
Jaynes. Controversial, but interesting thesis nevertheless.

------
davidgould
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I feel like it left me subtly but
permanently changed, as if seeing through new differently tinted lenses.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I haven't read that one, but I read Mason & Dixon when I was in college. I
knew just enough history and scientific trivia to know that Pynchon was
playing a lot of highly intelligent games and to realize that a lot was flying
over my head, but not enough to really appreciate the book. Would be
interesting to revisit it again.

------
koonsolo
"The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching" by Thich Nhat Hanh

Completely changed my world view. As someone who loves science, this book
shows that Buddhism is not about belief but a way to look at the world. And
that view might be closer to reality than the current one.

[https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Buddhas-Teaching-
Transforming-L...](https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Buddhas-Teaching-Transforming-
Liberation/dp/0767903692)

------
SZJX
A relatively unconventional choice but the highest-rated visual novel of all
time, Muv-Luv Alternative, is insane. It is without any exaggeration the only
piece of actually "life-changing" media that I've consumed. I felt myself to
be mentally much more mature and tougher afterwards, and able to face
challenges head-on instead of procrastinating or shirking away. It really is
something that shakes you from your soul and leaves an everlasting emotional
impact, which is very different from the non-fiction books (which are also
indispensable of course).

I would summarize core ideas as "To live is to suffer, but you have to carry
on no matter what. This is what everybody does." and "an ode to humanity", but
it really is so hard to put the experience into words. You have to live it
yourself.

Link on VNDB: [https://vndb.org/v92](https://vndb.org/v92) There are also
various streamers who streamed the whole story on Twitch after its popularity
blew up, e.g.
[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/390581022](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/390581022)

------
werber
I think looking for memoirs by people who you see no common ground with and
cant stand is a great way to do that.

------
abakker
Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco. As with anything he wrote, the writing
itself is amazingly good, but the thoughts really get to you, too.

------
jbrun
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Picketty

Both dramatically formed by world view.

------
socrates1998
"The First Principle" by Osho. About eastern meditation and the difficulty of
achieving nirvana. A lot about the paradox of trying to achieve inner peace,
but only actually being able to experience it when you don't try to obtain it.

"Philosophy and the Matrix". Part of a pop culture series that takes popular
art and has different philosopher break down it into different philosophies. A
good way to realize that the same work of art can mean vastly different things
depending on the frame of reference.

"Tribe" by Sebastian Junger. The seemingly disconnect that people felt happier
when they were experiencing a traumatic event, like war, mainly because they
were relying on each other and counted on each other.

"The Social Leap" by William von Hippel. How we went from just another mid-
sized ape on the plains of Africa to the most successful large mammal on the
planet earth in a few million years. His theory is focused on the social
adaptations of early hominids and how that affects us to this day.

------
Nevermark
"The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
reveals the simple principles used by everyone from CEO's, politicians, and
autocrats to gather and consolidate power, depending on as few people as
possible.

The general population is rarely important in this process, and of course (if
you are among those accreting power) you want keep them in the dark. The
illusion of participation is very important to the institutionalization of
power for yourself in any kind of system, especially ones that think they are
democracies.

As might be expected, to the degree they are good at it, the less the
governing class needs to concern themselves with good governance or policy.
And again, in the "real" Gov 101 its rule #1 that the populace doesn't
understand that.

Mind bending? I think so, but I appreciate even more as a mental/citizen level
up.

These are the principles they should teach kids in government class in
elementary school. History without understanding this is just a database of
facts.

------
low_common
"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. What an incredible book. Starts off following
this pizza delivery driver then warps into this cyberpunk adventure with VR,
ancient languages and wild characters.

------
nicbou
"The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck"

The free sample is enough to get the core message: the Konmari method can also
apply to obligations, not just objects. It's not a fascinating book, just an
interesting concept. Most of the book covers the exceptions and caveats of its
own technique, a rare approach in this genre. Its premise is similar to Mark
Manson's "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck", but without the aggressive
self-help bro tone.

"No More Mr. Nice Guy"

This book is for nice guys who never get what they want. The answer isn't "be
a selfish asshole for once", but "if you want something, ask for it" and
"don't expect unsolicited generosity to be rewarded in specific ways". This
book is a healthy fix to an unhealthy behaviour.

"Influence: Science and Practice"

The gang of four made a book about programming design patterns. Cialdini made
a book about influence design patterns. It's easy to read, and full of
examples.

------
mitchelldeacon9
In addition to the classics of cognitive psychology (Kahneman, Taleb, et al.),
I would also recommend books on psychological manipulation, religious cults,
and con men. The following books offer a multi-disciplinary perspective on
psychological techniques to improve awareness and exploit other people, both
of which are essential to enhance your perception and protect yourself against
fraud and manipulation.

Cialdini, Robert (2006) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Guinn, Jeff (2017) Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple

Ekman, Paul (2007) Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to
Improve Communication and Emotional Life

Kahneman, Daniel (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow

Mitnick, Kevin and William Simon (2002) Art of Deception

Navarro and Karlins (2008) What Every Body is Saying: Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to
Speed-Reading People

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1887) On the Genealogy of Morals

Rhodes, Richard (1986) Making of the Atomic Bomb

Sun Tzu (c. 400 BCE) Art of War

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2005) Fooled by Randomness

Wright, Lawrence (2013) Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of
Belief

------
friendlybus
The archetypes and collective unconsious - carl jung

The origins and history of consciousness - mircea eliade

Cosmic symbolism in genesis - mattheiu pageau

If you want to get deep into opinions on making art, symbolism is a great
rabbit hole.

~~~
wry_discontent
Lobsters, man

~~~
friendlybus
It's not that simple, roughly speaking

------
poormystic
For serious thought: anything by Krishnamurti :) Jorge Luis Borges is the man
for fiction.

~~~
jgwil2
For anyone looking for an intro to Borges I would recommend "The Garden of
Forking Paths." It's a tight, exciting narrative that also explores his great
themes.

[https://archive.org/stream/TheGardenOfForkingPathsJorgeLuisB...](https://archive.org/stream/TheGardenOfForkingPathsJorgeLuisBorges1941/The-
Garden-of-Forking-Paths-Jorge-Luis-Borges-1941_djvu.txt)

------
binaryorganic
Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this
thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I
looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?

~~~
pftburger
Oh man, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is AMAZING on so many levels.

A common thread with these books seems to be exploring consciousness and
definitions of self.

As a bonus it does stuff I find more from women authors, like quietly question
gender roles without making a scene about it, question slavery, ownership,
etc.

Similar a bit to the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells but on a whole other
level.

Its a wonderful trilogy of three books. Strongly recommend it.

I can also recommend N.K. Jemisin, not really mind bending, but very odd

Generally I dislike it when authors patronise me, banging my head against
their genius, and I find women authors tend to do that less (Disclaimer to
sensitive people : this is my personal opinion)

~~~
gjstein
Can second both Ann Leckie (her new book "The Raven Tower" is also a great
page-turner) and N.K. Jemisin (who did totally blow my mind with her Broken
Earth Trilogy).

Ursula K. Le Guin also appears down below; The Left Hand of Darkness was a
profound read.

~~~
some-username
Also from Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed.

Not mind bending for someone who spent some time trying to imagine a anarchist
society (but still quite enriching), but maybe for others.

------
mindcrime
Besides _Permutation City_ by Greg Egan, which has been mentioned several
times already, I'd add _Glasshouse_ [1] by Charles Stross.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_\(novel\))

------
Syzygies
Just published "The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and
Institutions" by Jeffrey D. Sachs.

An economic history of the species, more academic than "Guns, Germs, and
Steel", without the flashy zebra bites. Not as meta as "Sapiens".

Radicalizing, even if one believes one already knows.

------
daleco
I really enjoyed this SciFi book - Dark Matter: A Novel

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife
is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college
physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something
remarkable. Something impossible.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101904224/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_HY...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101904224/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_HYRUEbPFE968B)

Another good one from the same author - Recursion: A Novel
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1524759783/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_G0...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1524759783/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_G0RUEb4MDKFSS)

------
nixtaken
My Adorable Apotheosis: Don't Look Back, Pussycat. Kill! Kill! by Kirsten
Hacker.

In keeping with the preposterous title, it uses sci-fi tropes to illuminate
the ways in which the modern scientific community is heading in a preposterous
direction.

It is sort of like the Princess Bride of sci-fi.

------
3pt14159
Ted Chang Story of Your Life and Others. And his newest short story collection
too, Exaltation.

Permutation City is also great, as mentioned by others.

------
prince005
Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari. This is the second book in the very famous
series Sapiens. The book explains how technology will effect our lives in the
future in a way that is interesting, entertaining and above all, mind-
boggling.

------
drcongo
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick

------
samirillian
I found The Little Prince pretty mind bending.

------
walkingolof
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

Framework for a happy life in any context.

~~~
dreamercz
I was looking for someone to mention stoic literature!

For that matter I'd like to add another author - Michel de Montaigne and his
Essays. It offers a very humane look inside his thoughts about the world and
makes you think about your own life and how you look at it, too.

------
mjlee
I really enjoy books on neuroscience that change the way I think about
perception.

Phantoms in the Brain by V S Ramachandran - a book about how the brain
organises itself in bizarre edge cases. The Tell-Tale Brain: A
Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes us Human. The Tell-Tale Brain: A
Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes us Human by the same author is also
worth reading.

Admissions by Henry Marsh - An experienced neurosurgeon's account of how his
job has changed over the decades. Really interesting discussion of what's
important and how people react in a real crisis.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks. More of a collection
of interesting curiousities but does an amazing job of humanising the
discussion of brain.

~~~
pas
It's not a book, but a great infotainment lecture series by Robert Sapolsky
(the intro to human biology course at Stanford, 2010)

[https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D)

And of course cites Sack, and a lot of amazing research/studies/results.

The caveat is that some results are not that solid, and he mentions priming,
which we know does not replicate.

------
scottlocklin
Skip all the pop science bullshit suggested below. That's almost entirely
sugar water, and beyond that; most of it is actually actively wrong.

Read anything written by Ancient Greeks; Aristotle, the Iliad, Herodotus,
Plato. There's a reason people still read these dead white guys, and there is
a reason that peak times of excellence in Western Civilization have been peak
Ancient Greeks. It will make your thinking three dimensional, and give you
perspective as to the world you live in today as a software engineer.

~~~
draklor40
Can't agree more. Though, Romans >> Greeks.

------
evo_9
VALIS by Philip K Dick. It explores the nature of reality through the lens of
mental illness / madness.

~~~
Minor49er
Seconding this recommendation. The way the story was told became very surreal.
It's an experience unlike any other that I've had while reading fiction.

~~~
carapace
FWIW, Dick claimed it was a record of communication with some cosmic
intelligence named VALIS: Vast Active Living Intelligence System

Here's a thing TIL from the wikipedia entry:

> At one point, Dick claimed to be in a state of _enthousiasmos_ with VALIS,
> where he was informed his infant son was in danger of perishing from an
> unnamed malady. Routine checkups on the child had shown no trouble or
> illness; however, Dick insisted that thorough tests be run to ensure his
> son's health. The doctor eventually complied, despite the fact that there
> were no apparent symptoms. During the examination doctors discovered an
> inguinal hernia, which would have killed the child if an operation was not
> quickly performed. His son survived thanks to the operation, which Dick
> attributed to the "intervention" of VALIS.

------
drstins_n
The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness both by Ursula K Le Guin

~~~
gitrog
I've been deliberating over where to start with Le Guin. What would you
suggest?

~~~
drstins_n
The Dispossessed is more political and philosopical. Left hand of darkness is
about difference and prejudice.

I would also say that Dispossessed is more about love, Left Hand is about
friendship.

------
VSerge
Erich Fromm's "Escape from freedom". It is very well written and the subject
matter is truly mind-bending: how can an educated people decide to throw their
freedom away and give power to a dictator? E. Fromm was German psychologist,
and jewish. He fled to America in the 1930s. He writes with a composite point
of view, at the intersection of psychology, sociology, and philosophy, without
getting stuck in a narrow analysis, and I think this is what makes this books
and others by him so good.

------
joshstrange
Peak Prosperity's "Prosper!" [0]. I learned about PP through their daily
COVID-19 updates [1] and then watched their crash course (from 2014) [2]. They
are currently giving the book away for free because of how much it relates to
the current situation.

I'll be the first to tell you I started watching their "crash course"
expecting it to be BS but it is very compelling and explored ideas that I knew
about intellectually but had never thought all the way through. I HIGHLY
recommend people check this out and if you think they are wrong or going to
far please feel free to respond or email me (email in profile), I am 100%
willing to be proven wrong. Anyways I've shared this with a couple of close
friends and we have all agreed that we can't continue living the way we were
before having watched/read it (crash course/book).

[0]
[https://www.peakprosperity.com/freebook](https://www.peakprosperity.com/freebook)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaE...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaEkFimDeepqyWf)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_ofJoMx1rB6Z...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_ofJoMx1rB6Z0EA1OwAGDRdR)

------
dandare
The Sefish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Lot of what I thought was question of
morality and good vs evil turned out to be simply the question of rational
strategies in given environment.

------
rcarrigan87
"Why Nations Fail" offers a pretty compelling framework for why some countries
are stronger than others. Changed my thinking on the role of government.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Blew my mind like no other book has. My favorite.

------
billfruit
Some authours and books offer deep introspection of human lives, that you
learn and realise things about yourself from reading them:

I got that feeling from reading Montaigne's Essays.

Anatomy of Melancholy by Burton and Samuel Johnson's essays also are effective
in a similar vein.

Plutarch's Parallel Live's is the essential book on politics, after reading
it, when you read the newspapers you get a feeling that there is nothing new
under the Sun, in politics.

~~~
noema
Yes, you can't beat the classic essayists. Sir Thomas Browne too. Melville
draws a lot from these writers in Moby Dick.

------
henron
No book has made me question the reality of my surroundings like Ubik by
Philip K Dick.

~~~
nourishingvoid
I agree wholeheartedly. This is a great book that is truly terrifying because
Dick is constantly subverting the characters’ (and reader’s) perceptions of
reality. He does this to an even greater degree in The Three Stigmata of
Palmer Eldritch.

------
nilsocket
C Radhakrishnan - Bhagavad Gita_ Modern Reading and Scientific Study.

Intellectually very challenging.

Even though it is a religious book for many people, it can be read as just a
normal story.

It teaches one about how to live life, not by set of defined rules, but by
providing a proper explanation and through understanding.

It's a book which is usually dated to 5000 years or 7000 years.

It`s a very well-balanced story, one can ignore parts which are not relevant
to present society.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Might as well recommend the Holy Bible or the Koran. Also good books with good
stories.

~~~
carapace
FWIW Buddhism is different from the "People of the Book" (Jews, Christians,
Muslims all worship literally the same God.) Buddhism is not monotheistic.

(The resolution between these forms was given in South Park of all places: God
appears on Earth and mentions in passing that He is Buddhist.)

\- - - -

Uh, heh, _Hinduism_ is also different from the "People of the Book", and from
Buddhism. The _Gita_ is, of course, Hindu, not Buddhist. (I'm not sure how I
got confused in the previous portion of this comment, sorry. No offense
intended!)

------
jyounker
Alexis de Tocqueville's, "Democracy in America" (1835,1840).

It was the first history/sociology book I read that I really enjoyed. I came
away with a clarity that there is an essential character to American politics
and discourse that has been constant throughout its history.

Decades later it is still one of the most clearly written books I've read. It
reminds me of reading an elegant proof.

------
__s
_The Fountainhead_

Or anything Vonnegut or Philip K Dick

A personal "brain expanding" book for me was _The Miracle Planet_ but timing
is everything, as an 8 year old who had only been reading children's books it
taught me that you can read through anything with persistence

The Bible has a lot of mind games & plot twists. I read it as an atheist
seeking better perspective on a couple thousand years ago

~~~
Cthulhu_
I can't take anyone reading Ayn Rand seriously anymore; it's what all the
selfish right-wingers read and take as gospel, those that take a massive shit
on everyone but themselves - Trump to name but one. And it's ironic because
Rand herself was fervently atheist and hated conservatives as they turned to
religion and nationalism in the 50's.

~~~
mattbk1
I found the stories in Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to be compelling enough
that I could both empathize with (some of) the characters while at the same
time disagree wholeheartedly with their choices.

They're good books for trying to find out _why_ you agree or disagree.

------
teunispeters
(in case of curiousity, all of these books are intended for mature adults)

Science Fiction:

Ursula le Guin - The Found and the Lost - this one will be higher impact if
you're North American, but it works anywhere. Pretty much any of her books are
mind bending and perspective opening. Not that they'd help become a better
computer developer say - but you'd probably be a wiser person for the
exposure.

C.J.Cherryh - Cyteen - on individual, on programming personality and more.

C.J.Cherryh - Voyager in Night. (on a perspective on alien thinking)

(author has a lot of excellent books as writes for an intelligent and well
educated audience. I will note neither are easy reads and the second might be
harder to get through)

Nonfiction:

T.E.Lawrence - 7 pillars of wisdom. (watching "Lawrence of Arabia" doesn't
hurt either, they sync reasonably well). He was a deeply cynical atheist in a
whole series of very violent episodes that shape life in the modern world more
than you'd think. This one more for a perspective on history than changing
one's own view of the world.

(edited for presentation only)

------
WheelsAtLarge
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

What it helped me see is that we aren't necessarily born with world class
abilities but that we can achieve them by working hard. I know there have been
criticisms about the methods Gladwell outlines towards achieving mastery but
the basic message about working hard towards mastery is valid.

It completely changed my view on why people become Masters in their field.

------
Errancer
"Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery" by Imre Lakatos
made me look at math like i never did before it

------
voisin
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn Just a short conversation between a man and an ape
that explains the unsustainable path our society has taken.

~~~
bryan_w
I'm so glad to see someone recommend this.

------
code_biologist
If you're into biology, Nick Lane's books will blow your mind. Two in
particular I'd recommend:

1\. The Vital Question - An explanation of the genesis of complex life through
bioenergetics. Explains why complex life is likely very rare in the universe.

2\. Power, Sex, Suicide - Why mitochondria are awesome, and also responsible
for the emergence of sex, cancer, and mortality.

~~~
hardlianotion
Don’t forget Oxygen. Amazing book and my intro to Nick Lane.

------
uranium
Lots of great suggestions here! I'll add "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler"
by Italo Calvino. It's the only book I've ever read in the second person, an
amazing and successful experiment in form. I've never found anything else like
it.

I'll second the suggestion for "The City & The City", another real mind-
bender.

------
theincredulousk
Surprised not to see Liu Cixin mentioned yet?

The Three-Body Problem & The Dark Forest.

------
torstenvl
_Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst_ , by Robert Sapolsky

 _Sapiens_ , by Yuval Noah Harari

 _Children of Time_ , by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 _The Road_ , by Cormac McCarthy ( _Blood Meridian_ is better, stylistically,
but changed me less as a person)

 _The Alchemist_ and _The Fifth Mountain_ , by Paulo Coelho

 _The Little Prince_ , by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 _Tribe_ , by Sebastian Junger

------
Mikhail_Edoshin
Smarter and wiser aren't synonyms :)

The best teachers (that could be books) will find you when you're ready. Other
people's milestones are theirs, not yours. The best way to use this list is to
pick a book by gut feeling. That said, I'll leave my candidate: "The Presence
Process" by Michael Brown.

------
gitrog
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut was probably the most recent one for me. I
guess the book in its entirety is probably fairly mild by modern sci-fi
comparisons, but without wanting to spoil anything there is a certain species
in the book whose outlook on life immediately changed my perspective of
reality.

~~~
jredwards
I always preferred Cat's Cradle.

~~~
gitrog
I read Slaughterhouse 5 first, so that might be why I prefer it, even though I
really enjoyed Cat's Cradle. But beyond that, I felt that Slaughterhouse 5
tied into reality more for me. It just felt more relevant, if that makes
sense, but it could totally just have been due to my mindset at the time.

------
jparise
"Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" by Edwin A. Abbott.

> Written pseudonymously by "A Square", the book used the fictional two-
> dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian
> culture, but the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of
> dimensions.

------
hackeryogi
Thank you for starting such an interesting thread. Going through all the
comments a few days after the question was asked is very rewarding ! So many
books marked as 'to read' :)

My contribution: If you're not familiar with Quantum Physics, do check out
'Through Two doors at once'. There were numerous instances while reading the
book that I had to just put it down and think deeply - mostly philosophical
thoughts around what we are and how magical nature is. The subject matter is
very very approachable - even to someone like me who hasn't read a physics
book in like a decade.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38527619-through-two-
doo...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38527619-through-two-doors-at-
once)

------
amiga_500
Progress and Poverty. Henry George.

Outsold only by the bible in 1880s/1890s [1]

Especially if you live in SV, as it's the perfect demonstration of rich
landlords and deep poverty, as "society" gets richer.

1: [https://progressandpoverty.org/](https://progressandpoverty.org/)

------
arantius
I'd suggest
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)
. I was much younger when I first read it, but it blew my mind at the time.

------
ExactActuation
Food of the Gods by Terrence McKenna
([https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/111941/food-of-
the-...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/111941/food-of-the-gods-by-
terrence-mckenna/))

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
([https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529343/how-to-
chang...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529343/how-to-change-your-
mind-by-michael-pollan/))

Fellowship of the River by Joe Tafur, MD ([https://www.drjoetafur.com/the-
fellowship-of-the-river](https://www.drjoetafur.com/the-fellowship-of-the-
river))

------
grosswait
For me, The Origin of Consciousness by Julian Jaynes. It has really caused me
to look at the world through a new lens. While the book is Jaynes' idea, the
evidence he provides is fascinating as are some of the competing views that
have originated from this book.

------
yuribro
"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter It's presented in a very non
conventional way, but teaches you to think about many problems in a more
"first principles" way, and connects real world problems with more abstract
idea. I have read it well into my CS career and it was still worth it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)

------
herve76
Bernard Moitessier - Tamata Alliance

A life changing book!!! about sailing, freedom and Life.

[https://www.amazon.com/Tamata-Alliance-Bernard-
Moitessier/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Tamata-Alliance-Bernard-
Moitessier/dp/0924486775)

------
analog31
When I was in high school, I read Goedel Escher Bach, and it made math come
alive for me -- to see it as something beyond making physics work, even though
I was also interested in physics. It's probably what caused me to choose math
as my college major.

------
asivokon
"The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life"

It gives you an alternative perspective on art, school, charity, politics
(including office politics), religion, and, well, yourself. This book will
likely make you revise at least some of your beliefs.

------
cnorthwood
Rutger Bregman's "Utopia for Realists", changed my political outlook
completely

------
randomstring
Check out _The Eden Express_ by Mark Vonnegut (son of Kurt Vonnegut). It is a
memoir documenting the author's own psychotic breakdown. Reading this gave me
insight into the human mind and what it's like when it goes off the rails.

You say "anything that transforms me into a smarter, wiser person" so I'll add
Eliezer Yudkowsky's fanfic _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_
([http://www.hpmor.com/](http://www.hpmor.com/)) The whole HP universe is re-
imagined, except Harry is smart, a scientist, and empowered with rationality.
It is both entertaining and an introduction to the art of rationality.

~~~
spookyuser
Just finished HPMOR and loved every second of it. Truly an amazing piece of
work, would definitely recommend. I do hope that i remember some of the
methods of rationality mentioned in the book, but even beyond that it was just
a plain good story.

If people are interestead in reading it, I would highly recommend the audio
book/podcast, it's extremely well produced and features an insane amount of
good voice acting [1]. Though I would definitely recommend _not_ listening to
it in podcast player, and instead use one of the stitched together mp3s.

[1]
[https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56](https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56)

------
harel
Try "The End of Mr. Y" by Scarlett Thomas. It's quite a mind bender,
literally. Great story.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Mr._Y](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Mr._Y)

------
sneak
Some of my faves in this vein:

Stranger In A Strange Land

Solaris

The Fall

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Seveneves (a bit silly but definitely fun and will set you to thinking)

~~~
iainmerrick
I adore _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ , but for Philip K Dick at his
most mind-bending, I’d instead go for _Valis_

~~~
Trasmatta
I love Valis and it's probably his most mind bending, but I wouldn't recommend
starting there. That book works best when you've already been exposed to his
bizarre mind-bending style, and also understand a bit of the context of Dick
himself (since Valis is semi-autobiographical).

My recommendations are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, The Three
Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly. And then reading a bit
about Dick's life -- in particular, his experience with the "pink light", and
his belief in the real life instantiation of VALIS. After that, the book Valis
will make a lot more sense, but also be even more mind bending.

Dick likely suffered from some sort of undiagnosed mental illness. But having
the discussion end there sort of discounts the core themes of his books --
mainly, the recognition of the paper-thin nature of reality, and the
impossible task of ever knowing with a certainty the true state of things.

~~~
iainmerrick
All good picks! I was thinking of mentioning _Ubik_ myself. I’d add _A Maze of
Death_ also.

Thinking about it, yeah, _Valis_ is probably best saved for much later. That’s
the same order I read Dick, and knowing a bit of his background and having
seen his recurring tropes in fictional form, it added a whole new dimension to
see them crop up in... pseudo-autobiographical form? I’m not even sure what to
call it!

~~~
Trasmatta
> pseudo-autobiographical form? I’m not even sure what to call it!

For sure! Trying to describe what Valis actually is, is about as difficult as
pinning down what reality in a PKD novel is.

The fact that PKD's real life experience basically turned into one of his own
novels is something I find endlessly fascinating. And also kind of sad, since
whatever mental health issues he was dealing with seemed to cause him quite a
bit of pain. I have a copy of "The Exegesis of Philip K Dick", and while it's
too tedious to just read cover to cover, I'll often just pop it open and read
a few pages here and there. Really interesting stuff.

------
nbardy
"A man's search for meaning" \- Viktor Frankl

This book has more profundity than anything I've ever read. The type of
sentences which cause you to stop and think, woah, what did I just read. The
type of sentences where it is obvious the author has understood something you
don't, but not obvious exactly what. The type of sentence that is short and
simple in what it says, but with great depth in its meaning.

I'm about done with this book and I already want to re-read it. I've decided
I'll read it once every few years. To remind myself of the important parts of
living. The parts that are easy to figure about going about living day to day.

------
supr_strudl
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle [https://www.amazon.com/New-Earth-Awakening-
Purpose-Selection...](https://www.amazon.com/New-Earth-Awakening-Purpose-
Selection/dp/0452289963)

~~~
themoops36
Agreed. Life-changing if you're in the right place for it.

------
tim333
The Moral Animal I found kind of mind bending though perhaps a bit downbeat.
The basic thesis is that we evolved to deceive ourselves in evolutionary
helpful ways as if you say 'I'm great, I should be the leader' and are lying
people will see through it but if you say that and really believe it, even if
it's factually incorrect, then it has a better chance of working. See many
political leaders for examples.

Something upbeat I came across recently was Naval Ravikant's ideas on
philosophy happiness and how to get rich. Not a book but you can see him on
Rogan 1309 and google the get rich tweets / podcasts.

------
xtiansimon
Aczel, Amir. The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the
Human Mind. New York, NY: Basic Books, (2000)

"Aczel's compact and fascinating work of mathematical popularization uses the
life and work of the German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918) to describe
the history of infinity--of human thought about boundlessly large numbers,
sequences and sets."
([https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-56858-105-7](https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-56858-105-7))

This popularization makes an effort to explain truly mind bending ideas of
infinity.

------
talkingtab
"Hidden Order" by John Holland. I think of it as a programmers view of complex
adaptive systems. There are many books about Emergent systems, CAS, etc. but
this one changed how I think and how I see the world.

------
SirensOfTitan
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram.

Ingram is one of the most advanced meditation practitioners in the west, and
this book is a painstaking mapping of the development of attention. I’ve read
nothing like it.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
This book was really interesting, and ultimately made me decide meditation
wasn't worth it for me. (I'm not saying it isn't worth it for others, just
that the outcome of meditation that he describes doesn't seem like something I
want).

~~~
stutonk
Just out of curiosity, what was the purported outcome/why wasn't it worth it?

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Basically he describes the process as one of continually looping through
various mental stages as one progresses in their meditative practice. Many of
these mental stages look like psychotic episodes to me and I worry that
getting into the practice would preclude me from accomplishing other things
that are more important to me.

Here is a decent overview of the book that goes into more detail:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-
mastering-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-
the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/)

------
Cthulhu_
"Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking"; it helped
me and my girlfriend understand ourselves more and make me feel less out of
place in the world, accepted, less anxious and insecure if you will. It tells
you that you shouldn't be ashamed of stepping out of a party earlier for
example, or find quiet spaces at events, etc.

It's one of those books that's full of anecdotes and padding out though, so if
you want a summary the author's also made blog posts and a TED talk that
summarize the subject well enough.

------
every
The World Book Encyclopedia, complete with a two volume dictionary and an
annual supplemental volume. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence
buried in the many thousands of glossy, fine print pages. And the most awaited
day of my summer was when the supplement finally appeared in the mail. I
suppose the internet is now my adult substitute and have never really
changed...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Encyclopedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Encyclopedia)

------
jjgreen
Nausea, J.-P. Sartre

------
carapace
If you really want to self-modify your programming I can recommend hypnosis.
The books I recommend are: "TRANCE-formations" by Bandler and Grinder, and
"Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?" by Heller.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21806109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21806109)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043783)

------
galfarragem
Definitely “No more Mr. Nice Guy” from Dr. Robert Glover. If you’re struggling
in life buy this book today. It’s that good.

If you just need a book to boost your courage read “The alchemist” from Paulo
Coelho.

------
ser13
A few that affected me and haven't already been mentioned (in no particular
order)

Anything by John Twelve Hawks, but especially The Traveler: his works got me
thinking about the role technology plays in the world and especially the
balance among surveillance and privacy.

Pure by Linda Kay Klein: perhaps only interesting if you were raised in the
Church's purity culture, but this also talks about the role religion plays in
society as a whole.

14 Lessons in Yogi Philosophy: really opened my mind to Eastern ideas about
living a spiritual life.

------
brudgers
_Art of Computer Programming_. Just as a book(s), it is a great book. I'm
always a bit puzzled by the degree to which it's intended audience seems to
avoid reading it.

~~~
kemiller2002
I love the little quips that Knuth adds to his writings. There are little
subtle things that have to be there to be funny and just below the surface
meaning of the text, because taken literally they would be absurd. I remember
seeing a couple in there and a couple in his book Concrete Mathematics.

------
blamestross
Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts

They permanently changed how I think about cognition, consciousness and how
fragile and small a thing conscious life is and that we have to protect it.

------
50
Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation by Meister Eckhart and translated by
Raymond Bernard Blakney: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6885348-meister-
eckhart](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6885348-meister-eckhart)

Other notable authors, titles, and subjects, some that others have already
mentioned: Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, Khalil Gibran,
sufism, The Philokalia, etc.

------
roca
The Bible is a trite answer, but a true one.

I would add "The City And The City" by China Miéville. A delightful read and
it changed the way I look at the world a little bit.

------
vixen99
Orwell's 1984 and Camus' Outsider, read in tandem.

------
SJMosley
Parsed as much as I could to make a slightly more formatted list. Stars are
the ones I was drawn to most. Sorry if I accidentally missed a rec or cut
stuff out.

[https://www.notion.so/moderndesert/List-from-Hacker-new-
chan...](https://www.notion.so/moderndesert/List-from-Hacker-new-change-your-
life-books-f4ad60b29da34d7395a779d9bc60728e)

------
wunderlust
I don't think any book has had an immediately noticeable effect, but looking
back to books I read years ago I can to some degree tell which ones are still
resonating.

The Demon Haunted World (Carl Sagan) — although I was already a skeptical
thinker, this book opened me up to how critical thinking can enhance your
spiritual side as well as your intellectual side.

Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter) — this book added color to a lot my
intuitions about the deeper connections of patterns we see throughout reality.

Truth & Power (Michel Foucault) — I'm not a fan of most so-called continental
philosophy, but Foucault's ideas about cultural structures has always stuck
with me.

The Allegory of the Cave (Plato; section in The Republic) — classic; some
might say the basic idea underpinning all philosophical and scientific
inquiry.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ludwig Wittgenstein) — I'll admit I never
quite understood this book from reading it, but it definitely changed how I
thought about philosophy, consciousness and spirituality.

Charles Sanders Peirce essays — it's been a long time, so I don't remember the
specific texts, but he did fascinating work in semiotics. One essay in
particular was critical in how I think about communication and consciousness.

Fact, Fiction, Forecast (Nelson Goodman) — Goodman is brilliant and is great
at relaying philosophical problems as puzzles. He's a great writer and turns
the problem of induction on its head in this one.

Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco) — I don't read a lot of fiction, but this
book is amazing. There's a lot of history, so you may need to keep an
encyclopedia nearby, but this one will really get you thinking about how the
autonomy of memes. Probably quite relevant at the moment.

Any number of books and essays by great analytic philosophers: Saul Kripke,
W.V.O. Quine, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Carl Hempel, John Campbell, David
Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, Dan Dennett, David Lewis,
etc.

------
bananamerica
\- _The Men Who Folded Himself_ is a book about a time traveler that falls in
love and has sex with himself in several distinct time periods.

\- _All You Zombies_ is a short story that makes use of one of the most
ingenious and mind-bending time travel conundrums to reflect on the nature of
personal identity.

\- _The Door Into Summer_ is about the effects of suspended animation on
personal relationships.

\- Anything written by Philip K. Dick.

------
oldsklgdfth
Technopoly by Neil Postman Industrial society and it's future by Theodore
Kaczynski

Both these books drastically changed my perception of technology. The role we
think it has and the effects and consequences it does have.

The main take away is that a technology contains an implicit bias that is
absorbed by the user. More plainly put "to someone with a hammer, everything
is a nail" applies to all technology.

~~~
daniel-thompson
For those who don't know, Theodore Kaczynski is the Unabomber. He killed 3
people and injured 23 others with a mail-bombing campaign. Ideas are ideas,
but maybe take with a grain of salt anything said by a guy who advocates for
his beliefs using physical violence.

~~~
oldsklgdfth
Always take information with a grain of salt. Kaczynski was not all there and
is a murderer.

The first half of the manifesto is a fairly piercing critique of industrial
society. Most of the ideas are not really original. Interesting questions are
raised, the call to violence is nonsense.

------
achow
Guns, Germs and Steel.

Actually, any well researched history book. View on the world gets changed
drastically, and usually for better.

~~~
tryptophan
'Why nations fail' is about the same subject and much better supported, incase
you are interested.

~~~
james_s_tayler
The opening chapter is even a direct challenge to Diamonds book!

The rest is a really wild ride through history. Fascinating read.

------
loxs
Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Democracy: The God That Failed

This is a seriously mind bending book. You will never again see the world the
same way. Not an easy book to read though. You will need to follow the
references (and they are many), as otherwise you will refuse to believe what
you are reading. Also, it is not a "pleasant" book to read. The author is not
a great writer, only a great scholar.

------
jshaqaw
Slightly dated at this point but Illuminati Trilogy

------
lcuff
I confess 'mind games' and 'plot twists' don't correlate to my personal
notions of wisdom. Googling 'books wisdom' turns up a lot. My one sentence bit
of wisdom is currently from Charlie Munger: "I never allow myself to have an
opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than
they do."

------
divkakwani
"How Not to Die" by Michael Greger describes how a good plant-based diet can
prevent and even reverse various common diseases

------
marcrosoft
How I found freedom in an unfree world. By Harry Browne and pretty much all of
his other books

A guide to the good life, the ancient art of stoic joy

------
Dowwie
In these anxious, depressing times it helps to have a cognitive toolkit of
techniques that can be applied to irrational thinking that influences
feelings. "Feeling Good", by David Burns, can help you create such a toolkit.
This book is a self-therapy guide presented in a very user-friendly style.
Wisdom will follow.

------
teucris
To venture into the more poetic/artistic realm, I really recommend Invisible
Cities by Italo Calvino. It’s quite short, but so layered that I actually have
a hard time describing it.

Framed as a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, the book is a
series of vignettes describing fantastical cities Polo has visited in his
travels.

------
heed
Resurrection by Harry Stottle:

[https://www.fullmoon.nu/Resurrection/PrimarySpecies.html](https://www.fullmoon.nu/Resurrection/PrimarySpecies.html)

It’s a play made for radio about a scientist who brings his father back to
life (digitally) as the first test of “resurrection” technology.

------
jtr1
"The Ethics of Ambiguity" by Simone de Beauvoir helped pull me out of a pretty
debilitating bout of nihilism.

------
alexanderthe-
I recommend Plutarch's Lives, I own the Oxford World's Classics translations
of 'Roman Lives' and 'Greek lives' and the stories told between the two alone
allow to you build a mental model of the nature of mankind, the rise and fall
of empires, and the "vicissitudes of fortune".

------
nscalf
"How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" by Mohsin Hamid.

The book goes through the second person point of view of a young boy born into
a village outside of a major Asian city. Each chapter is a time jump to a
different point of their life. I believe I heard of this from an interview
with Marc Andreessen.

------
reidacdc
Charles Perrow, "Normal Accidents". Nominally about safety in large-scale
complex engineered systems, and it's very good on that topic, and/but in doing
so, touches on how scale and social factors interact with engineering details,
which affects a lot more than safety.

------
agrippanux
“Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James Loewan will fundamentally change your
understanding of American history.

~~~
wry_discontent
There's a lot of books like this. I think the one that affected me most was
Overthrow, America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. It really
made me start looking at foreign policy more seriously.

------
cameron_b
[0] - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - and most by Annie Dillard, An American
Childhood is also of note. She has a very good way with details.

0 -
[https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061233326](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061233326)

------
Vanit
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

Maybe not mindbending, but a must read for us engineers prone to burning the
midnight oil.

~~~
lut4rp
Careful with this one, the content is controversial and considered
unscientific: [https://guzey.com/books/why-we-
sleep/](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/)

~~~
criddell
To be fair to the author you should also post the link to Walker's response to
these questions and more:

[https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-
sleep-...](https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-
responses-to-questions-from-readers/)

------
retreatguru
“20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation” or “ Where Reincarnation and Biology
Intersect“ both By Ian Stevenson.

I’m a heavy duty skeptic but these books pushed me over the edge away from
scientific materialism towards a broader view of reality where consciousness
survives death.

Excellent Well executed research.

------
caleb-allen
The Little Schemer, by Felleisen and Friedman.

Entertaining style, and amazing at conveying very complex ideas. I had
understood recursion for years prior, but this really showed me what it was to
truly "think" in recursion, and to understand the Y Combinator and its
significance.

------
j7ake
I am a strange loop by Douglas Hofstader. Very clear thinking and awesome
thought experiments

------
diegolo
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Self-Deception-
Getting-O...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-Out-
Box/dp/1609989708)

life changing, I reread it every now and then

------
Bangkok
I highly recommend Information - A Very Short Introduction by Dr. Luciano
Floridi. Dr. Florida’s book is a tremendously important guide to the strange
new world opening up in front of us. I’m sure it will become a classic.

------
sumosudo
The Trial -- Kafka

------
robotnikman
My favorite go to books:

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg How to Win Friends and Influence People
by Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie 10%
happier by Dan Harris Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

------
crypteasy
The Egg is a (very) short story that I've often found myself thinking about.

[http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)

------
aerovistae
Design of Everyday Things. All about how we design the things we interact
with, and how the design of something can influence your ability to understand
it or use it, down to the most basic things like doors and handles.

------
karthickgururaj
I would suggest Shadows of forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.

------
coryfklein
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari

Will forever change how you look at humanity, society, and technology. Lot's
of eye openers and in general it causes you to shift your frame of reference
entirely.

------
jeffe
For a more modern and youthful perspective, I'd recommend "Trick Mirror" by
Jia Tolentino. It really dives into how chaotic world of internet and media
has influenced younger generations.

------
smsm42
The Mythical Man-Month

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and
How to Restore the Sanity

Parkinson's Law, and Other Studies in Administration + The Peter Principle

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

------
ph4
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber

The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts

The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas

The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter by Rupert
Spira

Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram

------
antuneza
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

------
h4kor
Blindsight from Peter Watts

------
dariusj18
Infoquake by David Louis Edelman and the trilogy it belongs to would be right
up HN's alley IMO. It's fun techie sci-fi. Some of the ideas can really make
you think about reality.

------
malloreon
If you read these three Agatha Christie novels you'll never think about
mysteries, in any form, the same way again.

I recommend this order:

The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd

And Then There Were None (also titled Ten Little Indians)

Murder on the Orient Express

------
throwaway9482
The Master and the Emissary by Iain McGilchrist

Read the reviews on Amazon to see what it’s all about

I read it a few years ago and I’ve read quite a few books that changed how I
view the world but none as much as this book

------
34679
"Breaking Open the Head", by Daniel Pinchbeck

"DMT: The Spirit Molecule", by Dr. Rick Strassman

"The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge", by Jeremy Narby

"The Law", by Frederic Bastiat

------
lbrito
Ubik by Phillip K Dick.

I'm kind of shocked that it wasn't cited already.

------
dreamercz
Really anything by Robert Fulghum. Granted, this books are not mind mending
but when I read them I was relatively young and their authenticity left a
lasting impression on me.

------
allie1
For someone with ADHD, "outwitting the devil" had a very strong effect on me.

I know public sentiment for Napoleon Hill is not positive overall, but I
definitely recommend this one.

------
GaryGapinski
Lazarillo de Tormes:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes)

------
kabdib
Annie Dillard, _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_ and _Holy the Firm_. Dillard has a
way with words that is both eloquent and a little violent, and she influenced
how I write just as much as Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_.

Douglas Hofstadter's _Godel, Escher, Bach_ for its captivating presentation of
some very complicated ideas (at least to the 17 year old kid who read this for
the first time). This book was published around the time that I was growing
from hobby programming to writing software as a career, and it exposed me to
non-trivial proofs, LISP, and recursion in general.

Vernor Vinge's _The Peace War_. It's a bit stupid, but . . . I want to make
the tech in this book become reality :-) Bobbles are sheer fantasy, of course,
but the Tinker tech stack would be a lot of fun.

------
bumbledraven
_The Beginning of Infinity_ , by David Deutsch. It talks about the kinds of
ideas that lead to progress vs stagnation at the level of individuals and
societies.

------
OOPMan
Clearly there is only one real answer to this question...

...The Necronomicon!

------
thisisbrians
Waking Up by Sam Harris

Sam is a neuroscientist and meditation devotee who offers a cunning and life-
altering exposé on the mysteries around consciousness and the investigations
and learnings therein. One mind-bender from the book: some people have
undergone a procedure to separate the left and right sides of the brain as
treatment for rare disease. Following this procedure, the left and right sides
can independently answer questions (sometimes simultaneously) posed by
researchers, frequently offering conflicting answers. Interestingly, the right
brain alone cannot speak but can answer questions by drawing or choosing
letters/cards. Thus, it would appear that following the procedure, each side
of the brain is conscious, yet unaware of the consciousness inside the other
side.

------
pjmorris
Maybe try something/anything by Douglas Hofstadter. 'Godel, Escher, Bach' gets
most of the attention, but I also found 'The Mind's I: Fantasies And
Reflections On Self & Soul' (with Daniel Dennett), and 'Metamagical Themas'
fascinating.

------
alexashka
Thus spoke zarathustra. If it isn't clicking within the first 25-50 pages,
come back to it after you've become a bit disillusioned with humanity :)

------
smsm42
Also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123088)

------
beefield
Amartya Sen: Development as freedom. Gives perspective what is needed for a
country to develop to (and stay) a good place to live for the citizens.

------
kryogen1c
perhaps blasé, but the Tao. it is as simple as it is unknowable, from the
highest levels of philosophy down to action-items in your everyday life. the
Tao that can be described is not the true Tao, so you must search yourself :)

to simply be smarter (but maybe not wiser), the art of learning by josh
waitzkin. if you are interested in optimizing anything, why not learn how to
optimize optimization?

~~~
fjfaase
I wonder if the Tao is so profound as it is interpreted in the West, because
the understanding of the text, much lies on the nature of the Chinese
language, which is much more about concepts, than about words. For example,
the 'the Tao that can be described' part in Chinese consists of only three
characters, which when transliterated would read 'way can speak', where for
both 'way' and 'speak' the character for tao is used. The remaining part of
the sentence also only uses three characters, if I am not mistaken 'not
constant(timeless, eternal) way'. See for example: [https://www.tao-te-
king.org/](https://www.tao-te-king.org/)

------
Pandabob
The first time I read Talebs Black Swan was pretty mind bending. It's a
intriguing mix of philosophy, history and the application of probabilistic
thinking.

It's also a great aggregator book. It introduced me to the works of Kahneman,
Tetlock, Poincare and Mandelbrot.

~~~
sixhobbits
Read "fooled by randomness" if you haven't already. I much preferred it to his
later work, and it introduced me to Popper (who was someone that 3 years of
philosophy at university somehow managed to skip) who you might also enjoy.

~~~
thatswrong0
I tried to read this but just could not get over his writing style. It just
felt so self-indulgent and took forever to get to the point. I have no idea
why it's recommended so highly.

~~~
alexilliamson
I don't know why it is, but I suspect it's the same reason people listen to
Nate Silver

------
polskibus
Neuromancer by Gibson, Black Oceans by Jacek Dukaj.

------
Tomte
"The Illuminated Mind", supposedly. But I've just started reading it.

It's a guide to meditation, without the religious parts.

------
ainiriand
For me that was 'The Infinite Book' by John D. Barrow. I read it at a very
young age and changed my brain completely.

------
maxwell
_Prometheus Rising_ by Robert Anton Wilson

------
ssvt
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson (relatively new) and Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

------
SuoDuanDao
For me, the following are near the top:

"The Opposable Mind", by Roger Martin

"Antifragile" by Nassim Taleb

"The Conscious Universe" by Dean Radin

~~~
Invictus0
I'll caution readers here against Conscious Universe as pseudoscience rubbish.

~~~
SuoDuanDao
It gets a lot of flak, but I've never met a critic who could pile more peer
reviewed studies against its premise than I could pile in its favour.

------
ne9xt
The Teachings of Don Juan - Carlos Castaneda

~~~
itchyjunk
I first read The Art of Dreaming. Then I started with The Teachings of Don
Juan and read all of the 10+ books in the series. I also read the book that
was written by the women from his party. Really enjoyed all of it.

------
zanmat0
The Three Body Problem and its two sequels.

~~~
CosmicShadow
I just finished devouring these as they were posted in the last similar thread
I saw on HN.

Can never really look at the stars or think of space the same again.

------
joeberon
Any intro to philosophy book, e.g. "Think: A Compelling Introduction to
Philosophy" by Simon Blackburn

------
yizhang7210
Mark Manson's books:

\- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F * ck

\- Everything Is F * cked

They have absolutely changed my life. I can't recommend them enough.

------
meristem
"Mindset", Carol Dweck. Or her more scholarly one on same topic, "Self-
theories"

------
21eleven
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

------
DyslexicAtheist
book suggestions are like opinions: everyone has a few ... fwiw here books
which I re-read more than twice:

1) Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society (La Technique)":
[https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...](https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety)

2) Jacques Ellul "Propaganda"
[https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512](https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512)

3) Robert Cialdini "Influence"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Theory_of_infl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Theory_of_influence)
<\- could probably be described as a modern / dark adversarial take in "how to
make friends and influence people" and should be read with Kahneman &
Tversky's books/papers.

4) James C. Scott "The Art of Not being Governed"
[https://libcom.org/files/Art.pdf](https://libcom.org/files/Art.pdf)

5) Dickens "Hard Times"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Times_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Times_\(novel\))
<\- for it's description of the effects on peasant communities during
industrialization, which is also a theme in "La Technique" above

6) George Orwell "Down and Out in London and Paris"
[https://archive.org/details/DownAndOutInParisAndLondonGeorge...](https://archive.org/details/DownAndOutInParisAndLondonGeorgeOrwell1933/mode/2up)

7) M. Scott Peck "The Road Less Traveled"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Traveled)

8) Introducing Psychology of Relationships - A Practical Guide by John Karter
[https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Psychology-
Relationships-...](https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Psychology-
Relationships-Practical-Guide/dp/1848313594)

9) Lion Feuchtwanger "Goya" [https://www.amazon.com/Goya-Lion-
Feuchtwanger/dp/8476408838](https://www.amazon.com/Goya-Lion-
Feuchtwanger/dp/8476408838)

10) Thomas Ligotti "The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of
Horror" [https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race-
Contriv...](https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race-
Contrivance/dp/0984480277)

11) Plato "The Republic":
[https://archive.org/details/PlatoRepublic/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/PlatoRepublic/mode/2up)

12) Lewis Mumford "The Story of Utopias":
[https://archive.org/details/storyutopias00mumfgoog/page/n9/m...](https://archive.org/details/storyutopias00mumfgoog/page/n9/mode/2up)

13) the major works of: Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Foucault,
Chomsky, Zizek

Short:

\- Peter Wessel Zapffe "The Last Messiah":
[https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah](https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah)

\- Lion Feuchtwanger "Power":
[https://archive.org/details/powerbookbylionf00zieliala/page/...](https://archive.org/details/powerbookbylionf00zieliala/page/n2/mode/2up)

\- Samuel Becket "Waiting for Godot":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot)

\- Fyodor Dostoevsky "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man":
[https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Ridiculous-Man-Fyodor-
Dostoyevs...](https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Ridiculous-Man-Fyodor-
Dostoyevsky/dp/1419160222)

------
theblahblah
The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho and Psychology of Intelligence Analysis by
Richards J. Heuer Jr.

------
davedx
The Magus, John Fowles

Dune (all 6)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

Manufacturing Consent

The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan

If This Is a Man, Primo Levi

Light, M. John Harrison

~~~
alibaba_x
All 6 Dune books? The first one was a masterpiece but the rest are not as
widely praised.

~~~
BtdTom
Personally, I love the first four books, although the be warned they take a
different tone than from the first book. The last two are good, but Heinlein
passed away after writing the sixth book. I believe his son tried to continue
the series, but I haven't read past that.

I highly recommend reading at least the first four books.

------
lgas
I would recommend Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter if you haven't
already read it.

~~~
bobosha
TBH I have attempted to read it many times but escapes my feeble mind. GEB is
one of those books ...

~~~
maurits
You could have a look at 'The Mind's I' [1]. Its a collection of short essays
edited by Hofstadter and Dennett.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I)

------
leonardoeloy
\- Meditations on Quixote and the Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset
\- Iliad by Homer

------
tekknolagi
Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It was a wild ride. Permanently raised the bar for
fiction for me.

~~~
davisdulin
this book continues to represent one of my highest ideals. monastic orders
that may form in the possibility of eventual hackstability

------
projproj
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. Don't know how, but his words just made my
brain buzz.

------
thr0w__4w4y
Michael Pollan's "How To Change Your Mind"

Jocko Willink's "Extreme Ownership"

------
whearyou
The Dispossesed.

Collective activity, ie the bedrock of humans human-omg, has not looked the
same since

------
elorant
Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius

------
omarchowdhury
Any books by Fritjof Schuon, René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, or Titus
Burckhardt.

------
Emptysister
The Tibetan Book of the Dead

------
mongol
The God Delusion by Dawkins perhaps. I was agnostic before, atheist after.

------
49531
Silas Marner by George Elliot. Changed the way I parent my children.

------
james_s_tayler
Mind bending books?

Non-fiction: The Brain That Changes Itself

Fiction: The Way of The Peaceful Warrior

------
goldenshale
Accelerando by Charles Stross: Be there to receive a phone call from a
sentient hive lobster consciousness that escaped from the lab, and watch the
singularity happen in a hilarious and mind bending fast take off.

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge: explore the far future in a space opera
dreamed up by a computer science professor turned sci-fi author. This book
literally inspired the first IoT sensor "motes" created, and we haven't come
close to achieving the vision he explores just as texture in this rich book
with fascinating characters. Not my favorite wordsmith, but one of my favorite
idea-smiths.

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter: create a new mathematics from the
axioms up, while strolling along with a wise tortoise and a hare who share
fascinating ideas and connections from art and music to number theory,
incompleteness, and consciousness.

------
cik
At random

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand. Love her or hate her, she makes you think.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things - This is a great book about building
businesses, and business in general.

Capital in the 21st Century - One of the greatest books about economics and
capital written ever - let alone in the last decade.

The Intelligent Investor - This is Buffet's favourite book, and regardless of
how many times I read it, I still learn more. One can never digest it in full.

Predictably Irrational - This excellent tome makes behavioural economics
digestible outside of economics. It's enlightening, though provoking, and
turns several accepted truths on its head, purely by being written at all.

Nexus (Ramez Naam) - This science fiction book explores transhumanism and
would it could mean in the near future. It's both light and pulpy, but at the
same time makes you think about the outcomes of technological progression.

~~~
organsnyder
I read _Atlas Shrugged_ without any preconceptions (I didn't know who Ayn Rand
was, and Libertarianism wasn't nearly as trendy back then). I was taken in by
the story of how everything fell apart, but was completely turned off by her
solution—creating a "utopia" is quite easy when you only allow in a select few
and have unlimited free energy. It struck me as the Libertarian equivalent of
_The Jungle_: tell a compelling narrative of how society is (or can be)
broken, and then destroy the credibility you've built by presenting your
ideological vision while completely ignoring potential pitfalls.

~~~
cik
This is exactly what I love about that book. To many it's a bible of
libertarianism. To many it's everything that's bad about it. Either way I find
it definitely encourages debate and thinking - much more than her other works.

------
benjohnson1707
The innovator's dilemma

Systemantics

A farewell to entropy

The nature of technology - what it is and how it evolves

On being wrong

------
kalimatas
"Only Forward" by Michael Marshall Smith. Unexpected.

------
sidcool
How do I know which recommendation has been voted the highest?

------
diehunde
\- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

\- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

------
pftburger
* (Theory) Surfing Uncertainty by Andy Clark

Basically a unified theory of consciousness. 100% must read.

* (Theory) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

A bit long winded but it really changes the way you think about the voice in
your head, about consciousness in general. Pairs well with Surfing Uncertainty

* (Self Help) Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Really wakes you up to the domination language that rules our interactions and provides an alternative framework. Its even great if you don't plan on implementing NVC, just to understand what non nonviolent langue is. Pairs well with Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness for understanding how language formed our minds and our societies.

* (Theory) The Force of Nonviolence Judith Butler Wakes you up to the highly dominant and persistent narrative of violence. Provides frameworks for something else. If this doesnt blow your mind im not sure what will.

* (Theory)Staying with the Trouble by Donna J. Haraway The name says it all. Ways to stop trying to wipe the slate clean, to start from scratch, but instead to "stay with the trouble" and make new things WITH. Wakes your mind up to disrupting in whole new ways.

* (Theory) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein Another book that helps you see the world through different eyes, or even if I dare, to see the world more clearly. Pairs nicely with the unnecessarily long winded "Fall" by Neal Stephenson for understand a post truth world, specifically the idea of "Edit Streams"

* (Scifi )The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton This one game me a framework for science and spirituality to coincide

* (Scifi ) Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Questions everything, blows your mind on multiple levels.

* (Self Help) She Comes First by Ian Kerner Wakes you up to the massive comfort imbalance in sex between genders and provides simple ways to help fix it (for heterosexual)

------
valaksh
Italo calvino,On a winter's night, a traveller.

------
alyx
Bernardo Kastrup's - Why Materialism Is Baloney

------
tiborsaas
Cracking the coding interview :)

~~~
achow
Very interesting reply.

And coming to think of it, there are couple of books that changed my life
similarly (reading them for interview); though by themselves they may not
merit to be in my permanent collection.

------
duckietown
Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl.

------
preordained
The Disappearance of the Universe, Gary Renard

------
just_testing
"Debt" and "bullshit jobs", both by David Graeber.

The first book really tears apart several of the "foundations" of economics.
For instance, the creation of money as portrayed by Adam Smith? It's a myth,
and no single place like he described ever existed.

Bullshit jobs is about the myriad bullshit managerial jobs we have and how we
really shouldn't have them. It's capitalism, it's supposed to be efficient and
yet, when he published a piece about bullshit jobs in an obscure anarchist
magazine in 2013, it made so much impact The Economist wrote a response!

------
zedr
The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. It describes what science believes life
to be, and it can be very upsetting. Understanding it, however, made me a more
confident and happier person than I was before.

~~~
fit2rule
I found this book completely degrading, even to the point of nauseating .. it
discounts tens of thousands of years of human experience with describing
itself, producing a taxonomic monster that is of very little actual use to the
common man beyond providing a convenient excuse for ones failings and for the
nature of humankinds more banal spirit.

Science can be repressive. Dawkins is a classic example of the iron fist in a
velvet glove, imho. He justifies monstrosity with a technical crutch, and
whether it is 'true' or not, at the end of this book I just felt like dirt.

/just_like_my_opinion_man

~~~
zedr
I appreciate your opinion. I think the book gives a very convincing
explanation on how evolution works and how it shaped what we call "life". I do
not remember Dawkins degrading human achievements in that book, so you might
be referring to talks and lectures after the book was written. On the
contrary, consider the following quote from the book:

> “If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our
> children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological
> nature. ”

Let me quote another favourite author of mine on the same topic:

> "There’s Nature, and she’s going to come out the way She is.", Feynman.

~~~
fit2rule
Indeed there is alignment, as one of my favourite quotes from one of my
favourite authors brings to bear:

“You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” -
Richard P. Feynman

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weare138
Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick

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gyrcom
William Saroyan, The Human Comedy. Yup,, that's the one. Explains more about
the human condition than any other literature that I have encountered.

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kemiller2002
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill.

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bbrree66
Jed McKenna - Spiritual Enlightenment

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picatycomb
"The Magus" by John Fowles

~~~
hardlianotion
What did you like about it? I read it a few years ago and found some of the
period attitude hard to appreciate.

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skuthus
I haven't seen it mentioned yet: Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter -
this book was a game changer for me - I read it in college over a partiularly
rainy spring break and its content has changed the way I think about just
about everything.

Systems Thinking: A Primer by Donella Meadows is also an incredibly thought-
provoking non-fiction book, that really makes you think about the world and
the systems we create differently.

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abvdasker
"The Dispossessed" by Ursula K Le Guin is a classic science fiction novel
written in 1974 about political philosophy and its relation to individuals'
personal lives. The book's genius is in describing capitalism through the eyes
of a protagonist for whom it is unfamiliar and literally alien.

It changed the way I think about how society today is structured and showed me
that something different is possible.

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Minor49er
"I Am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. It explores an idea of
consciousness as being a side effect over neurological loops becoming
recursive. It also gets into the idea that your conscious mind can partially
blend into another's. He does this by talking about his feelings of day to day
life after his wife passed away. There's a dense math chapter, but the rest is
pleasantly written

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jtlienwis
Sholzenitzen's Gulag.

Twains Pudd'head Wilson and "The Corruption of Hadleyburg"

Ayn Rand et al "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal"

Peter Kropotkin "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution"

Tannehill, Morse "The Market for Liberty"

Albert J. Nock "Our Enemy the State"

Stephan Wolfram "A New Kind of Science"

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BadMrFrosty
Anything by E Michael Jones

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PhaedrusV
"Maps of Meaning" by Jordan Peterson (yeah, that JP): a extremely interesting
textbook-length treatment on cultural meaning and narrative. I found it a
little hard to get through the learning curve on the jargon in the print form,
but I could tell it had some really interesting ideas so I got the audio
version and fully enjoyed it. It was a thoroughly mind-bending look at the
meaning and power of shared cultural myths and human myths which transcend
culture. It ended up with a fascinating analysis of (even to the point of
being a partial rehabilitation of) Jungian psychoanalytic frameworks and pre-
scientifc Alchemy. Maps of Meaning was a book that I immediately wanted to re-
read as soon as I finished it, because I could tell there was a lot that I
missed the first time.

Another recommendation is "Quantum Genesis: Speculations in Modern Physics and
the Truth in Scripture" by Stuart Allen. QG is a relatively deep pop sci look
at physics, computation, and several related fields where the author points
out that the original translation of the creation myth in Genesis 1 matches up
extremely well with a modern understanding of quantum physics and simulation
theory. (disclosure: a family member is the author).

------
ekianjo
Cosmos by Carl Sagan

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aronowb14
Never split the difference (Chris Voss): incredible book about dealing with
people, after reading you end up seeing most interactions with other humans as
negotiations with “black swans” hidden in your conversations.

Thinking Fast and Slow. (Recommended in other responses but I’d have to second
this one. Incredible for reasoning about your own reasoning).

What the Buddha Taught: (Walpola Rahula): a short intro to Buddhism. There are
some really powerful ideas from this age old religion, that can definitely
help you think about your own happiness and what material possessions actually
give you.

The Innovators Dilemma: a must read for startup founders, I think it’s the
best model for thinking about technology and why startups and adoption often
fails.

Atlas shrugged (Ayn Rand): completely transformative book for looking at our
world, America particularly. Th perspective it gives you may not be in the
best, or most human way, but I’ve found no other book that forces you to
empathize with capitalism like this one.

~~~
kemiller2002
Never Split the Difference is an amazing book. I use what I learned from that
everyday, and I've coached people (successfully) to get out of bad situations
with management using those techniques. It is literally one of the most
helpful books I ever read.

------
dipiert
\- "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter \- "Foucalt's pendulum" by
Umberto Eco. \- "A Perfect Vacuum" by Stanislaw Lem. \- "Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.

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inventtheday
Godel Escher Bach by Hofstadter. I was never even close to the same
afterwards.

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nbulka
Labyrinths of Reason, William Poundstone The Ghost in the Atom, P.C.W Davies
The View from the Center of The Universe, Abrams and Primack Godel Escher
Bach, Douglas Hofstadter The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz

------
FailMore
Tao Te Ching

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kleer001
Gödel, Escher, Bach: by Douglas Hofstadter.

Surely expanded my brain. But then again I was 16 and stuck on a train for 3
days and it was my only entertainment.

------
theterriblestid
Homestuck.

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debt5000
debt, the first 5000 years

------
geori
48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

------
chenpengcheng
beyond good and evil

------
gwright
Godel, Escher, and Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter

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marnett
Hmmm. Great question. What was the most "mind bending" moment in cinema? The
ending to The Sixth Sense or the trial and conviction of Harvey Weinstein?
When I think of mind bending I think of the thoughts and ideas that break one
out of a previous believed framework of thinking. Things that have a lasting
impact on how they see and view the world.

"The Bible" (New International Version)

“Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Friedman

“Imperial Ambitions” by Noam Chomsky

“Evolution and Religion: A Dialogue Book" by Michael Ruse

“The Value of Free Thought” an essay by Bertrand Russel

“The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism” by Daniel Bell

“Stalking the billion-footed beast” an essay by Tom Wolfe

“Propaganda” by Edward Bernays

“Bonfire of the Vanities” by Tom Wolfe

“Walden” by Henry David Thoreau

“30 Satires” by Lewis H. Lapham

“Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut

Above, in chronological order, are the books that changed my life. It is weird
looking at that list, as each book is tied to such a fundamental shift in my
life. They each taught me about something fundamentally new and different.
Faith, spirituality, economics, thought, power, society, nature, technology.
It should appear obvious by looking at the list, there are plenty of opposite
pairs, dipole books if you will, present. Bending one’s mind has multiple
phases, first when one goes from knowing nothing to knowing something.
Depending on what was learned, this can definitely be mind bending. But not
everyone rides the second phase, going from knowing something to learning that
it wasn’t the whole thing, or wasn’t the only way to interpret such a thing,
or wasn’t entirely correct, or perhaps, in our largely subjective world, is
not true at all.

Certain books can only speak to certain people at certain times of their life.
It’s just the beauty of the whole thing. And to the core of this thread, one
actually has to believe something, truly and passionately, in order for them
to then have their world view bent and turned on its head. This is the hardest
lesson that many won’t really ever opt to face. The core of truth, learning,
and wisdom comes when you finally read (and thus think) something that takes a
belief you previously held as passionately true, unalterably true, core-to-
identity true, and made you wrestle with the reality that it may, perhaps, not
be. That’s the biggest mind f __* of them all.

One’s entire worldview is constructed of things they believe. But those things
you believe come, for some more than others, from what one read, purposefully
or not. Seek books that challenge what you believe and enjoy the ride.

------
okasaki
Lying by Sam Harris

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dntbnmpls
> I'm looking for mind games, plot twists, brain expanding books, and
> literally anything that transforms me into a smarter, wiser person.

It's hard to tell whether you want a mystery/thriller book or a book on logic
or a self help book. If you want to be more intelligent or aware of culture,
then read the bible. You'll be surprised how almost everything you read, watch
or listen to is tied to the bible. Almost every book listed in this thread
will have references to the bible. You really can't be culturally intelligent
without having read the bible - at least in the US or Europe. If you want a
mystery, can't go wrong The Name of the Rose. Also, a book isn't going to
transform you into a smarter, wiser person. The countless shelves of self-help
books should be evidence enough.

Also, I love this quote from einstein:

"Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative
pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls
into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the
theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his
own life."

~~~
hardlianotion
> It's hard to tell whether you want a mystery/thriller book or a book on
> logic or a self help book.

Then we can throw over what we like and see what sticks!

------
saheb37
I will take the bullet and suggest Ayn Rand's Fountainhead.

If you are a teenager it will definitely make you think and likely leave an
impact on you. It's not a typical novel, more like philosophical ideas
presented in the form of a novel. Ideal characters placed in real life. You
will also understand why the world is divided into Ayn Rand lovers and haters.

It questions how the world works, how it should work, how people live their
lives, and how they should live their lives, etc, etc.

Warning you, it's not filled with plots twists.

~~~
friendlybus
Is the book better than the movie? I just watched the 1949 film last night. It
seems complete, does it miss any details?

~~~
saheb37
I haven't got around watching the movie yet, is it any good? I will give it a
try.

~~~
friendlybus
It's similar to your description of the book, ideal characters doing ideal
things. Some scenes feel like they could be trimmed down and convey the same
information. The web of characters gets more rewarding to watch past the
halfway line as the conflicts start to blossom. The film builds over time and
comes to a powerful and satisfying end.

The 1940s emphasis on tall verticality in its art style is on full display.
The strict adherence to command in speech seems foreign to me, not having been
through the fighting forties.

Yeah its good. Cant say it will have any surprises left for you.

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starpilot
Here's my list:

* Read any book you want

* Don't read books that you don't want to

* Get on with your life

------
kentf
Wolfram, A new Kind of Science. Could re-define fundamental physics and
computing.

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t-writescode
Thinking Fast and Slow. I recommend this to absolutely everyone. It’s a huge
study on how everyone thinks, even when they think they’re above thinking like
that. Truly amazing!

~~~
qwerty456127
Is the whole book actually worth reading? I mean the concept is very simple
(although extremely important) and can be explained concisely in a couple of
minutes - why a 500-pages book?

~~~
AQuantized
A lot of the book is going through various types of specific bias (e.g.
anchoring, sunk-cost), and going over the way in which it was studied and
shown to exist. I see this as valuable as because, as you say, accounting for
irrationality is important, and having an indepth account of exactly how bias
arises is key to internalizing the reality that we are all prone to succumbing
to these errors.

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nicholast
Ok this is actually more along the lines of “Mind bending books to write and
never be the same as before”, as in I wrote it and has certainly had that kind
of impact. I wrote a collection of essays documenting various interests like
machine learning and entrepreneurship. An ongoing project, currently on book
four. It’s a lot of fun! “From the Diaries of John Henry”, available online at
[https://www.turingsquared.com](https://www.turingsquared.com)

------
oosh9Shi
That's quite a personal experience, I think.

For me, the books which had the most impact on my life were those which were
exploring systematically something I had a confuse idea of and seemed rather
unorthodox. When you get that feeling that "oh great, if I'm insane, I'm not
alone", it immediately organizes your thought process and allows you to go
further.

Of course, there is always the risk of an "echo chamber" effect, but on the
other hand, there are some ideas that you can't get if you're not in a given
predisposition, so better maximize the usefulness of your reading time (and
explore introduction to alien ideas through lighter sources, like small
articles).

