
Ask HN: What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? - jbischke
In the last year I've become mildly obsessed with understanding "how the world works."  This is basically a combination of understanding human nature (and things like evolutionary psychology), how/where money and power flow in society, what are the "underground" things that really have an impact on people succeeding or failing, etc.<p>Many of the links here on Hacker News and stuff like Paul Graham's essays have been invaluable and I wanted to see what specifically HNers recommend along these lines.  What books, articles, etc. have you read and afterwards said "Now I get why this is that way."?
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pasbesoin
Years ago, a brilliant if eccentric friend had one of those one-pane comics on
his bulletin board. It depicted a figure walking down a city street. All the
forms of communication around him -- I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but
remember particularly items such as a bus stop bench, perhaps a TV in a shop
window, newspaper vending machine, and a billboard -- displayed the word
"lies".

At the time, I thought it was a rather cynical take on life. Over the years,
though, I've come to be more and more in agreement with it.

He's also the fellow who once, in response perhaps to my own low self-esteem,
said: "Xxx, you have to realize, most people are as dumb as rocks." I'm still
working on that bit of imparted wisdom. Some days I agree. Some days, I am
surprised by the unexpected abilities I find in others. (And a bit
disappointed at my own lack of insight prior to such realizations.)

I guess the real eye opener, although it didn't come all at once and I still
fall short, is that, the more you (truly) respect yourself, the more others
respect you. Don't look to others to give you your self worth, though you can
find it in part in your interactions with them.

Finally, one time I said to a group, thinking it nothing terribly special,
that one should not expect from others what they are unable to give you.
Another brilliant, if a bit self-centered and brutal friend, responded in a
surprisingly positive fashion: She said she had never expected to learn
anything from me, but that this really surprised her. Her feedback reinforced
my own point to me. It also showed me that you cannot always tell what someone
else will find valuable. Finally, over time, it showed me that when someone
echos a sentiment to you, pay heed: I was hoping for a relationship with her
that she was willing to tease and "pretend" about, but not willing to really
start.

Despite the comic and sentiment about "lies", most people, when you really pay
attention, are communicating fairly immediately what their interests and
perspective are. It may not always be in their words or even in their short
term actions, but it is in -- pardon the use of the word -- their Gestalt.

EDIT (again): Decided to remove the previously edited in, additional portion
of my comment addressing others pointing out and then my own anecdotal
observations of correlations between physical attractiveness and success, as
well as congregation of such attractiveness -- like seeking like. I do seem to
see such, but I'm not comfortable my observations are objective enough to
warrant exposition.

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brk
For me it was simply getting out in the world at a relatively young age at a
variety of levels.

I never really got any allowance, mostly just because my old man was a bit of
a cheap-ass and a control freak. It was easier to earn my own money instead of
having to be beholden to him and account for where my spendings went.

And I've always been rather enterprising, so I tried various forms of income
multiplication like loansharking and other investments.

You learn how the world works much more quickly when you are on your own and
interacting with various people at various levels in various ways. For me this
started in earnest around age 10.

At some point I figured out early on that other people have only has much
power as you give them, and that nobody else is ever going to be looking our
for YOUR best interests, despite what they might say.

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yan
Fantastic question that I've been musing over myself recently.

I've not understood anything specific that led to this (as far as my tired
mind remembers), but my hunger for some specific statistics grew. For
instance: Partitions of US workforce into industry, median wage, median age,
geographical locations, etc. Trying to see the overhead in society. Sources of
political contributions. Wealth division. Each industry's contribution to:
GDP, pollution, natural resources, workforce, etc.

My long-running goal has been to create visualizations that sum up a lot of
these big questions. I'd love to work with others if they share similar goals.

edit; forgot to mention: I've been craving to find out topics known inside
industries but covered to the general public. I.e. how record labels work, how
industries deal with non-compete agreements and collusion, what financial
institutions do that should be illegal but isn't, details of HFT, agriculture
subsidies, barriers of entry to large industries, etc and etc. (I have a
feeling I'll be editing this a lot)

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Maven911
Wow! I always thought it strange that I felt I was the only one who was truly
obsessed about "how the world works". It always amazes me that people under 20
don't even bother to watch news to stay up to date with current events or
special information reports...

Me personally, I would say the newspaper. I would read it cover to cover when
I was a kid (yes I know, I am weird like that). Even clip out articles I found
super interesting.

Nowadays, with the internet and wikipedia, anything that pops in my mind is
easily searchable. Plus, I read a lot of non-fiction books on a variety of
topics (though I mostly prefer anything having to do with money, analyzing
human behaviour, social/society issues and analysis).

One book I would highly recommend to understand the concrete world around you
(power lines, power plants, road development, etc.) would be this fantastic
book: <http://industrial-landscape.com/index.html>

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scarface548
Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

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bsaunder
I've been pondering information architecture a lot lately. I've found that
much of _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ resonates well with my thoughts.

Particularly I've been contemplating the relationship between transformation
and efficiency, as well as parallel processing and recurive architectures.

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Tichy
I liked the books by Alice Miller, at least the earlier ones. I am not sure if
the later ones are still good (the made up examples seem strange). I think
"The Untouched Key" was one I liked.

Made me wish everybody would read them at least once.

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iterationx
Introducing NLP - Joseph O'Connor, John Seymour, Propaganda - Edward Bernays,
Tragedy & Hope - Quigley, Evolution of Civilizations - Quigley, 911: The Road
to Tyranny - Alex Jones, New Order of Barbarians, AA-1025

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dimarco
Kerouac and traveling.

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gregp
Learning how to learn.

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dbs
Read Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin.

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zeynel1
+Newton's Principia as a masterpiece of marketing and for creating the modern
scholasticism
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica)

+Descartes' Geometry where he declares that you can choose any line as a unit
to measure other lines (your knowledge depends on what you already know, your
unit) (p.1) <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26400/26400-pdf.pdf>

+Galileo's Dialogues for the realization that real understanding of nature
does not come from academic gibberish and research is actually fun
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems)

+Dana Densmore's Newton book to understand Principia
[http://www.greenlion.com/cgi-
bin/SoftCart.100.exe/principi.h...](http://www.greenlion.com/cgi-
bin/SoftCart.100.exe/principi.html?E+scstore)

+Slow burn by Stu Mittleman to understand how human body deals with fat and
sugar [http://www.amazon.com/Slow-Burn-Faster-Exercising-
Slower/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Slow-Burn-Faster-Exercising-
Slower/dp/0062736744/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251423434&sr=1-4)

+The Answer John Assaraf about habits [http://www.amazon.com/Answer-Business-
Achieve-Financial-Extr...](http://www.amazon.com/Answer-Business-Achieve-
Financial-
Extraordinary/dp/1416562001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251423501&sr=1-1)

+Paul Graham's essays on education and dropping out of school for early
startup <http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html>

+Ernst Mach's History of mechanics for its incredible lucidity and classic
simplicity
[http://books.google.com/books?id=8bI3-JSarecC&dq=ernst+m...](http://books.google.com/books?id=8bI3-JSarecC&dq=ernst+mach+mechanics&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=XKK9MvgqWF&sig=7R2QuZYCshqlRogROu74ktE2MMM&hl=en&ei=AzaXSvbANtCJ8Qa6icixDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

+Euclid for its complete lack of physics in it and its beautiful diagrams
<http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html> +Aristotle for
appreciation of curiosity
[http://books.google.com/books?id=WWyF4vS8P7UC&pg=PA154&#...](http://books.google.com/books?id=WWyF4vS8P7UC&pg=PA154&dq=aristotle+curiosity&lr=#v=onepage&q=aristotle%20curiosity&f=false)

+Bertrand Russel for his humor <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell>
and for his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy Really beautiful book so
simple and fun to read...
[http://books.google.com/books?id=9GK_Fhz5RDUC&dq=introdu...](http://books.google.com/books?id=9GK_Fhz5RDUC&dq=introduction+to+mathematical+philosophy&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=T0YcV4i7Zs&sig=nZTCfKBaVLaVLQYJGRdRHwqc6ac&hl=en&ei=-TaXSpSOIJOg8QbD84GaDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

+Tolstoy's Confessions
[http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tolstoy/confession...](http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tolstoy/confession.html)
For his intellectual quest going in circles

I believe that if you continue long enough in your quest, your research and
understandings will describe such a circle. That's not a bad thing, I guess.

How does the world work? The world works the way you look at it.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210104> We see what we believe.

Ooops, I think I am steering away from your question. But I learned something
about how the world works from each one of these books.

I totally appreciate your approach to the question from a wholistic view
(including the social and human elements) by disregarding academic boundaries.

