My question is meant to be open-ended and not limited to programming. My examples:
Meta-programming, in ruby (the power of code that creates code, being released from the tyranny of typing)
Social psychology (Social proof, hacks for relating to people, hacks for appealing to the opposite sex, hacks for reading people)
Economics (Why the minimum wage is damaging, why free trade is good)
The role that biases play in my own thinking. Charlie Munger's speech that was on this site a while ago articulates a lot of things I was beginning to realize (http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html)
I struggled for a long time with procrastination and low productivity. When I realized that abandoning the parts of my life that were not deeply fulfilling (browsing the web aimlessly, refreshing RSS feeds, wasting time in forums, watching tv etc) would not actually be as painful as I thought it would, it changed how I live and work in a very fundamental way.