[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker a...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem
solver?
Your choices needn't be only math books. They can come from any
discipline or genre. When you mention any book please add a line
or two as to why it made you a better thinker and problem solver.
Author : newsoul
Score : 264 points
Date : 2022-11-30 07:13 UTC (15 hours ago)
| yboris wrote:
| A book that made me see how carefully and how well we can
| ascertain a nebulous concept in social science:
|
| _Culture Of Honor: The Psychology Of Violence In The South_ by
| Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Honor-Psychology-Violence-Dir...
|
| The authors use a variety of independent evidence (historic, lab
| experiments, etc) to show that a _culture of honor_ exists, what
| it is, how it is perpetuated, and how we can make predictions
| based on it. This book is superb!
| mantas wrote:
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Good take on what is
| quality vs function and form.
|
| Art of War. Good example of a creature to last a damn long time.
| triggercut wrote:
| A book I'm surprised doesn't get more love, this book really
| helped pull together a lot of things I "knew" about computing at
| the time and how to approach knowing things from breaking them
| down more generally.
|
| Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering by Eldad Eilam
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversing:_Secrets_of_Reverse_...
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| "Make it stick", by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel. And any talk by
| Dave Snowden on Cynefin.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Trigger warning: This is a self-help thread. It may expose you to
| suggestions of self-help books and pop-sci of dubious quality.
| yboris wrote:
| Life hack: choose to read books written by researchers about
| their field of study, rather than by non-experts dabbling in
| social science / psychology.
|
| _Positive Psychology_ is a great example -- rather than
| reading one of the dozens of books written by non-experts, why
| not go with something like _The How of Happiness_ or _Stumbling
| on Happiness_ - by people who actually study and run
| experiments they write about.
| alfor wrote:
| Bible as an atheist (with Jordan Peterson biblical lecture on
| youtube as an introduction)
|
| We live a story and to make society work that story has to be
| shared.
|
| The goal of life would be to be in self-sacrifice in service of
| truth and love, in a sense it's similar to the stoic philosophy
| but with more dept.
|
| So much of our humans problems and pitfalls are outlined
| perfectly, but we have to find a way to read it without
| prejudice, with the intention of discovering what we don't know.
|
| There is a deeper meaning than the bearded magician in the sky,
| but it's a process for a scientifically minded person to be open
| to what is there (we have been taught that it's a bunch of lies
| and superstitions)
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| The Enchiridion (handbook) by Epictetus.
|
| It's really a summary of a single idea, but the most valuable
| idea I have encountered- how to recognize that the hardships and
| problems we face mostly come from failing to identify what we
| actually control, and mistakenly focusing our efforts and
| concerns on what we can't control while neglecting what we can.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Socrates
|
| Plato
|
| Alexis de Tocqueville
|
| Notebook of Nicholas Tesla
|
| Deep insight into non-engineering nature often brings out a
| solution that can be applied toward engineering/computer science.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| >>> problem solver
|
| "Applied Engineering Analysis" by Tai-Ran Hsu, published by John
| Wiley & Sons, 2018 (ISBN 9781110071204)
|
| Recent discovery. Complete reference in a single textbook.
| Applicable to any scale: from industrial automation to lunchtable
| experiments ;)
|
| >>> better thinker
|
| Wolfgang Engel. Decades of books from shaderx to gpuzen. Plus The
| Forge renderer!
|
| >>> holiday fun
|
| Flea | Acid for the Children (if you enjoy Just Kids, Chronicles:
| Vol 1, etc)
| Aromasin wrote:
| This might sound odd for those who know it, but the "48 Laws of
| Power" I've always felt worth recommending. It gives insight into
| how the power-hungry think and act, and is a valuable tool for
| helping to recognizing when a sociopathic/narcissistic person is
| trying to manipulate or undermine you. I think it crumbled away
| some of that social naivety I used to have, but in a good way. It
| made me more empathetic to people who's motives I previously
| would have failed to understand, and think more clearly about how
| I approach situations with people who don't have my best
| interests at heart. In short, it's a great book for making you
| think deeper and come up with solutions in the social realm.
|
| Interestingly enough, I recommended it to a few friends of mine
| who quite clearly to me had toxic partners. In both instances,
| they thanked me for the book recommendation and took action to
| remove those people from their lives. Especially in
| relationships, it's good to have a frame of reference to tell
| whether someone truly has your best interest at heart, or they
| just want power over you and use your good nature to get that.
|
| Keep in mind that the book is written in such a way to sound like
| your getting an education in politics from a full-blown
| psychopath, but once you get past that there's a lot of worth to
| be found.
| mach1ne wrote:
| This is an interesting take. Having read the book, I find that
| following its instructions would only yield relationships with
| people who aren't necessarily worth your time. Smart people are
| usually rather adept at detecting manipulative behavior. I
| concur, the best use for the book is the one you described.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| After reading that book, I look at influential people so
| differently now.
| hackerman123469 wrote:
| Having read that book, I can agree with this a lot.
|
| The book is amazing at teaching you to solve problems, as it
| helps you analyze and understand the behavior of others.
|
| It teaches you both what to do and what not to do in any given
| situation, but it also teaches you how to spot those who play
| the game of power as well.
|
| It's a tool that not only helps you obtaining/maintaining
| power, but also how to take away power from others.
|
| The principles in the book can mostly be applied to other
| things as well.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| In USSR there was a very popular method of problem solving
| developed by Altshuller called TRIZ[1]. It seems that it is still
| being used in some other countries like Japan, S. Korea to
| improve manufacturing processes. I read the books but I don't
| think it helped me to become a better problem solver... I wonder
| if anyone looked at it too.
|
| 1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ
| toolslive wrote:
| I read: https://www.amazon.com/40-Principles-TRIZ-Innovation-
| Extende...
|
| and I still think it's a great way to find strategies to think
| outside the box.
| azangru wrote:
| Triz is included in the list of "liberating structures" [0] -
| facilitation techniques that have become fairly popular in the
| agile community (scrum.org trainers definitely talk about
| them). So yeah, it's being looked into :-)
|
| [0] - https://www.liberatingstructures.com
| sho_hn wrote:
| "The Decipherment of Linear B" by John Chadwick is the story of
| how Michael Ventris, an architect with no formal education in
| linguistics and cryptanalysis, defied conventional (and his own)
| dogma and revealed the ancient Linear B script to have been used
| to write down the Greek language. This rewrote European history
| over night, and ends with a lovely section on what the now-
| readable documents reveal about the civilization who produced
| them.
|
| Wonderful lessons therein on:
|
| - thinking from first principles and following the evidence and
| solid metrics
|
| - being willing to be proven wrong, and keeping an open mind in
| the face of new facts
|
| - the value of open scientific collaboration
|
| - resisting arguments from authority
|
| - how fundamental skills and intelligence transfer across domains
|
| Ventris did not have a Rosetta stone at hand, so he had to
| decipher the script from what he could suss out using statistical
| methods and building up an internal logic. It's also a fun story
| of a great puzzle.
|
| It's a short and great book and was formative to me. There's
| newer books on the story that do a better job of highlighting the
| contributions of Ventris' collaborators (particularly the
| impressive Alice Kober), but Chadwick's is still the most concise
| and enjoyable, I think.
| agomez314 wrote:
| SICP was a game-changer for the way I think about software and
| problem-solving in general. Reading Aristotle's works also opened
| my eyes to all the different ways one can think about a problem
| (it rids of you of the narrow problem-solving methods we use
| today). Reading about history in general also opened up my
| perspective to think about problems in new ways -I recommend the
| Story of Civilization by Will Durant.
| cjfd wrote:
| Test Driven Development by Kent Beck. Split the process of
| development into small steps. One does not always have to design
| the complete solution beforehand. Periodic
| improvement/refactoring leads to better solutions than up-
| front/big design.
| gwd wrote:
| "The Logic of Real Arguments", by Alec Fisher, has had a pretty
| big impact on me. He develops a framework and some tools to use
| when analyzing real-world arguments, including extracting "A and
| B therefore C" statements, and asking questions like, "How would
| I know if this were wrong?" Then applies it to a number of
| passages from famous works. Discussing ideas with people with
| whom I disagree (at least initially) is both my job (only
| sometimes thankfully) and my hobby, and this book has allowed me
| to be a lot more effective in listening and communicating back.
| arnejenssen wrote:
| "The art of thinking clearly" by Rolf Dobelli
| https://www.amazon.com/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Rolf-Dobelli/dp/...
|
| 99 cognitive biases with memorable examples and stories.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
| jasone wrote:
| These are books that I've reread major portions of repeatedly
| because they consistently trigger broader thinking about their
| subject matter.
|
| _Purely Functional Data Structures_ by Chris Okasaki broadened
| how I think about algorithmic complexity analysis, after decades
| of mostly imperative programming. Other books on lambda calculus,
| type theory, OCaml, Haskell, etc. preceded this in my reading
| list, but this book clinched my love of functional programming.
|
| _The Garbage Collection Handbook_ by Richard Jones, Antony
| Hosking, and Eliot Moss provides broad, yet sufficiently
| detailed, coverage of automatic memory management that most
| techniques can be understood and implemented without digging into
| the primary literature. That said, this book (actually its
| predecessor, _Garbage Collection_ by Jones and Lins) inspired me
| to dig deep into memory management, and jemalloc is one of the
| incidental results.
| julienchastang wrote:
| On the interpersonal side, "How to Win Friends and Influence
| People" by Dale Carnegie. The title sounds Machiavellian, but it
| is basically a manual on how to deal with people i.e., take an
| authentic interest in people's lives, and make a strong effort to
| see conflict from the other person's point of view.
| kbrkbr wrote:
| If you're into probability, statistics and/or ML, Judea Pearl's
| The Book Of Why enlighted me kind of.
|
| While reading and applying, the suspicion had grown in me that
| probability is embedded in causality. Specifically when using
| Bayes theorem I had tweaked notation for me, so P[X|Y] would mean
| that X depends causally on Y. Then
|
| P(Y|X)=P[X|Y]P(Y)/P(X)
|
| would clearly show the reverse problem character, and how
| evidential reasoning is built on causal reasoning.
|
| Thus what Pearl and a lot of contributors built fell on fertile
| ground with me. I think it is an amazing addition to reasoning
| tools.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| The art of war
| wnzl wrote:
| Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety
|
| by Nancy Leveson
|
| Definitely one of better books that makes you think outside the
| box.
| muggermuch wrote:
| 1. I would fiercely recommend reading "An Engine, Not A Camera"
| (Donald MacKenzie). Formally, it reads as a sociological study of
| the practice of finance - how financial markets shape society
| instead of simply capturing its needs and desires at large. More
| importantly, however, it made me think deeper on questions about
| fields of study that are (were?) distant and to question
| assumptions: a lot of ideas that we take for granted as absolute
| truths are simply consensus-derived and have no objective
| reality.
|
| 2. On a similar theme, "The Lady Tasting Tea" (David Salsburg)
| was a wonderful history of the development of statistics as a
| mathematical discipline. I found it absolutely fascinating to map
| out how individual personalities were buffeted and shaped by
| larger historical events and movements (e.g. eugenics in the late
| 19th century, WW2, the rise of the Soviet Union, etc.) into
| asking questions of data that propelled statistics forward.
| Disciplines we think of as being "hard" (math, CS, statistics,
| physics) have been shaped by social forces in a non-linear non-
| Hegelian fashion, in fits and starts, quite contrary to the way
| they are presented in a pedagogical setting.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Plato: Theaetetus, Charmides, Apology
|
| And Aristotle's metaphysics and Nicomachean ethics
|
| They had an integrated understanding of the different kinds of
| knowledge and the phenomenology of the mind and the resulting
| errors we tend to make.
|
| And since their traditions were esoteric, it's a nice challenge
| to read them critically to get what they're pointing at.
|
| For those sniffing that these aren't mathematical models or
| category theories, realize that the entire family of logic can
| only tell you what's not possible. The real action in thinking is
| topologically sorting what's relevant, and that mostly depends on
| understanding yourself and others.
|
| However, reading them is an exercise in frustration without a
| good classics scholar; they are rare and getting rarer.
| minimoose wrote:
| I've found Micheal Sugrue's lectures on youtube very helpful to
| get the most out of philosophy.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@dr.michaelsugrue
| yboris wrote:
| A great general one that HN folks should enjoy:
|
| _Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions_
| by Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Live-Computer-Science-Deci...
| rubayeet wrote:
| Masters of Doom. It's the story of two renowned game developers,
| John Karmack and John Romero, and how they built id Software, the
| video game company that profoundly changed PC gaming and
| graphics. I was writing software for enterprise / consulting
| companies at the time (early phase of my career). This book
| opened my eyes to the crazy/wonderful/scary world of 'startups',
| the idea that people can bring their passion into writing
| software and start a business or movement. I joined a startup
| (nothing to do gaming) and never looked back.
| nickjj wrote:
| This is also one of my favorite books. As someone who grew up
| playing Quake this book has one of the best possible
| combinations of material combined into 1 book (business, life
| stories, relatable games, nostalgia, etc.).
| cpursley wrote:
| This was a great book. And the audiobook was superb. And I'm
| not even a gamer. I recommend it all the time.
| turing_complete wrote:
| Very motivational book. It's a good illustration for the value
| of technical excellence and, well, single-minded obsession when
| building something great.
| Insanity wrote:
| Highly recommend masters of doom. I've read through it a couple
| of times and find it motivational.
|
| I grew up playing Wolf3D and quake games, and in general have
| admiration for what they were able to build. So I am not sure
| if people without that context will feel the same way about the
| book though :)
| sasha_fishter wrote:
| Interesting fact is I noticed that not many book titles are
| repeating in this thread. This means there is no single book that
| can change your thinking, I think one have to find it on their
| own. Most of the time the best book for you is the one that you
| don't know will be the best book. You just figure it out months
| or years later.
| dottedmag wrote:
| Or maybe people read comments before posting. There's a dozen
| of books I'd mention if they weren't mentioned already.
| sasha_fishter wrote:
| Might be, yes, funny thing is I didn't think of that when I
| was writing the comment, which is strange :)
| thekoma wrote:
| Or it means that it's very easy for books to change your
| thinking. When you spend a lot of time and focus on something
| (e.g., reading a book) it can have an effect on you.
| rbates wrote:
| Graded Go Problems for Beginners
|
| A bit of a cheat answer. The book here represents the game of Go.
| I found getting into this hobby helped in problem solving other
| areas of my life since it exercises analyzing many branching
| paths.
|
| There are often too many possibilities to try every one, so it
| requires intuition to narrow down the good options, and then you
| can visualize how it might play out.
| theuseus wrote:
| Like many others, Not books but writing my thoughts made me a
| better evaluator of them.
| sasha_fishter wrote:
| where are you writing them?
| Anon84 wrote:
| Feynman's Lectures on Computation:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FJ6RRK7/ref=as_li_tl?ie...
| You might be familiar with Feynman's Lectures on Physics, but his
| lectures on Computation (based on a class he taught and his work
| in 'Connection Machine') aren't any less amazing. Through this
| short book, Feynman guides us through the concept of computation
| and the van Neumann architecture in his unique style, from logic
| functions, to Turing machines, coding and even quantum computers.
| It will give you a unique appreciation of the finer points in
| which computers are "Dumb as hell but go like mad" and give you a
| completely different way of thinking about computation
| agoodone345 wrote:
| This one is up there. https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-
| Intelligence-Analysis-Rich...
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Where're my art history peeps on this thread?
|
| Ways of Seeing by John Berger. It's a short book, written about
| 50 years ago to accompany a British TV series, which you can find
| on YouTube, and which I highly recommend before reading the book.
|
| Its a book about visual experience. Painting, advertisements,
| television. Pardon the pun, but it was eye opening when I read it
| and understood how advertising works, and today, years after the
| first reading and now in the context of what is the most
| graphically and visually intense society we have ever lived in, I
| find the messaging even more relevant.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Wooldridge's Introductory Econometrics.
|
| I don't do statistics in my day job, but having a solid
| foundation in the math and the theory and the proofs really had a
| profound impact on how I approach problem solving generally and
| root cause analysis specifically (just thinking about e.g. model
| specification and how you do it is a good exercise). It's still
| on my bookshelf and I'll pull it out and do a problem set from
| time to time just to stay sharp - even though, again, I don't do
| this for my job. Maybe, one day, I'll get a job with a baseball
| team or something. Understanding heteroskedasticity for example
| is one of those things where once you "get it", it really opens
| your eyes to a lot of things and you can't "unsee" it.
|
| PS there are packages in R nowadays but back in the day we used
| STATA.
|
| PPS if people don't like Wooldridge, what else would you
| recommend?
|
| Edit: I know you said "Your choices needn't be only math books"
| but this is a statistics textbook, so it probably doesn't count
| as "math".
| dev_0 wrote:
| tolleydbg wrote:
| Against Method. I had an incredibly rigid understanding of how to
| do science that was more performative, but Feyerabend opened my
| mind to approaching my exploratory research in a more chaotic and
| creative manner.
| spicyusername wrote:
| Surfaces and essences - Douglas Hofstadter, Emmanuel Sander
|
| A great book about how all communication and thought is mediated
| through metaphor.
|
| Douglas Hofstadter's books in general tend to be very thought-
| provoking.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Cross-examination
| TwoCent wrote:
| Two by Joeseph Henrich:
|
| 1. The Secret of Our Success
| https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/9474901
|
| 2. The Weirdest People in the World
| https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/26726468
|
| The first explores the extent to which humans are dependent on
| culture. It also underscores that we're not as smart as we might
| think. There's valuable knowledge that accretes culturally over
| time, and this book was the first to make me consider the
| ramifications of that on family, business, and community. The
| second book starts from the premises of the first and highlights
| the strangeness of Western Educated Industrialized Rich
| Democratic (W.E.I.R.D.) cultural norms.
|
| Both books compelled me to consider the power of culture on human
| behavior and thinking. We're less smart than we think, and
| there's more knowledge buried within our cultural norms than we
| realize. I'm not sure it's made me a better problem solver, but
| it has made me more likely to ask myself "does
| tradition/norms/etc. suggest a direction for this problem?" Time
| will tell if that approach leads to better problem solving.
| CelticBard wrote:
| Thanks for giving the thriftbooks.com links. I've completely
| moved over there to buy my books instead of Amazon.
| coolguysamt wrote:
| How to Read a Book by Adler. It describes a systematic way of
| reading, interpreting, criticizing, and judging the value of non-
| fiction.
|
| An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis by Hospers. Provides an
| approach to thinking about different types of philosophical
| problems.
|
| Both are accessible and will make you super genius.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good
| Politics" (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith)
|
| "Outliers: The Story of Success" (Malcolm Gladwell)
|
| "Data-Driven Science and Engineering: Machine Learning, Dynamical
| Systems, and Control" (Steven L. Brunton, J. Nathan Kutz)
|
| "Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories" (Dr. Seuss)
|
| "The Lorax" (Dr. Seuss)
| MavropaliasG wrote:
| Atlas Shrugged for reasons I will not disclose.
| AbhishekDutt wrote:
| I used to think Atlas Shrugged was a great book, same way I
| used to think Fight Club was the greatest movie ever made.
|
| Both are still fun though.
| kamaal wrote:
| Both Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, can be great creativity
| catalysts if read in your younger years. Though the rage
| fades as you age and come to grips with the reality and
| unfairness of life. They are still great books to read.
|
| Fight Club is another great movie as well.
| gwd wrote:
| "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year
| old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a
| childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with
| its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted,
| socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real
| world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
|
| [Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]
| turing_complete wrote:
| Accurately describes many problems we see today.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Anything that enhances your insight for wisdom.
|
| Philosophy comes to mind. As it helps you think out of the box.
|
| The big 3 philosophers and stoics are a great place to start.
| Explore the differences of western and eastern philosophies too
| once you get a taste for the west.
|
| You'll naturally come across mental models this way rather than
| have to read a farnam street blog on.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/
| mitchelldeacon9 wrote:
| Here are some classics in cognitive psychology with direct quotes
| that illustrate some of the main themes:
|
| Richard Rhodes (1986) Making of the Atomic Bomb
|
| "In scientific work, creative thinking demands seeing things not
| seen previously, or in ways not previously imagined; and this
| necessitates jumping off from 'normal' positions, and taking
| risks by departing from reality. The difference between the
| thinking of the paranoid patient and the scientist comes from the
| latter's ability and willingness to test out his fantasies or
| grandiose conceptualizations through the systems of checks and
| balances science has established - and to give up those schemes
| that are shown not to be valid on the basis of these scientific
| checks. It is specifically because science provides such a
| framework of rules and regulations to control and set bounds to
| paranoid thinking that a scientist can feel comfortable about
| taking the paranoid leaps. Without this structuring, the threat
| of such unrealistic, illogical, and even bizarre thinking to
| overall thought and personality organization in general would be
| too great to permit the scientist the freedom of such
| fantasying." (p. 151)
|
| Daniel Kahneman (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow
|
| "In the current view of how associative memory works, a great
| deal happens at once. An idea that has been activated does not
| merely evoke one other idea. It activates many ideas, which in
| turn activate others. Furthermore, only a few of the activated
| ideas will register in consciousness; most of the work of
| associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves.
| The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our
| minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to
| our experience, but it is true: you know far less about yourself
| than you feel you do." (p. 52)
|
| Thomas Kuhn (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions
|
| "One suspects that something like a paradigm is prerequisite to
| perception itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he
| looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual
| experience has taught him to see. In the absence of such training
| there can only be... a 'bloomin' buzzin' confusion'" (p. 113)
| rspoerri wrote:
| I'd argue that not reading, but doing/implementing/experimenting
| with things made me a better problem solver. If you "just" read
| on a topic you will maybe learn to recite what you know, but you
| will not yet be able to differentiate between different solutions
| or give reason why a solution is good or not. Of course reading
| or attending a class is a very good starting point, but it's not
| the way i learned thinking or solving problems.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I'd argue that this is like saying "not sharpening the saw, but
| cutting wood makes you a better lumberjack"
|
| For example, learning sorting by doing is a waste of time, it
| will take you years to "experiment" yourself into quicksort.
|
| Learning and applying what you learned is the key.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Yes I don't think you can divorce learning from practice,
| where excellence is the goal.
| eschneider wrote:
| Charles Perrow's "Normal Accidents" Lots to think about for
| system designers.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| > The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products
| Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
|
| This book changed the way I think about user experience as a
| developer. I'm not a designer at all but when building a UI I try
| to think of it from a user perspective now because of this book.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.
|
| Spent a few years trying to figure out how Help people without
| trying to force businesses to do what's right.
|
| Anytime I hear a new fiscal policy or laws idea I can usually
| figure out if it's going to work or cause problems
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465...
| lukas099 wrote:
| _Knowledge and Decisions_ by the same is also a great book.
| n0ot wrote:
| I'll add Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It provides
| an introduction to economics from an Austrian point of view,
| and dispells many common economic fallacies. A big takeaway for
| me is that the consequences of policies, such as providing
| loans to certain groups of farmers, have consequences that we
| cannot forsee.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Underst...
| elviejo wrote:
| It's not luck by Eli Goldratt. Where he introduces the logical
| thinking processes he used to develop his theory of constraints.
| It was graphs (links and nodes) to structure our reasoning.
|
| Then if you like it go to: The logical thinking processes; A
| systems approach to complex problem solving by Dettmer.
|
| And finally if you need to improve not only you thinking but that
| of a group in an open discussion go to: Dialog Mapping by Cocklin
| pjmorris wrote:
| My three favorites from Gerald Weinberg:
|
| 1. 'The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting
| Advice Successfully' I was put off for a decade by the click-bait
| title but this is a profound little book that helped me get
| perspective on problem solving in my work and myself.
|
| 2. 'Becoming a Technical Leader' The text is great; working the
| exercises for yourself will make you a stronger thinker.
|
| 3. 'An Introduction to General Systems Thinking' One of his
| densest, driest books, but a great summary of the highlights of
| the field with plenty of thought problems in the exercises and
| plenty of pointers for digging deeper.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I would look for books that either: 1. Increase
| context on problems being solved 2. Improve
| tactics/strategies/systemic understanding 3. Improve
| physical health/mental health
|
| If you want to think better, I think physical health and mental
| health will have the highest return by far.
|
| Thinking is kind of like driving. Imagine driving a car where
| some parts are broken (mental health problem) or a really
| uncomfortable seat (obesity), improper fluids (can cause parts to
| break or decay faster), or lack of routine maintenance
| (exercise).
|
| You can think of dopamine kind of like fuel and it will directly
| influence the amount of time and effort you can spend to solve
| problems or overcome setbacks.
|
| I've been enjoying the Huberman podcast lately.
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| I am not able to spend enough time on solving problems and my
| mind wanders away. What books/resources do you suggest to
| improve this?
| slothtrop wrote:
| Why would you then not have the exact same issues reading
| those resources and focusing on them?
| kingant wrote:
| Bit of a generic answer.
|
| Doing the problem sets from a good university course.
|
| Some problems might take you hours to solve, but it will develop
| your stamina for thinking hard.
| curious16 wrote:
| Any particular set of courses you have in mind?
| kingant wrote:
| Sure for mathematical problem solving skills, here is a good
| one: http://people.csail.mit.edu/moitra/854.html.
|
| It requires minimal mathematical background (undergraduate
| level discrete math). But you will learn a bunch of relevant
| algorithmic concepts. And the problem sets are hard!
| mzd348 wrote:
| Haven't seen this mentioned yet, so How to Solve It (1945) by
| George Polya? I haven't read it myself so I can't comment (I'm a
| muddy thinker and rubbish problem solver), but I think it was
| mentioned in a good light in one of Hofstadter's "Metamagical
| Themas" pieces.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| It's my favorite book. No other book has so many useful
| strategies for problem solving. It took me a year to work
| through because any time I'd read it I'd have to stop and write
| down all the new things that made sense after. There's a short
| summary at the beginning of the book. Just start with that.
| https://www.math.utah.edu/~alfeld/math/polya.html
| codethief wrote:
| Not any particular book but: Studying mathematics and physics has
| greatly improved my thinking and problem solving abilities.
|
| Already a semester or two (of real analysis, linear algebra,
| experimental physics, theoretical physics) would get one very far
| I think.
|
| As for books, https://theoreticalminimum.com/ might be a great
| starting point.
| codethief wrote:
| [Addendum] ...or, generally, any book about back-of-the-
| envelope calculations (or Fermi estimates). I heard there are
| some great ones.
| m-watson wrote:
| I often say to people that the most important thing physics
| gave me was being comfortable not knowing something. My math
| and physics education have 100% changed the way I think and
| address problems in life, despite not going into a physics
| career.
|
| Since it is a book thread:
|
| The Information: James Gleick - really made me take a step back
| to think about what information is and how we talk about it
|
| Reinventing Discovery: Michael Nielsen - It was some years back
| now but I had trouble reading it because I kept having to write
| things down or read about a new idea the book just put into my
| head. It really was thought provoking at the time.
| Anon84 wrote:
| In the same vein as "The Information" you might enjoy Cesar
| Hidalgos "Why Information Grows" https://www.amazon.com/dp/04
| 65096840?crid=W41QXVYZQMRM&keywo... where he takes a
| physicists view on information with a bent towards economics
| halefx wrote:
| Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa. There is a LOT
| in the book, but at a minimum it made me think analytically about
| language and "news".
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| John Rawls: A theory of justice. It's attempt to derive a theory
| of justice (obv.) using methods borrowed from analytic philosophy
| was hugely influential. Whether you agree with Rawls' conclusions
| or not it's a brilliant, meticulously argued book, albeit
| incredibly dense.
| [deleted]
| jwarden wrote:
| I am reading Rawls' followup book, "Justice as Fairness", which
| he describes as a kind of restatement or correction to Theory
| of Justice. I am not sure if it would have been better to read
| the original first.
|
| The idea of the Veil of Ignorance for deriving fundamental
| principles of justice is now one of the most fundamental ideas
| in my own moral philosophy.
| virissimo wrote:
| Yes, the veil of ignorance (original position) is a very
| important idea. It doesn't come from Rawls though. Both
| Vickrey and Harsanyi wrote about it earlier (and perhaps
| better, since they didn't introduce implausible assumptions
| like infinite risk aversion).
| stiiv wrote:
| Yes! While I'm often suspicious of simplistic models like the
| Veil of Ignorance, it's really among the best in western
| philosophy: it's easy to understand, and its implications are
| compelling and clear.
|
| The concept also carries a kind of common-sense appeal that
| practically bridges the gap between "is" and "ought." Maybe
| it bears some relationship to human instincts for social
| behavior and empathy -- is there any literature that
| describes such a relationship?
| slothtrop wrote:
| > common-sense appeal that practically bridges the gap
| between "is" and "ought."
|
| That intrigues me, because if there's one thing that is
| particularly tiresome about Socialists it's that they
| invoke Hegel to rationalize everything they want and
| propose.
| svieira wrote:
| There is no necessity of a gap between "is" and "ought" -
| the assumption that there is presumes that either things
| are not ordered towards an end or that we cannot known
| that end. But that's clearly wrong. See Socrates'
| discourse with the slave boy in _Meno_ and the universal
| desire for justice and happiness that all human beings
| posses.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > But that's clearly wrong.
|
| Woefully lacking in details here.
| jwarden wrote:
| One descriptive theory of morality is Moral Foundations
| Theory[0]. Jonathan Haidt introduces it in his popular book
| The Righteous Mind[1].
|
| My current thinking is that, since normative principles
| (what ought to be) cannot be demonstrated to be universally
| true, the best we can do is demonstrate that they are
| consistent with our core instincts and motives. For
| example, being generous to others is not right based on
| some external principle, but because if I had sufficient
| emotionally maturity, security, and insight I would
| recognize that my deepest desires extend far beyond
| immediate gratification of my physical desires.
|
| [0]: https://moralfoundations.org/ [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind
| crabmusket wrote:
| The Beginning of Infinity: expanded my understanding of what
| science is, exposed me to Popper's ideas of conjecture and
| refutation. Many profound concepts which I think about regularly.
|
| Thinking, Fast and Slow: introspection about how the mind may
| work, common biases and traps. I often think about the fast/slow
| system divide and notice when I just want to coast along doing
| fast thinking.
|
| The Scout Mindset: very neatly describes a way of being which I
| rarely attain, but aspire to.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Came here to say _Thinking Fast and Slow_ by Kahneman and _The
| Black Swan_ by Taleb.
|
| I don't know if it's strictly applicable to OP's question - but
| these books shaped how I see the world more than anything in
| life - and I think my view is _way_ more accurate and I 'm
| _infinitely_ happier as a result.
|
| In these conditions, I think problem solving becomes a lot
| easier...
| m0llusk wrote:
| superforecasting, the (mis) understanding of markets
| tizio13 wrote:
| Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
|
| The private thoughts of a person with terrible power. An emperor
| who could put to death anyone he chose. Create the law by
| speaking it. Command any one to his bed if the mood took him.
| These pages are filled with Aurelius' private struggles to be a
| good man, despite the frustrations of the world.
|
| His words helped me become a more social thinker.
| kaiju0 wrote:
| Totally agree. But the language and wording structure is a slog
| to get through.
| tizio13 wrote:
| I highly recommend the version published by Penguin Classics:
| ISBN-10: 0140449337
|
| This version is translated by Martin Hammond. He does a
| fantastic job at making this a comfortable read. And another
| bonus, this version is Narrated by Richard Armitage. His
| voice filled the book with life.
| rrishi wrote:
| Pretty ironic that his son was completely his opposite and an
| abject failure.
| gigantecmedia wrote:
| Only 3 books (or set of books...):
|
| Zero to One by Peter Thiel: philosophy for building companies and
| future.
|
| Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson: a life of one of if not
| the most influential founder of our time.
|
| Incerto 5-Book Set (Black Swan and Antifragile included) by
| Nassim Nicholas Taleb: how to understand and win in life,
| literally.
| thehours wrote:
| The Scout Mindset: Helped reinforce the difference between being
| right and getting the right answer. Removing my ego from the
| equation has made it so much easier to admit being wrong.
| yboris wrote:
| I read many books in field of psychology focusing on rationality
| / irrationality. I think some of the best are:
|
| _Mindware_ by Richard Nisbett - a researcher focusing on this
| for decades distills his best insight in a recent book.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Mindware-Tools-Thinking-Richard-Nisbe...
|
| _Predictably Irrational_ by Dan Ariely - a classic book in the
| field.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expand...
| borderprepper wrote:
| FedorinoGore wrote:
| My top 3 (with a recency bias of course): 1. The Field Guide to
| Understanding 'Human Error' - most of the book I thought "but
| it's obvious", but it still made me actively think about system
| design choices not from the standpoint "how it should be used"
| but "how can it be misused" 2. Thinking fast and slow - just
| another reminder that my brain is a lazy bastard and
| information/awareness hygiene is very important 3. Hooked -
| whenever I work on any side-project I repeat the mantra "solve
| your personal problem first!". It was a catch for my long-term
| motivation in cases when I ask other people on feedback for a
| very raw project...
| snarf21 wrote:
| Thinking, Fast and Slow is also what I came to say. There is a
| lot of insight in how all of our thoughts are anchored in some
| way. Once you understand that, you understand the power of
| introspection which is our one true super power.
|
| Everyone should read this book!!! It isn't perfect and does
| lose its way towards the end but the insight into _HOW_ and
| _WHY_ we think is invaluable.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| RE: Thinking Fast and Slow - I seem to remember a few times
| where that's been posted here that some say some of the
| concepts have been disproven/aren't rooted in science. I'm not
| sure if I'm thinking about the same thing. I've always been
| intrigued by that book.
|
| Also, do you mind explaining a bit about what you mean by
| "information/awareness hygiene"? I'm intrigued by that as well.
| ethics13 wrote:
| Thinking Fast and Slow to me was a manual to a human mind.
| chx wrote:
| I was reading the book the evening before my citizenship
| hearing. I got citizenship. Whether the two were related we
| will never know :D
| cossatot wrote:
| Congrats, and (if you're in the US where I am), welcome!
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Great suggestions here, but one thing I would like to point out
| to the original poster is that, while I have read a lot of books,
| people have had a far greater impact on my thinking than any
| books. So I don't discount books, but it you want to be a better
| thinking look around for successful people and pay attention to
| how they work.
| rrishi wrote:
| Thank you for your tip. I don't often run into successful
| people and the few that I do run into it's pretty difficult to
| have deep conversations. However, I have found people are a lot
| more open to divulging their inner workings on podcasts. So, I
| think podcasts are pretty adept at discovering successful
| people and their strategies.
| clavalle wrote:
| Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have
| All the Facts by Annie Duke
|
| and
|
| How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in
| Business by Douglas W. Hubbard
|
| Really changed the way I approach decision making.
| mortehu wrote:
| Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. The knowledge in the book is more
| mainstream now than in 2008, but it gave me more "tools" to
| understand the fields of medicine and nutrition as a consumer.
| whoisjohnkid wrote:
| Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
|
| This introduced me to systems thinking which gives an interesting
| perspective on how to solve complex systemic problems.
|
| Concepts can be applied to engineering or any other field
| dottedmag wrote:
| <<Systems thinking>> by Levenchuk.
|
| Masterful distillation of the most important parts of current
| systems engineering and systems management into a broadly
| applicable systems thinking approach.
|
| The book is now reworked to a course and is currently free:
| https://eem.institute/open-endedness/systems-thinking/
|
| TBH I read the original (in Russian), and English translation
| does not seem to be of stellar quality.
| jtlienwis wrote:
| "How not to be wrong" by Ellenberg. Use mathematical thinking to
| solve everyday problems.
| totalZero wrote:
| Anyone who works with other human beings can make improvements to
| his/her professional interpersonal skillset by reading Influence
| by Cialdini.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| It's not a book, but I revisit Munger's Psychology of Human
| Misjudgment nearly every year to remind me of the various biases
| that we are all susceptible to and to hopefully keep them at bay
| as much as possible. Link:
|
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ca3e714d74562b554c38...
| microjim wrote:
| This sounds great, but isn't this -
|
| > hopefully keep them at bay as much as possible
|
| ...wishful thinking, or symptom management, rather than cutting
| at the root of the issue (less than rational thinking)? Would
| be happy to be corrected here.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Basically, it's remembering to take a step back when thinking
| through a thorny problem, be it interpersonal, business, or
| technical, and asking yourself "are one of the big biases at
| work here?". It has also informed some of my work habits. For
| example, I'm less likely now to share investment ideas with
| more than a couple close associates so that I'm less likely
| to suffer from commitment and consistency bias.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| I recently got hooked onto Munger and his thoughts.
| Fascinating.
|
| Read this and heard his speeches, took detailed notes and am
| going through berkshire's annual meeting recordings since 1994
| and it's surprising how many of these concepts reflect in
| warren and charlie's decisions, answers and thought processes.
|
| I'm going to be spending more time on this.
| yboris wrote:
| A classic in the _Math_ field is _How to Solve It_ by Georg Polya
|
| https://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-Mathematical-Princeton-Scie...
|
| And for improving _statistical thinking_ , the classic _How to
| Lie With Statistics_ by Darrell Huff
|
| https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff-ebook...
| miobrien wrote:
| Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation
| and Enlightenment by Robert Wright
|
| The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S.N. Goenka
| by William Hart
| JackMorgan wrote:
| From a software engineering standpoint:
|
| - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all
| the exercises is key). This book helped me think about how
| programs run, how state is stored, how you can build out
| asynchronous computation, and how you can build your own
| languages.
|
| - Designing Data Intensive Applications. This book profoundly
| changed how I think about application performance and data. It
| describes so much about different kinds databases and query
| languages, that now I feel like I've got a big picture view of
| the whole industry.
|
| - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. This book really
| taught me to think rationally and logically. I think I really did
| not understand the scientific method until this book.
| sadn1ck wrote:
| never thought i'd see someone mention HPMoR on HN :D
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.
| ..
|
| The more the merrier :)
| gwd wrote:
| I read it recently (and then re-read it twice within a few
| months), after seeing it referenced here on HN. Seems very
| much on-brand, and I'm surprised it took me so long to see it
| referenced.
| runald wrote:
| Strange, the only place I only ever see someone mention hpmor
| is on HN. In fact, I first heard it from here.
| throwaway2203 wrote:
| HPMoR seems to be a very popularly disliked fanfiction,
| judging by r/HPFanfiction
| CelticBard wrote:
| Your third recommendation is fanfiction?
| corobo wrote:
| Have you read it? Judging a book by its cover is kinda like
| judging a book by its cover.
|
| It definitely makes Harry a massive arse if you enjoy the
| original character, but once I got past that it was actually
| an interesting read. A lot of the concepts have stuck with me
| and I've gone on to look into them further.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all
| the exercises is key).
|
| I tried this, but got stuck on the first exercise that had you
| prove some mathematical thing. I concluded that I was too
| stupid for the book.
| tmtvl wrote:
| You may want to check out the book Concrete Abstractions, I
| found it helped me with the maths I was lacking for SICP.
| quacked wrote:
| I came here to comment HPMoR. It's a little embarrassing
| because the book is very cringey at times, full of itself, and
| for those who care, quite sexist. But it has some _incredible_
| lessons in how to think rationally, especially in situations
| where most people don 't believe you or are very used to doing
| things a certain way even when that way has bad consequences.
|
| My favorite part of the book is when Harry goes around trying
| to collect the signatures of people who believe (on flimsy
| evidence and against their better judgement) that another
| character has committed attempted murder. Their refusal to
| directly advertise their beliefs (thus subjecting themselves to
| later scrutiny if they're proven wrong) is a direct reflection
| of how people in real society like to take intellectual and
| strategic positions without accepting any of the risk or
| responsibility of being wrong.
| tasuki wrote:
| It's so embarassing and cringey I couldn't manage to read it
| at all. I've had more luck with Yudkowsky's other book,
| Rationality: From AI to Zombies[0], which I've rather
| enjoyed.
|
| [0]: https://www.readthesequences.com/
| anyoneworks wrote:
| Why exactly is being cringey and full of itself fine as a
| criticism, but being sexist needs its special little carveout
| "for those who care?"
| quacked wrote:
| Using a special little carveout theoretically satisfies two
| groups of people:
|
| 1) Those who won't engage with material if it's sexist
|
| 2) Those who think other people are stupid for not engaging
| with material if it's sexist
|
| As an example, I could write:
|
| > Because the book is very cringey at times and full of
| itself.
|
| I've said this before, and the response was multiple times
| "who cares about that, what about how sexist it is? Can you
| believe how the female characters are written?" And then
| the topic of conversation is about the sexism of the author
| (and whether or not I can reliably identify sexism) instead
| of the content of the book, which is what I wanted to talk
| about.
|
| I could also write:
|
| > Because the book is very cringey at times, full of
| itself, and quite sexist
|
| But then the response is either "why are you recommending
| it if it's sexist?" or "no it's not sexist, why would you
| say that?" And then the topic of conversation is again
| about the sexism in the book instead of the content of the
| book.
|
| When things like HPMoR come up, the conversation trends
| towards the more controversial parts of it and less about
| the useful parts. I _thought_ that using "for those who
| care" was enough of a lead-in to prove that I both (a)
| understand that the book is sexist and (b) understand that
| one doesn't have to ignore all of the content of a work
| just because it's sexist, but... apparently not.
| anyoneworks wrote:
| Honestly, fair enough. I didn't initially get that out of
| that comment, but I can see how you meant it.
| nobleach wrote:
| For many years I recommended everyone on my team (that was
| interested in retooling their brain in a more functional way)
| read "The Little Schemer". My only caveat is that they read it
| without touching a computer. Like... read it on an airplane.
| While I had no interest in using Scheme/Racket/Lisp for actual
| work, I found that it brought so much simplicity to my thinking.
| Lio wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing. The other books in the series
| are pretty good too.
|
| E.g. The Little Prover
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262527958/the-little-prover/
|
| and
|
| The Little Typer https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536431/the-
| little-typer/
| nobleach wrote:
| I've always wanted to look into these other books! (I even
| purchased The Reasoned Schemer - but failed to start reading
| it). Someday... probably when I retire.
| [deleted]
| amoopa wrote:
| Barbara Minto: The Pyramide principle.
|
| The book is basically a bible among top tier management
| consulting firms as it has some fantastic principles for breaking
| down complex problems and communicating it to others (e.g. MECE;
| Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive)
| Daub wrote:
| Zen and the art of painting and An actor prepares.
|
| These I read when I was a young art student. I learned a lot from
| the way they mapped the interior process of creative thought.
| thedangler wrote:
| I enjoyed Pragmatic Thinking & Learning. by Andy Hunt.
| yboris wrote:
| One of my all-time-favorite philosophers is _Daniel Dennett_. He
| wrote many excellent books through which you can learn how to
| think better on specific topics and in general. But one of his
| books he focuses specifically on thinking:
|
| _Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking_
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools-Thinking/...
| stiiv wrote:
| _Proofs and Refutations_ tops the list.
|
| Dialog and progressive discovery are crucial to solving problems,
| and these things happen even after (mostly after?) you arrive at
| a good solution. _P&R_ provides a working example of how this
| might go, and how a diligent and magnanimous mind might approach
| the process. I think it's a really fun and engaging book, too.
|
| Works on pragmatism by CS Peirce were really impactful, though I
| can't recommend a specific book. In a very focused way, Peirce
| advocates for evaluating ideas in terms of their real-world
| effects, often by employing a measured skepticism.
|
| On the psych/behavioral side, _Gut Feelings_ shows how to be an
| efficient thinker. Largely contrary to Kahneman's work, it
| vindicates intuition, but does so in a qualified way. It explains
| when and how to trust your instincts, and emphasizes the
| importance of cultivating them.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Feeling Good, by Dr. David Burns is the _Cognitive Distortion_
| description and analysis book that deep dives and destroys
| Imposter Syndrome, as well as a huge number of other self
| deceptive mechanisms in one 's self conversation. It is literally
| a revolution for many self critical personalities, as it provides
| the self arguments necessary to defeat one's self critic. After
| that self criticism is quelled, the tools provided continue to
| serve as fantastic and scientific discrimination tools for
| discerning subtle information, maintaining an objectivity that is
| easily deluded and lost.
| borderprepper wrote:
| michepriest wrote:
| Questions Are the Answer by Hal Gregersen
|
| When you're stuck or your team is stuck, do what he calls a
| "question burst" to ideate all the questions that need to be
| asked. It's so simple but highly effective
| abruzzi wrote:
| To me, the most influential book is Allisons's Essence of
| Decision. Most people seem to treat it as a book about the Cuban
| middle crisis, which of course it is, but the event is analyses
| through the lens of several analytical techniques. That's the
| part that is fascinating to me, especially the organizational
| process model.
| elgar1212 wrote:
| I can't think of any book that's really helped me solve problems.
| The reason for this is that reading isn't a problem solving
| activity, it's relatively open ended. You can do exercises, but
| most of them don't have any sort of grading system that outputs a
| pass or fail. So there isn't any signal to train off of
|
| The thing that taught me the most about solving problems was
| doing a bunch of autograded systems programming assignments, and
| reading about how other people went about doing the assignments
|
| I developed this mindset (note this is for writing code for an
| autograder that no one else will read, it isn't going into a long
| term codebase):
|
| - only do the bare minimum necessary to satisfy all criteria
|
| - ignore any bloat that people suggest unless it's part of the
| shortest cost path
|
| - figure out one way of doing something and just reuse it so that
| you can use the mental energy elsewhere
|
| - reread the instructions so many times that you can mentally
| "see" all the logic before the first line gets written
|
| - try to work in long bursts over a short term as opposed to
| short bursts over a long term because context switching is too
| expensive
| eoin-lynch wrote:
| domod wrote:
| The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis - Richard Heuer
| - Concise introduction of how the mind works, biases, dealing
| with uncertainty, critical thinking, and dealing with complexity.
|
| The Pyramid Principle - Barbara Minto - Logic in
| writing and thinking.
|
| The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Eric Jorgenson -
| Inspiration for better thinking.
|
| fs.blog - Mental models, better thinking,
| decision making.
| atemerev wrote:
| I also recommended another Heuer's book in this thread!
| Apparently, he's onto something, or intelligence analysis in
| general requires a lot of introspection about your ways of
| thinking (I'm not an analyst, but it was intriguing to learn
| about their mindset).
| sasha_fishter wrote:
| fs.blog -> nice one, subscribed. Thnx
| rasse wrote:
| They also have three books that are available as audiobooks
| on Audible. Volume 1 in particular is fantastic.
|
| https://fs.blog/books/
| karmakaze wrote:
| I don't think I learn much from books. They're good for exposure
| and direction but haven't made so much an impact on the things
| I've internalized that let me think about and solve problems.
|
| What has done the most for me is actually running into lots of
| problems and solving them by digging deep, finding the cause, and
| a good way to solve it. One thing that's been invaluable is the
| idea that any problem can be solved, any system can be understood
| (as well as necessary to solve a problem), and that everything is
| fair game and in scope for solving the problem (thinking outside
| the box? there's only the box you put yourself in).
|
| Nowadays, I'm mostly learning how to better explain the thought
| processes behind good software engineering that is all about
| tradeoffs and not about following rules or applying patterns
| without assessing applicability.
|
| Another superpower is always to think of the simplest thing that
| will work. Avoid using fancy words or creating abstractions that
| make software seem sophisticated and complex when unnecessary.
| That only lowers the limit of how complex a problem you can
| solve. If you get really good at thinking and solving problems in
| simple ways, you can solve much more complex ones when called
| for.
|
| I would suggest an entirely different path: play Go, the board
| game. The rules are incredibly few and easy to learn. The tactics
| and strategy limited only by imagination and ability to
| count/execute while balancing priorities (important vs urgent).
| Another thing that it teaches is the counter-productivity of ego.
| There's odd parallel I've noticed where getting good at Go makes
| you better at other things and vice versa. I've taken a year or
| more off playing and when returning to the game, find I quickly
| get back to my past level and beyond. Alternatively, if a bit
| masochistic play StarCraft 2 ladder ;-)
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| "Out of the Crisis" by Demming: helped me see the best way to
| manage projects isn't always about fixing problems, it starts
| with reducing uncertainty.
|
| "Seeing like a state", "Knowledge and Power", and "Antifragile",
| top down control of a system always clashes with bottom up
| understanding, so experts in a field need humility when working
| with a new system and need to learn from the people who work with
| it every day.
|
| "Critique of Pure Reason", there are things we can't know using
| only logic, so don't try to use it to understand everything.
| rrishi wrote:
| I was wondering if there's much utility in reading and learning
| about the ways higher ups set up and/or manipulate the socio-
| economic systems. I personally feel pretty much like a cog in
| the machine that can't really influence the machine overall,
| just play my part in it. I recently came across the book
| "Seeing like a state" in the podcast Balaji S did with Lex
| Fridman. Though it's intellectually interesting to learn about
| how the state works and what alternative think tanks propound
| (ex communism, libertarianism), delving into history I have
| found that things happen in really grand ways (i.e. an idea
| works only if there's a whole load of people behind it) and
| often these circumstances arise out of happenstance. Being a CS
| geek, I feel kind of pigeonholed into a role in society that
| learning about the state, economic theories etc feels unneeded
| and maybe even a waste of time. From history, it feels like
| it's the liberal arts or the army types that affect economic
| and geopolitical changes.
| gyulai wrote:
| > "Knowledge and Power"
|
| Can you give the author?
|
| Your other suggestions look interesting.
|
| I've read Antifragile and loved it.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| George Gilder, definitely a more niche and controversial
| author with a lot to disagree with, but I think his
| frameworks finds the right balance between libertarianism and
| full government control of the markets.
| tolleydbg wrote:
| This suggestion is humorous, but absolutely true: Potty Training
| In 3 Days.
|
| Before having children, I thought I was fairly empathetic and
| introspective, but raising a child helped me realize how
| superficial those traits in myself were.
|
| I'm being completely honest when I say this book made me a better
| leader and project manager - having a better understanding of the
| motivations of others, incentivizing those looking to you for
| guidance based on their own goals/desires, providing those with
| tools they need to succeed, and taking a macro view of a problem
| and allowing those under me to flourish and find creative ways to
| solve problems that take advantage of their strengths and
| idiosyncrasies.
|
| I'm in no way suggesting that you infantilize those around you,
| just that teaching my toddler to shit opened my eyes to the way I
| approached problems, and Brandi Brucks' book helped me approach
| things differently with great success!
| more_corn wrote:
| This is the best idea I've heard all week.
| techstrategist wrote:
| Totally agree! We used this book for our 3.5yo son and then
| even faster with his 2.5yo brother. It somehow gets a layer
| deeper in terms of understanding, empathizing, and managing
| behavior.
| tolleydbg wrote:
| Absolutely. It's amazing how concisely she lays it all out
| too. I hope people don't think I'm being sarcastic when I say
| that it is the perfect example of how a guide/tutorial should
| be written. The book could also be named the Mythical Dad-
| Week.
| fredrikholm wrote:
| Genuinely felt a bit bummed since we lost Brooks, reading
| that nearly made me spit out my drink. Thank you.
| westurner wrote:
| "The Everyday Parenting Toolkit: The Kazdin Method for Easy,
| Step-by-Step, Lasting Change for You and Your Child"
| https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11h7dr5mm6&hl=en-US&q...
|
| "Everyday Parenting: The ABCs of Child Rearing" (Kazdin, Yale,)
| https://www.coursera.org/learn/everyday-parenting :
|
| > _The course will also shed light on many parenting
| misconceptions and ineffective strategies that are routinely
| used._
|
| Re: Effective praise and Validating parenting
|
| https://wrdrd.github.io/docs/consulting/kids
| tolleydbg wrote:
| I love Kazdin, great additional suggestion. I didn't know
| there was a course on Coursera though, thanks for sharing!
| nashashmi wrote:
| "Can a man be a soldier and father?"
|
| Mel Gibson: "I would think so. I hope being good at one makes
| me better at the other." (And vice versa).
|
| - from movie "We were soldiers ... and young"
| xchip wrote:
| How so?
| halefx wrote:
| Her approach actually doesn't focus on defecation at all, just
| urination, but yep, I agree with all the rest.
| atemerev wrote:
| Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis
| (Randolph H. Pherson, Richards J. Heuer Jr.) I am not an
| intelligence analyst, but this book is very insightful on
| thinking about your thinking.
| jamager wrote:
| Peak: Secrets from New Science of Expertise
|
| The book is not actually about problem solving, but about
| deliberate practice. It is a bit tangential, but in seen problem
| solving as a skill, you can see how the principles in that book
| apply. A good book - however, like many books of this style, I
| find it somewhat repetitive too.
| probolsky wrote:
| Why Geography Mattersby Harm de Blij
|
| It gave me a whole new perspective on virtually everything. It
| answers a lot of the 'why' questions about how we got to the
| place we are in this world.
| mathattack wrote:
| The Goal by Goldratt helped me think about optimizing for the end
| outcome versus sub-optimizing for process steps. (Measure but
| don't sub-optimize)
|
| The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement https://a.co/d/iQGmd23
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