[HN Gopher] How to live an intellectually rich life
___________________________________________________________________
How to live an intellectually rich life
Author : TheLadyParadox
Score : 447 points
Date : 2025-05-02 10:58 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (utsavmamoria.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (utsavmamoria.substack.com)
| karol wrote:
| I wouldn't advise this as a life goal. Better to live an
| intentional live. I am sure people can come up with even better
| formulations.
| incomingpain wrote:
| How to:
|
| Read lots of non-fiction. Whatever interests you.
|
| Try to find overlap over the different interests. Try to find new
| thoughts there. You might be the first to find them.
|
| Assume everything you know is wrong. It's generally true of >50%.
|
| Hard is best, too hard is bad, too easy is bad.
| amos-burton wrote:
| bend, dont break
| jhickok wrote:
| I think engaging with works of fiction is just as important.
| Like anything, if a work of fiction engages and challenges you,
| and you are an intentional reader, it exercises very important
| muscles.
| incomingpain wrote:
| fiction absolutely can be intellectual. 1984, 451 Fahrenheit,
| anything dostoevsky or heinlein.
|
| in fact, by adding that intellectualism is what makes these
| stand out.
|
| But i do specify non-fiction because I wouldnt say most
| fiction is intellectual; or if you try to approach some
| fiction you'll quickly dig deeper than what's actually there
| and then it's just you superimposing.
|
| The example i like is colour metaphors. Shakespeare will say
| that a character put a green shirt on. You're supposed to say
| 'thats just a new shirt, not the colour green' but no. It
| actually really is just the colour green. You cant dig too
| deep on most fiction.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Seek movement .Move towards discomfort. Settle only in your
| values, never in loyalties or kinship. Be homeless in regards to
| ideologies, be merciless to those that subvert what your values
| brought about , be subversive to all things to see the
| brittleness of things.
|
| Disregard detected retardations in yourself, invest your lifes
| work in little turtles crawling towards abilities up the scenario
| tree. Do not attach, to fortresses, kings and nations built on
| those branches.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This reads like someone accidentally posted their Linkedin
| motivational slop on HN.
| deeThrow94 wrote:
| Ah it's just romantic; let's not be so harsh. LinkedIn would
| be so lucky to get a post like this.
| noduerme wrote:
| Polonius. You forgot "never a borrower nor a lender be".
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| Polonius was famously wrong about everything.
| apwell23 wrote:
| nah..do whatever the fuck you want.
| noduerme wrote:
| Just because you can prove mathematically that most link chains
| "end" at "philosophy" doesn't mean that's the end _you_ should
| end up at. I spend at least 2 nights a week just reading links
| through wikipedia as I 'm falling asleep, and I almost inevitably
| end up at _languages and cultures_ or historical events that I
| knew little about. Philosophy isn 't an end, and it's pretty
| meaningless without some stone cold knowledge about the world. Or
| you could say it comes as a result of knowledge, not before it.
| ysofunny wrote:
| personally I believe that
|
| philosophy helps to "compress" more knowledge about the world
| into "less" knowledge by shifting quantity of data into
| difficulty from advanced conceptual abstractions
| ghugccrghbvr wrote:
| This is a fucking brilliant observation!
|
| Thank you.
| bluGill wrote:
| Nothing ends at philosophy. They reach there, but they can
| reach lots of different places. Without scrolling on philosophy
| I can see more than 50 other links from that page that are thus
| reachable from anywhere by at most one more step.
|
| Pick a random thing and see if it is reachable from anywhere. A
| lot of them are. I suspect most are, but I don't know how to
| run this study (other than a brute force algorithm that will
| use more compute than I would want to dedicate)
| sesm wrote:
| Philosophy is like math for humanities.
| gen220 wrote:
| I think you'd be interested in Tolstoy's view of "Philosophy",
| which he expresses in "Confession / What I Believe".
|
| Basically that the reason why philosophy is cold and
| meaningless is because it tries to separate itself from the
| source of meaning, which is intrinsically subjective and
| physical and spiritual.
|
| Philosophy's logical conclusions are relativism and nihilism
| (or at least they were in Tolstoy's time? I'm not a
| philosopher), because they try to understand the world with a
| pretext that denies its vitality.
|
| Common folk / common sense frown on these forms of philosophy,
| because they miss the point in a sense; they don't actually
| tell you how to live in a moral way. Tolstoy thought
| intellectuals grossly underrated the perspective of folk wisdom
| in that way. We've made some progress in that department, since
| his time, but it's still largely true today.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Read HN, of course.
| begueradj wrote:
| True knowledge is to know yourself.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Read Nobel Literature too young to understand but old enough to
| remember the stories. Then when "life happens" the meaning of
| those Nobel Books hits with a physical epiphany and sudden
| unexpected wisdom is realized.
| tomrod wrote:
| I tried this for awhile, but was dissatisfied. I found myself a
| constant consumer of intellectual material instead of being an
| engaged participant. Once I realized that, I set course to become
| more of a producer of useful things. That's led me to
| woodworking, to running a consultancy, to producing AI/ML for
| nonprofits, and to writing academic works. All in all, I enjoy
| life substantially.
| phrotoma wrote:
| Years ago I realized that if I bluntly categorize the things I
| do with my free time into buckets of "productive" and
| "consumptive" it's the productive things that make me feel
| pretty great.
| aflukasz wrote:
| I find consumer vs producer to be very interesting and useful
| distinction. Sometimes very enlightening and somewhat scary
| when applied to personal time spending.
| xwiz wrote:
| Pairing production and consumption can be very satisfying.
| Some personal examples:
|
| - Cooking a novel dish, then eating it
|
| - Setting up a music server, then listening to music with it
|
| - (With friends) Making a pen-and-paper game, then playing it
| tomrod wrote:
| Absolutely agree!
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| One might argue that everything we produce lends itself to
| some kind of consumption. Moreover, not all actions lead to
| tangible "products", but they can lead to useful results
| and experiences. Sports and games are an example.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Perhaps production tends towards consumption but not the
| opposite. If I make music I'll probably listen to it. But
| I can easily listen to music without making it.
|
| And agree sports are an interesting example. It kind of
| fits my mental model of consumption in many ways:
| something you do that's primary effect transforms you.
| Watching TV, playing a game, etc. The effect being
| something chemical that is satisfying. I guess with
| sports or exercise the internal change is more physical
| (muscle, endurance, etc) vs chemical. Although I suppose
| you are acting on the world as well - you are scoring a
| point or advancing a position. It's just more ephemeral
| (ends when game ends) and arbitrary.
|
| Im sure even just in terms of chemical reactions there is
| going to be a clean split between stuff like playing
| video games or watching TV vs. sports, building
| something, etc. Dopamine vs... ?
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| I agree. Knowledge-seeking can become a defense or excuse not
| to take action. I think it can be enriching, particularly when
| young, but there's a balance in everything.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| "Anyone who reads poetry to improve their mind will never
| improve their mind by reading poetry." CS Lewis.
| Eextra953 wrote:
| I've been trying to create/produce more but I'm stuck in the
| consumption mindset. I can't think of what to create. How did
| you decide what useful things to produce?
| bwfan123 wrote:
| In my youth, I read many books, and I still have many unread
| ones on the shelf. But, eventually, realized that, you only
| understand what you can create (to paraphrase feynman), and
| also that, what it means to be curious is to start from a
| burning problem or itch which differs for each one of us
| based on something deeper in our psyche.
|
| Productive activities put us often into uncomfortable mental
| places which spurs growth of some kind - the discomfort is
| difficult to embrace however, which is why we resist it. In
| contrast, the consumptive activity comes out of a comfortable
| mental place and is embraced easily.
|
| So, a question I ask myself is: what problems am i passionate
| about, and what am i doing (productively) about them. If I
| dont feel any passion, then perhaps, something is amiss (I am
| not communicating with my soul so-to-speak), and if I am not
| doing anything about them, then I need to get my ass moving
| and embrace the discomfort.
| bluGill wrote:
| Do you need something? Make it - it doesn't matter what.
| Quality doesn't even matter, if the shoes you make turn out
| well you wear them, if not well go to the store and buy some.
| If you decide you like making shoes then make some more. If
| you decide it isn't fun then find something else (and come
| back again if you later change your mind).
|
| See someone else make something, try to do it yourself.
| Sometimes you get something nice, sometimes you have fun and
| then throw away the worthless object.
|
| There are a few danger signs to watch out for. Don't get
| caught up in learning how - you can spend the rest of your
| life watching "how to make a guitar" videos and never build
| anything. You can spend a lot of money on tools, or think you
| cannot do something for lack of tools - for the first one
| figure out how to use minimal tools (not zero!) so you don't
| get invested in a hobby you turn out not to enjoy - the big
| bucks should be only after you are sure the hobby and the
| tool is for you. You can start with a project too complex -
| start with small projects you can get done - take on the
| complex ones only after you are sure this hobby is for you.
|
| Question for you: does creating mean building something? Do
| you count playing music as creating? What about art? What
| about dancing? There is no right answer to these questions
| except whatever you decide.
| tomrod wrote:
| I divide my time into 4 sets.
|
| Based on an area of interest I:
|
| 1. Find interesting people or projects that are interesting
| (discovery)
|
| 2. Identify the things I don't know how to do yet, or where I
| don't have enough information (information consumption with
| plan as output)
|
| 3. Execute on the plan (creation and delivery)
|
| 4. Evaluate on the outcomes -- modified ikigai is the
| framework I use: (1) does the world need it? (2) what is the
| world willing to pay for it? (3) did I enjoy it? (4) could I
| be good at it
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >I can't think of what to create. How did you decide what
| useful things to produce?
|
| What you like to consume.
| creer wrote:
| Consumption is addictive - even or all the more so when we
| feel we are consuming worthwhile stuff (see the various major
| reading projects here). A useful first step is awareness of
| the time spent on the various time sinks: we have limited
| time and sinking all that available time in one thing kills
| that. So then, diversification away from the worst bits. Even
| if temporarily that means still consuming.
|
| A second step is understanding the taste vs skill gap: unless
| what you produce is related to your job or training, when you
| start creating things your skill is poor (and your equipment
| probably not adapted) and it's hard to be satisfied with the
| quality of what you are creating. You can create something
| related to your job skills, or you can recognize that skill
| gap is a normal thing and persevere. Some classes though are
| excellent at carrying someone a long way in a short time.
| tasuki wrote:
| > Consumption is addictive
|
| So is production! Even more so, I guess.
| creer wrote:
| Would love to hear more! We rarely hear stories of people
| "stuck" on the making/ creative side. Exciting yes - but
| rarely addictive in the sense of taking so much time that
| the rest suffers?
| dayvigo wrote:
| It's common enough that there's a well-known term for it:
| workaholic.
| tomrod wrote:
| Typically, production requires some consumption. At a
| base level, however, the outcomes can be guided,
| satisfying my ego and leaving my mark on the universe.
| benwaffle wrote:
| Here are some suggestions: Writing, music creation,
| woodworking, drawing, painting, photography, podcasting,
| gardening, cooking, DIY home projects, chess, sports
| nicbou wrote:
| My very brief stint into woodworking and machining gave me a
| lifetime of looking at random objects from _really_ close.
| Seeing how things are manufactured makes you look at every man-
| made object differently. It gives you a rare appreciation for
| craftsmanship and clever engineering. There are whole museum
| sections that have suddenly opened up to me.
|
| I credit a few YouTube channels for creating the spark: The
| Engineer Guy, This Old Tony, AvE, Pask Makes, Xyla Foxlin to
| name a few.
| deeThrow94 wrote:
| I enjoyed this article.
|
| I am confused though how this was a difficult problem to begin
| with, particularly with the internet. It is not exactly hard to
| find intellectually stimulating concepts if that's what gets you
| off.
|
| I also find "philosophy" to be a pretty miserable and unrewarding
| topic to think about, and I tend to run quickly away from those
| who want to talk about it. I find it very curious that the author
| finds it to be a natural place for your focus to land. I think
| this is a red herring: the secret to long-term contentment is not
| thinking at all if it's not strictly necessary. Aristotle got
| "contemplation is the greatest good" _dead_ wrong.
| card_zero wrote:
| The first precept of anti-philosophy philosophy is,
| deeThrow94 wrote:
| Philosophy as a _concept_ isn 't an issue; but we tend to
| romanticize the tendency to neurotically examine even when we
| know finding "truth" isn't possible, and I've noted a
| tendency in people so devoted to unconsciously emotionally
| attach to what are ultimately word games. This concerns me.
| Perhaps we should instead romanticize living a contented
| existence, some of which will surely still involve reading
| and discussing philosophy (in moderation, of course).
| precompute wrote:
| I have great difficulty in believing that a real human and not a
| LLM wrote this. It reads like self-help tripe and is far too
| long.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I am still searching for the definition of "Intellectually Rich
| Life".
|
| There are some compelling and imaginative calls in the article,
| but can we drop with the metaphors? I rather have the author
| develop deeper examples, instead of vague focus and practicality.
|
| Maybe because I am not searching for inspiration, but detailed
| roadmaps.
| Changerons wrote:
| That is my conception of the world that we all have different
| interests and cognitive functions. Also, call it serenpidity,
| synchronicity, fate or luck, but as this article showed, the best
| ideas come from places you could never have expected.
|
| Read about the discovery of LSD if you haven't, it's one of the
| perfect example of this.
|
| So you have to find your nature, the garden of iteas that
| resonates with you. For that, just read. From any topic that
| interests you and sometimes, dare to read something you would
| never do. Comics, mangas, niche recipes, biographies, romance,
| everything is fair game and you never know, sometimes you might
| just click on something you never might otherwise.
|
| In the age of Wikipedia, kindles and libraries, you really have
| no excuse to not indulge in your curiosity.
|
| For all we know, we could ever be "hard-coded" to love certain
| topics more than
| others(https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/research/the-way-we-
| app...). Maybe in the future, a drop of saliva would be enough to
| know if you should study architecture or dancing ?
| globnomulous wrote:
| This is interminable and appears to be a disaster of mixed self-
| help metaphors and embarrassingly naive writing -- a TED-talk
| blog post, though TED talks mercifully have a length limit.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I personally found this very tedious to read and hard to
| follow. The author veered into weird unrelated tangents and
| came across of too self indulgent at times. I would rather read
| Seneca or Cicero instead of this.
| lbrito wrote:
| Came here to say the same. Excessive writing itself is a form
| of self indulgence and comes across as sloppy.
|
| Conciseness is really undervalued. Long and meandering is okay
| for a personal journal or diary, but if you're sharing it with
| the world, be concise.
| harrigan wrote:
| I'm not sure about the metaphors. The "Axe of Satisfaction"
| suggests that some of the ills of late-stage capitalism can be
| overcome through individual grit alone. Maybe we need to band
| together and target the root system rather than hacking down
| individual trees?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Discussing this and its implications in a direct and serious
| manner is, regrettably, unpalatable in polite company. Few are
| willing to accept the risk of discussing it openly.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > In August 2018, in the last month of my three-month sabbatical,
| I arrived at the Hamta village in Himachal Pradesh. I rented a
| one-room cottage, and my caretakers were Dolma Aunty and Kalzang
| Uncle, a couple well into their 70's.
|
| I got to this part and realized: I've read this article before in
| some form.
|
| It's a really common trope to head out to some remote area of
| Asia and admire how happy people are. There's often a spiritual
| component to it. I will write the guy a bit of a pass, because he
| himself is (I think) Indian.
|
| But westerners have been doing stuff like this for ages and
| prattling on about it - it's kind of a cornerstone of
| Orientalism. This was actually a plot point in the recent White
| Lotus season. People rarely go to Appalachia to have these
| experiences, but you certainly can find people living simple
| happy lives there. (At least, if they do, nobody publishes those
| articles - it doesn't fit our preconceived notions of who gets to
| be enlightened, which is to say it has to be some place far away
| and people very different than your average Americans)
|
| Not to say there's no value in this article (there is), and it
| was a fun read at that.
| IanCal wrote:
| Rather reminds me of Pratchetts character Lu-Tze, who having
| seen so many travel to the monasteries to achieve enlightenment
| decides to travel to Ankh Morpork and learns many ancient
| wisdoms ('Is it not written "Oo, you are so sharp you'll cut
| yourself one of these days."?')
| webdoodle wrote:
| The America's have the 'noble savage' trope to find
| enlightenment with. It became so blatantly co-opting anothers'
| religion that many Native American tribes still refuse to teach
| non-tribal members there spiritual practices.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| It's a common trope among urban Indians. They're enamoured by
| the simple and rustic living of the villages and think of them
| as noble savages.
|
| I grew up in rural India and I always recommend people to read
| Dr. Ambedkar's rights on this subject.
| Labov wrote:
| Dr. Ambedkar is somebody more people in the United States
| should know about. I was a briefly involved with the Triratna
| Buddhist Community and read some of Sangharakshita's writing,
| and he discusses Ambedkar. Real interesting stuff.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| TBH Dr. Ambedkar's Buddhism is very different from what the
| other traditions preach. It was an answer to the prevailing
| jativada, but unfortunately it didn't manage to make the
| dent he envisioned.
|
| I've grown up around Navayana and have many friends from
| Kagyu, Theravada and other traditions.
|
| (All this to say I know Bauddha Dharma intimately)
| Labov wrote:
| All part of the great warp and weft. It's a fascinating
| thing to learn about, how all these traditions intersect.
|
| Seattle, the city I live in, recently became the first to
| ban caste discrimination. I didn't think much of it at
| the time, but nowadays maybe there's something to be
| learned from jativada, the many forms it comes in, and
| the response to it. Reading Leslie Feinberg right now,
| interesting working class perspective.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| There's a difference between casteism and jativada which
| is not easy to explain in a short comment. Ambedkar's "
| Annihilation of Caste" and A.M. Hocart's works provide
| interesting insight on it.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Hamta isn't even really rural. It's a bunch of homestays just
| outside of Manali, and is similar to Pahalgam.
|
| My family is from rural HP/JK/Ladakh, and a homestay like
| Hamta is not representative of rural HP/JK/LA/UK.
|
| > They're enamoured by the simple and rustic living of the
| villages and think of them as noble savages
|
| I think it goes both ways. They either over-idealize it, or
| overly berate it.
|
| I feel it's also state dependent to a certain extent, with
| some states better at rural administrative capacity (eg.
| Kerala, HP, PB, JK) than others (eg. KA, TG, GJ).
|
| Something I've noticed is states that don't have a primary
| city tend to have slightly better rural administrative
| capacity, as it at least incentivizes small town or T3/4
| economies to develop instead of being invested in a single
| mega city.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Thanks for adding extra context. I wasn't aware of Hamta.
| My experience is in rural central and South India but I've
| travelled extensively in Garhwal. How different would you
| say rural JK/HP/LA/UK is?
|
| Your last para rings true. Goa, Kerala, CG and Odisha have
| better rural administration than MH, TL or KA because of
| the absence of heavyweight cities.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > How different would you say rural JK/HP/LA/UK is?
|
| Rural UK is much poorer than rural HP and JK.
|
| The administrative structure of UK is very top heavy
| (everything is decided in Dehradun), and
| Dehradun+Haridwar have caused tourism and real estate
| induced Dutch Disease to arise. JK and HP also have a
| tourism economy, but also have a strong industrial base
| (pharma in HP, heavy industry in JK) plus more investment
| in higher value rural industries like food processing and
| fruit cultivation.
|
| HP and JK also have a bottom up political culture with
| panchayats in a district coalescing into District
| Planning Committee that includes state civil service
| cadre and the MLA, so local governance is much more
| responsive, and has the resources and capacity to invest
| in infra like cold storage or make the case for an MNC to
| invest in manufacturing.
|
| Basically, if local government and administration is
| actually given priority beyond haphazard panchayats, it
| makes it easier to attract build industries and a semi-
| industrial rural economy.
|
| > Kerala, CG and Odisha have better rural administration
| than MH, TL or KA because of the absence of heavyweight
| cities.
|
| Political culture is also more top-down in states like
| MH/TG/KA, where the CM office tends to have inordinate
| control over local planning and panchayat+local
| government funding is minimal
|
| Even if their administrations had some interest in rural
| economic development (which in those states they don't),
| they wouldn't even have the bandwidth because there are
| too many districts. This is why local government needs to
| be invested in by states, but locals are the ones who
| know best about their needs and capabilities.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Great comment, thank you for sharing it. I've seen some
| of it in Garhwal where villages didn't get proper
| attention by the Govt. We keep forgetting that states in
| India are akin to states in Europe.
|
| A modern version of Gram Swaraj combined with Switzerland
| type canton system might work well but there are no
| incentives for the administration for that.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I'm not sure a canton type system is necessary if the
| Gram Swaraj system sees further investment and is coupled
| with delimitation for legislative assemblies, it would
| solve most of the pressing problems.
|
| A lopsided population to MLA ratio makes it easier for
| MLAs to be disconnected from local government, and
| incentivizes governance through internal party machinery
| (beg the CM or the local party leadership to get your MLA
| or DM to do something) instead of via the local
| administration, which further deprofessionalizes local
| government.
|
| > We keep forgetting that states in India are akin to
| states in Europe.
|
| Pretty much. Even within states the diversity is insane
| (eg. MP, KA, or UP would be better served split into 3-4
| states).
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| JK's interesting history from partition onward has
| definitely biased its political culture to inspiring
| bottom-up, panchayat-forward governance.
| Labov wrote:
| Well, maybe there's something to it. I think it's great when
| East meets West. East should keep meeting West over and over
| and over. Maybe one day East will know West and vice versa.
|
| For what it's worth, I had something of a similar experience,
| but it was in a plywood shack on a desert island off the coast
| of California.
| dogleash wrote:
| > But westerners have been doing stuff like this for ages and
| prattling on about it - it's kind of a cornerstone of
| Orientalism. This was actually a plot point in the recent White
| Lotus season. People rarely go to Appalachia to have these
| experiences, but you certainly can find people living simple
| happy lives there.
|
| I think you're moralizing over a pretty bland bit of
| psychology: people need to be shaken from their frame of
| reference to see different parts of the world. Even if they
| exist next door. For many Americans, Appalachia will be too
| close to home to force off the blinders.
|
| I've flown all over the US for work, and in every location
| found the same exact city. It's hard to take away someone's
| footing when they feel at home. OTOH, the preconditions that
| gave me many life broadening experiences within 100 miles of a
| single US city are not available to everyone.
|
| Assigning someone internal character traits so that their
| external practice of respectful travel can still be judged is
| cruel.
| jhickok wrote:
| Agreed. I think beyond tourist voyeurism, there is something
| really maturing(?) about being inserted into a completely
| different culture where people seem to be content. I grew up
| in rural Wisconsin and even the micro-change of moving away
| for college in a place like St. Louis had very important
| implications for my worldview.
| carleverett wrote:
| As someone from the US who's traveled all over the country
| for fun, I can assure you there are loads of delightfully
| unique places and rich communities that think and act quite
| differently from each other.
|
| But yes I could see how work travel only could make them feel
| like carbon copies - both from the mindset you'd be in and
| from the types of places you might only go for work.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Places you go for work are mostly corporate parks in the
| suburbs. Of course they all feel the same. I had the same
| experience and that was why - rarely did I get to visit the
| big cities. I went to places which had Chili's and Target
| and Outback Steakhouse.
|
| On the odd times I visited DC or SF or Toronto - really
| amazing and different experiences.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| Both the DC and SF metro areas have Chili's, Target, and
| Outback. Can you articulate what made DC and SF "really
| amazing and different experiences" from one another,
| beyond vibes? Asking as an American who's pretty sure
| it's all the same here (and has traveled internationally
| to places where it's not).
| RajT88 wrote:
| I'll try. YMMV, but:
|
| DC:
|
| You can get just about any kind of food - because just
| about every culture in the world is represented. You can
| find some of the more home-y type menu options too for
| the same reason. For example, Greek restaurants where I
| am at don't generally have Taramosalata (carp roe dip).
| Due to the shorter flights to Africa, the is a much
| larger African population in the DC area. One trip, I
| bought some Nigerian movies at a gas station. Then
| there's all the historical stuff - tomb of the unknown
| soldier, Vietnam wall, Air & Space Museum, etc. As I
| wandered around town on one of my early trips there, I
| keep seeing things I thought were very familiar - and it
| turns out at least some were because Bethesda (HQ'd
| nearby) had done an awesome job recreating apocalypse
| versions of them in Fallout 3 (which I played a lot of).
|
| SF:
|
| I went cycling a few times with a friend of mine. We went
| over the Golden Gate bridge, which was amazing. Also to
| the top of some mountain (big hill?) overlooking the
| city. What a view! I like to fish, and dropped a line
| near my hotel and caught a leopard shark. I saw an old
| Japanese homeless man wheel a little red wagon on a pier
| near the Mozilla HQ (near the many-billion dollar company
| I was visiting), and catch a pile of Jacksmelt using a
| spark plug as a sinker. There is a lot of excellent
| Asian-influenced dining options - my personal favorite is
| Lilo Lilo Yacht Club. I got to see a tent city of what
| appeared to be techies - all really nice huge family-
| sized tents, well dressed and apparently happy and well
| fed. One time, I was having a drink in a bar in SFO, and
| chatted up a guy who had just come from an executive
| meeting with a bunch of VP's and CTO's of Sony, where
| chewed them out about their usage of Kubernetes. I saw a
| shirtless man walking around with what appeared to be
| pony boots? I assume part of the gay scene.
|
| Now - you may not like all that, but you are not
| generally having those experiences near suburban
| corporate parks. Yes, they have Outback Steakhouses, but
| they have rather a lot more going on.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I've flown all over the US for work, and in every location
| found the same exact city.
|
| I think you can find the exact same city if you like but I
| also have found much more. Simply LA and NY are very
| different places, as are different communities in those
| cities.
| harrall wrote:
| There's also some self-selection here.
|
| If you go to another place and someone lets you stay with them,
| they are probably in a good place in life. You are selecting
| yourself to meet with happier people.
|
| You won't be making as many friends with unhappy people.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| I agree that this is a common trope but the rest of your
| comment reads like, "Hey westerners, go find your own rural
| people and stop appropriating mine".
|
| Also completing your logic loop, this guy is apparently
| stealing intellectual ideas from (mediocre) westerners.
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| A simpler explanation is that Americans have succumbed to
| consumerism to such an extent that the absence of it feels
| enlightened.
|
| Of course the reality is just that the US has become the axis
| of evil, and perhaps always was, it just had the best PR.
|
| I think you're doing yourself a disservice by belitting Asian
| cultures and what insights they may have, that are apparently
| incomprehensible as more than a trope to Americans.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| America is the best because citizens can do basically
| whatever they want all the time. The latest complaints are
| people took it too far (rampant drug use, camping on
| sidewalks, and shitting everywhere in San Francisco, etc.).
|
| But if you want to buy a rural cabin on a beautiful mountain,
| it's available, and cheap. You don't need to go to Asia to
| live like a hermit.
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| > America
|
| Obviously America refers to the continent, so I'll use the
| shorthand country name "the US" instead.
|
| > is the best
|
| That may be true, but I do wonder if it was a lucky
| accident. What if the Irish famine hadn't happened? What if
| WW2 had been averted (but maybe the EU wouldn't exist...).
|
| > rural cabin
|
| That's nice, but what value is it if the forest burns down,
| the lake is polluted, the wild life is dead, and there's
| nothing left but neighboring land full of fracking wells?
| Glory to god.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| You just have no idea how incredibly enormous and empty
| the US is
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| And yet, every viable plot of land is used for farming.
|
| Similarly, I would argue that you should not
| underestimate the harmful and wide-reaching effects of
| industry.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Of course the reality is just that the US has become the
| axis of evil, and perhaps always was, it just had the best
| PR.
|
| Sigh.
|
| Yes, the Soviet Union really was the worker's paradise with
| free, prosperous, happy people!
|
| Can we get away from the sophomoric idea the USA was ALWAYS
| the ONLY source of badness in the world, just because right
| now it's the most powerful nation in the world and also a
| complete mess?
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| I suspect that the communist project has lived under
| constant fear of the US, that the economy ultimately was
| bankrupted from having to defend itself against the US war
| machine.
|
| The US has waged war in virtually every country around the
| world, for example Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Korea, which
| were significant threats to both Soviet and China. China
| has virtually been besieged since the 1950s, with Americans
| present in Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and South
| Korea.
|
| How would you feel if the Soviet installed weapons systems
| in Canada, Hawaii, Mexico, Greenland, and Cuba? And then
| started a tariff war to hopefully bankrupt your economy?
| sepositus wrote:
| Wasn't communism influenced heavily by being anti-
| capitalist? They fundamentally disagreed with the tenants
| that the United States stood on. Your comment, if I'm
| understanding it correctly, makes it look like the
| communists were just trying to do their own thing in
| their own countries and the big bad U.S came in and
| bullied them out of existence.
|
| I'm not defending either sides here. I'm not a Reaganot.
| But to think most communist regimes were not hellbent on
| the destruction of western capitalism would seem a bit
| misleading to me.
| patrick41638265 wrote:
| Not sure about the intellectual part of it, but how to live a
| rich life? Surely not by secretly cherishing a feeling of
| _superiority_ and _sophistication_ because these sentiments will
| cut you out of a lot of insights and encounters that make your
| life _rich_. True, life is a farce in a lot of ways, but who
| cares? Accept it where you can 't change it and find your own
| islands of happiness. These may be intellectual if you like, but
| don't expect the people around you to follow the same (high)
| standards, that will only make you unhappy.
| awanderingmind wrote:
| Good insight about how feelings of 'superiority' or
| 'sophistication' can suck the joy out of life. I fell into this
| trap myself, and it took a long time to get out of it.
|
| That said, there are times when a certain type of appreciation
| of 'sophistication' is warranted - you just shouldn't use it to
| believe you are therefore above other people, or beyond the
| simple pleasures of life.
| nicbou wrote:
| Superiority and sophistication might ironically make you less
| curious and appreciative.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| This stirs up a good discussion. My way of having a satisfying
| intellectual life is not just by juggling many ideas, but also by
| problem solving. I find immense satisfaction in making something
| work or creating something that didn't exist before. Many times,
| this requires problem solving with creativity, compromise and
| tradeoffs. Some times, it requires deep diving into academic
| papers and doing some math. When this ends up working it is truly
| a triumphant feeling; however it might sometimes not work at all.
|
| Another thing is meeting and absorbing knowledge from other
| people. It's incredible to learn or even just watch skillful
| people do their thing.
| BoxFour wrote:
| This is a little meandering so just to focus on one part:
|
| Philosophy can be valuable, but applying the ideas meaningfully
| requires discernment. I'm thinking particularly about the
| popularity of "Meditations", for example.
|
| Take Plato, for example: He and his also-famous mentor believed
| knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives, an idea
| illustrated with an unconvincing geometry lesson in Phaedo (EDIT:
| It's Meno).
|
| Sure, it's worth stepping back to reassess what's going to
| increase your "PC" to borrow from seven habits. That could
| involve leaving behind surface-level achievement in favor of
| deeper reflection, as the referenced article suggests.
|
| But let's not overly-romanticize ancient thinkers: Plato and
| Aristotle held fundamentally different views on knowledge. Even
| they couldn't agree; there's no need to treat any one of them as
| infallible.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > Philosophy can be valuable, but applying the ideas
| meaningfully requires discernment. I'm thinking particularly
| about the popularity of "Meditations", for example.
|
| From one translation of _Meditations_ (I forget which), and
| from memory, so I may have it slightly wrong:
|
| "You can live your life in a calm flow of happiness, if you
| learn to think the right way, and to act the right way".
|
| The _act the right way_ is the hard part. The frame-of-mind
| stuff that lots of people focus on is necessary, but not
| sufficient. On its own it can be of some help, but it can also
| lead to traps like going too easy on one 's own deficiencies of
| action. The thinking bits that get most of the attention, at
| least in stoicism, are largely reactive--the acting is
| proactive, as is the thinking to support it (which gets less
| attention in popular takes on Stoicism, and is harder).
| BoxFour wrote:
| Meditations is particularly interesting because it's clearly
| just Marcus Aurelius's diary that was doubtfully ever meant
| to see the light of day.
|
| He spends a fair amount of it repeating mantras to himself
| over and over again, or even arguing with himself in stream-
| of-consciousness.
|
| It's Marcus Aurelius giving himself a written pep talk. He
| struggles to uphold those stoicism ideals his whole life,
| failing constantly ant it, and Meditations is an artifact of
| it.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| There's also an awful lot of really boring and silly Stoic
| physics and metaphysics in there, which topics _for some
| reason_ people who love the book rarely bring up, LOL.
| dwcnnnghm wrote:
| The dialogue you refer to is _Meno_ and the idea is a solution
| to "Meno's Paradox".
| BoxFour wrote:
| Thanks, that is what I was thinking of.
| safety1st wrote:
| Philosophy is just one of the liberal arts. This idea has
| declined in popularity in recent years but I still think
| there's a lot to be said for possessing a liberal arts
| education. If you have a good one your understanding of the
| world around you gets broader and deeper. You recognize why
| things are the way they are. In the long term you may spot
| opportunities you wouldn't have otherwise, or be able to solve
| problems that would have seemed intractable. Maybe most
| importantly you end up developing a sophisticated moral
| framework that's grounded in history and all the things that
| eventually led up to you existing and living the life you live.
|
| You don't have to major in a liberal art or even go to college
| to get one, you can just read books. You also don't have to
| learn it all in your early 20s. You can just incorporate the
| great works into what you read throughout your adult life. It's
| very easy to find lists and recommendations online for what you
| should read if you want a broad-based liberal education. The
| general idea is simply to be informed about and understand the
| foundational concepts in philosophy, economics, political
| science, psychology, history, sociology, law, and so on. There
| is no need to go deep in any one them, unless you find it
| interesting and wish to do so. Someone who reads one or two
| foundational works in each of these subjects will have a wildly
| better understanding of the world than someone who doesn't. To
| me this is what living an intellectually rich life is and it's
| very rewarding. If nothing else, due to my liberal arts
| education I will never be bored in retirement, there are
| thousands of books that I would find it interesting to read.
| BoxFour wrote:
| I don't have a problem with having a good understanding of
| classics (liberal arts is a category that far encompasses
| more than just classical education, though).
|
| I do have a problem with blindly assuming Plato/other ancient
| philosophers were some sort of omniscient super-intelligence
| we should blindly follow, which I do see happen with some
| regularity in my own life.
|
| Plato et al might've been the start of our modern
| understanding of ethics, but the concept of a moral life or
| epistemology certainly didn't stop with him!
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Philosophy is just one of the liberal arts. This idea has
| declined in popularity in recent years but I still think
| there 's a lot to be said for possessing a liberal arts
| education. If you have a good one your understanding of the
| world around you gets broader and deeper._
|
| Look no further than all the AI debates on HN: from the
| perspective of someone with a couple of college classes on
| philosophy (not even a minor), it's looks like a bunch of
| five years olds debating particle physics. Complete ignorance
| of what the academic precedent is, retreading ideas that
| philosophers have moved on from hundreds of years ago.
| munksbeer wrote:
| Yes, people are going to be ignorant of things they haven't
| studied previously. So, people exploring the ideas and
| debating them for the first time might look amateur to you,
| but why is that a bad thing?
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| I believe the point was this is preventable by having a
| slightly wider knowledge base.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Wont discussing these things widen their knowldege base?
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| Possibly, but slowly and inefficiently.
| throwup238 wrote:
| This is a social media site; people can shoot the shit
| about whatever they want and there's nothing wrong with
| that.
|
| But... what's the point? It's like going into a thread
| about modern chemistry and debating about the four basic
| elements of ancient Greece. Sure you can have fun
| shooting the shit about what is essentially a historical
| novelty, but if you really want to _debate about
| chemistry_ you need to open a high school textbook and
| get up to speed on at least the first few chapters.
|
| The only difference is that nerds look down at philosophy
| and not chemistry; and the former is rarely taught in
| high school after which the arrested development seems to
| set in. No one blinks an eye telling flat earthers that
| they don't know what they're talking about.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Why shouldnt people on a message forum explore "ideas that
| philosophers moved on from hundreds of years ago?" It seems
| to suggest philosophy is more about the conclusions than
| the process. I cant think of an academic field where that
| is less true.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >If you have a good one your understanding of the world
| around you gets broader and deeper.
|
| The problem is, is it _unique_ to liberal arts? That is what
| must be true to give it some purpose. If you can just read a
| bunch of books or study something else with additional
| positive benefits why do liberal arts?
|
| I am a liberal arts and computer science degree holder. I
| don't think liberal arts is _worthless_. I do think its a
| terrible value proposition and that the positive side effects
| can be achieved while studying something far more marketable.
| Computer science has made me a much stronger general problem
| solver and a better critical thinker than liberal arts did.
| These are the primary skills touted by the liberal arts.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >But let's not overly-romanticize ancient thinkers: Plato and
| Aristotle held fundamentally different views on knowledge.
|
| 1) everyone agrees "overly" Romanticizing is wrong. By
| definition of "overly".
|
| 2) why should having a fundamentally different view on
| knowledge disqualify something from being romanticized? Isnt
| romanticizing precisely for things that are different?
|
| 3) i think its a mischaracterization to say Plato thought "
| knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives." He was
| not talking about "past lives" but the "soul" (which I think
| wed both agree is a loaded term). He said the soul knew it
| before the person was born. This goes to his theory on the
| forma which I think is a better way to characterize his
| thoughts on knowledge. In general terms id say he believes
| truth exists in a timeless, non-empirical realm (the Forms).
| With the physical reality being an imperfect imitation. Which
| people have some mediated access to.
| BoxFour wrote:
| > everyone agrees "overly" is wrong
|
| I mean, apparently not - this author alone takes Plato's cave
| allegory at face value without spending even a moment to
| criticize it.
|
| > I think it's a mischaracterization...
|
| It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very
| painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the
| exact same.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| The example he gives about geometry is actually quite
| interesting. It is one of the early highlights of a deep
| question: is this knowledge, geometry in this case,
| learned/learnable or is it, somehow, innate? Do we learn
| this from scratch or do we have innate pre-existing
| cognitive structures that are "configured" by experience?
| If the latter, what does "learning" mean? It's definitely
| not what we usually mean. If the former, we meet Hume and
| Kant and have to show how we arrived at space and geometry
| ex nihilo.
|
| If learning is essentially based on "configuring" innate
| structures, you can IMO state it is eternal or uncovered or
| whatever poetic vehicle you desire. I'd say give these pre-
| modern guys a break.
|
| These are issues being discussed way into the modern era
| starting (again) with the likes of Hume and Kant and no
| easy solutions are available. This is not a solved problem.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Is math invented or discovered?
|
| I think most people's intuition is that the methodology
| and conventions are invented but are constrained by some
| transcendental reality. It seems difficult to argue its
| instead purely natural or purely convention.
|
| This is very much inline with Platos theory of the forms.
| I dont really understand the idea that Plato's ideas are
| dated.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > I mean, apparently not - this author alone takes Plato's
| cave allegory at face value without spending even a moment
| to criticize it.
|
| Does HE say hes over romanticizing it? No.
|
| He would probably argue hes not over-romanticizing it. So
| the question isnt if over-romanticizing is improper (which
| is true by definition of "over"). The question is if he
| actually is over romanticizing.
|
| >It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a
| very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought
| the exact same.
|
| Im not contesting that Plato believed in reincarnation. But
| its not true that he thought knowledge comes from "past
| lives" (as in when you were previously some other person).
| He believed the _soul_ had direct access to knowledge. In a
| past life you would have only had an impression as well.
| This is all downstream of his actual theory of the forms
| though. Why not attack that if you want to attack his
| theory of knowledge.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I like How To Think Like a Roman Emperor's analysis of
| Meditations but maybe it falls into pop self-help/psychology,
| it discusses the history around the text and how modern
| psychology has similarities with some of the techniques and
| aphorisms.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > Take Plato, for example: He and his also-famous mentor
| believed knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives,
| an idea illustrated with an unconvincing geometry lesson in
| Phaedo (EDIT: It's Meno).
|
| I find the line of thought in "Meno" extremly impressiv. Let me
| try to reformulate it in modern terms.
|
| The literary form of a dialogue emphasizes that the thoughts of
| the participants should not be considered as doctrines, but the
| whole as an investigation of a problem domain.
|
| The dialogue starts with a distinction between empirical
| knowledge ("The way to Larisa") and mathematical knowledge.
| Empirical knowledge is something that I cannot know from
| introspection. In contrast, the nature of mathematical
| knowledge comes from inside the mind. This is demonstrated by
| an uneducated, but smart child (a slave boy). The child is
| guided to discover a mathematical insight by questions alone.
| At first the boy does not know the right answer to an initial
| question. Then Socartes starts again with a simple question the
| boy is able to answer. Then a sequence of other questions
| follows each building on the previous answers. Socrates only
| questions, the boy only answers. Finally the boy arrives at the
| correct answer of the initial question whose answer he did not
| know at the start.
|
| This scene should demonstrate the essence of mathematical
| proof. First we do not know the answer of a mathematical
| problem. Step-by-step we clarify our understanding, until we
| arrive at an answer. At this stage we know whether the
| particular mathematical statement is true or false. We expanded
| our understanding by only just thinking. In one way it is new
| knowledge (we now know something we did not, when we looked for
| a proof), in another way the knowledge was always there, just
| hidden in our mind.
|
| At this point Socrates hits a limit where he runs out of
| questions to invistigate this further. This is when he starts
| to tell a story (the greek word for story is "myth"). Such
| stories are just tools to further investigate a problem when
| purely theoretical thoughts come to an end. In the dialogue it
| is also accompanied by a lot of joking, and "let me speculate"
| and "don't take it too serious" sort of remarks. So he reminds
| his fellows about some old stories (that he adapts and
| decorates a little to match the problem) about reincarnation
| where one looses the memory of one's past life but has
| occasionally some sort of flashbacks. This is more or less the
| whole point of the story: Perhaps we should think of
| mathematical knowledge as analogous to memory, but in a in a
| transcendent way.
|
| Our modern doctrins are not very much off: Our ability of
| mathematical thinking is something that is inherent to us, more
| specifically to our brains. The blueprint (a sort of memory?)
| for our brains are in our genes. This way we are a sort of
| reincarnation of our parents, but in a state were we have to
| undergo all the mathematical training again.
|
| What Plato lacks is a theory of evolutionary epistemology. But
| this is a really new development.
| gregates wrote:
| Here's how I would put this: reading the classics can be
| valuable, but if you want to become wise you need philosophy.
|
| Philosophy isn't a set of ideas or texts. It's a practice.
| WillAdams wrote:
| For my part, one of the most striking things which I recall from
| my youth was reading Dumas' _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and the
| Abbe Faria contending that everything a gentleman needed to make
| his way in life was contained in less than 100 books --- which he
| had memorized the content of, and could impart to the young
| Edmond Dantes.
|
| A naive younger me tried to brute force this by reading one non-
| fiction book from each major section of the Dewey Decimal system
| catalog, but was stymied by the paucity of a high school library
| in a county in the second smallest tax base in the state....
|
| Since then, I've actually been trying to put that list together
| (and lightly updating it for availability from Project
| Gutenberg/Librivox).
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams...
|
| Suggestions and comments and recommendations welcome.
| js8 wrote:
| I like your idea, but it's missing any sort of practical skills
| (which Dantes and Faria certainly had).
|
| What would be more interesting, IMHO, books that Cyrus Smith
| from The Mysterious Island had memorized.
|
| Just from what I saw on HN, I remember Gingery books on metal
| workshop from scratch, and some homesteading manual from late
| 19th century.
| bluGill wrote:
| The most important books are things like first aid and CPR.
| Or better yet a class because hands on experience beat books
| learning.
|
| I love the Gingery books and they are great foundations for a
| hobby. However even in a end of civilization scenario we only
| need a small minority who knows that content who can teach
| the rest - that is at best, but quite likely there won't be
| enough industrial base to produce the aluminum needed and so
| you are stuck with useless knowledge. Even your 19th century
| homesteading tends to assume far more industrial base to make
| some annoyingly hard things.
|
| Most so called practical skills are either not practical in
| modern civilization (there is far too much population for us
| all the be hunter/gathers even if we want to); or they are
| only practical in context of current times. I've seen how to
| wire your house for electric lights books from the 1920s -
| most of the things shown wouldn't pass code today. My house
| was built in 1970, and there are a lot of things that still
| work but there is good reason we don't allow that anymore.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Had Self-aid and buddy care when I was in the service, and
| became qualified and volunteered as an EMT for a while
| after getting out. I do have a Wilderness Survival First
| Aid Book on my Kindle, and I'll definitely add it to this
| list.
|
| I actually had a copy of _The Metal Lathe (Build Your Own
| Metal Working Shop From Scrap, Volume 2)_ ages ago, and
| slotting in the full leatherbound edition of all 7 volumes
| is likewise a good fit.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Trying to focus on intellectual things --- practical skills
| invites the list becoming an extension of my various
| interests (note the extant shelves on archery and
| woodworking) and their various intersections, e.g.,
|
| https://www.lumberjocks.com/showcase/archery-case-ascham-
| of-...
|
| Edit: did add a first aid book, as well as the 7 volume
| edition of "The Gingery Books".
| gen220 wrote:
| "The Good Life" by Helen and Scott Nearing has an excellent
| bibliography/citations section.
|
| How to build stone houses, compost and farm organically, etc.
| A good primer on homesteading. Contains references to things
| like 19th century homestead manuals
| WillAdams wrote:
| I've considered adding "The Foxfire" books (which I read
| when I was much younger) and perhaps a text by Roy
| Underhill, but as noted elsethread, this is intended as an
| academic/social list.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I love this idea, and the lost is full of gems, but I see a
| couple of issues. If you actually intend you or anyone else to
| read these and stay sane I'd remove the mathematical tables
| (there is value in reading these, but only for a very rare
| soul), the Bible (lots of really dry stuff about begetting and
| knowing), the complete works of Shakespeare (hard to understand
| without careful study, way too long to cafefully study).
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Shakespeare is worthwhile but much easier to understand when
| you see it performed, which is how it was meant to be
| experienced anyway.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Yes, exactly. A lot of people forget that he wrote 'plays'
| and not 'reads'
| mr_toad wrote:
| He had to; a large part of his audience would have been
| unable to read.
|
| A lot of European literature was poetry for the same
| reason. Its only because literacy rates have risen that
| prose has become more popular.
| dhosek wrote:
| My Shakespeare class in college was based around performing
| a play at the end of the semester. We read about half a
| dozen plays, but the bulk of our work was based around
| preparing to perform _Hamlet_ (each semester, a different
| play was performed, with fall being Comedies /Histories and
| Spring being Tragedies/Romances).
|
| The big challenge is that a lot of plays are rarely
| performed. I had the good fortune of hearing an interview
| with Kenneth Brannagh where he talked about how Shakespeare
| is better experienced by watching a performance than
| reading a text and he made an aside about how it's unlikely
| you're going to get to see Henry IV part II performed and
| then spotting that there was a free performance of that
| exact play being given at the Chicago Cultural Center. This
| turned out to be part of a series of staged readings of
| _all_ the plays. I missed the beginning of the sequence,
| but stuck around to the end. One of the coolest moments of
| this came when I was attending a play at the Goodman
| Theatre which had the actors interacting with audience
| members during intermission and one of the actors in the
| play recognized me from the audience of the staged
| readings.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There are more or less accessible TV performances. The
| definitive complete collection is probably the BBC
| Shakespeare, available on iPlayer and DVD.
|
| Some of the plays have also snuck onto YouTube.
| stryan wrote:
| > the Bible (lots of really dry stuff about begetting and
| knowing)
|
| I'd suggest replacing the Bible with just the Gospels
| (Matthew, Mark, Luke[0], and John). Removing it entirely
| seems like a mistake since you'd lose a lot of the literary
| and moral underpinnings of Western culture, but having to
| read the bible in its entirely sounds exhausting. I did it
| (reading all four gospels) recently and can attest even
| outside of the religious aspects the retelling of the same
| tragic story in four different was is a fascinating literary
| experience.
|
| [0] Technically we should through Acts in there too since
| Luke-Acts are essentially one book, but it's not a gospel so
| I left it out. Plus quite frankly while I did read it I found
| it way more boring than the others; turns out that Jesus
| fellow is a way more interesting main character than Paul :)
| gen220 wrote:
| I think the Bible can mostly be distilled to Genesis,
| Exodus and the Gospels without losing too much. Each of
| those books is eminently legible in its own right. You
| could arguably make the sermon on the mount its own book,
| "communist manifesto" style.
|
| I think those individual chapters would be super compelling
| to modern readers with or without a religious background,
| but their legibility is held back by the rest of the
| Bible's contents. How is someone non-religious supposed to
| figure out that it's ok to start reading a book at section
| 2, chapter 1? :)
| Y_Y wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree, except to add that Ecclesiastes
| stands on its own as a great piece of philosophy, and
| Revelations is pretty influential as well as having some
| pretty entertaining madness.
| ivape wrote:
| It's argued that God had a plan (all-knowing). The
| compelling argument to read the Old Testament in full
| before the New Testament is that this whole thing was a
| deliberate sequence. That's if you are willing to
| entertain the notion on a literary level (forget about
| belief). Take the story of Samson for example, one
| argument is that God showed that humans would persecute a
| man whom humanity couldn't even contemplate could have
| gotten his powers from God. It's a setup for Christ.
|
| You can distill if you are looking for moral teachings,
| but you can't if you want to know this guys (that guy up
| in the sky) full plan, in which case you have to
| entertain that it was a sequence of events. It's very
| weird, but almost makes going through the whole Bible
| fascinating as a serial drama. One thing led to another.
| gen220 wrote:
| I totally agree. I think for theological reasons (if your
| goal is to convince yourself that Jesus is the Messiah of
| the Abrahamic religions), then it can't be distilled.
|
| However, I do think the abrahamic origin stories
| (genesis), the tribulations of the Jewish people in Egypt
| and reception of the Ten Commandments (exodus), and the
| moral teachings of Christ that replace those commandments
| (gospels) are more or less self-contained and free-
| standing, if you're trying to understand them at face
| value.
|
| The gospels in particular contain a good moral teachings
| that are arguably more valuable than anything else in the
| book. Like really clear directives on how to live and
| carry yourself.
|
| In my Weird Bible, I'd cold open with the sermon on the
| mount, followed by the Pharisees and the passion, and
| recursively hyper-link to every New Testament or Old
| Testament thing that supports those "primary" stories. I
| feel like if you arranged the Bible into a neat "tree"
| structure that way, the main load-bearing trunks would be
| the books mentioned.
| ivape wrote:
| I appreciate your points. Morality is what most people
| want to take away from all of these books, but the thing
| they want to leave behind is one requirement that God
| seems to have, and that's straight up obedience.
| Obedience doesn't really fit inside morality, and in fact
| if you just distill morality out, obedience won't make
| it. The Old Testament hammers home the need for obedience
| to God's laws in story after story, until finally God
| just kinda lets us know that "hey you guys really cannot
| follow the law, so lets shift to a relationship framework
| with Christ". That's how I've been making sense of WHAT
| the Old Testament is in the context of the sequence, and
| further, why I don't ignore it because it seems to be he
| values both morality and obedience (and again, obedience
| doesn't fit into morality - Just the story of Abraham and
| his son, there's nothing moral about it).
|
| It's a thoroughly Christian view, that being humans lack
| the capacity to follow God's laws because we're
| inherently sinners - but that's a whole nother' can of
| worms. It's kind of like a Kindergarten teacher (God)
| letting the kids run the show for a day (Old Testament),
| just to make it clear, they can't manage it. It's quite a
| thing to believe such a supreme being would run a
| sequence like that on us (in fact, that's how I make
| sense of a lot of the craziness in the world, that God
| would in fact let things run its course, however messed
| up (even in modern times, e.g - social media, wars,
| factory slavery in China, slavery in Mideast construct,
| abject poverty in third world, pure greed and gluttony in
| the west, etc, where all of these things are just as
| Biblically fucked up as parts of the Bible)). It's my
| only case for why the Old Testament is quite relevant to
| understanding the fullness of God.
|
| Fun topic!
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| Yes, but the Gospels are "complete." You obviously gain
| much by reading the OT before it--not to mention the
| apocrypha like Enoch and Jubilees which are quoted
| directly and indirectly in the NT--but the Gospels have
| the entire "message" contained within them.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Isaiah for the poetic language and imagery deeply
| embedded in Western culture. Psalms for raw expression of
| the emotions at the heart of the human condition:
| suffering, rejection, abandonment, joy, and praise.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| St John's College is known for their Great Books curriculum -
| the foundation of their four year program - where students read
| the primary text of western civilization.
|
| It's always held a soft spot in my heart as my own experience
| was mostly reading derivative descriptions and the rare times
| when I was able to read a primary text during my coursework
| were always my happiest memories.
|
| 1. https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-
| bo...
| uncletaco wrote:
| I'll never forget the night sjc students invited me to smoke
| weed and listen to some Charles Mingus.
| kurthr wrote:
| Trying to learn Newtonian Mechanics from Philosophiae
| Naturalis Principia Mathematica is kinda dumb though.
|
| I certainly noticed that it was ineffective in discussing
| implications with the students. I found Boyle's observations
| far more effective in teaching science.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Pri.
| ..
| jihadjihad wrote:
| > Trying to learn Newtonian Mechanics from Philosophiae
| Naturalis Principia Mathematica is kinda dumb though.
|
| It'd be like wanting to improve your cardio health so you
| try to climb K2. The edition I have has 150+ pages of just
| _introduction_. You have to wade through all of that just
| to be able to figure out how to read the rest of the tome.
| It is cool, though!
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Let's be honest, trying to learn Newtonian mechanics by
| majoring in the humanities probably isn't the best
| approach. Maybe that's not really what the program is meant
| for in the first place.
| glial wrote:
| I had an elective class at St. John's where we read
| selections from Newton's Principia (ISBN 9781888009262)
| together with William Blake's long poem "Jerusalem, the
| Emanation of the Giant Albion".
|
| The goal was not to learn how to do physics calculations,
| but to understand each writer's concept of reality and
| humanity's relationship to it. I remember that Blake really
| focused on the worth of actually instantiated reality, what
| he called "minute particulars", in contrast to Newton's
| abstractions: He who would do good to
| another, must do it in Minute Particulars General
| Good is the plea of the scoundrel hypocrite & flatterer:
| For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized
| Particulars And not in generalizing Demonstrations
| of the Rational Power.
|
| Also, Newton's Principia uses Euclidian-style
| demonstrations to illustrate many of his points, whereas
| today we would use algebraic calculus. That was fun, since
| everyone in the room had also worked through the first book
| of Euclid's Elements.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Similarly, a related project is an effort to assemble a
| chronological list of books where the oldest text which
| is still valid given contemporary knowledge of the
| subject is listed includes Euclid's _Elements_ of course:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355?shelf=chro
| nol...
| xphos wrote:
| One issue I have with modern teaching of both Math and
| Physics though is that they give the "correct" answer to
| fast which teaches the material and accelerates learning
| but I think it also leaves a lot of motivations for why
| certain decisions were come to and how which is important.
|
| Recently I've been following long with the Distance Ladder
| challenge I saw on 3 blue 1 brown with Terence Tao. Going
| through those question is motivating because those
| questions are based in solving navigational problems. I
| fear that with the ever increasing the low friction in life
| we are stealing the challenge and things for people to
| consider to build up there problem solving ability before
| the curtain is pulled.
|
| I think its also more motivating to learn considering more
| interesting questions especially in math. All this to say
| going back to the source material while not the most modern
| accurate physics it usually does include large amounts of
| motivation to explain why things are logical and what they
| are doing it for. To be fair I haven't read the
| Philosophiae Naturalis Principia but I have read other old
| book and wager it has similarities
| andrepd wrote:
| Hmm but you _can_ (an in fact do, in many physics
| programs) follow the historical development of theories
| using modern textbooks. The pedagogical value is in
| understanding, not exactly in wading through the archaic
| language and the confused early papers.
|
| Even for modern theories like general relativity people
| study by textbooks written many decades after the fact,
| with a clear picture after things were settled, and not
| by Einstein's first papers :)
| mr_toad wrote:
| Newton intentionally made it difficult because he didn't
| want to be bothered by questions from lesser minds.
| WillAdams wrote:
| A co-worker mentioned this school when his son selected it
| for a visit, and I quite envy the young man the chance to
| attend --- I believe I got everything from their reading list
| --- if I missed something, let me know.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| They have a graduate program available at a distance if you
| feel particularly drawn to their learning style. Basically
| covers a subset of the UG curriculum.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, I considered that --- just not an option
| financially --- my workplace is actually next door to a
| private university, and I've been considering getting a
| Masters in CS there, then going on to get a PhD....
| andrepd wrote:
| I'm not sure what's the value in spending time reading
| obsolete scientific books. "The Fahrenheit Scale"?
| financypants wrote:
| ah yes, read 100 books, abide by 1,000,000 rules
| colecut wrote:
| the proper framework can set you free
| crims0n wrote:
| I am about a quarter of the way through Modern Library's top
| 100 and it has been a worthwhile journey. It is "just" literary
| fiction but it is among the best humanity has produced. I have
| learned so much about the human condition, my ability to
| articulate ideas has improved tremendously, and I feel like my
| mind has been "freed from the tyranny of the present" (to quote
| Cicero).
|
| https://sites.prh.com/modern-library-top-100
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| Seeing that I am on HN and can unleash unrestrained pedantry
| I wish to ask where Cicero actually writes that because I
| cannot find it?
| crims0n wrote:
| The full quote is allegedly "The purpose of education is to
| free the student from the tyranny of the present." ...I
| picked it up in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death,
| but he didn't cite which work it came from. Goodreads
| attributes it to "Selected Works".
| literalAardvark wrote:
| The Roman version of "trust me bro"
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I thought Mark Twain said that. /ducks
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| would have loved to see some non native English speaking
| authors on the list. (instead of listing some authors twice -
| as great as they are). There were 2 Russians that stood out
| but no Camus, Feuchtwanger, Remarque, Musil, Borges, ...
| mediaman wrote:
| Yes, it's kind of a strange slice - we get Faulkner three
| times and we get Joseph Conrad no fewer than four times(!),
| but not a single book from Dostoevsky or Tolstoy? No
| Bulgakov, no Turgenev? No Flaubert?
| S_Bear wrote:
| Lermontov's 'Hero of Our Time' is probably my favorite
| Russian novel, and I say that as someone who absolutely
| adores Dostoevsky. It still feels relevant and modern.
| haroldp wrote:
| English was Joseph Conrad's third language.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Or just rename the list "Top 100 Novels in the English
| Language".
| WillAdams wrote:
| I've read more than half of those, and every time I see that
| list, I really wish that almost every book would be paired w/
| one which enhances/comments on either the book or that same
| theme.
|
| e.g., _Kim_ by Rudyard Kipling should be paired w/ Robert
| Heinlein's _Citizen of the Galaxy_, or _The Grapes of Wrath_,
| which was cribbed from Sanora Babb's notes w/o permission
| should be paired w/ her _Whose Names Are Unknown_:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_.
| ..
| crims0n wrote:
| I really like this idea. I didn't even know about Whose
| Names Are Unknown... added it to the queue.
| infecto wrote:
| I'm not a literary scholar, but this seems like a great use
| case for ChatGPT. I've used it for music explorations and
| found it surprisingly good at providing context and
| interesting suggestions. I tried your idea with The Grapes
| of Wrath and it surfaced Whose Names Are Unknown, with a
| thoughtful explanation. Obviously it's qualitative, but you
| can shape the prompt to reflect your taste and still get
| some worthwhile discoveries.
|
| [1] https://chatgpt.com/share/68150654-bebc-8010-ad4b-050f5
| b39d4...
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I would also suggest the childrens books Cheaper by the
| Dozen, The Musicians of Brennan, Morris' Disappearing Bag
| and The Red Badge of Courage.
|
| I'd maybe throw in some of the little house on the
| prairie books as well, especially the one where they all
| almost froze to death.
|
| I think being able to appreciate books as an adult is
| pretty contingent on being exposed to good books as a
| youth.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Anyone who puts "Ulysses" at the top of a best books list is
| suffering from expertitis. Ulysses has a massive user
| experience problem. It's hard. Dense, convoluted, absurd. If
| your friend asks you for a good book, you don't recommend it.
| The only time you do is when your college English major, or
| advanced highschooler, who is bored with the tropes of even
| very good novels wants to stretch themselves. Then you hand
| them this book.
| crims0n wrote:
| I agree, and in fact I did not start with Ulysses and do
| not recommend people do. I read 2-10 on the list, then
| Hamlet, then Ulysses - which I feel mostly prepared me for
| it. I did love it, but it is not an easy read, and took me
| the better part of a month to get through.
| bpshaver wrote:
| Why are you conflating "best" with "what you would
| recommend a friend"?
|
| Many of the best things in life are hard. And you wouldn't
| necessarily recommend them to a friend.
|
| When you consider specific domains, often the best
| instances of X tend to be harder versions of X. Or, when
| people become familiar with many instances of X they seek
| out the "best" instances of X. Its natural that those best
| instances would be difficult for people unfamiliar with the
| domain.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| "Many of the best things in life are hard. And you
| wouldn't necessarily recommend them to a friend."
|
| Yup.
| miunau wrote:
| How did you find Ulysses, was it a good read for you?
| gradstudent wrote:
| >Or, when people become familiar with many instances of X
| they seek out the "best" instances of X
|
| I think you're saying the same thing as the GP? Ulysses
| is a book for lit nerds, which I suppose the Modern
| Library board were.
|
| Looking at the list, there's hardly any books from after
| mid 20th century. That makes me think that the board
| comprised primarily old lit nerds, who stopped reading
| long before voting. The list is also super ethno centric,
| which makes me more dubious still about the claims for
| "best" anything.
| quantumgarbage wrote:
| Yes, this list reads like one a Midwestern high schooler
| would go through to impress his failed literature teacher,
| who will write him a nice recommendation letter for the
| ultra-conformist university of his dreams, dooming him to
| 25 years of debt and a miserable life working as a
| consultant
| glitchc wrote:
| Yes, but now tell us how you really feel.
| _m_p wrote:
| > Ulysses has a massive user experience problem
|
| Seems this book is not intended for you then!
| haroldp wrote:
| > It's hard. Dense, convoluted, absurd.
|
| These are a few of my favorite things!
| piokoch wrote:
| Exactly. This is extremely boring piece of writing.
| m463 wrote:
| There's definitely some of that going on.
|
| I've gotten the same feeling watching old movies a second
| time.
|
| I would watch a movie when I was young, and it just came
| out. It would be "modern", maybe state of the art, and it
| would have an impact on me. But I was young, and easily
| impressed by the cliche or trite.
|
| And then I would watch the same movie decades later. Times
| changed, the art has changed, casting, pacing, effects have
| all advanced to support the storytelling. And I am older, a
| different person, and maybe more aware of what is
| "timeless" with a little more experience under my belt.
|
| It might be a historical deep dive, but compared to the
| available material our present has, some older media should
| drop off the list.
| dhosek wrote:
| I've read 53 of the fiction, 10 of the non-fiction (which
| tracks with my being an English major).
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| What an awful list!
|
| And I say that as a Modern Literature major who has read a
| lot on that list. FAULKNER IS A TERRIBLE WRITER! And while
| James Joyce and some of the others are good writers, they
| don't deserve multiple entries in the top 100.
|
| It's clear this list is really "5 librarians personal
| favorites."
| WillAdams wrote:
| It was from a list of 440 books (possibly what Random House
| then had in stock) and voted on by the board members ---
| it's been widely criticized/commented on, see the Wikipedia
| article for some further links on this.
| crims0n wrote:
| Can you recommend a better one? I picked it at random when
| I wanted to explore literature, but it seemed to be cited
| often enough.
| andrepd wrote:
| One that does not omit Dostoevsky or Garcia Marquez over
| mediocre books in the English language would be a good
| start.
| cgh wrote:
| Again, this list is from Random House, a major American
| English-language book publisher.
| WillAdams wrote:
| My suggestion would be to start with the authors
| nominated for a Nobel prize for literature.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_
| Lit...
|
| Filtering by those available in readily available English
| translations should yield a workable list.
| windowshopping wrote:
| The sentence "FAULKNER IS A TERRIBLE WRITER" is one of the
| most incredible sets of words I've ever had the misfortune
| to lay my eyes upon.
| morleytj wrote:
| The Sound and the Fury is an incredible piece of art with a
| beautifully structured narrative, in my reading of it. Why
| do you say he's a terrible writer in your opinion? Who
| would you rank higher?
| brummm wrote:
| I don't think this is a very good list that should call
| itself top 100. Maybe anglophone top 100, but even then I'd
| question some of the choices. I completely ignores a ton of
| more important works in non-English languages.
| cgh wrote:
| The Modern Library is a publishing imprint of Random House
| so it's pretty much focused on works in English.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| You inspired me to do the same. I just ordered the first
| five, and will continue down the list.
|
| Out of the list, I read 8 books so far, but all of them in
| Czech.
| piokoch wrote:
| This list is kind of strange. Firstly, it is very "anglo-
| saxon" oriented. It is a mixture of "Big Literature",
| interesting for someone who is literature student, like
| ULYSSES (which is at the same time a great novel and a boring
| as hell novel) with true gems, like Orwell or Joseph Conrad-
| Korzeniowski with additions like Robert Graves writing, which
| has mostly entertainment value equal to average pseudo-
| documentaries from Netflix and pop stuff like Vonnegut' books
| (which are, at least, not boring).
|
| Still, a lot of interesting stuff, Orwell, unfortunately,
| never gets old, pity Ray Bradbury was omitted, as Fahrenheit
| 451 is getting more and more up-to-date.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Really wish they had that list in order of difficulty - if
| you start with Ulysses, you're gonna have a bad time.
| andrepd wrote:
| That's a dreadful list in my opinion. Absurdly Anglocentric
| (esp. Americo-centric). I'm not saying they're bad books but
| a really far cry from "among the best humanity has produced".
| Not a single south-american novel? Not a single romance
| language book as a matter of fact? I highly recommend you
| diversify your reading choices.
| jsbg wrote:
| Some books I would put on this list: Knowledge and Decisions by
| Thomas Sowell, Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal, Up From Slavery
| by Booker T. Washington, 1984 by George Orwell.
| rayiner wrote:
| My mom grew up in Bangladesh with a classic British education
| (augmented with Russian works that were popular in the country
| given the socialist alignment). She speaks English with a heavy
| accent despite living here for almost 40 years, but will
| randomly reference great works in conversation. The other day
| she worked a reference to a greek tragedy into a dig at
| Pakistanis. I've come around to the idea that this isn't merely
| a class flex, but rather these works have distilled
| observations about the human condition as well as building
| blocks of the society we live in even where we don't recognize
| the provenance.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Exactly correct. In reading some highly regarded works two
| things occurred to me, first that the author had captured
| into words some fundamental aspect of the human condition.
| Second was that it's easier to think about something
| presented as a story than it is when it is presented as an
| alternative to how you currently think.
|
| If you tell someone there position on some topic is wrong,
| they will argue with you. If you tell someone a story where
| the character takes the same position they have and then
| through experience and personal growth comes to understand
| how it is wrong. They can come away realizing that they might
| have it wrong. Great trick when it works.
| WillAdams wrote:
| One contemporary author who often writes fantasy and
| science fiction on social issues is Steven Brust, and he
| has a rule that when he puts his personal viewpoints into
| the mouth of a character, he uses a character whom the
| reader would have a narrative reason to dislike, which
| forces him to be honest with himself, and more impartial
| with the reader.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That is a great technique.
| caycecan wrote:
| There are some works from the more recent past that might add
| to this list:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/books/best-books-21...
|
| https://www.nypl.org/voices/print-publications/books-of-the-...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Judging from the French movie (with Pierre Niney) I saw last
| year (which was awesome btw) , and my vague recollection of the
| book, there's lots of physical skills involved. It's not just
| an intellectual pursuit, but more like applied science in
| getting vengeance. Really fun read. Big chunk of social media
| is self improvement. Stumbled across this guy yesterday and
| actually gives pretty solid advice.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYsr2jkf_3A
| WillAdams wrote:
| Point!
|
| Added:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/803453.The_Sword_and_the.
| ..
|
| (which I have a copy of and re-read when I was considering
| taking up fencing, but my wife demurred)
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| You might enjoy the movie "Young Sherlock Holmes" than. If
| you haven't seen it, great fun. And it ends in a fencing
| scene like Hamlet.
| jcynix wrote:
| If your wife isn't happy to see you fencing (which I can
| understand) you might want to take a look at archery
| instead? And add this book (which impressed me during my
| teenage years) to your reading list:
|
| Zen in the Art of Archery - Wikipedia
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery
| WillAdams wrote:
| It's a long story, but my wife was fencing at the time.
|
| As regards archery, it's long been an interest of mine:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-
| adams...
| soupfordummies wrote:
| > reading one non-fiction book from each major section of the
| Dewey Decimal system catalog
|
| This actually sounds really fun. Not so much in an optimized
| way, but more like just going to the library and picking a
| decimal heading and then just selecting a cool-looking book in
| that heading and reading it, then repeat.
| WillAdams wrote:
| It was.
|
| Tried to do it again in college, but using the LoC headings,
| but ran out of time and graduated before running out of
| college/headings.
|
| To this day, when going to the library, I try to keep this in
| mind when looking over the new books, and if there is one on
| a major/notable subject I can't recall having read a book on,
| grab it.
| dhosek wrote:
| I actually did your Dewey Decimal project:
| https://www.dahosek.com/category/dewey-decimal-project/ I read
| one book out of each "decade" of the Dewey catalog from my
| local library (which is reasonably well stocked). It was a bit
| less than the predicted 100 books since there are some gaps in
| both the system and the collection of my library, but it was an
| interesting way to discover things I didn't know I didn't know.
| runamuck wrote:
| I only read great literature, classics, history books my whole
| life. This year (Aged 48) I decided to pepper in a "fluff" book
| or two. I forced myself to read something I normally wouldn't.
| I read "The Situation" (Jersey Shore) and Mathew Perry
| (Friends) "auto" biographies. I actually had some profound
| insights about depression and substance abuse from those two.
| Of course, I don't recommend you read either, but if you never
| read "airport fiction" or "pop biographies" it might prove
| interesting.
| mmooss wrote:
| How would you characterize the differences between the two
| categories of books that you read?
| djtango wrote:
| I've come around to the idea that anything and anyone can be
| interesting and enriching if you approach it with the right
| level of curiosity.
|
| Doesn't always play out but it adds to the spice of life when
| you can draw insight from places you never expected to.
| austinl wrote:
| "Be careful... about this reading you refer to, this reading of
| many different authors and books of every description. You
| should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is
| unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you
| wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a
| lasting place in your mind."
|
| - Seneca, _Letters_
|
| I was surprised to learn that the temptation to read too many
| things was also a problem 2,000 years ago. This inspired me to
| work on a short list of books that I know deeply.
| aaronrobinson wrote:
| That sounds horrific
| andrepd wrote:
| Sucks that the vast majority of those books were lost
| forever. Early Christianity was a scourge in that regard, how
| much culture we lost forever because of those zealots.
| sepositus wrote:
| I didn't realize Early Christianity had a monopoly on the
| destruction of books? As far as I know the burning of rival
| civilizations has been happening for thousands of years.
| typon wrote:
| I wish I could experience the feeling of reading The Count of
| Monte Cristo again
| WillAdams wrote:
| Well, Steven Brust's _The Baron of Magister Valley_ is
| basically TCoMC w/ the names changed and serial numbers filed
| off in a fantasy setting.
|
| Also, if you haven't read _The Black Count: Glory,
| Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo_ by
| Tom Reiss I'd strongly recommend that:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330922-the-black-count
| typon wrote:
| thanks for the recs!
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Dumas himself had a personal library of about 6,000 books at
| its peak. If you don't already have them on your list,
| historians have mentioned several books that were known to have
| strongly influenced him:
|
| Walter Scott's historical novels, particularly "Ivanhoe" and
| "Waverley," which inspired Dumas' approach to historical
| fiction
|
| James Fenimore Cooper's frontier adventures, which influenced
| his action narratives
|
| Lord Byron's romantic poetry and persona, which shaped Dumas'
| conception of the romantic hero
|
| Schiller's play "The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa," which
| Dumas translated and adapted early in his career
|
| Shakespeare's dramatic works
|
| Memoirs of historical figures, particularly those from the 17th
| and 18th centuries, including Courtilz de Sandras' "Memoires de
| M. d'Artagnan," which became the foundation for "The Three
| Musketeers"
|
| Plutarch's "Lives," which informed his understanding of
| classical historical figures
|
| Works by Abbe Prevost and other French novelists of the 18th
| century
|
| The Bible and classical mythology
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Based on your interest in Tacitus and Thucydides, I might
| recommend the _The Histories of Polybius_. [1] It is absolutely
| mind-blowing to me that he actually witnessed the events he
| writes about, and how analogous it is to modern-day
| geopolitics.
|
| By the way, thank you for providing your list of books - I
| picked up a few future reads from it.
|
| 1. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44125/44125-h/44125-h.htm
| glitchc wrote:
| Tony Judt.
|
| "Reappraisals" and "When the Facts Change" should be on top of
| everyone's reading list. Few indeed are those who can write
| prose as crisp, succinct and erudite as he did.
| parrot333 wrote:
| The author seems to favor episteme (theoretical knowledge, sought
| for its own sake) over techne (application of knowledge in a
| craft).
|
| I find the latter far more intellectually rich and rewarding.
| fsckboy wrote:
| there are 25 comments here now, but none of them yet mention the
| opening idea of TFA, that if you click the first link you see on
| wikipedia and lather, rinse, repeat, you will get to philosophy
| every time.
|
| if true, this is fascinating.
|
| ...
|
| i just tried it a few times, and it worked! although the reason
| seems to be a bit less interesting. biography page: "so and so
| was a botanist" --> and we're headed to philosophy. "political
| party" --> decision making. "vehicle ramming attack" --> -->
| power.
|
| encyclopedias start each page by saying what category something
| is in, and you inevitably category your way back to,
| metaphorically speaking, earth, air, fire, or water
| grimoald wrote:
| I think the explanation is simple: The first link is usually
| the category of the article's lemma. Or something else which is
| a more general or abstract word. Following the links you will
| lead you to the most abstract things and eventually to thinking
| about abstract things, which is philosophy.
| subpixel wrote:
| This whole spiel is a piece of content marketing for a course on
| creating a newsletter. Pfft.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Surprising how many philosophically literate comments missed
| that this was an ad.
| amos-burton wrote:
| > Our ideas become Oscillators
|
| it is the muscle working, the tide going back and forth.
|
| i liked reading it, lots of things to unpack, new descriptions of
| the elephant in the room to absorb.
|
| The conclusion itches me, (sorry for the spoil, readers)
|
| > After all, aren't we all trying to understand our place in the
| universe?
|
| are you sure about that ? that "you" are trying to do that, or
| that, something else works hard on you, much like in those "Goals
| that are physically, emotionally and economically crushing us"
| dassicity wrote:
| all big talk. feels like a linkedin post
| js8 wrote:
| I have been wondering lately if "intellectually rich" can be
| found solely in books.
|
| I read Jim Stanford's Economics for Everyone, and he recommends
| to go out and talk to people and see what problems they are
| having in life.
|
| That's not to say that long time dead philosophers cannot give
| good insights, but I feel that looking at other people's problems
| (especially in different cultures) is a lot more relevant for
| understanding the world.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| I think one of the advantages of reading very old material is
| a) it's not bogged down by modern ideology, b) imparting the
| realization that some human issues and ideas have been around a
| very long time (see for instance dialogues in Thucydides
| History of the Peloponnesian War), b) some ideas and insights
| have a timelessness to them. Take for instance the Tao Te
| Ching. I found it retains influential power, despite my not
| being completely on board.
| hbarka wrote:
| Can LLMs achieve intellectual richness?
| tennysont wrote:
| A lot of passion was put into this article. I appreciate that.
| And I do think that there are several huge themes that need to be
| periodically grappled with.
|
| Just to pick one, the ego hit when jumping into a new field is
| real (I'm currently immersed in math & ML from a CS background).
| It's one of the things that I feel is least talked about. It's
| very easy to peak in a field and then rest on your laurels.
| Despite being particularly willing to start at the bottom, I also
| identify as "being smart," and getting schooled by 22 year olds
| stings.
|
| But the rewards for "owning" two peaks are so huge, and much of
| the process is so satisfying.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I was initially fairly sceptical of this essay, but getting to
| the parts about Erdos I find myself more in agreement. The title
| misled me!
|
| Intellectualism for the sake of intellectualism is a road that
| leads to isolation. And then, what's the point of it all?
|
| Connection and collaboration is where it's at - which is more or
| less what the author concludes, although still under the banner
| of intellectuality. Perhaps my definition of intellect is/was too
| narrow?
| brojustchill wrote:
| Bro, that was a lot of text... I mean, chill. Life is simpler
| then that. Enjoy your flaws and get along with things as they
| are, without the need of a "framework" to navigate life
| rexpop wrote:
| Congrats, yours is the most condescending comment on this site
| today.
|
| That sounds like you have already got a framework that works
| for you, which is great for you. Too bad it's a framework that
| drives you to upbraid innocent strangers on the internet.
|
| Not everyone can take action on the words "just chill." We're
| all in different places in life--think of it as a state space
| model. The same vector of force results in different
| coordinates when applied to different coordinates.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I was expecting a flowery puff piece but I'm pleasantly surprised
| at how...helpful? Mindful? This is.
|
| And lengthy, good grief. I'll be reading this over the weekend.
| dangus wrote:
| If living an intellectually rich life is as exhausting as reading
| this article I want no part of it.
|
| And I truly honestly mean this comment to be more of a thoughtful
| contribution than my high level of snark makes it sound.
| max_ wrote:
| In finance there are some people that say "All roads lead to
| quantitative finance"
| iandanforth wrote:
| I don't like this answer so here's mine.
|
| "Read. Not too much fiction. Mostly books."
| didgetmaster wrote:
| As with nearly anything, an obsessive pursuit of knowledge,
| simple living, or 'enlightenment' to the exclusion of other
| things can be very harmful.
|
| We should be constantly exposing ourselves to new ideas and
| exploring new avenues; but diving down a rabbit hole for a years-
| long journey is not the way.
|
| Sitting in a mountain shack trying to digest the best 100 (or
| 1000) books ever written, might yield some real benefits; but at
| what cost?
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| I don't think this article is encouraging the reader to obsess
| on the pursuit of knowledge at the expense of family, work, or
| personal happiness.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| You might find A. G. Sertillanges's "The Intellectual Life"
| interesting [0].
|
| [0]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/549384.The_Intellectual_...
| sadeshmukh wrote:
| For those of you who're interested in the Wikipedia Philosophy
| thing, check out this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-llumS2rA8I
| bgoated01 wrote:
| I didn't have time to get through the whole article today, but
| I did spend some time with my kids playing the Wikipedia first
| link game, which we enjoyed. We kept trying to find one that
| didn't end in Philosophy, and my youngest son said we should
| try Brick. Sure enough, it ended in a loop consisting of
| Existence and Reality.
| lgiordano_notte wrote:
| In trying to live an intellectually rich life, there's a risk of
| adding too much noise. Chasing more input, more ideas, more
| learning. Sometimes less really is more. Depth often comes not
| from adding, but from subtracting. Clear away the noise, and
| what's left tends to have 'meaning'. Personally I prefer a deep
| life to a rich life, but maybe that's just semantics...
| dash2 wrote:
| 325 points for this nonsense? Oh, HN.
|
| From the title I expected something serious. I gave up halfway,
| having pigeonholed the pompous verbiage as a first cousin to
| Women Who Run With The Wolves. But really, the game was up when I
| read the phrase "late stage capitalism", which is the verbal
| equivalent of a plague bell, used by halfwits to warn us of their
| presence.
|
| Friends, here's how to have an intellectually rich life: read
| serious authors. There's Montaigne out there. There's Orwell.
| After a while, you'll recognize good writing and thinking, and
| you won't waste your time on pap.
| toader wrote:
| Do you consider Werner Sombart, and Ernest Mandel to be 'half
| wits' and unserious?
| dash2 wrote:
| I haven't read either, but if you mean that them using the
| phrase legitimates it, then that isn't so. Clever people have
| invented many phrases that later become stale or absurd. If
| nothing else, consider that both men are long dead, whilst
| capitalism's "late" stage continues unabated.
| BhavdeepSethi wrote:
| The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy
| isn't a search for meaning, it's to just keep yourself busy with
| unimportant nonsense, and eventually you'll be dead. - BoJack
| Horseman
| 1900-01-01 wrote:
| It loops at Existence and Reality.
| maj0rhn wrote:
| Perhaps a more enlightening view is in the book "The Socratic
| Method," by Ward Farnsworth, who is dean of the UTexas Law
| School. This is a great book for those just starting on the
| adulthood road, though it could have been shorter.
|
| It analyzes the dialogs of Socrates with practicality in mind,
| showing how to question the world around you, question your own
| beliefs, and question the beliefs of others, all without coming
| off like a dick (as Socrates often does). Moreover, as related to
| the OP's article, it tells you precisely how Socrates would have
| defined an intellectually rich life, and I think Farnsworth is
| correct.
|
| Farnsworth's Socratic method is about much more than just asking
| questions. The trite "Know thyself" injunction is seen to be a
| specific outgrowth of the Socratic method, echoing in some way
| the OP's claim that everything tracks to philosophy.
|
| Incidentally, the book includes a stunning revelation from Ben
| Franklin saying that he found the Socratic method to be the best
| way of getting people to change their mind and do what he wanted.
| He gave it up, however, because it was too powerful a tool and he
| decided to adopt instead a more diffident personality, which he
| found also successful.
|
| I would have thought a book like this would sell about 10 copies,
| but it has 800 comments on Amazon! [I have no connection with the
| author or with Amazon.]
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