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Ask HN: Books that teach you to think
Which top 2 books you you always remember when someone asks you about books that taught you to think.
Not told your exciting stories about thinking (like those fancy NYT bestsellers), but actually pushed your own thinking skill forward.
- kleer001 4y agoThe real way to help your thinking is writing.
- rawgabbit 4y agoSocratic Logic by Peter Kreeft. A History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 is a book by James Ford Rhodes written in 1918. It is one of finest examples of plain English writing I have read. How to get your point across unpretentiously.
- raydiatian 4y agoEric Ries “Lean Startup” has genuine life advice value I think
- musicale 4y agoAny book on logic (and/or logic puzzles) and/or Lisp.
- Move37 4y agoMaybe not crazy about thinking, but the book 'mindset' from a known stanford prof. helped me massively
- mariorojas 4y agome too! I really like the book, actually I realized with this book that I was a fixed mindset
- boredmgr 4y agoHackers & Painters by Paul Graham A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart.
- mariorojas 4y agoI think all the chapters in it are pg's posts on http://www.paulgraham.com/ http://www.paulgraham.com/, aren't they?
- boredmgr 4y agoyes they are, the essays in the books are placed in right order to build up the various challenges and the respective way to look at the challenges and solve / ignore them.
- joshux 4y agoBeginning of Infinity - David Deutsch Personal Knowledge - Michael Polanyi
- syveen 4y agoConfucius and such kind of Old Books.
- ninethirty 4y ago"Geography of Nowhere" by Kunstler and "Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy" by Suvorov.
- fraaancis 4y ago"Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn.
- nuancebydefault 4y agoCarlo Rovelli -- reality is not what it seems The takeaway that stayed most with me: all laws of physics are proven to be wrong at some point in time, and get step by step replaced by less wrong versions. Sapiens, no introduction needed
- Shatnerz 4y ago"How to Know Every" - Elke Wiss. I read this recently and it was pretty good.
- gHeadphone 4y agoThis is an outstanding book. Here is a review for those who may be interested in whether to read it or not - http://markgreville.ie/2022/06/22/book-summary-how-to-know-everything-by-elke-wiss/ http://markgreville.ie/2022/06/22/book-summary-how-to-know-e...
- iamjasonlevin 4y ago"Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit" -- I learned that I wasn't a bad writer. I just wasn't hooking people in the first sentence. You need to hook someone in the first sentence, get them to the second, and repeat until the end. This goes for every type of content creation and even other things like first impressions in work and dating. "The Almanack of Naval Ravikant" -- I learned about leverage, the importance of peace over joy, and how to build long-term relationships. I come back to this book every few months and look through my notes even more frequently.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoAs an avid reader for the last 40 years, this does not apply to me.
- iancmceachern 4y agoI liked their comment and bought the book, so while you may not be, I was grateful for their comment.
- joshxyz 4y agodamn thanks for letting us know what books would you recommend for people in their younger years though?
- kirso 4y agoThe defining decade for someone in their early 20s... this book will save your life.
- mradek 4y agoI read a book called “Thinker Toys” when I was younger. It had some unorthodox methods but I found them useful for “thinking outside the box”. Often times the solution would pop out doing something wild lol.
- holtkam2 4y ago1. The Black Swan 2. Thinking Fast and Slow
- fluffet 4y ago+1 on The Black Swan. I found all of Taleb's books really interesting, but this one I enjoyed the most.
- mariorojas 4y agoso, both books of The Black Swan are great ones
- marc_io 4y agoJust as important are books that can teach you how to relate to thoughts, AKA proprioception of thought. Thinking is a hugely important function, but it should not be considered as the only one, nor the most important in every case.
- joflicu 4y agoCan you say more? What do you mean by "how to relate to thoughts?" Seems similar to mindfulness, but I am not sure.
- marc_io 4y agoYes, mindfulness is helpful in practicing this. When we have a thought – any thought – there is an inherent relationship with it, whether acceptance, resistance, fear, estrangement, desire, and so on. The quality of this relationship is informed by various signals in your body/mind system (emotions, impressions, other thoughts and even skin reactions, in the case of persistent patterns). It is crucial to be aware of this relationship, as your actions – and therefore what happens as a result of them – are strongly informed by it.
- Nomentatus 4y agoMeditation for example (vipassana in particular) helps you tune into information coming at you through feelings in various parts of your body. An ancient text said that good monks "always keep their attention on their bodies," for this reason. Antonio Domasio is the leading researcher on how taking the body out of the equation hamstrings humans in making decisions, whether about poker hands or what house to buy. His former students are doing some great work, too.
- andrei_says_ 4y agoAll decision making is based on emotion. George Lakoff mentioned in one of his lectures that people with a specific brain injury involving access to emotion, lose their ability to make decisions. Any kind of preference is based on emotion. All decisions stem from having a preference for one outcome over another. The thought processes claim to make the decisions, and to be “rational, but they always serve preferences. The ability to expand one’s awareness beyond thinking gives access to a universe of phenomenae in a space larger and containing the thinking activity.
- Nomentatus 4y agoI studied logic and philosophy at University, but I don't recommend any texts in that area because empirical studies don't. Studies have shown that taking logic or philosophy courses didn't help students think through situations nearly as well as taking, say, medicine. It turned out that encountering real world examples of good vs bad thinking helped more than being able to name or categorize particular kinds of fallacies after the fact. I will say, that for my part Earle Stanley Gardner taught me best; to use what I'd term my "systematic imagination" and leave no possibility unconsidered. Useful for invention, but also for coding and algorithm design, of course. He did a pretty good job of cataloging the limits of most human (associative) thinking. And it's not just me! Crime fiction had a significant influence on academic philosophy last century through such as Wittgenstein; but many others as well. There's a good article detailing that history but I can't find a URL for it just now. If you aren't sure what "first principles" thinking is, Gardner offers a post-graduate course with interesting examples. I prefer the term "systematic imagination" to "first principles thinking" because some people tend to flip the meaning of the latter phrase on it's head and narrow their thinking to straightforward derivations from a few axioms; as if they were medieval theologians. That's not at all what Elon Musk has in mind when he talks about "first principles thinking." He means, discarding everything except the most basic principles of physics, and not neglecting any possibility that those laws allow. In other words "systematic (exhaustive) imagination." In the same way, reading Elon's precepts (or mine) doesn't really reform your brain; but going through a lot of examples of how 'twas done right, and done wrong is really helpful. The scientific history of medicine offers plenty of (mostly horrifying) examples. Histories of technology and technological and engineering blunders can perform the same function nicely, too. Watt saw the blunder that Newcomen had made by repeatedly heating and cooling the same chamber. Crazy inefficient. However Watt later assumed that his small-scale tests of high-pressure steam engines showed that the concept couldn't work. Unconsciously, he seems to have assumed that physics scaled (linearly) even though Galileo had shown it doesn't. Blunder. Since he held the key patent, Watt tragically blocked all development of high-pressure steam engines until his patent expired. My own thinking has also been much improved through reading many excellent military histories that focused on decisions: because you know (nearly) everyone is really trying to do their best thinking in a war, they aren't usually being merely slovenly; yet amazing blunders happen. Such as the Germans putting their bridging equipment at the back of their columns during the Bastogne offensive in WWII. That works in a desert, but it's the wrong way to get through a forest (Ardennes) with rivers. Once trapped at the back of a narrow forest road, the German portable bridges were useless. They didn't think that one through (didn't deploy their imagination, sufficiently.)
- nextos 4y agoThe Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods by Baggini and Fosl. Mathematical logic, fallacies, etc. written by two famous philosophers. It's a great textbook for undergrads. Also Statistical Models: Theory and Practice by Freedman. I refer you to Taleb's review: https://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Models-Practice-David-Freedman/product-reviews/0521743850/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_kywd?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1&filterByKeyword=taleb https://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Models-Practice-David-Fre... "[...] This book is outstanding in the following two aspects: 1) It is of immense clarity, embedding everything in real situations, 2) It uses the real-life situation to critique the statistical model and show you the limit of statistic." Both cover most of what you need to know to think rigorously using logic and its extension to account for uncertainty, probability.
- rramadass 4y agoGreat suggestions. The first one in particular looks very interesting. How would you compare Statistical Models by Freedman with Statistical Models by Davison ?
- nextos 4y agoI have Davison's book in my shelf but never read it cover to cover. I think it's much more advanced. It's like a third course in statistics, whereas Freedman can be used in first year.
- kherud 4y agoI can recommend the puzzle books by Raymond Smullyan [0], for example "Satan, Cantor and Infinity". Among others, this contains puzzles about infinities and apparent paradoxes associated with them. Reading is mostly a form of consumption and therefore not really suitable to train your working memory. For this you have to solve mental tasks on your own instead of following the thoughts of others (without implying that this can not be valuable as well). Smullyan's books contain humorous puzzles of increasing difficulty, that are mentally challenging but still fun to read. I learned of them after finding here on HN Smullyan's article "Is God a Taoist?" [1] and wanted to read more from him. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Smullyan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Smullyan [1] https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTa...
- jcynix 4y agoAmong the most important books for me was Summa technologiae by Stanislaw Lem, oldie but (still) a goldie: Despite its age and a number of inaccuracies in specific domains (e.g., mathematics, biology, sociology), the book has lost no momentum in the past years. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae
- przefur 4y agoI second this opinion, would recommend the book.
- graymatters 4y ago“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
- _carbyau_ 4y agoI have seen this referenced so many times. But it didn't work for me. Not sure why. I gave up on it 20 years ago. Maybe I need to try again.
- TedKroft 4y agoI enjoyed it a while ago when I read it but it was hard to get through at times. some of it is pseudo-philosophical ramblings of a man during a mental breakdown and you have to accept it as not entirely making sense. Don't try to understand every thought he has. That said, not everyone has to enjoy it.
- Havoc 4y agoYeah same here. Very frustrating
- rasm 4y ago"The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking" by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird
- psteitz 4y agoThis is a hard. Books that made me a better thinker have to be the hard ones / ones that made me change. Top two would be Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Immanuel Kant. Supposedly more accessible version of Critique of Pure Reason but still very hard and mind-bending for me at least. Not just philosophy was easier after wrestling with this content. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Tomas Kuhn. Made me self-aware about what scientific thinking actually is.
- jonjacky 4y agoHow To Solve It by G. Polya [1,2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It 2. https://archive.org/details/howtosolveitnewa00pl https://archive.org/details/howtosolveitnewa00pl
- leobg 4y agoIf you prefer older books that stood the test of time: How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively by Rudolf Flesch.
- andi999 4y agoSerge Lang, Undergraduate Analysis.
- uptownfunk 4y agoHow does it stack up to Rudin?
- dominotw 4y agoSpivak calculus was the book for me that made math finally click. It was a golden period of my life due to that book, unfortunately adult life is rarely if ever sees these moments. Now I write datapipelines all and feed the family :/.
- morelisp 4y ago(Someone already posted How to Solve It which would be my first recommendation on this forum.) The Zhuangzi, probably at least two translations. The Elements (that is, Euclid's). Process and Reality has had the most impact on my thinking but it's one of the most unapproachable things I've ever read. Get there eventually.
- gglitch 4y agoAgree about the Elements. I was once enrolled in a small class that proved all of the props in order. For a given meeting, a set of props were assigned (fewer and fewer as they got longer and more complicated), and a student's name would be randomly chosen to prove the prop at a chalkboard without the book or any aides-memoires. One did not have to reproduce Euclid's proof exactly. We quickly learned the value of (a) making mistakes, and (b) being able to think things through logically. It was a transformative experience for me.
- la64710 4y agoBhagavad Gita
- nnlsoccer 4y agoDrawing on the right side of the brain (Really amazing book, teaches a different way of thinking though the mode of drawing)
- musicale 4y agoI found Xu's Drawing in the Digital Age to be an interesting counterpart. I also like Drawing on the Right Side... but note: "a meta-review of the laterality of creative processes conducted by Dietrich and Kanso (2010) found no evidence that the right and left brain hemispheres contribute differently to creativity. Furthermore, the idea that drawing upside-down objects, including faces, leads to more accurate depictions has not been supported scientifically." https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/illusions-delusions-and-reality/201911/drawing-the-right-and-left-sides-the-brain https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/illusions-delusions-... Rapid Viz (Hanks and Belliston) and Experiences in Visual Thinking (McKim) are also interesting (and out of print, but cheap used!)
- hnaccountme 4y agoCouldn't agree more. Just started reading it a few days ago.
- imranq 4y agoThe highest leverage is not which books, but who to meet. Find people you can discuss these topics with and that will push you're thinking the most. For this forum, I'm assuming you are looking for math / science books (otherwise I'd recommend the Talmud, Bible or Quran), I'd recommend Real Analysis by Charles Chapman Pugh or Surely you're joking Mr Feynman (+ Feynman Lectures on Physics)
- kirykl 4y agoLateral Thinking by Edward de Bono
- cr4nberry 4y agoProbably Hume's Enquiry, specifically how he discusses causality. Tl;dr anything we have to say about one event causing another event relies on the assumption that the future will be like the past. Also the is-ought problem Also "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by Ioannidis, which just made me more skeptical of people citing studies
- youssefabdelm 4y agoMetapatterns by Tyler Volk - If anyone knows any similar ones that are as (or more) transdisciplinary and unifying please share! I'm highly interested in what I call maximal 'unifiers', ideas or concepts which co-occur across as many disciplines and phenomena as possible. E.g. fractals, Bejan's constructal law, or structural complexity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_complexity_(applied_mathematics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_complexity_(applied...
- B00GIE_MAN 4y agoYou do not need books to learn how to think. Explore your own thoughts by challenging them. Those that make sense in your own reality go futher and research about them. Expand your awareness by observing the details of the context in question. Talk to people instead of reading. A Book is just a bunch of somebody's ideas trying to sell you what they even don't know if it is true or works. Instead of reading, start writing about your own experience about the world.
- dev_0 4y agoNot true. Books can provoke your thoughts. But don't just rely on books all the time. "Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes." ~Arthur Schopenhauer
- musicale 4y agoWell, that saved me from having to read Schopenhauer.
- grandiego 4y agoIMHO the books with the transcription of the Krishnamurti conferences encourages the practice of thinking in novel ways.
- hnaccountme 4y agoThinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows
- palashkulsh 4y agoIf you liked it try fifth discipline if you haven't
- palashkulsh 4y agoTry https://fs.blog https://fs.blog
- syct 4y agoTwo that I recently completed: 1. "Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire" by Luke Burgis 2. "Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It" by Oliver Burkeman and one bonus which definitely made me think: "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi
- humanlion87 4y agoI don't usually cry and find it hard to cry even when I want to. But the tears were just flowing freely as I was finishing up When Breath Becomes Air, especially the epilogue.
- roydivision 4y agoI would suggest reading as much great literature as possible. One can learn how to think in many different ways, it doesn't need to be from a manual. Good books invite one to question, to put oneself in the shoes of the protagonists, to imagine what we would do in their situation, and to empathise. Try Crime and Punishment, or Moby Dick.
- v-erne 4y agoCould You explain in few simple words why Moby Dick is worth reading ? I've got through first few chapters recently (I use it for touch typing practice so I go through it quite slowly) and found it to be extensively dragged out. Its almost funny how many unnecessary and boring details we get from Ishmael narration. I understand that You should not judge book by its cover and not everything have to start like hickok movie but after few chapters I would like to be hooked by the book otherwise what's the point.
- keiferski 4y agoIf you are reading Moby Dick for information, you’ve already missed the point. It is intended to be an immersive experience and an overwhelming journey. I suggest slowing down, reading very carefully, and stop worrying about how “useful” it is.
- v-erne 4y agoIt would be hard to read it slower for me - as I said I use it for touch typing practice and I'm not the fastest typer in the west. I transcribed 10% of this book at this point and start to wonder if should switch to something more interesting. I'm not native speaker and my english could be better so maybe this somehow prevents me from appreciate the beauty of this book.
- keiferski 4y agoHmm yeah I can imagine it being difficult as a non-native speaker. I am a writer and native English speaker and still had to look up 3-4 words per page. I would say try some simpler writers that are easier to understand, write clearly, and have more action. Hemingway is always a good choice
- romesmoke 4y agoThe Matter with Things, by Iain McGilchrist. To be precise it taught me how to un-think. There are several podcasts with him available on YouTube, to get a first taste.
- bwghughes-fth 4y agoBest books I ever read. I would start with The Master and His Emissary by the same author. It’s more accessible.
- Igrom 4y agoWhile I can't produce the second recommendation at a moment's notice and would have to think, the first one would unquestionably be "Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments" by T. Edward Damer. In hindsight, reading the book and fiddling with the examples in my head really has restructured the way I think: improved on how I critically analyze the information I take in and increased my capability for extended logical deduction.
- gigantecmedia 4y agoThe only 2 (set of) books I ALWAYS recommend: Incerto by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Masterful pieces of work. Especially the 2 books in the Incerto book set: The Black Swan and Antifragile.
- throwaway0asd 4y agoPractical * Principles by Ray Dalio - honesty * Good to Great by Jim Collins - integrity —- Theoretical * Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle - Happiness via Utility * On Liberty by John Stuart Mills - Equity
- achenet 4y agoThinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman
- dmbche 4y agoThe awakening of intelligence, J. Krishnamurti The human condition, Andre Malraux On The Road, Jack Kerouack 1984, George Orwell Read the books, and then look into reviews and explanations of them, or even better - talk about it with someone that you like. Just try to word the things you've been exposed to and experienced and understood.
- RODMANM 4y agopdfcoffee.com_lend-me-your-ears-pdf-free wonderful work for universal knowledge, learning to hear and learn to speak ...
- lapcat 4y agoPlato's Republic Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil
- mdnahas 4y agoTextbooks on rhetoric. Aristotle’s book is okay. I also had a book from the 1950s. They didn’t teach me logic, but taught me how other people think. Or, at least how they act after you communicate to them.
- shubhamjain 4y agoIn my experience, the harder you search for things that can transform you, your thinking, the rarer it is to find them. I might find something impactful, but it's possible no else can relate to that feeling. Sometimes the most unexpected things can change your life. I recently re-watched the movie _Groundhog Day_. I found it pretty amazing the first-time, too. But second time, I thought that there couldn't be a better metaphor for life. I do realize that the writer didn't intend it that way, but it doesn't hurt to draw your own lessons. I found a new value in being kind and trying to seize the day. Much of impact is dependent on context, and where you're in your life. I have often tried popular recommendations but more often than not, they haven't worked for me. The transformative books have happened to be the weird ones that often don't get talked about. My advice would to read wide variety of interesting stuff. And don't think too much about how to change your thinking. It will happen naturally without effort.
- bailster 4y agoBorges short story collections — The Library of Babel can launch you in any number of directions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel?wprov=sft...
- poulsbohemian 4y agoSix Thinking Hats, by Edward DeBono. The concept is very simple, but this idea of looking at something from different defined perspectives is a useful tool that many seem to lack. Getting to Yes. Still one of the best books on negotiating. Again, the simple concept of seeing the world from the other side of the negotiating table, IE: thinking like the competition. The Little Blue Book. A must read for people working in progressive politics. Will help you to think like the other side so you can formulate messaging they will understand. A computer science degree (and thus any materials on CS), if done well, can be an exercise in thinking / problem solving skill that can serve well beyond traditional STEM careers.