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It's hard to choose a single book, as I've read (or listened to) a number of books this year. I'll choose Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow (http://www
by Evgeny 13y ago
It's hard to choose a single book, as I've read (or listened to) a number of books this year.
I'll choose Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow (http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman-ebook/dp/B005MJFA2W http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman-ebo...).
The way it changed my life was to make me actually think more about the way my mind operates, the decisions I make and the way these decisions affect my life. As a consequence, there were a few books I read later that were loosely related to this one in the way that they all refer to the way people think.
Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice
Steven Pinker - How the Mind Works
Nassim Taleb - The Black Swan; and Fooled by Randomness
Leonard Mlodinov - The Drunkard's Walk (quite similar to Fooled by Randomness)
Carol Dweck - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Neil Postman / Andrew Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death
Rolf Dobelli - The Art of Thinking Clearly (just started)
On my reading list now:
Quiet by Susan Cain - mentioned already
The Better Angels of Our Nature - Steven Pinker
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
Jared Diamond - The World Until Yesterday
Also, did not quite change my life, but very recommended:
Neal Stephenson - Anathem.
You may have to struggle through the beginning, but as soon as I understood the way the world he devised operates, I was thrilled completely.
- pmcpinto 13y agoGreat list
- mbesto 13y ago+1 to Kahneman - the book is brilliant.
- dpcan 13y agoWhile reading the book, sometimes you feel like it's reading your own mind. Very chilling.
- capkutay 13y agoI was thinking about reading 'Thinking, Fast and Slow', but I couldn't tell if it would really be useful or if it would just be another glorified self-help book. But if people here like it, I will probably give it a shot. Also, Drunkard's Walk was excellent.
- Codhisattva 13y agoThinking is not a self help book. It's a memoir of sorts about a nobel prize winning economist and the way he and his mentor changed the field of decision theory through the combination of economics, psychology and statistical mathematics. It truly is eye opening and life changing.
- jaibot 13y agoTechnically, Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist who just happens to have a Nobel Prize in Economics because his work in the field has been amazingly usefil to economists.
- Codhisattva 13y agoWell "just happens to" is strange attempt to diminish his accomplishments. We're talking about the life work of a brilliant polymath.
- StavrosK 13y agoI would also characterize Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality as "applied Thinking: Fast and Slow". I would strongly recommend it.
- trendoid 13y agoReading 'How Mind Works'. Do you think his proposal matches the recent discoveries in neuroscience? Till now(120 pages in) he seems to be an evangelical of Computational theory of mind
- nathankot 13y ago+1, I was just going to reccomend this!
- Codhisattva 13y ago+1 Thinking, Fast and Slow. I was going to post that as the most influential book of the year. (I started reading Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise when I got to a reference to Thinking, Fast and Slow. Switched and haven't gone back yet.)
- daphneokeefe 13y agoGuns, Germs & Steel was a real revelation about the rise of Western civilization. Ain't because we're so smart or genetically superior, sorry. Just a matter of being in the right place at the right time a few thousand years ago.
- canistr 13y ago+1 Snow Crash The interesting part about Snow Crash is that I feel that the dialogue between Hiro (the protagonist in the story) and the Librarian (an artificial intelligence in the metaverse but more advanced than either Siri or Google Now) amount to what may be the future of Google/Wikipedia/Research in the form of Q&A search queries. His questions are usually ones which attempt to draw new insight from historical documents, but are asked in a way in which the Librarian can answer them as though a computer can, but does not immediately draw conclusions. I can easily see that in 10-20 years, research/Q&A/Google could perform many of those same functions without biasing the user with any particular conclusions (because it can't).
- ryanmarsh 13y agoIf you liked "Guns Germs and Steel" you'll also enjoy Diamond's latest book "The World until Yesterday". Everything I've learned about organizational dynamics can be gleaned from this book.
- jeroen 13y agoBarry Schwartz on TED, same title as the book you mention: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...