I’ve been on a bit of a Feynman binge recently. I strongly recommend “Surely you’re joking Mr.Feynman” and “What do you care what other people think?” Less strongly recommend, but still recommend, “Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track”. Previous review.
All of them give significant insight into the mind of one of the master traditional rationalists and are quite funny. The first two, do better than the last one in both respects.
I second Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think? I expect most LWers have read them, but they were absolutely fantastic if you haven’t. I can’t recommend them strongly enough.
After Yvain posted about it I read the Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike in quick succession and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. They’ve got the all-important trait of having dozens and dozens of citations for every point that I find both useful and interesting in pop-sci books, and are written in fairly good conversational style.
Also I read “Judgement Misguided” and it is one of the best books on Metaethics I’ve ever read. It’s about how moral judgements are particularly prone to bias and how unbiased moral judgement resembles consequentialism/utilitarianism.
Measurement by Paul Lockhart, a book on geometry for those who have little background in mathematics. I have not actually read it, but I have heard it hyped quite a bit by people who know what they’re talking about, and I’m quite prepared to believe that it is excellent given that it was written by the author of A Mathematician’s Lament. If you are already a math expert, you might not get much out of this, but if you want to become a math expert, I recommend it.
The Collapse of Complex Societies, it’s kind of dry but a very interesting look at the mechanics of societal expansion and contraction. He dispenses with a lot of popular notions of why the Roman Empire in particular collapsed with excellent clarity, but goes further than that and proposes a general theory of collapse that applies to societies of all types, even hunter gatherers. I haven’t finished it yet however, and since I’m not particularly knowledgeable about archaeology or economics I don’t know how well it fares against other works in the genre.
After reading quite a few books relating to military matters (including some which glorify the whole business a bit—say, “No easy day” or “American sniper”), it seemed good to look a bit deeper into the minds of soldiers—“On Killing” is all about what goes through the heads of men whose job it is to kill.
An interesting fact seems to be that at most 20% or so of American WW2 soldiers fired at the enemy; and this number seems to be consistent with other armies / history (there is no hard evidence, but some indications). Reason for this seems to be a mental barrier most people have against killing. Another interesting observation is that Skinnerian operant conditioning has raised that number to ~ 90% in the Vietnam war. Useful for the war effort, but, as the book suggests, killing comes back to haunt the killer after the war (and esp. in the Vietnam conflict it was made worse by the way the troops returned—this explains many of the psychological problems veterans face).
Interesting read—the last part about violent movies / video games seemed a bit redundant, and it’d be interesting to see an update on this ’95 book.
Frans de Waal looks at primates (primarily, chimpanzees and bonobos) at some of human nature—in particular, sex, violence and morality.
The stories about ape behavior are really fascinating, and may tell us a bit about our own behavior. De Waal suggests that some of our behavior has counterparts in chimpanzees and bonobos, the latter being more aggressive (even violent, cruel) and competitive, and the second being more social.
I didn’t like De Waal’s extrapolations into human politics and society, or his snide remarks towards Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, apparently mostly because he did not like the title. And the circular reasoning, “Morality needs emotions, because Mr. Spocks’s pure-logic morality doesn’t feel right”.
So, in summary—Overall, an enjoyable read, and De Waal is best when he discusses apes.
(Note: primates such as bonobos, chimpanzees and gorilla’s are apes, they get annoyed when you call them monkeys)
I would recommend most anything by Desmond Morris the Zoologist and Ethologist. Most of his books are about the human species and the insight per page ratio is very high. They are all very readable as well.
He does seem to be too confident about some claims he makes, however. It would be nice if he noted that some of the claims that he makes would be controversial in his field.
The Destiny of the Republic. I did not know that Alexander Graham Bell invented the metal detector specifically to find Guiteau’s bullet in President Garfield’s body. It’s an interesting history of science/history of medicine book (this is the assassination where Guiteau’s defence was that he only shot the Prez and it was the doctors who killed him).
META: I would love it if you also ran a monthly or quarterly “Anticipated Media Thread”, where people could post links to media they’re looking forward to being released in the next few months, broken into categories just as you do with these Media threads.
Non-Fiction Books Thread
I’ve been on a bit of a Feynman binge recently. I strongly recommend “Surely you’re joking Mr.Feynman” and “What do you care what other people think?” Less strongly recommend, but still recommend, “Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track”. Previous review. All of them give significant insight into the mind of one of the master traditional rationalists and are quite funny. The first two, do better than the last one in both respects.
I second Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think? I expect most LWers have read them, but they were absolutely fantastic if you haven’t. I can’t recommend them strongly enough.
Genius by James Gleick is excellent. It’s a pretty dense biography, but well worth it.
After Yvain posted about it I read the Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike in quick succession and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. They’ve got the all-important trait of having dozens and dozens of citations for every point that I find both useful and interesting in pop-sci books, and are written in fairly good conversational style.
Also I read “Judgement Misguided” and it is one of the best books on Metaethics I’ve ever read. It’s about how moral judgements are particularly prone to bias and how unbiased moral judgement resembles consequentialism/utilitarianism.
Measurement by Paul Lockhart, a book on geometry for those who have little background in mathematics. I have not actually read it, but I have heard it hyped quite a bit by people who know what they’re talking about, and I’m quite prepared to believe that it is excellent given that it was written by the author of A Mathematician’s Lament. If you are already a math expert, you might not get much out of this, but if you want to become a math expert, I recommend it.
The Collapse of Complex Societies, it’s kind of dry but a very interesting look at the mechanics of societal expansion and contraction. He dispenses with a lot of popular notions of why the Roman Empire in particular collapsed with excellent clarity, but goes further than that and proposes a general theory of collapse that applies to societies of all types, even hunter gatherers. I haven’t finished it yet however, and since I’m not particularly knowledgeable about archaeology or economics I don’t know how well it fares against other works in the genre.
Dave Grossman—On Killing
After reading quite a few books relating to military matters (including some which glorify the whole business a bit—say, “No easy day” or “American sniper”), it seemed good to look a bit deeper into the minds of soldiers—“On Killing” is all about what goes through the heads of men whose job it is to kill.
An interesting fact seems to be that at most 20% or so of American WW2 soldiers fired at the enemy; and this number seems to be consistent with other armies / history (there is no hard evidence, but some indications). Reason for this seems to be a mental barrier most people have against killing. Another interesting observation is that Skinnerian operant conditioning has raised that number to ~ 90% in the Vietnam war. Useful for the war effort, but, as the book suggests, killing comes back to haunt the killer after the war (and esp. in the Vietnam conflict it was made worse by the way the troops returned—this explains many of the psychological problems veterans face).
Interesting read—the last part about violent movies / video games seemed a bit redundant, and it’d be interesting to see an update on this ’95 book.
Read Frans de Waal’s Our inner ape
Frans de Waal looks at primates (primarily, chimpanzees and bonobos) at some of human nature—in particular, sex, violence and morality.
The stories about ape behavior are really fascinating, and may tell us a bit about our own behavior. De Waal suggests that some of our behavior has counterparts in chimpanzees and bonobos, the latter being more aggressive (even violent, cruel) and competitive, and the second being more social.
I didn’t like De Waal’s extrapolations into human politics and society, or his snide remarks towards Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, apparently mostly because he did not like the title. And the circular reasoning, “Morality needs emotions, because Mr. Spocks’s pure-logic morality doesn’t feel right”.
So, in summary—Overall, an enjoyable read, and De Waal is best when he discusses apes.
(Note: primates such as bonobos, chimpanzees and gorilla’s are apes, they get annoyed when you call them monkeys)
I would recommend most anything by Desmond Morris the Zoologist and Ethologist. Most of his books are about the human species and the insight per page ratio is very high. They are all very readable as well. He does seem to be too confident about some claims he makes, however. It would be nice if he noted that some of the claims that he makes would be controversial in his field.
I particularly enjoyed “Catwatching”.
Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne. Can usefully be regarded as one of a pair with Dawkins’ The Greatest Show On Earth.
The Destiny of the Republic. I did not know that Alexander Graham Bell invented the metal detector specifically to find Guiteau’s bullet in President Garfield’s body. It’s an interesting history of science/history of medicine book (this is the assassination where Guiteau’s defence was that he only shot the Prez and it was the doctors who killed him).
META: I would love it if you also ran a monthly or quarterly “Anticipated Media Thread”, where people could post links to media they’re looking forward to being released in the next few months, broken into categories just as you do with these Media threads.
Is there any reason that couldn’t go in here? I don’t see much point in having two threads.