3.1 KiB
What are the best nonfiction books you've read in the past year?
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Author: u/raymestalez *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3zefhw/what_are_the_best_nonfiction_books_youve_read_in/
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Score: 10
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Created: 2016-01-04T11:28:25
Post:
Comments:
u/DaystarEld [+13] Pokémon Professor (6 hours later)
"Thinking, Fast and Slow," by Daniel Kahneman. There's more "useful" psychology in it than an entire Bachelor program's worth of classes. Hell I'd throw my Master's in there too, if not for the profession-specific value. If you legitimately want to know more about how you and people in general think, and why, it's the first book I'd recommend.
u/lehyde [+7] Nudist Beach (5 hours later)
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (For me it served as a unified explanation of all the little tidbits about FAI that I had gathered from blog posts.)
u/CthulhuIsTheBestGod [+5] (13 hours later)
"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter, a book about philosophy, music, math, and consciousness.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (15 hours later)
+anything by Hofstadter
u/Subrosian_Smithy [+3] Nudist Beach (3 hours later)
Recently I read "Napoleon's Buttons" and "Creations of Fire", about historically significant molecules, and about the history of chemistry, respectively. Pretty interesting stuff.
u/xamueljones [+4] My arch-enemy is entropy (4 hours later)
How about The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean. They are great books about chemistry and genetics.
u/23143567 [+3] (7 hours later)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Good and Real - each could be considered a canon of rationalist thought on evolution of humankind and ethics respectively.
u/sharkbag [+1] (13 hours later)
Nuts. I left my copy of Sapiens in another country.
On another note, Daniel Epstein's "The Sports Gene" was really interesting. Very engaging writing with very little hammer over the head conclusions.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (11 hours later)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incognito:_The_Secret_Lives_of_the_Brain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
This year has been a Neuroscience & Psychology year for me.
u/ajuc [+1] (12 hours later)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_West_Rules%E2%80%94For_Now
u/mhd-hbd [+1] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (9 days later)
The End of Error: Unum Computing is great if you are of a number-crunching sort.