9.5 KiB
Rational nonfiction?
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Author: u/JaimeL_ *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6bdu60/rational_nonfiction/
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Score: 18
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Created: 2017-05-15T23:12:09
Post:
I know this is a sub for rational fiction, but I have no idea where to post about nonfiction in a rational sense.
I enjoy logical books, some of my favourites are Risk by Dan Gardner and The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. I'm enjoying Blink by Malcolm Gladwell at the moment as well.
Can anyone recommend writers similar to these to me, under genres like philosophy?
Comments:
u/josephwdye [+18] I love you (an hour later)
Here are some of my favorite non-fiction that I would say is rational.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl sagan Sagan does a great job talking about bullshit detecting, scientific literacy, and the scientific method.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely Fun and interesting book on why are brains are crazy sometimes.(Dan's other books are great too)
The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell Title says it all
Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky Yudkowsky is crazy, but in a good way. (you can get it here for pay for what you want.
u/Kuiper [+6] (4 hours later)
The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell
For a book that has the opposite premise, check out The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It's also great reading for writers who might be thinking about how to world-build a post-apocalyptic setting.
u/JaimeL_ [+4] (11 hours later)
I like Carl Sagan and I've read some of his books, my one problem with him is that he's very poetic and tends to focus on the beauty and amazing nature of reality as opposed to the concepts behind it and how humans think about it philosophically.
I liked Predictably Irrational too.
I've seen Thinking: Fast and Slow recommended a lot here and in other places, I'll definitely pick that up soon, thanks.
I've seen Thinking: Fast and Slow recommended a lot here and in other places, I'll definitely pick that up soon, thanks.
u/None [+11] (51 minutes later)
The obvious low-hanging fruit stuff is "educational" books like Godel, Escher, Bach; Moonwalking with Einstein; and Influence: Science and Practice.
u/None [+7] (3 hours later)
+1 to GEB. Even though some of Hofstadter's thoughts on AI are now out of date, it was one of the most significant books I've read so far that really opened my eyes to meta-levels, recursion, and strange loops.
u/josephwdye [+3] I love you (an hour later)
Influence: Science and Practice
Isn't that a little bit out of date?
u/None [+4] (an hour later)
I haven't heard that before. It's had several versions since the original---it's currently on its fifth version, which was released in 2003 (I think). Of course I haven't read any of Cialdini's books that were released after it, so I don't know if he's updated it since then; but the central concepts (reciprocity, commitment, group think, liking, authority, and scarcity) are still pretty mainstream psychology.
u/waylandertheslayer [+5] (an hour later)
I really enjoyed 'The Power of Habit'. I'm not sure how entirely generalisable the ideas in it are, but it completely changed my view of my own behaviour (and human behaviour in general).
On a different note, 'The Ascent of Man' was very fun as well. It's a sort of history of civilisation, heavily abridged.
u/None [+6] (3 hours later)
Good and Real by Gary Drescher. Covers a similar philosophical stance to that of Yudkowsky in the Sequences, but with more academic rigor. A fun read that goes over computation, decision theory, morality, and Newcomb's Problem (among other things.)
Thinking Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman's lifetime of research in heuristics and cognitive biases condensed into one epic volume. Highly engaging and 100% recommended if you aren't well-versed in this area.
A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley. A scientific approach to studying, looking at good memory tricks, ways to learn better, and some interesting ideas on procrastination (including characterizing it as a malign reward loop).
u/josephwdye [+1] I love you (3 hours later)
Thinking fast and slow is good!
u/None [+4] (16 hours later)
I'm sure Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman would definitely be up your alley.
u/None [+3] (18 hours later)
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
u/Kuiper [+4] (3 hours later)
Since you're already reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, I'd recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, which explores (and challenges) some of the ideas in Gladwell's book. Kahneman is a researcher rather than a journalist like Gladwell, so his book doesn't have the same "entertainment value," but its arguments are well-rooted in the science.
For a broader perspective on humans, read Yuval Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari's thesis is that humanity's capacity to engage in and understand shared fictions (even irrational ones) serves as the basis for much of human civilization. On a somewhat related topic, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond is a somewhat more recent history of contemporary humans and societies.
I always feel a bit awkward whenever I recommend Nassim Nicholas Taleb, as he has a personal style that I think many would characterize as "unnecessary aggressive," and understandably so: he seems to take personal shots at many of his critics and "opponents" and to illustrate points he often provides specific examples in a way that seems to "call out" specific parties in a way that understandably seems to foster. (Even in cases where I find myself agreeing with Taleb, I often find myself shaking my head and questioning whether he could have made the point without naming and invoking disdain for specific parties.) That said, he has plenty of interesting ideas that are certainly worth exploring, with Antifragile being perhaps the most notable of them. (Specifically, the idea that "stability" and "fragility" are not opposites is a very interesting premise.)
For a "fun" book that doesn't really fit the idea of this thread but seems to fit with the theme of this subreddit, Randall Munroe's book What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions seems like it could be worth your time. (If you enjoy speculative fiction, think of this as "speculative non-fiction.")
u/JaimeL_ [+1] (11 hours later)
I've seen Thinking: Fast and Slow recommended a lot here and in other places, I'll definitely pick that up soon, thanks.
I've read The Black Swan - I agree NNT is aggressive but I really like his 'self awareness', explaining the narrative fallacy and so on, that's the kind of thing I really like - I can see it used by people all around me now, along with confirmation bias that I learned from Dan Gardner.
u/None [+3] (an hour later)
Minority pick for The Signal and the Noise?
u/josephwdye [+3] I love you (an hour later)
The Signal and the Noise
Tell us some about it?
u/None [+4] (2 hours later)
It is a book by Nate Silver, a rather famous predictor of baseball and politics, about the process of statistical prediction. Special emphasis is given on Bayesian methods, which is primarily why I mentioned it. It is a good read in general, especially if you are interested in predictive modelling.
u/josephwdye [+1] I love you (3 hours later)
That sounds really interesting, I will add it to my to read list.
u/serge_cell [+1] (2 days later)
A. Rényi: Dialogues on Mathematics