2.9 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: 11
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Created: 2016-01-04T11:28:25
Post:
Comments:
u/DaystarEld [+12] Pokémon Professor*
"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 [+6] Nudist Beach*
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 [+7] *
"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter, a book about philosophy, music, math, and consciousness.
u/Transfuturist [+4] Carthago delenda est.*
+anything by Hofstadter
u/Subrosian_Smithy [+4] Nudist Beach*
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 [+5] My arch-enemy is entropy*
How about The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean. They are great books about chemistry and genetics.
u/23143567 [+3] *
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] *
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*
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] *
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'*
The End of Error: Unum Computing is great if you are of a number-crunching sort.