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Books that have profoundly influenced my life.
1816 sats \ 8 comments \ @r3drun3 30 Jan BooksAndArticles
If you had to choose only two books, one fiction and one non-fiction, that have significantly impacted your life, which ones would you choose?
As for me:
  1. Fiction: "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. I am aware that this book polarizes opinions, with readers generally falling into the camps of either loving or hating it.
    Personally, I loved the gargantuan madness of the work to the extent that it left a void within me after finishing it, and I have since struggled to truly enjoy another work of literary fiction.
    The characters, simultaneously parodic and painfully real/humans, and the overarching, bigger-than-life narrative that transcends the ordinary, serve as a scathing parody of American culture and human existence.
  2. Non-Fiction: The choice here is more challenging, but if I were to pick one, it would probably be "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I consider the guy to be a complete genius.
    While I may not agree with everything he says, no collection of essays has reshaped my thinking and approach to rationality than this one.
What about you? I am really curios to hear your choices 😊
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Roll 30 Jan
Eckhart Tolle : The power of now It brings me a new perspectic to view, feel, discover... the life, And to go further on the spiritual path...
Arthur Conan Doyle: Hound of the baskervilles Cause it s my 1rst book i ever read (so it s sentimental ) :)
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5 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 30 Jan
Franz Kafka's The Trial probably made me into the bureaucracy-dreading person I am today.
It's the story of this poor guy who one day gets accused of some vague crime or infraction or maybe he isn't accused of anything and is just being investigated. As the story unfolds, and the guy tries to discover what he is going on, he meets ever more opaque bureaucratic functionaries who are just doing their jobs but come off as malicious--maybe sadistic is more accurate.
It's like the tax code was made into a novel.
I get nervous renewing my driver's license, half expecting them to haul me away and throw me in prison for reasons unclear.
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50 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 17 Feb
Have you ever entered LAX from abroad and got secondary screening? It's a level of Dante's Purgatory right on the boundary with the Inferno.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @2d 30 Jan
Cool topic, looking forward to finding some new inspiration here
  1. The Hobbit: got an old copy handed down to me by a family member when I was really young, credit it to starting a love of reading in general
Non fiction is tough, I’ll be back
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 30 Jan
I'll answer later, but in the meantime would love to hear some specifics of things from that Yudkowsky book that made a big impact. It's such a tome it could be anything!
Also, the DFW commencement speech is one of the most moving things I've ever encountered.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @r3drun3 OP 30 Jan
It is hard to point at specifics for me...the holistic experience is what has deeply reconfigured my cognitive circuits. Eliezer's essays possess the ability to prompt unconventional thinking and to assess belief systems for what they truly are: primarily biases. These essays have taught me the art of meta-intelligence, rigorous reasoning, and epistemic humility, consistently adhering to the principle that "beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded".
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @beorange 30 Jan
Didn't change my life... but shaped the way I view certain things and lead me to read more about the subject (including opposing views): "Why Nations Fail"
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @030e0dca83 30 Jan
As I wrote lots of time here the best fiction book for me is Don Quixote. It teacked me that the same things we see differently. What about non fiction - JavaScript.info, it reached me how to operate computer in my way
Ready to read other comments
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