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A comment on Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?.

Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by briga on Saturday December 28, 2019 @05:19PM (#21902206)
Out of Control by former Wired editor Kevin Kelly. This book was a labor of love and it shows--every chapter explores some fascinating new topic on the intersection of biology and technology. Even though the book was written 25 years ago it feels completely fresh. I'm sure anyone who reads this site would enjoy it.

David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity. If you know him, it's probably because Deutsch did some pioneering work in Quantum computing back in the day, but this book covers everything from physics to biology to computing to art with a grand sort of theory of everything. There are few popular science books more densely packed with original ideas.

Borges' collected fictions. There probably isn't much that needs to be said about this that hasn't already been said. Borges was a visionary.

Proust.

Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. Completely changed the way I think about sci-fi.

Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence. I think this is still the gold standard of speculative AI books.

Sapiens. Like everyone else I loved this one.

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Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by digianarchist on Saturday December 28, 2019 @07:45PM (#21902979)
Didn't care for Sapiens. Very pop-science with the author's opinion littered throughout alongside wild predictions on AI, automation.

The only other book I read this year was Evicted by Matthew Desmond. It was an excellent account of poverty cycles as it relates to housing.

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Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by jiscariot on Tuesday December 31, 2019 @10:06AM (#21921409)
I felt the same way. Romanticizing hunter/gatherer society and downplaying positive effects of agrarian society or any notion of evolutionary psychology. It started OK and about halfway through it seemed like he was just giving thoughts and theories on various things, without any references.

Though more focused on cultural evolution, I much preferred Joseph Henrich's "The Secret of Our Success".

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Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by Breza on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @10:30AM (#21980829)
Evicted offers a great view into a topic that may be new to many HN readers
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Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by iliketoworkhard on Saturday December 28, 2019 @06:17PM (#21902519)
I really need to pick up Solaris.

I felt like Sapiens rewired my brain in a way. Homo Deus only drove in the message that we are nothing but algorithms

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Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by jackthetab on Saturday December 28, 2019 @08:29PM (#21903204)
> I felt like Sapiens rewired my brain in a way.

Same here. His explanation of intra-species realities blew my mind. Explains a _lot_.

> Homo Deus only drove in the message that we are nothing but algorithms

Biological algorithms but still...

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Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by chubot on Sunday December 29, 2019 @12:27AM (#21904143)
Yes I found the idea of "intersubjective", and the word, very useful. Money, corporations, religions, etc. being great examples.

(This reminded me of it and I had to look it up)

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Re:Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? by JoeMayoBot on Saturday December 28, 2019 @09:13PM (#21903399)
Thought Sapiens was good too. The other two seemed a bit dark, especially Homo Deus, but still learned a lot.
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