What's the most radical book you've read?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40409808

by parisivy • 2 years ago

28 46 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

By radical I refer to ideas/frameworks/ways of seeing life that are dramatically different to what you think/am.

AGivant• 2 years ago

Alphabet

unnamed76ri• 2 years ago

The most radical book I’ve read is the Bible. But dramatically different…Discover of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane perhaps. I don’t agree with everything she wrote but she had some interesting ideas.

tobinfekkes• 2 years ago

I second the Bible as the most radical.

BjoernKW• 2 years ago

Prometheus Rising, for certainly being rather radical and refreshing.

richk449• 2 years ago

I like the question. Bible aside, here are some other options:

Where is my Flying Car?

Zero to One

Paradise Lost

East of Eden

amemaro• 2 years ago

The Rose of Paracelsus

coder4life• 2 years ago

The Human Zoo, Desmond Morris

yuperryippee• 2 years ago

Max Weber - The Sociology of Religion

TheFreim• 2 years ago

Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge by Paul Feyerabend

rerdavies2• 2 years ago

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

A unique synthesis of aesthetics and mathematics that completely formed my worldview.

Perhaps slightly dated, because it was written very early in the computer revolution. Had it been written today, the Artificial Intelligence chapters would be very different.

gaws• 2 years ago

that completely formed my worldview.

How?

rerdavies2• 2 years ago

I was afraid somebody would ask that question. I don't have a simple answer to that question. As best as I can explain it, GEB provides an intentional stance that makes it much easier to exist in a chaotic world that we know little about.

The lynchpin around which that stance revolves is Goedel's proof that classical reasoning systems are necessarily incomplete. In short, that there are true things we can never prove to be true, and false things that we can never prove to be false, and an entire category of statements that are neither true nor false.

Coming to terms with the provable fact that knowledge is incomplete is enormously liberating. Once you do, the consequences spiral outward.

Examples, some of which GEB deals with explicitly, some of which falls out relatively easily:

- We can't know everything.

- Sometimes "I don't know" is a perfectly valid answer.

- Sometimes "the premise upon which your question is based is flawed" is a perfectly valid answer.

- All knowledge about objective reality requires (at a minimum) use of some form of Bayesian/probabilistic reasoning.

- Finite rules-based ethical and legal systems are (almost definitely) incomplete. Deeply distrust anyone who attempts to tell you otherwise.

At the broader end of the domino chain of consequences, there are things like this:

- There are no rules for what is beautiful.

- Falling in love is a dreadful way to select a mate. But do it anyway. You won't regret it.

- Hard materialism is not incompatible with experiencing awe and wonder.

- We live in a chaotic universe that doesn't care about us at all. There are ways to deal with that.

- Embrace chaos.

- That consciousness is an emergent property of a complex universe is a perfectly valid alternate explanation to "Gods did it".

- Having a materialistic worldview does not preclude having a rich inner life.

itkovian_• 2 years ago

Atlas shrugged

lgvln• 2 years ago

In this political climate: Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson

leobg2• 2 years ago

Almost every book by Nietzsche. For example:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra The Gay Science Human All Too Human

leobg2• 2 years ago

And, almost as a contrary, Tolstoy, My Religion. For example, he claims that - the teachings of Jesus are a reflection of human needs; break them and you will suffer, - every form of oath taking is forbidden; every time you align yourself with some external authority, you will suffer or do evil, - no form of judging another is ever allowed; even the criminal justice system is against the teachings of the Christ, - any form of non-monogamy leads to suffering; even just fantasizing about a woman who is not your wife will lead to suffering.

There’s more.

I’m not a Christian or religious. But this is radical. And interesting.

rramadass7• 2 years ago

Human All Too Human : A Book for Free Spirits to give its full name

For some reason i don't often see this book mentioned. Perhaps i am biased (this was my introduction to Nietzsche) but i have always found this to be more nuanced, incisive, insightful and less polemical than his other works. Also the fact that it is basically a set of aphorisms (of varying para lengths) on very many topics means that you can read it from any page for short periods of time and still find something of value.

tschwimmer• 2 years ago

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner

On the Genealogy of Morality by Nietzsche

Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

kkoncevicius• 2 years ago

"The reign of quantity and the signs of the times" - Rene Guenon

defrost• 2 years ago

Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973) - E. F. Schumacher

namlem• 2 years ago

The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGilchrist

Why Materialism is Baloney by Bernardo Kastrup

The first one really opened my mind to alternate modes of thought. The first half of the book is especially interesting, the second half is skippable. I don't think I could have appreciated the second book if I hadn't read the first.

The Dictator's Handbook by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith is another good one. Afaik, the first successful attempt to create a true theory of politics.

hiAndrewQuinn2• 2 years ago

Love de Mesquita's The Logic of Political Survival and selectorate theory in general as well. What a meaty concept, with a lot of counterintuitive explanations.

rramadass7• 2 years ago

For me it was Jack London's fiction The Sea-Wolf. I was/am interested in philosophical ideas/frameworks but the simple direct materialistic philosophy espoused by Wolf Larsen in the above book made me question everything i had read.

Here are the relevant excerpts : https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1jqpar/what_book_sin...

We are mere "Animals" with a far more complex social structure than any other species which is why we invent all sorts of "subjective meanings" to "objectively meaningless" life. How to reconcile both is the eternal "Human Condition" problem.

See also : Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality by James Tartaglia. Free pdf at - https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781...

usgroup5• 2 years ago

Nihilism strikes me as a very specific commitment. There is a difference between "there is no meaning", and "we don't know the meaning", or a myriad other recall/precision related questions such as "can we know the meaning", "is one of the following candidates potentially the meaning", and so on.

I can see why for practical reasons some may lean into it, but I don't see it being epistemologically well founded.

rramadass7• 2 years ago

You have to give up your preconceptions and "think outside the box" as it were. Think of Nihilism as the canvas background against which you paint your chosen philosophy/religion/beliefs. Life "objectively" (i.e. from outside in) is meaningless (applying Occam's razor) but lived "experientially and subjectively" craves meaning. You have to keep both these distinct and separate viewpoints simultaneously in mind while treading your own path. Modern Science has so advanced our objective understanding of the world and ourselves that we can no longer cling to beliefs from the past unconditionally (eg. organized religion) without validating and re-interpreting them in the current context.

Here some of the Hindu schools of philosophy are of great help since many(eg. Carvaka/Samkhya/Yoga/Buddhism/etc.) don't subscribe to the idea of a omniscient "God" but merely construct a experiential worldview based on perception and inference. It is like a mathematical formal system with concepts/symbols/rules/etc.

admissionsguy• 2 years ago

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

hiAndrewQuinn2• 2 years ago

I've got a whole list of books like this sitting somewhere on my hard drive called "Well-Argued Ideologies Very Different From My Own". Covers the whole gamut, from anti-natalism to Z-theory.

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life would be my go-to. It's all about how people's motives are a lot more self-serving than you might think, including your own.

If you liked that, and then really want to go off the deep end, try The Enigma of Reason.

Gnarl• 2 years ago

"Rules for Radicals" by Saul D. Alinsky.

On how to organize revolutions and how to be careful about what you wish for.

barfbagginus• 2 years ago

Atlinsky is nice but he's kind of tepid and Western anti-violentist/ Western nationalist. So he can't speak about situations where military resistance is necessary, such as resistance against fascism or dictatorship. These can inoculate themselves against alinskian shock provocation tactics by using brutality and propaganda.

In order to understand the proper use of violentism/militarism and the, ethical high ground against a dominant enemy, I recommend Che Guevara's "Guerilla Warfare". It introduces the moral high ground, the national good, the organization, the economics, and the field tactics of strike and retreat, giving units quotas of cane crops to burn, etc.

Please read Che's letters as well - "I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967". They will show the human behind the tactics.

Both books are on the audiobook bay, along with alinsky. They provide a perfect counterpoint to alinsky.

As we enter an era of American nationalist fascism, alinskian tactics might need to give way to queer inclusivist cyber guerilla tactics. For a Just and Libre Society! We can win!

mattnewport• 2 years ago

Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illich

closetkantian• 2 years ago

The Bible, specifically the New Testament, and more specifically，The Gospels. The reason that it's radical is that Christ overturns traditional notions of morality. Greco-Roman thought saw the rich and powerful as close to the divine but Christ's message is that the meek and poor are prefered by God.

Coming in at #2, I would argue for Marx, maybe Capital. It's radical because it shows that Capitalism is not a "natural" state of affairs (as much as it would like us to believe that it is).

p0d• 2 years ago

Agreed. I love the Old Testament too, as it is so raw and real. Murder, betrayal, sex, prostitution, and war. Interwoven with the hope of a new start with Christ coming to earth, and a new beginning when he returns.

nonrandomstring• 2 years ago

By that definition of "radical": painful and difficult to read, but yielding enormous positive transformation, then for me Aldous Huxley's "Heaven and Hell" (which contains "Doors of Perceptions"), Erich Fromm's "To Have or to Be", Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization" and his "The Myth of the Machine". YMMV, but for me all of these were "radical" in challenging my purely rational, instrumental, and I think very limited ideas of knowledge, technology and "progress" that I held as a younger scientist/engineer.

unrestifarian• 2 years ago

Second Nietzsche - Beyond Good & Evil + Thus Spake Zarathustra.

TPZ is really a poetic/mock religious text version of BG&E.

The first few chapters of BG&E ask the question: why we humans seek knowledge at all? What drives the will to knowledge. . .feelings? A question most scientists never even think to ask. . but that seems the most radical question of all (as in getting to the 'root' of it all).

atlanta90210• 2 years ago

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

mikewarot• 2 years ago

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

euroderf• 2 years ago

The Screwing of the Average Man

What's the most radical book you've read?

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