Books that made you look at things differently

[diebitter]

I can think of a few works that made me think differently about stuff, and I think helped me to think more clearly and percieve how things work more closely to reality than previously. Here's some of them:

1. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

A titanically great book, this has a final chapter that actually spawned a whole new science: Memetics. Here, Dawkins posits the notion of a meme. As a gene is to genetic evolution, a meme is to cultural evolution. A meme can be an idea, a tune, a phrase, or anything that sits in your head, comes out of your mouth/typings/writings and gets transferred to another brain.

Examples: "Sup, bro", "It's not even close", and so on.

It gave me a fundamentally different view of how society, religion, politics and generally systems of thinking and acting work.

See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme


2+3. 1984 - George Orwell and Dune - Frank Herbert

These two books gave me a good insight into political power, and power groups. The first was really about how power groups try to maintain their power by manipulation of mind and thought, whilst Dune (though a work of Science Fiction) made it very clear that sometimes motives of people are not clear, and their motivations may easily hide very deep intentions. As is said in the book 'Seeing the trap is the first step in avoiding the trap'. A sort of introduction to 2nd and 3rd level thinking.

4. Assorted works of Dilbert - I'm not kidding

I started reading these when I was working for a big outsourcing IT firm. I couldn't believe how much I learnt about stuff going on around me, from being a 'team leader' (which I was, of 25-30 guys + gals!) without actually getting any extra pay, right through to how throwaway comments on your self-assessment pay review forms can and will be dragged out at some later date to justify you not getting a raise.

Any of you had the same?

[Phil153]

Fame in the 20th Century by Clive James

The book is designed as an entertaining and funny read about celebrities and fame. But there's a deeper theme running through it, about how television and the Hollywood star have changed and perverted our perception of reality, sometimes dangerously so. It made me stop and think about what's real and how life would be without television and the media. It's also an excellent compendium of 20th century icons and a must read for anyone who wishes to get up to speed with 20th century popular culture. Highly recommended.

What Remains to Be Discovered: Mapping the Secrets of the Universe, the Origins of Life, and the Future of the Human Race by John Maddox.

This is a truly fascinating book about science, written by the former editor of Nature (a prestigious science journal). The first thing that strikes you about this book is the writing style; the author writes with a clarity and precision I've never seen before or since.

The book is written to be understand by a layman. The writing is so clear that the author lets you into his mind, and for a while you see the world from the privileged perspective of someone who's been at the forefront of scientific development for 25 years. You come out the other side and little wiser and somewhat in awe of science. This book shook any notions I had that science had slowed down, or that most major discoveries have been made.

How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now - William H. Calvin

A fascinating book that explores intelligence from the perspective of neurons, synapses, and the physical structures in the brain, in a non technical and interesting manner. The author is a neurophysiologist, and goes into detail about how the brain stores and retrieves information and makes decisions, with a lengthy discussion on how these factors affect intelligence - and what intelligence is. The insights in this book are nothing short of profound - it will change the way you view consciousness and intelligence.

[Duke]

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Just a brilliant book that made me look at the world, and what it means to be alive in it, differently.

~D

[britspin]

Vico - The New Science
link

Robert Caro- The Power broker Link

Two fantastic books that really made me think about philosophy, politics and power.

[jojobinks]

food revolution , by john robbins.

along with fast food nation (eric schlosser), these books got me to stop vacillating on what i eat (back and forth for a decade on vegetarian/not vegetarian/partial vegetarian). by the end of this book, i was convinced i'd never eat meat again.

the quiet zone rules...i'm quite certain i'd never write that post in oot.

[brandofo]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806527...5Fencoding=UTF8

[Performify]

Off the top of my head:


Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
God's Debris, Scott Adams
The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil
Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell

[matrix]

Fingerprints Of The Gods- Graham Hancock

This book got me thinking so much more about who we are and where we came from.

There are some startling facts in this book that boggle the mind.

e.g. The Piri Reis map. This is a real map which was made by a cartographer in 1513 from older "source maps"

It just so happens to depict in perfect detail the surface of the land mass (in part) of Antarctica. (Some 300 years before Antartica was even discovered) The land mass thats underneath the ice sheet which couldn't possibly have been seen or mapped at that time. The earliest possible time this "source map" could have been written was 4000BC - which is intriguing to say the least.

Other maps are presented that show perfect lines of latitude and longitude - humans were unable to work out longitude with any degree of accuracy until the late 18th century yet these maps are much older.... [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

This book is also responsible for kicking off my obsession with Pyramids. To cut a long story short using all of the 21st century techniques and tools at our disposal we couldn't build the Great Pyramids of Giza today(the Japanese actually tried to build a smaller replica and failed miserably) - not even close - not to the same standards of precision that someone did build them to. If we can't build them now why are we supposed to believe that primitive Egyptians a few thousand years ago managed it??

The pyramids also "map out" the constellation of Orion, and are pretty exact in their placement (read VERY exact)

Interestingly though they only match perfectly with the night skies as seen at Giza c.10500 B.C. - long before the "Ancient Egyptians" were on the scene.

The sphinx has been dated using geology and weathering patterns caused by falling rain - (it's in the middle of a desert.) The only time rain could have fallen on it in significantly large amounts to cause the weathering was thousands of years ago.

There are walls built of huge polygonal blocks in South America built who knows when out of mammoth pieces of limestone - all odd shapes - all enourmous - they still fit together today well enough so that you can't even slide a piece of paper inbetween the joints.

There are reports of strange bearded white men called the "Viracochas" which sound very familiar to descriptions of a certain biblical figure (and I don't mean Chris Ferguson) - but I digress.

Basically these people are credited with civilising the mayas and Incas - teaching them about lots of stuff - and then vanishing. They are also the reason the mayas were all but wiped out by Spanish conquistadors - according to their legends these men would return in the future - handily for the Spanish they resembled beared white men and were welcomed with open arms by the Mayas - who were then promptly slaughtered. How much knowledge has the human race lost because of that....



This book opened my eyes to lots of different things that I had never thought about before - I highly recommend it.

[cambraceres]

I looked at milk much differently after reading the book "Milk: the deadly poison"

By the way, please don't drink milk, I want you all to live!!

[arbitrary]

[ QUOTE ]
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Just a brilliant book that made me look at the world, and what it means to be alive in it, differently.

~D

[/ QUOTE ]

This was my choice too. I try to give it a read about once every year and a half, and never feel like I fail to get something new out of it. It's the book that got me started on books about the nature of thought. You've got to put a lot into it to get a lot out though.

==arbitrary