YC's Winter Reading List | Hacker News Reader

YC's Winter Reading List

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46 pointscraigcannon28 comments

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If you like "The Rent is Too Damn High" and really want to dig in, I've been reading this:

Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation - http://amzn.to/2gZQtqg

It's pretty dry, but very thorough.

Some groups that are good for people who want to get into this stuff more:

* http://www.strongtowns.org/

* http://marketurbanism.com/

It's an area where people can really make a difference: I've managed to chat with a couple of city councilors and our state representative here in Bend, and recently kicked off https://bendyimby.com/

Have you read Marohn's two books? I keep putting them off, but I haven't gotten a recommendation yet.

No, I haven't. They look like "the blog's greatest hits" and I tend to be less enthusiastic about books like that. I'm curious too, because they might be good to recommend to people. Maybe I'll see if I can get the library to get them.

In light of HN's (edit: temporary) ban on political content, I find it interesting that so many of YC's favorite books relate to:

- religion (Going Clear, Zealot, Finding God in the Waves)

- war and oppressive policy (War in a Time of Peace, Silence Once Begun)

- conservative lifestyle (Strangers in Their Own Land, Hillbilly Elegy)

The first two are explicitly prohibited topics of discussion on this site, and the third is implicitly discouraged.

You'll notice this post got (correctly) flagged off the front page.

> In light of HN's ban on political content

Please don't forget to mention this is just for one week. The intention is not "ban political content". It's to take a one-week breather from political stories that tend to result in flamewars.

Compartmentalization is the name of the game.

If you want a list of fiction and textbooks, I think you could reasonably expect that this was the wrong list for you. If you want contemporary nonfiction, you will find yourself wading into something at least moderately political. We argue about them for the same reasons we read and write books about these things: they're important.

Unlike this forum, a book is a really good length for experiencing those political arguments. So read a book to understand why someone would support something so backwards, to see if their thinking stands up to scrutiny, or read it just to 'know thy enemy.' But if the book is good, you'll probably get something out of it. If it's bad, it'll be slow and painful. Arguably the recommendation is twice as valuable when you disagree with the author's thesis: far better to hear only the best counterarguments to one's own perspectives, given limited time.

I'll second "A Guide To The Good Life", and would like to suggest "What's The Matter With Kansas" by Thomas Frank as a companion piece to "Strangers In Their Own Land."

"Art of Living" (Epictetus) is another great introduction to stoicism. Highly recommended.

Here is a great primer on stoicism: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/3a2bl4/stoicism...

I love the practice of stoicism, but I cannot do the negative visualization. It just gives me anxiety!

This is a great booklist. Thanks YC.

I find it interesting that this list of books includes a scholarly look at a man I believe to be God incarnate, written by a non-believer.

Does that not violate the temporary ban on "the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet"?

I'm sure it's an interesting book, and I'm all for people reading it, but is that really the sort of thing we should be discussing this week? Next week would be totally fine.

For a "Winter Reading List", there is a ton of titles. I'll be lucky if I get to 5 books in the next few months. Can someone recommend a top 5 from this list?

Flagged, as there is clearly political content here that doesn't comport with new Hacker News rules.

Exactly. Shameful attempt to smuggle politics onto a tech site.

> If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

A good guideline in general, but I hope you can imagine reasons why it might be worth commenting in this rather unusual case.

"new Hacker News rules"

I think this should read: current weeklong experimental policy on Hacker News.

I also don't feel like this list of books justifies getting flagged, even during this reprieve from political discussion. If loads of comments start flaming, maybe then. But right now it is just a list of suggested books to read.

It's a slippery slope. If we censor articles indiscriminately, what's the point of censoring them at all?

To make us feel better about collaborating with authoritarians

That's specifically counter to the rules, though: it's a detox. We're supposed to get better as a community by avoiding these topics entirely. Flaming was already against the rules, and low-contribution (though non-flaming) comments were already subject to downvote.

Got it. I would have been happiest with this on the front page, but I just happen to really like reading lists. No matter.

Perhaps they could simply censor Jared Friedman's choice of "Strangers in Their Own Land" for the remainder of the week. A book that's "very helpful for understanding the other half of the country" doesn't belong on HN right now.

If you read the guidelines, politics has always been considered off-topic.

What it says is "most stories about politics", which is deliberately vague, but not the same as the current experiment.

People seem to think that previously, politics was an ok thing to post. Mostly, it was not.

No, the current experiment is just a reminder of the existing rules with added encouragement to flag.

Compare the announcement (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404) and the guidelines. It seems completely obvious to me that they're saying different things.

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