Ask HN: What are some good (fiction/non-fiction) books about human progress? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some good (fiction/non-fiction) books about human progress?

35 pointskarimdag29 comments

Everything is said in the title, however if you'd please include why you have chosen that (those?) book it would be a really nice addition!

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The most ambitious book in that regard must be Guns, Germs, and Steel (http://amzn.to/2jKq9ku) by Jared Diamond. It aims to answer the question: "Why did Europeans end up killing/conquering/... American Indians, and not the other way around?

You'll find lots of people saying Diamond has been "debunked" but by that they mean "here's some criticism someone posted online". It's a remarkable work of analysis tracing the causes of human progress over thousands of years.

Came here just to say that book also. It's amazing. My favourite non-fiction book.

A differing opinion would be that he identified correlations. Both guns and steel stem from discoveries and inventions (e.g. gunpowder and smelting), not from physical resources unique to Europe.

It goes much deeper than that. He'd next ask: where do discovery and invention come from?

For a different (and, for me, more convincing) perspective read 'Why Nations Fail' by Acemoglu and Robinson.

Reading Fukuyama's "The Origins of Political Order" and part 2, "Political Order and Political Decay" is a really good sweep on political progress where it comes from and whether or not it's inevitable (hint: it's not).

Fukuyama is a real realist. What I mean by that is that he doesn't deny that progress has occurred (something some people believe), but he points out how precarious that progress is and that it can go away (something some people deny).

I don't understand why it's a controversial statement to say that progress isn't inevitable and that decay can sometimes happen, but for some reason it is. I think his books, among many other things, are useful for grasping that progress takes hard work and can, like anything in this world, be ruined by laziness, corruption, or simple accidental misfortune.

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Harari. Pretty much a review of all human history.

I second that big time. It also has a promising follow-up which I have yet to dig in to "Homo Deus"

Pretty much everything by James Burke, including the Connections series and The Day the Universe Changed.

Both were turned into TV miniseries by the BBC (plus a successor to Connections that I haven't seen).

So far most comments are non-fiction, so I'll add a couple of fiction books.

I'd like to add the fiction Foundation series, by Isaac Asimov. Although they began being published in 1942 and Asimov got some technology wrong, it's a must read.

Also work by Stanislaw Lem. My favourite one is The star diaries, and it mixes pure sci-fi plot with a lot of philosophic thoughts about the future of human progress.

bill bryson, a short history of nearly everything. It is basically a history of what we know and how we came to know it i.e. what experiments were performed, what led to other things etc. Really well written.

Really love Bryson's writing style. He manages to convey a lot of information in a way that makes it easy to consume. Great rec.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

One man's journey towards enlightenment, learning, experiencing, and progressing through life the entire way.

The box is a really interesting history of the shipping container. It's looks at the intersection between the technological, political and business aspects of the struggle to introduce a more efficient but highly disruptive technology. It changed the way I think about driverless cars.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Econ...

Why read a book when you have a live experimentation?

Amish are not my cup of tea, but they are an interesting bunch.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217...

Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray. The author did statistical analysis to find the most influential figures in each field of endeavour, from philosophy to music.

The Ascent of Man: A Personal View, by Jacob Bronowski should be on any list about Human Progress, especially technological progress. The book is about the progress, pitfalls and misgivings of technological progress.

Sapiens is amazing

Seconding Sapiens. It's my favorite read of 2016 and takes an even broader look than Guns, Germs,& Steel. And although the author is a historian, he speaks cogently about the role of technology.

Don't miss the sequel "Homo Deus"!

I would recommend:

The Measure of the World by Denis Guedj

There is an excerpt here:

http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/310302.html

The matter is interesting and IMHO very well told, as besides describing the peregrinations of the scientists it gives an insight into the period, the science revolution and Enlightenment.

Deirdre McCloskey has a series of books on "The Bourgeois Era". Here's an example of what they cover "1% of history, 99% of wealth" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0nsKBx77EQ

"The Gun" by C.J. Chivers is about the history of the AK47 and how it changed war. The AK remains an affordable, durable piece of technology that anyone could use, and effectively do so with minimal training, while in the process disrupting structures of power.

You'd have to read the body of his work, but Mark Twain's self conversation (the theme present in all his writings) is criticism of the conceited concept of human progress.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

One of the most enlightening reads out there. Read both Why Nations Fail and Guns, Germs and Steel.

The Information by James Gleick.

It is a good read on how information has changed humanity and is still doing so.

Books by Eric Hobsbawm and perhaps even Marx and related figures like Proudhon. They are from a European point of view, though.

Science fiction: Seven Eves

It's what happens with the human race if the moon crashes into the Earth.

Rendezvousous with Rama

Global Shift

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