Books on Thinking About Thinking | Hacker News Reader

Books on Thinking About Thinking

bloomberg.com

175 pointsmoh_maya25 comments

Thinking about thinking is a fascinating topic, and the heart of true critical thinking. At the same time, it's easy to get wrapped up in our own inventions and hubris if not careful. When approaching "truth" check out the following as an added sanity check :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

BUT also not allowing these to limit blazing a new path forward!

If only humans were taught this, humanity would be totally different.

Trick Mirror is quite fun.

It’s not a particular book, but nothing has more radically altered the way I think about thinking than the work of Theodor Adorno (and to a certain extent, Horkheimer). I had, prior to reading their work, a tendency to think of thinking as an activity that occurs with quite a definite shape, in quite a well-circumscirbed space. They really exploded the concept for me and broadened my considerations about thought, how it works, what different forms it can take, and that most of the time, it’s more like a peice of music than it is a rational or practical sequence of arguments, and that the societal patterns and forces that attempt to fix your thought into a limited sequence of statements are in fact instances of control impinging itself upon you. This is not to say “don’t be rational” but it is to say there are definte thresholds upon which thought crosses over from the plane of a genuine “thinking through” into an “idiomaticity” or a “thinking about” — a preconception, a repetition, a bias.

What book or books would you recommend as a starting place for someone wishing to explore these concepts? Is there one Adorno ir Horkeimer I should start with?

Trick Mirror [1] reference in GP comment.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Trick-Mirror-Self-Delusion-Jia-Tolent...

'Dialectic of Enlightenment' might be a good place to start when it comes to thinking about thinking. If you want something a bit more fragmented/playful/debatable, then 'Minima Moralia' would be interesting. 'The Culture Industry' is well worth reading too.

Oh boy! The guy who hates jazz!

French postmodernism is not the right place to go for epistemology

Haha, no doubt his career is not free of blemishes.

I disagree on the second point. Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition is imo the most important work on epistemology of the last century.

Barry Ritholtz has a great business and finance podcast called “Masters in Business” and frequently discusses favorite books and book recommendations in context of the dialogue.

“MiB was originally conceived by its creator, Barry Ritholtz, as a deep dive into the minds of the most influential, savvy and successful people in the world of business & finance. The podcast explores how these folks became the professionals they are today: Who their mentors and influences were, what their personal work history is like, what books they read, even what their daily routines and thought processes are like. A listener wrote: “The show is like eavesdropping two very smart market professionals having a deep discussion over a cup of coffee.””

https://ritholtz.com/about-masters-in-business/

This year I read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman and absolutely loved it. I was surprised this list did not contain it.

Looks like I've got quite a few books to read.

so, thinking fast and slow has received a fair amount of criticism, both here on HN and elsewhere. Some previous threads & links that may be of interest (and perhaps value!) to you. Start with this:

[0] https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...

[1] https://www.wenglinskyreview.com/wenglinsky-review-a-journal...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8lnlmt/is_t...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030791

Just to be clear, I think its a great book; but there are, apparently, as for all things human, limitations & errors here and there. :)

For thinking about thinking, I can highly recommend Eliezer Yudkowski's "Rationality: AI to Zombies". While mildly obnoxious at times, it's very thorough and full of interesting as well as practical information.

It's available in a myriad of places:

- Less Wrong wiki, where it all started: https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality

- Minimalistically formatted: https://www.readthesequences.com

- Official homepage (with links to Amazon for paper copies): https://rationalitybook.com

This is a comment on a link to an article about books about thinking about thinking

I got stuck in a loop starting on the thinking of whether I wanted to click on that link.

Dangerous thoughts. Should we really think about thinking. There is no easy break. It's rather breaking any functional thinking and slow down actual thoughts. Any tip on scoping this effort would be appreciated.

There is a therapy, which main focus is changing how you think about thinking.

Thinking about your thinking is called metacognition, and therapy I talk about is Metacognitive Therapy

Thanks, fascinating. I could find some papers on the subject. Is there any useful resource for self metacognitive therapy you could share?

Best resource would be a manual from this trial https://mct-institute.co.uk/self-help/

But I couldn't find the manual anywhere in the study paper and by googling it. I wonder if dr Wells would share it if someone kindly asks, but I haven't tried it.

Wells (2009). Metacognitive Therapy for Anxiety and Depression is a guide for therapists but I am using it to learn techniques myself. Not sure if psychologists would approve

I have not read all the books on this list, but I would add The Drunkard’s Walk (How Randomness Rules Our Lives) to great books related to thinking about thinking. It breaks down how probability actually works in the real world in an easily understandable way. And how our intuition about the world is, generally, woefully off the mark.

Metacognition. Just think about it.

idk, I was quite expecting to see a book about actual thinking in the list. Like for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Not_Luck

Nah, all the books you need to read about thinking were published in the past year.

I actually happened to read The Goal a few weeks ago, I take you think It’s Not Luck is a worthwhile follow up?

Strange, no Douglas Hofstadter on the list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter#Published_w...

I would argue GEB has been really influential on the topic.

Can someone please paste the books that they recommend? I've reached my free reading limit on Bloomberg.

"Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/0...

"The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Pred...

"The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...

"Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Darwin-Genetic-Engineering-Hu...

"Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" https://www.amazon.com/Biased-Uncovering-Hidden-Prejudice-Sh...

"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized...

"The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story/...

"Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" https://www.amazon.com/Trick-Mirror-Self-Delusion-Jia-Tolent...

"Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Should-about-People...

"Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence" https://www.amazon.com/Prediction-Machines-Economics-Artific...

Sure.

No. 1. "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky.

No. 2. "The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy C. Winegard.

No. 3. "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" by Gregory Zuckerman.

No. 4. "Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" by Jamie Metzl.

No. 5. "Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.

No. 6. "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein.

No. 7. "The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" by Ben Macintyre.

No. 8. "Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" by Jia Tolentino.

No. 9. "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" by Malcolm Gladwell.

No. 10. "Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence," by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

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