Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdonahoe | Hacker News Reader

I struggled to read Spaceship Earth this past summer. Are his lectures better?

For better or worse, his writing style is dense, and somewhat self-referential, as he builds and reuses a custom linguistic-metaphorical concept-stack. While he doesn't speak quite that densely, the voice and technique remains pretty similar (and as much as I'm a fan, I must admit that his elocution isn't particularly compelling, although perhaps I'm biased by the poor quality of many recordings).

I would humbly advocate pushing through regardless, as I found the material to be profound; I'd also suggest "Synergetics" [0], which employs a similar style, but is much more STEM-oriented than the "Spaceship Earth" quasi-narrative. But having said that, I don't blame anyone who finds the style too tedious; I have a similar experience every time I try to read 18th/19th-century political economy (Smith + Marx).

[0] https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/03/08/buckminster-fuller-...

thanks for the link!

I can also highly recommend Critical Path. In my experience, his invented words are designed to politely reprogram the way you think, and give you a tabula rasa frame of mind about the subject. The act of voluntarily interpreting the meaning of his words rewires you a bit.

I love how in the beginning of Synergetics he spends pages building an argument to justify the statement "1 + 1 = 4." He was insistent that we reformulate our most basic notions about value and equivalence.

Who could know if they're better for you?

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who found that book too weird to read... and I'm hoping there is more approachable material available

Reply on news.ycombinator.com