The Best Books I Read in 2014
gatesnotes.com
gatesnotes.com
According to the Forbes article linked below, they saw his blog post and rushed to reprint it based on the demand he created.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/07/28/how-bil...
I prefer to know what he actually likes, rather than what he thinks would look best if he claimed to like.
I'm not going to force myself to read books from people of my culture (or non-white in general) just to meet some arbitrary bigoted quota. I respect authors for their ability to write well and make solid arguments, not for their skin color, culture, or anything else. If your view of minorities is that we're so prideful/nationalist that we [should] read mostly books by non-white authors, then I find that highly offensive.
Edit: Sorry if it came across as saying that you should feel bad for reading the books you read.
It would take a long time for enough people to become interested in writing books for certain fields for author demographics to really approach anything nearing a reflection of the global population, so I don't expect every genre of book to be equally diverse in its authors.
"Suspicious" is also a really strong biased word. I could just as well claim that I'm 'suspicious' as to why most parenting books are written by white women. But as I mentioned before, I do not care about the author (unless their biases shine through in their writing too much). And it's completely reasonable to expect that mothers would be more likely to write about their experiences parenting than fathers at this point in time, and that only in developed 'white' countries would parents have the free time and luxury to write books about their experiences raising children.
Similarly, if I read science books, I would expect (and want) authors of those books to come from places that have well developed science programs (like the US, which is predominantly white). If the author isn't in the majority of that sub-population, then good for them! But ultimately that does not dictate what I read. Neither the readers nor the authors should be blamed for the statistical outcomes of the environment. If you want more non-white authors, petition for the US to adopt a better immigration policy that would be welcome to experienced creative individuals from poorer countries; calling racism at readers/authors isn't going to solve anything.
Should we start vetting movie directors and screenwriters before renting a movie? Or maybe would you like for the governments to setup quotas, and federally funded programs to support minority authors?
Possibly he most likely didn't even care who wrote them as quality knows not race, sex or orientation?
I mean we should TOTALLY believe the dude trying to rid the third world of malaria is TOTALLY a racist, right?
God, tumblr is leaking over into hacker news now.
This is also not about how many books were published this year (which may very well not be evenly distributed among the genders/races), it's about a subset of the books which Gates actually read this year, which may be an entirely different demographic of authors depending on his preferences. So you'd have to take into consideration the demographics of the authors for the particular sub-genres of books Gates likes to read as well.
If you're going to use math to suggest something is discriminatory, you better do a thorough job of mathematically proving it correctly, because it is a large claim to make using only primitive estimations.
If men are more likely to be published than women, that's an indication of a sexist industry (or sub-genre) and something that all readers should be actively working to compensate for.
I have experience actually working at a publisher for a particular STEM field, and can tell you that we didn't receive an equal demographic of pitches from authors looking to get published; in fact, we automatically gave any female authors even more of a chance to refine their ideas with us regardless of their original pitches. Males that made dubious pitches on the other hand were just canned outright. Yet the percentages of books published by females was still low, and there's not much that can be done about that from the publishing end if there simply aren't enough females interested in authoring for that genre.
Additionally, there is no reason why liking books by male authors over female authors (or vice-versa) in certain genres should be sexist. There have been studies showing that consumers can relate better to characters and such that share their same gender/culture than those that don't. Similarly, there are studies that students learn better from teachers that also share their same gender/culture. It's hard to say what exactly causes this right now, but it's not a stretch to suggest that perhaps males will simply enjoy reading/relating with authors more if they share a similar perspective.
Also, actively going out of your way to only read books by male authors in all genres is definitely a sign of some kind of sexism, and I have no idea why you're positioning it as something could even be remotely interpreted as 'less sexist' than merely liking books by authors that share a common ground with you. Selectively reading means judging books before you read them, not even giving them a chance based purely on some superficial trait (like an author of a different sex), while liking books could mean judging them on any number of nearly infinite dimensions. The two are nothing alike.
This is also not about how many books were published this year (which may very well not be evenly distributed among the genders/races), it's about a subset of the books which Gates actually read this year, which may be an entirely different demographic of authors depending on his preferences.
So if Gates's reading habits were even more sexist than the genres he was reading, that's pretty bad.
Of course you are generally right; we all naturally tend toward our own tribe. The question is, what do we do about it.
If white males have the power, and they naturally hire, read, talk to, etc. other white males, then there is a big problem for everyone else in society. You can see the results everywhere; as I posted somewhere, look at a group photo of Congress and see if you can spot any statistical anomalies about the demographics.
The tribal tendency is a bad one. We hire/read/etc less than the best, many people suffer discrimination, and it leads to much worse things: Horrible oppression, genocide, black teens getting shot, centuries of political and economic discrimination, etc.
Quality is not a sexism issue. Stop trying to make every little thing into this issue. It's counter productive.
That is so incredibly ridiculous. It's just a list of his favorite books, the race of the authors is irrelevant.
My favorite band is made up of all white musicians. Is that racist?
Whether they are from Asia or not seems to be mostly irrelevant.
"Most desirable" is subjective, and a simply being native to (or residing in) a region, as opposed to conducting structure study of the relevant domains, is not particularly likely to provide any deep insights into what cultural patterns are more desirable to reform (or even on the objective questions that precede the subjective "most desirable" question of which cultural patterns are more amenable to reform and what the effects of attempts to reform those patterns would be likely to be.
> It's also possible that Studwell does not entirely have the region's best interests at heart, and is writing to influence things in his favor.
The same would be true of natives, who are quite likely to make recommendation in their own perceived personal interest whether or not they are in the general interest of the population of the region. On the objective questions of effects, that's what you use reason and analysis of presented evidence, rather than evaluation of origin of the author, to evaluate the arguments. What you propose is adopting the ad hominem fallacy as a preferred system of judging arguments.
> After all, that's why the USA doesn't allow people born in other countries to become President.
The USA allows people born in other countries to become President, it doesn't allow people not US citizens at or by birth to become President.
And the history of the relevant clause does not provide much evidence of any particular basis for that restriction; any such explanation is purely speculative.
A common, very large problem in development and other types of foreign aid (military, etc.) is 'expert' outsiders with little local knowledge telling the locals what they should be doing. It results in a lot of wasted money and harm to the recipients.
Also, I'm sure most reading this wouldn't appreciate 'experts' from another country (e.g., Japan) coming to your community and imposing their ideas on your government, business practices, and way of life.
It's far worse with military 'aid', which can result in your family dead, you homeless, and your country in ruins for generations. American assistance to Iraq resulted in >100,000 dead (by conservative estimates), an ongoing civil war, and untold crime and destruction. We thought democracy would blossom as soon as we removed Hussein; one absurd example: We actually had personnel there trying to setup a stock market soon after the invasion.
I don't appreciate anyone (outsiders or not) imposing their ideas on my government, business practices, or way of life; but that doesn't mean that foreigner's arguments as to policy are less valid because of their status as foreigners. In fact, I think that one of the big problems in US policy is an often willful blindness to outside experience and a very big dose of NIH syndrome.
> We thought democracy would blossom as soon as we removed Hussein
Well, you might have. Plenty of Americans -- including many experts, and pretty much everyone whose argument supporting their belief referenced actual facts of history of other conflicts -- did not. Certainly, plenty of members of the senior leadership of the US administration -- people like Doug Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz -- made statements that indicated that they did, but then there's probably a reason that, e.g., General Tommy Franks described Feith as the "dumbest f-ing guy on the planet".
Seems to me that situation is further evidence for evaluating people's policy positions based on the content of the support for their argument, rather than simply their nationality or other positional traits.
What a weird remark imho.
There's a lot to be said to being exposed to different perspectives. And no one knows what other things Bill Gates read this year, but that the best are all white men is a little...disappointing I guess.
FICTION
1. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah 2. Terezia Mora - Der einzige Mann auf dem Kontinent (not translated yet I think) 3. Octavia E. Butler - Parable of the Sower 4. Jose Saramago - Blindness 5. James Baldwin - If Beale Street Could Talk
NONFICTION
1. Melba Patillo Beals - Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High 2. Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir - Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much 3. Laura Fermi - Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi 4. Judith Newton - From Panthers to Promise Keepers: Rethinking the Men's Movement 5. Sikivu Hutchinson - Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels
and as a bonus, because it's written by a white man...
Jeffrey Haas - The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther
It is a pretty great book.
Racial discrimination is widespread, and often unconsciously. For example, one of the first things you learn about hiring is that people instinctively hire employees like themselves. That's why comments like JeorgR's are valuable, to bring it to our attention.
If ~33% of the U.S. population (I'm guessing at the proportion of white males) dominate so much of our reading, our government, business, entertainment, technology, etc. -- just looking at the data, it raises serious (and what should be intellectually interesting) questions about how that happens, and about justice and fairness for the 66% whose opportunities are apparently much reduced.
EDIT: added a bit to the last sentence
Do you really think Bill Gates would hesitate to put a book on his list of best books if it was written by someone other than a white male?
It's a ridiculous claim when there's absolutely no proof to back it up.
Also, how does it help the problem of what you call "widespread", "unconscious" racial discrimination to artificially include books by non-white, non-male authors just to meet a race/gender criteria? Does that really help the problem?
I think it's fair to say that what frogpelt said was more or less in line with what most perceived your implication to be.
I think this gets to the core of the problem of discussing race:
Read the comments carefully; nobody blames Gates or even mentions him. I certainly don't; the cause could be a lack of books written by others, or a lack of opportunities to write, to obtain qualifications, to get an education, to get jobs in those industries, etc. etc. (I actually had written a sentence saying Gates wasn't the issue but deleted it as unnecessary.)
However, in the more angry responses, people jump to the assumption that Gates is being accused; those comments are the only place blame of Gates is mentioned. I point out that they are the angry comments because it seems that those people are defensive, jumping to conclusions and acting out. (Yes, some people get overheated in the other direction, but I don't see that here.)
That a big reason that it's hard to discuss these issues intelligently and move forward. People are defensive, and to be honest, today on places like HN it is far more trendy and 'politically correct' to shout down the mention of discrimination. You can see people angrily repeating the talking points (reverse discrimination, etc.); that kind of behavior (anger, repetition) is not a sign of intelligent analysis and won't likely help us solve these problems.
No, I think people here are being angry and defensive at the notion of a reading list numbering five books that is, at best, somehow being used as an example of issues endemic to society as a whole. It is absurd and only serves to detract from the original topic.
How could you tell if he didn't? The result is indistinguishable. And GP never recommended artificial inclusion of anything.
Maybe the problem isn't bill gates, and it's just that there aren't enough minority authors in the US to begin with, due to our school system turning low-income students off from reading?
There's so many plausible explanations for the patterns we see, that any immediate call to 'unconscious' racism/sexism is likely to be a red herring.
Agreed; I think this is part of a good discussion. Are few books being written by minorities and women? If so, are few of minorities/women getting the opportunities (e.g., book deals)? Do few have the qualifications to write on such topics?
Your idea certainly seems plausible, and then I wonder: Why do the bad schools seem overwhelming concentrated in minority and poor communities? For example, I suspect some is the result of generations of historical discrimination:
* Red-lining kept even economically successful minorities (which were were few due to overwhelming discrimination in employment and finance) from owning homes (nobody would give them a loan) and in depressed neighborhoods. I doubt it's coincidence that, despite the explosion of the black middle class, many remain in those neighborhoods.
* Women were denied opportunities in many of these fields.
I'd have a very hard time believing some isn't due to ongoing discrimination.
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However, the rest of the post seems a return to the same damaging shout-downs of anyone raising these issues:
If you re-read the comments, nobody calls Gates a bigot or blames him at all; I suspect many like me would share your hypothesis. Sorry to pick on your message, but your post is a good example of the reflexive response I was talking about that prevents us from moving forward. You seem to agree:
> any immediate call to 'unconscious' racism/sexism is likely to be a red herring.
Think of it this way: Aren't you enforcing a new political correctness? That is, it's now 'politically incorrect' on HN to point out racism. (Historically, that's been the most common political incorrectness.)
EDIT: typo on last word
I'm not saying that discrimination shouldn't be pointed out, I'm merely in support of substantiating such claims with good evidence. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and all that, and if the discrimination isn't blatant (like early 1900's US racism), then a good argument could be made that maybe we're just seeing things, because it is known that the human brain loves spotting patterns where they don't actually exist. Therefore if anything fishy is up, it should be able to be substantiated with some kind of coherent argument that isn't just appealing to the 'unfairness' of the 'system'.
If you were in a situation where you were randomly accused for something as serious as racism, you'd probably want your accuser to provide a good argument for it too. I'm merely saying that we should hold this as the standard for this type of discussion, because clearly it can quickly devolve if we're just throwing anecdotes around.
PS: I didn't downvote you, as I think you did well contributing to the discussion, so I apologize for you being in the grey; HN is obnoxiously downvote happy.
> I'm not saying that discrimination shouldn't be pointed out, I'm merely in support of substantiating such claims with good evidence.
Agreed. I think 5 out of 5 white male authors is not great evidence, and in something this sensitive and well-discussed, we should be careful. However, awareness is really the central issue (see below) which is why I like the original comment -- though clearly it should be carefully expressed!
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> "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and all that, and if the discrimination isn't blatant (like early 1900's US racism)
In my opinion, the evidence is very strong: Look at the dominance of white males in our society, in business, in government (look at a group photo of Congress -- notice something statistically odd?), in our culture, etc. When white males are only (33%?) of the population, I think the evidence is overwhelming that some sort of widespread discrimination must exist to explain the outcomes. Add to that our history of discrimination against these very same groups, minorities and women, and personally I am convinced that discrimination occurs widely even if specific situations are hard to prove. It's not as bad as 1900 or 1950, but it's still a very serious problem -- I can just talk about it, but it's a very real problem for those who live it every day, with every job they apply to, with every social situation, every store they walk into, etc. etc.
Also, anecdotally, many white people I know privately repeat the old racial and gender stereotypes (and I don't seek out that crowd).
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> If you were in a situation where you were randomly accused for something as serious as racism, you'd probably want your accuser to provide a good argument for it too.
Most importantly, I think being racist is the human condition. We all do it, me too. It's in our nature to be tribal and to dehumanize others. It's like being accused of being a sinner or having bugs in your code (not to trivialize racism): Of course I do; the question, is what do I do about it.
Awareness is the key I think, and many who study the issue say the same. Few want to discriminate, it's just that we're all naturally blind to it. That tribal instinct has a very unfortunate coincidence of properties: We are naturally a little blind, and it is the cause of the worst of what humanity does to itself: Generations of oppression for women, black teens getting shot, wars of genocide, reckless invasions of other countries, etc. etc.
There is no point being articulated at all in the above comment. It's an vague insinuation meant to derail. Please don't prop up his shitposting just because you think you might agree with something he might have meant.
If you're not here to tell us that (e.g.) you think Bill Gates is racist because of the books he read this year then what do you really even have to say? White guilt platitudes? Come on. That's not a conversation, that's an insult.
If you (et alia) actually believe it's an important issue, then you would actually be selective about when the subject is broached, so that actual intelligent conversations between willing and engaged participants could actually happen. Injecting "awareness" at every opportunity just debases the whole topic and turns into a sick game of making appearances and gestures. Nobody wants to talk about the supposedly important subject because everybody's tired of getting yelled at by the deafly intolerant and inflexible blowhards that keep bringing it up.
I would be much happier if HN would kill any comments that are not civil, no matter what else is in them. This kind of comment significantly reduces the value of HN; imagine the quality if they were all removed.