What are the best unknown books you read?
¹ https://twitter.com/tommycollison/status/1215008546657423361
² https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-its-systemic-phenomenological...
What are the best unknown books you read?
¹ https://twitter.com/tommycollison/status/1215008546657423361
² https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-its-systemic-phenomenological...
169 comments
The basic gist of the book goes something like this: in the real world (especially in a business setting) there are many things which are hard to measure directly, but which we may care about. Take, for example, "employee morale" which matters because it may affect, say, retention, or product quality. Hubbard suggests that we can measure (many|most|all|??) of these things by using a combination of "calibrated probability assessments"[2], awareness of nth order effects, and Monte Carlo simulation.
Basically, "if something matters, it's because it affects something that can be measured". So you identify the causal chain from "thing" to "measurable thing", have people who are trained in "calibrated probability assessment" estimate the weights of the effects in the causal chain, then build a mathematical model, and use a Monte Carlo simulation to work out how inputs to the system affect the outputs.
Of course it's not perfect, since estimation is always touchy, even using the calibration stuff. And you could still commit an error like leaving an important variable out of the model completely, or sampling from the wrong distribution when doing your simulation. But generally speaking, done with care, this is a way to measure the "unmeasurable" with a level of rigor that's better than just flat out guessing, or ignoring the issue altogether.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Busi...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibrated_probability_assessm...
Well, you need to hire some statistical experts, who model everything and than give you an estimate and if they got the callibration right, the result might be even close to reality.
Definitely easier than the other solution. Like talk to your employees once in a while and have a culture where they are not afraid to speak up if something is bothering them.
Ah no, too complicated. Back to math. That works better when dealing with those irrational emotional humans.
Humans are more than a number ... but when you are at a desk remote and only have numbers, than you are disconnected and it is much easier to make inhuman decisions as you are dealing with numbers and not humans anymore.
So that being said, yes, having the numbers additional that signal a decline in morale for example, is probably not a bad thing to have. If this does not replace actual human contact, because human moral also drops, when they not feel treated as humans anymore and just as numbers.
Agreed. And this is true of every tool... it has a place, and when used properly it can be of benefit. But it can also be misused in a way that is harmful or destructive.
That said:
"All models are wrong, but some are useful"
weak comment pal.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
embarrasingly, I can't seem to figure out how to edit a comment so leaving this here:
OP: I am sorry for harshing ya. I shouldn't be so dang cranky. cheers.
* Edit: I guess I waited too long and the edit button is gone now.
The writing style makes it hard to read (almost like an academic research paper) it's tough to keep urself interested. However the learnings are substantial too.
You're likely thinking of a correlated number, the measurement number must be a causative. Direct improvements on any causative number will by definition affect the outcome.
Say we're looking at developer retention. A correlated number is like scrum points. A causative number is like salary.
Of course, while the data on the causative and correlative effectiveness of both metrics is dispute-able... you still get my point.
Post apocalyptic novel written in a made up language (think Clockwork Orange).
Poetic and deeply moving account of a boy's journey through a world where scientific knowledge has devolved to primitive ritual and incantation; and his dawning realisation that we lost everything.
I've never read anything else like it.
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddley_Walker
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776573.Riddley_Walker
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Feersum-Endjinn-Novel-Iain-Banks/dp/0...
Phonetically styled narrative from characters pops up in several Banks novels. I’d argue the The Barbarian’s Scottish dialect in The Bridge was a precursor to Bascule.
There are also smattering’s of fun phonetic speech in the first few Culture novels. Most memorably from Fwi-song the prophet of the Eaters cult.
I had the feeling with Feersum Endjinn Banks decided to go ‘all in’ on the fun phonetics.
In the early 90s I went to a Banks reading (possibly Crow Road or The State of The Art) in Sheffield and during the Q&A he talked with great animation and detail about his new as yet untitled novel, which a few years later turned out to be Feersum Endjinn.
Sorely miss him.
I'd certainly agree with you there. He's variously introduced his readers to Scots, the Doric and the vernacular in his books over many years. Feersum Endjinn was a fun read, especially for me as a Scot who has an interest in the Scots language.
> Sorely miss him.
I do too. I'd met him at various times over the length of his career. Always a bloody nice guy and always self deprecating in a way you knew was very genuine. I always relished him taking the mickey out of his famous neighbour in North Queensferry, Gordon Brown, every now and again.
But I wonder if this type of "puzzle box" interface to a plot line actually produces a false catharsis that makes what is otherwise a crappy plot seem a lot better than it actually is...
I'd rather have a story be narrated in utter clarity and be enamored with it rather then be given a puzzle and have to piece together the plot only to have my bias for the story be affected by the catharsis of solving the puzzles. Maybe the puzzles themselves are what make the story worthwhile.
Either way, I'm interested in the given opinions and opinions on this story despite the "puzzles." If Riddley or Gene Wolfe laid out their stories with crystal clarity, how good would it be?
Common to all story-driven narratives is that the writer purposefully hides information. The author knows everything, and knows how the story will end; the characters don't. This creates suspense. That doesn't make the book a "puzzle".
Further, the choice of "dialect" has nothing to do with puzzles. Rather, it imbues the narrative with character. There's nothing in Bascule's particular language that obscures the plot. His first-person perspective certainly does, but that's because the character's understanding is more limited than the reader's. Bascule's odd and uneducated (and possibly dyslexic) choice of spelling reflects his young and carefree personality, but it also causes the reader to underestimate him at first; Bascule comes across as a simpleton, which he isn't. Feersum Endjinn is otherwise a pretty straightforward sci-fi novel.
Ultimately, good novels aren't about plot, they're about stories and how they're told. Take away that, and you're left with just plot.
As an aside, Wolfe is on another level entirely. He absolutely wrapped his stories in puzzles, and in his case the puzzle and the story are two sides of the same coin and completely inseparable. To decipher the puzzle is to understand the story. In The Fifth Head of Cerberus, for example, it's at times unclear exactly who is narrating the story.
Basically any book that has to have the reader do extra work to solve a puzzle is using the catharsis of solving the puzzle as an illusory element that affects your bias towards the book.
If the author chooses to hide information then reveals it explicitly at a later time for the effect of suspense this to me is still a story presented with utmost clarity.
From your statements it seems as if Riddley is not exactly that type of "puzzle" book.
On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.
He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly.
He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then.
Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, "Your tern now my tern later."
Edit: Oh my word! He wrote the text of the children's book "Bread and Jam for Frances" (and, I now learn, a whole series of others with the same character). That's a lovely bit of writing. I had no idea.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/05/featuresreview...
[0] http://paulkingsnorth.net/books/the-wake/
I've read it twice and I'd read it again. Many years ago there was a dramatisation of it at the Edinburgh Festival, very powerful.
One bit that sticks in my memory is when Riddley stumbles on the overgrown ruins of what must be the M25 motorway that encircled London. And he cries: "O what we ben wonce! And what we come to now!"
My ELI5 version is... Imagine data of the form Alice > Bob (Alice beat Bob in one match). Because many matches take place, the data can be contradictory, like Alice > Bob and Alice < Bob. (Alice won the first match, but Bob won the second match).
There can be loops, like Alice > Bob > Carole > Alice.
In the face of these apparent contradictions, how do you linearize the data, or in ELI5 terms... How do you assign a score to each player?
ELO is probably the most popular methodology, but there are many kinds of linearization strategies, Bradley Terry for example is another one that ELO was in fact based upon.
The math is very well formed, and is likely a secret weapon for fantasy sports players. But it doesn't seem like many people know about this form of math at all.
Eduardo: I'm here for you
Mark: No, I need the algorithm you use to rank chess players
The H.A. David one first published 1969, second edition 1988? Or a different one?
I guess I read the 2nd edition. 1988 sounds like a familiar copyright date.
I read this book as a kid, it changed how I view the world and I've never forgotten it's lessons. It shows how the ad world is working hard to persuade you. It convinced me to always question what are represented as facts by ads or the media. A healthy skepticism has served me very well.
Most people never deeply question and Packard is correct that there's an entire industry trying to persuade you. Not just what product to buy but which college to attend or which company to work for and yes even which political candidate to vote. Those very same hidden persuaders, some of the brightest minds in the world, are working on the web still trying to persuade you to click.
The closest way to bring it to HN world is PG's famous essay The Submarine that talks about recurring themes in the media such as 'suits are coming back'. The public relation professionals planting those stories are also hidden persuaders.
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I wonder about suits... weddings, funerals, in court... or employees in thankless jobs (car sales and fry's electronics)
It also talks a lot about very early Internet history, and gives the history of many things which I have not seen others reference, like Lee Felsenstein and Community Memory.
I suspect the book might not be well-known because its author, Jacques Vallée, it mostly known for being a ufologist. I did not know this until after I read the book, though, and the book itself does not contain any references to UFOs. I can wholeheartedly recommend the book, and it’s free to read online!¹
Later books in the same vein like Hackers and Dealers of Lightning are more well-known and seem to be appreciated by many, but this book seems to have been overlooked by most people.
1. https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC&pg=PS1
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
I remember a book he wrote, something about "Magonia". Not sure he considered UFOs "real" but more of a collective psyche phenomenon. Actually he collected a lot of ancient stories from previous centuries: fairy tales, Mother Mary visions, strange happenings of 1800s and befor 1950... it was very entertaining.
I mean it's a nice way to look at things that makes me curious of the other book.
Secondly, this being the case, those widespread, long-running physical manifestations indicate something more subtle than mere UFO visits that only began during recent history.
Ergo, we're looking at something external, at least partially physical and because it has affected our belief systems and legends, and thus quite possibly a sort of control system. (This last one is a bit more of a leap but the first two main arguments are covered fairly well in his books).
Like Keel, Vallee gets attacked by people who don't read him on two sides: by the people who are quite sure that UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors, and by the people who are equally quite sure that UFOs are the lies of con artists and the delusions of madmen. Neither explanation holds up to serious scrutiny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Compute...
But yeah, I guess it came out 2 years later.
You’re right, I misremembered; there’s nothing about Lee Felsenstein or Community Memory in The Network Revolution. The story about Doug Engelbart is definitely in there, though.
"Be careful what you measure"
From the Preface:
Many of the scientific treatises of today are formulated in a half-mystical language, as though to impress the reader with the uncomfortable feeling that he is in the permanent presence of a superman. The present book is conceived in a humble spirit and is written for humble people.
From Chapter 8:
Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. -- EXODUS III, 5
We have done considerable mountain climbing. Now we are in the rarefied atmosphere of theories of excessive beauty and we are nearing a high plateau on which geometry, optics, mechanics, and wave mechanics meet on common ground. Only concentrated thinking, and a considerable amount of recreation, will reveal the full beauty of our subject in which the last word has not yet been spoken.
This book was also on Gerald Jay Sussman's must-read list of books [1]. Another great book of his is "Linear Differential Operators" -- if you've ever wanted an intuitive explanation for why d/dx is not Hermitian but d^2/dx^2 is, this is the book you need to read. A quote from the book that resonated with me when I first read it:
Since the days of antiquity it has been the privilege of the mathematician to engrave his conclusions, expressed in a rarefied and esoteric language, upon the rocks of eternity. While this method is excellent for the codification of mathematical results, it is not so acceptable to the many addicts of mathematics, for whom the science of mathematics is not a logical game, but the language in which the physical universe speaks to us, and whose mastery is inevitable for the comprehension of natural phenomena.
[1]: http://aurellem.org/thoughts/html/sussman-reading-list.html
> “I wish HN had some other way of stylizing quotes.”
Me too, also simple ordered lists and ```inline code```.
Excerpt, brief review, and link to PDF of the full book here on Derek Lowe's excellent blog In the Pipeline:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/05/27/ma...
It attempts to codify how we should go about measuring and evaluating the somewhat fuzzy concept of "intelligence." He proposes an extension of his "Anytime Intelligence Test" which could be used to test animal and machine intelligence on a level playing field.
Measurement of task capability against a baseline is the most overlooked problem in AI and as far as I am aware Hernandez-Orallo is the only one focusing on it.
Notice that all of the major "breakthrough" moments in AI over the last half century had a human baseline that an AI was competing against. Those baselines were ones that had been already developed over years (sometimes a century) and were part of competitive games already. Go, Chess, DOTA etc... had leaderboards or international rankings.
For fuzzier things like driving, translation, strategy, trading etc... there is no generally accepted and measurable baseline test for what is considered human level, only proxies and unit specific tests. So we continue to not know when an AI system is measurably at or exceeding human level. Without this we can't definitively know how much progress we're making on Human Level Intelligence.
[1]https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/measure-of-all-minds/DC...
He's an early 1800s French Catholic monk and is possibly the greatest travel writer of all time. Not only is the trip amazing, but the way he writes about it? Incredible.
In the sequel, the Chinese empire summons him to stand trial for being a Christian, since it was mostly illegal to be so in the empire at the time. It, too, is amazing.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32747/32747-h/32747-h.htm
The cover itself is worth the price of the book - https://www.amazon.com/Story-Mongols-Whom-Call-Tartars/dp/08...
There's something... special, about finding these in old printings. I found the sequel to the one I linked at, of all places, a flea market in Temple Bar in Dublin, as a circa 1850s print. As in the book itself was over a century old!
I look forward to finding a printing of yours that's nice and old, too!
Trollope isn't as well known as Dickens or Austen. I think the emotional intelligence of this book makes up for the fact that nothing much happens.
There's a vicar who is old friends with the Bishop. He's made Warden of an Almshouse for old men in the community. The amount of money he's going to get to do basically nothing is embarrassingly large.
It's an extremely gentle book about controversy, conspiracy, and people taking a moral stand.
It got me hooked on Trollope. His other books are far more intricate, worldly, and entertaining. But I like this short novel very much.
Could you through in a few more names please? Would be interested to check what I’ve been missing. Thanks!
I read Dr. Thorne probably twenty years ago, and liked it OK. I recently found, and have been completely blown away by, the Timothy West recordings of Trollope on Audible. They are hands down the most consistently enjoyable audiobooks I've ever come across (and I've been listening to audiobooks since the 90s). West's readings add so much to the experience. I really cannot recommend them strongly enough.
[1]: http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/articles/FRANKFURTER_ALLGEM...
[2]: http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/books.html
"The History and Social Influence of the Potato" is a pretty good time.
"Politics of Qat: The Role of a Drug in Ruling Yemen" may sound way too niche, but it's fascinating as a study of transportation in a drug economy. Qat is a perishable leaf (like salad) and the politics of the entire region depend on who can more reliably deliver it to gunmen.
In general Pollan references a lot of great work in all of his books. If anyone wants to find some stuff to read his books are a good first stop.
https://www.amazon.com/Cloudspotters-Guide-Science-History-C...
I found this book in the Best Books of the Year 2006 round-up by The Economist: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2006/12/07/fighting...
Book review: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2006/05/25/radiantl...
Website: https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/
A book I am very fond of that I don't think is widely known (though it's not in the same league as your suggestion) is "Resisting the Virtual Life", a 1995 collection of essays on the theme of cyber-wariness published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights imprint - more often associated with poetry.
Also very obscure for a long time, though easily bought now: Mervyn Peake's self-illustrated children's book "Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor". From the author of Gormenghast, but frankly much better. Highly recommended.
The book is a thorough explanation of western harmony in its very basic aspects, from first principles. It also includes criticism of other, more famous music theory books, which is very interesting. One thing I love about it is how every theoretical concept comes first from what is perceived (hence "phenomenological"). A brief example of that is how some chords, which look like dominant chords if you look only on their notes, are sometime subdominant chords, because of the context in which they are played.
Some quotes:
On the approach of the book: "The conventional analytic approach as taught in academies is based primarily upon the depiction of the WRITTEN content of a composition by means of symbols and concepts inherent to the accepted analytic code. This analysis however, which describes mainly what is SEEN, does not always succeed in describing what is HEARD - the perceptual musical essence"
His definition of tonality which I loved so much that I had to memorise it: "Tonality constitutes the organisation of a given number of tones in a manner which creates among them differences of kinetic potential."
https://www.amazon.com/Semiology-Graphics-Diagrams-Networks-...
https://medium.com/@karlsluis/before-tufte-there-was-bertin-...
Interestingly another relatively unknown book I like (and bought/read 20 years ago) is also about harmony:
https://www.amazon.com/Harmonic-Experience-Harmony-Natural-E...
I would say there's two kinds of harmony: harmony in equal temperament, and "alternative" harmonies based on physics, and this is about the latter. I can't tell from the link what the other harmony book is about. What's good about it?
As far as computer books, I've read a lot of recommendations here over the years like "thinking forth", "Computer Lib" by Ted Nelson, etc. They are well known to some audiences but not others.
----
I also enjoy reading what people though the computing future would be like. I have "Superdistribution" by Brad Cox:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833331
And "Mirror Worlds" by Gelertner:
https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Worlds-Software-Universe-Shoeb...
I'm pretty sure Gelertner claims that the Facebook feed is identical to his "life streams". I guess taken literally it's hard not to see the current Internet as a "mirror world" that's becoming the real world.
Unfortunately GGIP is expensive so I would try to find it at your local library. (French copies are online).
As for a Sadai's book: it is an extremely thorough book about western harmony from first principles. It treats what is perceived - what we hear - as the anchor, and not what we see when we analyse the notes on paper. A good example of that is how we decide to give names to chords. We tend to name chords based on the notes in them, but this can sometime lead to misunderstandings because the context and how those notes are spread through the chord are also very important. Basics like which note is in the bass is taken into consideration, but otherwise these factors are often ignored. Sadai shows many examples for that throughout the book - as well as such "Mistakes" in other famous books. A quote from the book about the approach taken: "The conventional analytic approach as taught in academies is based primarily upon the depiction of the WRITTEN content of a composition by means of symbols and concepts inherent to the accepted analytic code. This analysis however, which describes mainly what is SEEN, does not always succeed in describing what is HEARD - the perceptual musical essence".
This prompts me to propose (although it's not obscure) "Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea" by John Haugeland. It's an AI textbook that is extremely readable and inviting - the best I've seen as a purely readable text, though probably far too basic for most readers here - but that is entirely drawn from the realm of "good old-fashioned AI", i.e. things like logic systems that have very little in common with what is understood as practical AI nowadays. Combine the readability of the book with the apparent hopelessness of its premise, and you have a perfectly nostalgic experience.
Jacques Ellul, Propaganda https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512
Thomas Ligotti The Conspiracy Against The Human Race https://archive.org/details/TheConspiracyAgainstTheHumanRace
and anything written by Peter Wessel Zapffe (an introduction to his work https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah)
I found it to be a very interesting and deep take on the philosophical and historical origins of many contemporary political currents.
The Road to Serfdom, by F. Hayek, a liberal economist.
I found it very well written, amusing and even hilarious in how even in the 1940's supporters of communism and progressives where making the same kind of arguments that are made today. Hayek needless to say, deals brilliantly with these. As relevant today as when written. I find its ideas resonate a lot when thinking about how systems of all kind come to be and function.
The writing style was terrible, as every third sentence seems to close with something like "and this inevitably leads to socialism and serfdom, and eliminates freedom". Only a dozen or so pages in and I was thoroughly sick of this device, as it's becoming clear that's his main and just about only argument -- extreme repetition.
It's a short article padded to a book length rant that anything less than total laissez-faire market libertarianism leads to slavery, serfdom, social democracy, socialism, nazism or communism (He appears to understand no difference between any of these). That any tiny government plan, regulation or service must lead to totalitarianism and blackshirts.
So my memory is also of finding it hilarious, I suspect for very different reasons. I also remember being left completely baffled as to why it ever got to be popular. :)
MP's The Tacit Dimension (1966, ~120pp) is a good introduction to his ideas about "Tacit knowledge", i.e. 'we can know more than we can tell', e.g. facial recognition. , A quick and enjoyable read that might appeal to many in this crowd.
Akin to Hadamard's Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field.
If you've got time, MP's earlier Personal Knowledge (1958, ~400pp) might be a worthwhile deeper-dive. I recall that his style reminded me of Lewis Thomas.
This is a textbook for behavior change course, but it is 100% practical (project to pass subject is to change some kind of behavior)
Only tested information Science-based. This book can change your life but you wont find it mentioned anywhere
Travels - Michael Crichton - a number of useful life lessons I'm only just catching up on
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travels-Vintage-Departures-Michael-...
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ragged-Trousered-Philanthropists-Wo...
Ishmael https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ishmael-Novel-Book-1-ebook/dp/B000S...
Another thought, Robert Heinlein doesn't seem well known in the UK these days but I think he might be better thought of in the UK although may be considered dated and sexist. I often see him quoted on here.
1. Medical School
2. World travel
3. Inner travel
The medical school part has some interesting perspective on careers/development and life goals. The world travel deals quite a bit on relationships. The inner travels part challenges a few preconceptions. I first read it about 20yrs ago and I've re-read it a few times which is unusual for me.
Propaganda and Information Warfare in the Twenty-First Century by Scot MacDonald, it's purely academic but also a fantastic read. Also academic is Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles, and Memoirs by George Marcus, also obscure but at least easier to find.
The 60s-80s books from City Lights are nice when you come across them. Pretty rare though.
The "Aquarium" of the title is the nickname given to GRU headquarters in Moscow by those who work there. "What sort of fish are there swimming there?" asks Suvorov of his boss when he learns about it. "There's only one kind there—piranhas." ─ Wikipedia.
Book: https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovAquariumTheCareerAn...
My "best unknown" in the espionage topic would be Gordon Winter's Inside BOSS[1] which tells of the author's stint in the employ of South African intelligence during the apartheid era.
Sample passage:
> I asked [Intel chief] H. J. van den Bergh how on earth British intelligence could obtain all the names of people who voted Communist in British elections. Surely the vote was secret. H J laughed and said any voter attending a polling station automatically had his name checked on the voters’ roll, which naturally gave his residential address. And when he voted he was given a numbered counterfoil. His voters’ roll number was written on the counterfoil stub which bore the same number.
> ‘It is therefore possible for the voting slip to be related to the counterfoil stub, which then gives the man’s number on the voters’ roll,’ explained Van Den Bergh.
> ‘But all the voting slips are locked in big black metal boxes and locked away after the elections, so how do British intelligence get to them?’
> H. J. van den Bergh shook his head sadly as if he was sorry I was such a simpleton.
> ‘That’s the answer the British authorities will always give if anyone claims that ballot papers are secretly scrutinized. But let me ask you some very simple questions. First, you agree that the voting slips are placed in boxes and then filed away in some official building somewhere?’
> ‘Yes,’ I answered.
> ‘And presumably those boxes are placed in a room?’
> ‘Yes.’
> ‘Does that room have a door?’
> ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
> ‘Does the door have a lock?’
> ‘I should imagine so.’
> ‘Is there a key to that lock?’
> ‘Yes, there must be.’
> ‘Then,’ said H. J. van den Bergh triumphantly, ‘somebody must look after the key.’
> Only then did I realize what he was getting at.
1: https://archive.org/details/INSIDEBOSS/page/n5
Some of his other works are also worth reading:
'Inside the Soviet Army': http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/index.html
One excerpt:
> The winter of 1969 was an exceptionally bitter one in the Soviet Far East. When the first clashes with the Chinese took place on the river Ussuri, and before combat divisions reached the area, the pressure exerted by the enemy was borne by the KGB frontier troops. After the clash was over, the General Staff held a careful investigation into all the mistakes and oversights which had occurred. It was quickly discovered that several KGB soldiers had frozen to death in the snow, simply because they had never received elementary instruction in sleeping out in temperatures below zero.
> This was alarming news. A commission from the General Staff immediately carried out experiments with three divisions, chosen at random, and came to a depressing conclusion. Wartime experience had been irrevocably lost and the modern Soviet soldier had not been taught how he could sleep in the snow. Naturally he was not allowed a sleeping bag and of course he was forbidden to light a fire. Normally a soldier would spend nights when the temperature was below freezing-point in his vehicle. But what was he to do if the vehicle was put out of action?
> The chiefs of staff of all divisions were immediately summoned to Moscow. They were given a day's instruction in the technique of sleeping out in snow at freezing temperatures, using only a greatcoat. Then each of them was required to convince himself that this was possible, by sleeping in the snow for three nights. (It should be remembered that March in Solnechnogorsk, near Moscow, is a hard month, with snow on the ground and temperatures below zero.) Then the chiefs of staff returned to their divisions and immediately the entire Soviet Army was put to a very hard test-that of spending a night in the open in numbing cold and without any extra clothing. It seemed as if those who were stationed in deserts in the south were in luck. But no-they were sent by turns to either Siberia or the north to be put through the same tough training. Thereafter, spending a night in the snow became a part of all military training programmes.
'Inside Soviet Military Intelligence': http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/index.html About the GRU.
'Spetsnaz. The Story Behind the Soviet SAS': http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov6/index.html Excerpt talking about the importance of a spade:
> Every infantryman in the Soviet Army carries with him a small spade. When he is given the order to halt he immediately lies flat and starts to dig a hole in the ground beside him. In three minutes he will have dug a little trench 15 centimetres deep, in which he can lie stretched out flat, so that bullets can whistle harmlessly over his head. The earth he has dug out forms a breastwork in front and at the side to act as an additional cover. If a tank drives over such a trench the soldier has a 50% chance that it will do him no harm. At any moment the soldier may be ordered to advance again and, shouting at the top of his voice, will rush ahead. If he is not ordered to advance, he digs in deeper and deeper. At first his trench can be used for firing in the lying position. Later it becomes a trench from which to fire in the kneeling position, and later still, when it is 110 centimetres deep, it can be used for firing in the standing position. The earth that has been dug out protects the soldier from bullets and fragments. He makes an embrasure in this breastwork into which he positions the barrel of his gun. In the absence of any further commands he continues to work on his trench. He camouflages it. He starts to dig a trench to connect with his comrades to the left of him. He always digs from right to left, and in a few hours the unit has a trench linking all the riflemen's trenches together. The unit's trenches are linked with the trenches of other units. Dug-outs are built and communication trenches are added at the rear. The trenches are made deeper, covered over, camouflaged and reinforced. Then, suddenly, the order to advance comes again. The soldier emerges, shouting and swearing as loudly as he can.
> The infantryman uses the same spade for digging graves for his fallen comrades. If he doesn't have an axe to hand he uses the spade to chop his bread when it is frozen hard as granite. He uses it as a paddle as he floats across wide rivers on a telegraph pole under enemy fire. And when he gets the order to halt, he again builds his impregnable fortress around himself. He knows how to dig the earth efficiently. He builds his fortress exactly as it should be. The spade is not just an instrument for digging: it can also be used for measuring. It is 50 centimetres long. Two spade lengths are a metre. The blade is 15 centimetres wide and 18 centimetres long. With these measurements in mind the soldier can measure anything he wishes.
> The infantry spade does not have a folding handle, and this is a very important feature. It has to be a single monolithic object. All three of its edges are as sharp as a knife. It is painted with a green matt paint so as not to reflect the strong sunlight.
> The spade is not only a tool and a measure. It is also a guarantee of the steadfastness of the infantry in the most difficult situations. If the infantry have a few hours to dig themselves in, it could take years to get them out of their holes and trenches, whatever modern weapons are used against them.
It covers the physics, politics, motivation, cultural implications, and so much more. It's one of those books where being extremely long is a feature because it's unbelievably interesting. I highly recommend it.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691000466/th...
I read all his other books (those that were translated) after it.
> After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Yoshimura's nonfiction chronicle of three previous tsunamis on the coast of Sanriku, Sanriku Kaigan Otsunami received an influx of orders, requiring a reprint of 150,000 copies. Yoshimura's wife and author in her own right, Setsuko Tsumura donated the royalties from the book to the village of Tanohata, which was heavily impacted by the tsunami. Tanohata was a favorite place of Yoshimura's to visit and inspired him to begin research on the historical tsunamis of the area.
Thank you for the recommendation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Yoshimura
Abridged English translation:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100237.Monkey
In its book form this story is basically unknown in the English-speaking world despite being considered one of four literary classics in Asia. And the 70s TV show that was based on this story was very faithful to the source material, particularly the humour.
And a more recent (2010) remake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Cheng%27en_and_Journey_to_t...
I grew up watching this classic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)
I recommend not reading the introduction.
https://www.amazon.com/West-Night-Memoir-Beryl-Markham/dp/08...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Markham
I found it completely by accident, picking it up at random off the shelf in my university's library while procrastinating.
It raises some concerns that folks in this forum are probably interested in and could do something about. Things like forcing US companies doing business in China to transfer dual-use technologies, the lack of US suppliers for certain goods, like high tenacity polyester fiber, domestic production of PCBs, specialized glass for NVG systems, a shortage of software engineers, but also shortages in skilled trades, like welders.
The dominance of the Chinese in certain critical industries is also problematic. For example one manufacturer produces 70% of small drones, which then creates secondary attack surfaces, like lack of security on the drone’s link. Another is the Chinese takeover of solar panel manufacturing, which creates a potential energy security risk.
For those skeptical of any report from the current administration, I would refer you to Ash Carter’s Inside the Five-Sided Box (2) which raises many of the same issues.
(1) https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASS...
(2) https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Five-Sided-Box-Lifetime-Leader...
China has prowess in centralization and consolidation of their sub-supply chain - but that can be done in Thailand (Casio started making their $10-20 watches in Thailand since 2016, for e.g.), Vietnam, Indonesia, India, etc. Making cellphone cases by the millions is not adding any intellectual value in the society. These problems have been solved.
I am old enough to remember "Made in USA" was a real marketing asset. We've lost our shine, just watch the Apollo 11 documentary (2019), it is an eye-opener. We need a new leader in this country that can inspire men and women to be passionate again, dissolve political differences and behold the American spirit. It is still there.
On this – China's One Belt One Road initiative specifically targets many of these countries to come together into a consolidated economic alliance that includes trade routes and infrastructure subsidies plus a basket currency pegged to the GDP from the region.
That's clever for a number of reasons. One of them is that it captures the revenue from precisely these alternative manufacturing bases that could otherwise be competing with China.
It may or may not be successful depending on how aggressive China is or whether or not they keep up the same business practices and culture that make companies want to take manufacturing out of Shenzen in the first place.
There's a massive political opportunity for the US but I think there's a lack of strategy in the administration to seize it.
On the one hand not surprising that a War/Defense-Ministry funded documentary has this underlying premise of 'China is the enemy'. On the other hand we should really wonder: where the hell are we headed and how can we change this trajectory?
You can only be truly friends with people who share your principles and values. Not all of them, but most or many of them.
Isn't the whole point of the united states to be inclusive of all principles and values.
I think the whole rivalry from both sides is more because China is projected to surpass the US economically. The US wants to keep its dominance out of pride and China wants to dethrone it, also out of pride.
It's more of childish pride thing but at the same time both countries can potentially burn everything down if they act on the urge.
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
Rational decisions made by individual actors when measured in aggregate become irrational.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tragedy-of-t...
> The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons The man who wrote one of environmentalism’s most-cited essays was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamaphobe—plus his argument was wrong
Either way, his essay is largely cited in academia from political science to anthropology. A blog post illustrating some factual anomalies (which in turn can also be debatable) does not render the heart of his essay wrong.
It's good to know the background of the author of an essay, but it is bad form and borderline propaganda to use that to discount an insightful observation about the world as we know it.
People doing this need to be aware of that; I suspect many are not.
Being cited doesn't make anything true, so I'm not sure what that has to do with it being correct or not.
There does exist scholarly work disputing Hardin's conjecture. For example, the work of Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University.
"Ostrom received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her groundbreaking research demonstrating that ordinary people are capable of creating rules and institutions that allow for the sustainable and equitable management of shared resources. She shared the prize with Oliver Williamson, a University of California economist."
http://elinorostrom.indiana.edu/
Being cited lends more legitimacy to it being true. Think of it like a vote. One person cited it because he thinks it's true. A vote from academia is worth more than a vote from a popular science magazine.
>"Ostrom received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her groundbreaking research demonstrating that ordinary people are capable of creating rules and institutions that allow for the sustainable and equitable management of shared resources. She shared the prize with Oliver Williamson, a University of California economist."
I think you missed the point. No one is saying that humans can't change their behavior. The article is describing a phenomenon that happens when people act rationally in a certain context. Of course with higher level knowledge of higher level contexts like how shared commons can be destroyed with rational individualistic behavior people can change.
One of China's key assets is having one of the largest consumer markets in the world which means a lot of companies are willing to play ball and pander to their demands or beliefs because they otherwise believe they will be missing out on revenue, a race to the bottom.
Furthermore most Chinese industry is nationalized by proxy which makes much of the manufacturing and R&D practices suspect particularly when we're integrating with them. This is how we get tech-transfer problems, selective search engine censorship by American companies, and the Huawei controversy.
And neither is physical conflict gone entirely: we still play deterrence games and spy games and quick hyper-lethal games with other nations since the root causes of conflict don't really disappear.
I do hope we return to being #1, though that becomes less likely every day.
Quality in the west also has potential for strength because of greater devolution to the production floor.
But I do have a problem with saying 'west' vs 'east', everyone can learn from each other. I have problems with assumptions of superiority. Could framing it as a question of learning and leadership be better?
What do you mean?
> But I do have a problem with saying 'west' vs 'east', everyone can learn from each other. I have problems with assumptions of superiority. Could framing it as a question of learning and leadership be better?
I think it's better put through the frame of negotiation. That's typically how the boundaries of any exchange internationally are set up to be fair and, depending on the goodwill between parties and their negotiating style, are mutually beneficial or mutually non-harmful.
"East" and "West" are also drastic simplifications which I'm sure you're aware of, but you don't get the evidential fodder for analyzing negotiation structures. This includes motives, positions, interests and personal players.
Like for example if I said "Eastern Europe versus Western Europe" I'd be conflating the interest of multiple countries and would be missing out on the history between Germany versus Russia (not a lot of goodwill), or Merkle versus Putin (maybe some goodwill due to her East German background?).
I personally would prefer the US over China but I'd also prefer NO hegemon, especially when that hegemon tends to abuse its power.
There's the question of whether this is structurally possible. IR theorists disagree on this issue although I favor the realist view which is that international conflict is more or less inevitable and having a central powerful mediator of conflict is necessary for peace.
Multi-polar worlds can be catastrophically unstable as they enforce no singular set of rules. A multi-polar world with a hegemonic focal point can (hopefully!) construct bounds on state behavior while still avoiding some of the evils from deigning to be unipolar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_stability_theory
US forpol has a lot of mistakes and flutters around too much per administration, but they are still uniquely positioned to act as a hegemon with at least some pretense of domestic freedom and mutually beneficial economic cooperation.
Is this the great fear of white Americans? That the Chinese would load a billion soldiers on an aircraft carrier and invade the shores of Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles? Does China even have an aircraft carrier that can cross the Pacific?
This must surely be the plot of a bad B movie, and starring Ben Affleck.
Hollowing out US institutions by replacing them with PRC puppets and shell corporations is just as worthwhile to defend against as any invasion would be.
If I remember correctly China doesn't even let you have dual citizenships. So a lot of people with connections to mainland are going to be in a position of personally deciding where their support goes even if they are born with US citizenships.
As far as wielding hard power goes, one example for China they've been testing the waters of wielding military power in territory that is typically controlled by US allies in the Spratley Islands to see how much they can get away with in occupying that location.
Since you asked.
"Blame Canada"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOR38552MJA
A fantastic and beautifully illustrated expository work describing symmetry groups such as the 17 wallpaper groups in the plane (think Escher), and other tiling groups in for example the hyperbolic plane. Love the use of orbifold notation as opposed to crystallographic notation.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Symmetries-Things-John-H-Conway/dp/15...
An even more obscure writer would be Christopher Evans and especially his novella "Chimeras". This is set in a medieval world in which some people have the Talent, an ability to create dazzling works of art out of thin air - just pure thought-stuff. An act of mental creation which appeals to the computer programmer in me.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Sweating-Bullets-Notes-Inventing-Powe...
In that sense it gave a (comparatively) rigorous argument for the nebulous eastern concept of "oneness". Using this foundation he then makes a logical argument (given his axiomatisation of emotion) for why we should be happy.
It's also the book that made me realise that, even if the jealous Abrahamic God exists, He is not moral. Because due to determinism every action can be traced back to the initial cause, so it doesn't make sense for Him who created the universe to punish or reward people for actions that were ultimately predictable consequences of the universe's creation, which if omniscient he should have foreseen. (And if some things are nondeterministic, this still applies, because somebody cannot gain moral responsibility through decreased determinism).
I don’t see it. Does he address the fact that dozens of other philosophers over the years have argued the opposite?
> ultimately predictable consequences of the universe's creation, which if omniscient he should have foreseen.
Isn’t this just free will? Is that the nondeterminism that the author is ignoring?
He creates an axiomatic foundation out of definitions that most philosophers of the time would have found reasonable (nowadays they're also reasonable, just takes a bit of work to get past the language choices he made, as mathematical logic didn't exist then so it's phrased in terms of geometric and theological language). He then uses this foundation to show that there's no objective measure for dividing individualness (what is me, what is not me) and responsibility (what was caused by me, what was not caused by me), essentially a proof that given the axioms no such measure can exist. Similar to how one might give a proof that e.g. there is no way to assign a Lebesgue measure to every subset of the real number line. Note this is just a very rough summary; his actual proof is long and dense.
>Isn’t this just free will?
Spinoza essentially shows that if free will is defined as "being 100% the cause of some action", then free will does not exist. Because any action we take, is determined by who we are at that moment, and who we are at that moment depends on actions we took in the past, and this causal chain can be traced backwards to who we were as a baby, when we could not make decisions.
Another way to look at it. If the universe was deterministic, and I had unlimited computing power and storage for simulation, then I could exactly predict someone's actions in life (assuming consistent laws of physics). If it was nondeterministic, then there are some things I couldn't predict, but these things would all be the product of chance, so how could they increase the degree to which any particularly individual is the cause of some action? They would just increase the degree to which randomness was the cause of some actions.
If we follow this recursion far backwards enough, we eventually get to the point where you were a baby, incapable of making your own decisions. This shows that any causal chain can ultimately be traced backwards to something outside "your" control. In which case, how can one sensibly assign responsibility to yourself?
Perhaps another abstract way to put it: Spinoza shows that God creating some kind of free will that made actions unpredictable to him is equivalent to the idea of God creating a rock so heavy that he himself cannot lift; it's incompatible with the idea of omnipotence. Undefined in the sense that the set of all sets that are not members of themselves is undefined.
Only a few hundred people have rated it on GoodReads, but if you wanted to trace a march of technological progress from swords to the Internet, it does a good job. There are definitely other stories you could tell about this accelerating sweep of technological change, but this one was a solid rapid overview and really stuck some ideas with me about how changes compound (or completely swerve to a new goal) over time.
The original tweet is more about how domain experts would rely on books nobody outside that domain has heard of, so maybe I should be thinking more about textbooks that stuck with me. Sources of Chinese Tradition, the Tractatus, and A Mathematical Theory of Computation all left pretty lasting influences in one way or another.
Sources of Japanese Tradition discusses the origins of Tendai Zen Buddhism, with some bits on Dogen, who once wrote something like, "If you want to achieve a certain thing, you must first become a certain person. After becoming a certain person, you no longer want that certain thing."
That's a pretty good tie in to Kessler's view of the last several hundred years of human progress. We were repeatedly solving some other problem, which once we had the tools to solve that, it became nearly irrelevant compared to what else we could do now.
I thought it was a great concept for a book, and the author has a unique viewpoint and knows his stuff, but it wasn't very well written. There seemed to be a lot of detail without defining terms, but it was also "breezy" and fast. Just my opinion.
But it kind came on this crest of technological advancement nonfiction, like Brilliant or Salt, and gets some of the key implications across in a fast and digestible way.
The books I liked with more consistently higher ratings tended to be much better known.
We could crowdsource the search for unknown greats of course. If you glance through GoodReads' highest rated books and filter down to the titles with the fewest ratings you get a mix of Austrian poetry (Rilke and Trakl), lectures by Feynman, and a volume of Love and Rockets.
That's honestly not a bad place to start...
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/24716.Highest_Rated_Book...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27208.The_Third_Policema...
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Electrons-Valence-Development-Theory-...
This is the article that introduced it to me; I don't know it counts as "unknown" if it has a Guardian story written about it.. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/aug/05/writ...
An off-kilter, hilarious, inventive, and cutting apocalyptic sci fi novel about pop music. Writing style is like Douglas Adams meets Tom Robbins, through the lens of Top 40 radio and tabloids.
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781733712569
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/07/20/thinking-thro... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unflattening https://www.amazon.com/Unflattening-Nick-Sousanis/dp/0674744...
Might be targeted at a teen audience, but I enjoyed it very much, as relaxing, clean, light fiction that makes the reader want to be a better person while they enjoy themselves. Very thoughtful and enjoyable, hard to put down. Shows a hard situation be resolved, from the perspective of the youths involved, and I thought it shows a lot of kind thoughtfulness over many years, by the author. (Some years ago I knew the author's husband.)
I read it in Spanish, and apparently it's not the easiest book to find in English, but if you do, it's definitely different.
https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=2493
At least for me it was worthy of bookmarking.
Deathworld by Harry Harrison. I've been waiting for some screenplay writer to stumble across this one, and if I had to guess James Cameron probably did, but just didn't tell anyone.
SLAN by A. E. van Vogt.
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz.
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, and Paratime by H. Beam Piper.
However the best of all, is maybe only slightly less know, since the author is certainly extremely well known: Tuf Voyaging by George R. R. Martin. An absolutely fantastic collection of stories about an ecological engineer.
Here's SLAN online its out of copyright now apparently https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article260
Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life (1960) by Dr Maxwell Maltz, MD.
A foundational work in the field of self-image and more generally self-growth. Sort of the missing link between Hill-Carnegie and Covey, it's the first of its kind to shatter the body/mind duality and show facts in hand the power of the whole. A positively enriching read, containing a few invaluable ideas.
If you're a Zen or Stoic like me, you'll find the traces of these roots in there, the lineage of ideas.
I did more research on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Banks_Rhine, and it's really quite fascinating that JB Rhine was doing parapyschology research at Harvard and Duke University.
Still, the book is great
> parapsychology research at Harvard and Duke
Takes us back a ways away, huh? Different world, but don't get too comfy in this one, things have a cyclic tendency IME. ;-)
I'll tell you this: I can see why they went there, Maxwell and Rhine and so many others. All of my research into such topics¹ shows that the mind-body connection and its manifestations (consciousness, "soul", etc) have always been such "hard problems" that they've always been met with supra- or para-normal solutions — whether in myths, in philosophies ancient and recent, in the generally benevolent groups (spiritual, friendly, etc). And it's still very much an open question, thus lending itself to beliefs.
I think there are also metaphors, images that were so good and are now so old that they became their own thing, and lost almost all connection to the things they described. "Magic" is a good example of that — the power of the word, and behind that knowledge. Magic as a concept is "old speak" (pre-recorded history) for power, very human and very real power.
I find it actually fascinating that we hold such beliefs about possible superpowers, I can't help but think this ability to image (imagine) more is what actually drives civilization at the lowest level.
[1]: I mean self-development/help/growth, philosophy in the pre-20th century common meaning of a "practice", "recipes for good living", not the "science" or study thereof we made it out later and to this day.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K4I391A
If you want to sample probably a different style and culture, I would highly recommend this book. This is a 2006 novel by a prolific African writer and is set in the late 1960s Biafran times in Nigeria. There is a lot in it and is richly written.
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18749.Half_of_a_Yellow_S...
* The Natural History of Nonsense by Bergan Evans
* Programming on Purpose, Essays on Software Design by P. J. Plauger
* Management: A Political Activity by Ted Stephenson
* The Energy of Life: The Science of What Makes Our Minds and Bodies Work by Guy Brown
* Patterns for Time-Triggered Embedded Systems: Building Reliable Applications with the 8051 Family of Microcontrollers by Michael Pont.
* UNIX Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric Multiprocessing and Caching for Kernel Programmers by Curt Schimmel.
* Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi) by Francesco Guicciardini
There are a bunch more i have to root around for :-)
An eerie look into the future from before the age of computers. The number of things about our lives now he got essentially right in 1969 is frankly stunning. Twelve interwoven short stories explore various residents in the Honeydew Condomiminium: how a computer managed network of telephone based services has affected their daily lives in sometimes nefarious ways. The novella's availability is limited in English, but there's a link to the Kindle store from the late author's webpage[1].
Non-Fiction: The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer
I think this book remains the most useful and concise guide to understanding mass movements and fanaticism I've ever read. It pairs nicely with Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Hoffer's book is more expository and cautionary where Alinsky's book is more enthusiastic and encouraging, while both books have a healthy dose of cynicism about mass movements themselves.
-----
[1]: https://shinichihoshi.com/voice_net.html
Everyone knows about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM). Lila is not as well known, but it's fun to read if you really enjoyed ZMM. https://www.amazon.com/Lila-Inquiry-Robert-M-Pirsig/dp/05532...
Mordecai Roshwald, Level 7
Alexander Dewdney, The Planiverse
Joseph Heller, God Knows
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams
Non-fiction:
Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man
Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts
C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image
Michael E. Brown, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads
Michael Harris, The Atomic Times
I may add guilty pleasures like the Legacy of the Force series, but I don't think this is what people here are looking for.
It's a first person narration of some Pleistocene hominid, somewhat educational but mostly just hilarious, in the sense of a Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett book.
I know 3 or 4 People who read it, they all loved it, but it's virtually unknown.
Accomplished its eponymous goal in a brief 110 pages, many of which are beautiful lithographic sketches.
“Reminisces of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefevre. Thinly veiled autobiography of Jesse Livermore, a 1920/30’s trader and his experiences, including foreseeing the crash of 1929.
1. Super Thinking - Lauren McCann and Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo)
2. Thinking Strategically - Avinash Dixit
A psychoactive book, science-based (YMMV).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/897536.Neurospeak
- - - -
Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"
Impossible to categorize, incredibly challenging. Gurdjieff was a genius on the level of Leonardo da Vinci, but where Leonardo studied the outer world, Gurdjieff studied the inner world. This three-volume tome is his effort to encode and transmit his particular school of thought.
Gurdjieff has had a deep and obscure influence on Western culture. For example, in the Monty Python's Flying Circus movie "The Meaning of Life" an abridged description of his philosophy is given in the boardroom scene about the meaning of life, right before Terry Jones asks, "What was that about hats?"
I agree he is brilliant but at the same level as the founder of the Scientology or other cult leaders who became awfully rich
Talking about a good book to read on cults / religion :
https://infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/three_impost...
The fake canary caper is assumed to be autobiographical, as is the brazen theft of the "IP" of the plaster statue-maker, but the time he almost initiated an orgy and then shook everyone down for donations was reported by a (sympathetic!) eye-witness. It's not included in "Beelzebub's Tales" at any rate.
You don't think L. Ron Hubbard is brilliant do you? I mean "Battlefield Earth" is pretty good (the book not the movie.) To me, comparing Hubbard to Gurdjieff is like comparing Nicholas Taleb to Isaac Newton.
This is a pretty strained argument. The much more likely scenario would have been Ponzi claiming that he had invented a cure for cancer and, given his history of gross fraudulent behaviour, would rightfully be ignored as a sensational claim being made by a known huckster.
But now I'm reading "the fourth way" by Peter Ouspensky, the most famous (if we don't count Joseph Stalin) of his students and find it awesome. Very rational, explaining everything in an exciting, easy to grok way. It feels like a book I would recommend to everyone.
In less time, I'd bet on Ouspensky's Tertium Organum or Fourth Way (or both in that order). Ousp. is more pragmatic/Western, and "self-remembering" can be a valuable exercise anywhere/when.
A brain reboot. If you're into design or a minimal lifestyle or want to be inspired before creating a new thing. Easy to read.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/White-Kenya-Hara/dp/3037781831
It's an NLP book unlike any other. It presents 12 (if I recall correctly) patterns of speech that are highly effective at changing people's perception of something. It's just super practical and really helped me out when I read it close to a decade ago. Never heard anyone else bring mention it.
-What Not by Rose MACAULAY (all caps just because I pasted it). It's a dystopian future book written during WW1. I've read that it's a inspiration for clockwork orange, 1984, and brave new world but much less well known. To be honest I find that it's the most relatable of all those dystopian books.
-The Story of B By Daniel Quinn (also My Ishmael and Ishmael but less well known then those). They represent a fundamentally different way of viewing the world we inhabit.
-The Foxes Of Harrow By Frank Yerby (Idk how well known it is though). This one is like those classic English lit books but focused on an enterprising Irish charlatan who goes down to New Orleans to build a life in the years leading up to the civil war.
Make sure you get one of the older editions with mind drills in it.
Keep in mind It isn't a programming book though and it really shouldn't be read as one.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt
Wherin the plague eliminates almost everyone in medieval Europe, thereby eliminating 'colonisation'.
Painting development of the world from there, up until around now. Showing to me how arbitrary much of the world as we know it is.
Not necessarily better, just like: 'Same shit, but different.'
(Even a little educational for real world history and geographic knowledge, because i've read it with maps and wikipedia open, and learned more of all the '*stans' that way.)
The book is BS. (I've read it.) There, I said it. It's always "this book is hugely thought provoking" (pointing at you Daniel Gross), and never ever and expansion on why or what insights it actually contains that's interesting. It has mildly interesting sentences that feels deep (mostly because they're confusing). The book has developed into some BS signalling device like Infinite Jest used to be. Everyone has read it, no one understands it. Everyone goes "oh yes, that's such a deep book, nothing has changed my mind like it since sapiens", and then we're all supposed to go silent to independently ponder it's many layered-ness, but in reality that's just what we do because we wouldn't come up anything remotely insightful if pushed into a corner. Frankly, the fact that this book is pushed so much makes me totally reconsider oft-repeated meme that "tech is low virtue signalling" (or low corruption). Clearly not.
(There, rant over. I'm overplaying how mad I actually am, I just feel like we need a few more rants against this book strewn about whenever this book is mentioned. Please, anyone, prove me wrong and a horrific narrow-minded dimwit by writing something more in-depth about what you think it contains and how it's insightful, I would love you infinitely.)
I suppose there are many ways to learn that, but, for me, it was this book. The lesson helped me a lot.
And it’s really short book so I don’t feel so guilty recommending it. Brothers Karamazov is amazing, but recommending it is like giving someone a job.
Does it changes abruptly after the second half? I'll probably never know.
Non-fiction
Story of a guy with a dream, screwed over by the government. His cousin storms the Canadian embassy in Beirut, demanding Eddy get his day in court. He does, and prevails.
Crazy story that occurred where I grew up, however it was before my time. I had driven past this "castle" a hundred times before I found this book. Every copy is signed by the author.
Here is a recent article detailing the story: https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/history/eddy-haymour-ratt...
It fundamentally changed the way I look at the world and helped me to get unstuck from some serious mental and emotional shortcomings.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/152640.Dropping_Ashes_on...
Paraphrasing what one reviewer said on GR, it's a good read if you are taking life too seriously, or, the complete opposite.
I didn't get it the first time I read it.
I do find myself going back to the riddles and the poems in the essays now and then when I feel I'm stuck, blocked, or trapped in a loop. It made me ... more humble?
Also a good read if you just want to learn more about Korean Buddhism and Kong-an's in general.
It means "public question" literally but is traditionally used in contexts of Buddhism
"And even when it was successfully completed, the peroxide would still decompose slowly; not enough to start a runaway chain reaction, but enough to build up an oxygen pressure in a sealed tank, and make packaging impossible. And it is a nerve-wracking experience to put your ear against a propellant tank and hear it go "glub" —long pause — "glub" and so on. After such an experience many people, myself (particularly) included, tended to look dubiously at peroxide and to pass it by on the other side."
The Manual by Cauty & Drummond. Funny, short, surprisingly insightful. A step-by-step method on making a #1 hit song. The authors had a #1 shortly before writing this book, and a few years afterwards. Can be found on archive.org.
The Snow Geese by William Fiennes....just for the sheer perfection of the prose.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book
Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? - Peter Termin, 1975
Termin is still going strong at MIT. His 1975 book was foundational for challenging Friedman on the cause of the Great Depression. Given what was to come in the 1980s this book quickly became overshadowed and destined for obscurity. However, it still provides an appropriate, timely lens to analyze monetary theory without the abstraction that has engrossed economics as of late.
The Supreme Court in the American System of Government - Robert Jackson, 1955
A series of lectures created for a Harvard lecture series in 1954-55 by Justice Jackson. He suddenly died before being able to deliver them, but they were compiled in a book now out of print. Justice Jackson is widely regarded - across the aisle - as one of the most brilliant legal writers of our time (or perhaps of any time). While this book doesn't set out his entire judicial philosophy, or even do what the title says due to his untimely death, it does lay a valuable conception of the proper role of the SCOTUS within the Republic. Also recommended, to see both his pen and intellect in action, are his opinions in Korematsu v. United States and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.
The Opium of the Intellectuals - Aron, 1955
Amazon does a better job of summarizing than I could off the top of my head, so here you go: "Raymond Aron's 1955 masterpiece The Opium of the Intellectuals, is one of the great works of twentieth- century political reflection. Aron shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of "secular religion" and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility of telling the truth about social and political reality-in all its mundane imperfections and tragic complexities."
An incredibly difficult read that is worth trying to get through. Brimming with ideas and not without its own pitfalls. Tells the story of 20th Century intellectual history and thought as well as any could, although in a rather indirect way.
The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Aristocracy & Caste in America) - Baltzell, 1987
I'll let Amazon summarize again: "This classic account of the traditional upper class in America traces its origins, lifestyles, and political and social attitudes from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to that of John F. Kennedy. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell describes the problems of exclusion and prejudice within the community of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (or WASPs, an acronym he coined) and predicts with amazing accuracy what will happen when this inbred group is forced to share privilege and power with talented members of minority groups."
My summary would be: what will happen (hypothetically, remember the date of publication) when an ephemeral class (WASPs) suddenly disappear from their previous pedestal of influence? Prescient, widely applicable to other countries with their own quasi-classes, and deeply interesting for those less familiar with the subject.
I've posted this repeatedly to these lists, but no one else is as enthused by it.
From the GoodReads page:
"Can the structures that animals build--from the humble burrows of earthworms to towering termite mounds to the Great Barrier Reef--be said to live? However counterintuitive the idea might first seem, physiological ecologist Scott Turner demonstrates in this book that many animals construct and use structures to harness and control the flow of energy from their environment to their own advantage."
He starts off with observations about well-educated, intelligent, capable people in possession of sophisticated technology starving or freezing to death when they were stranded in unfamiliar physical environments, in which other cultural groups could thrive.
If Turner thinks that your constructed habitat is part of your body, Henrich thinks that your culture is part of your intelligence, and for a wide range of purposes, the most important part.
The highest level stuff I've seen about this topic is the Gaia hypothesis. The creators of this theory managed to make it align with actual scientific theories but I think the very creation of this theory was caused by the same psychological trip up I described above. Yes life and ecosystem share an interesting isomorphism but again I repeat that the interesting part is really just a "linguistic" phenomenon.
We make up all words and yet don't seem to find every word interesting.
"which is basically just little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures."
I'm sure a lot of us would disagree with you downplaying how interesting most people find that topic. A lot . of things can pretty much be described as "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures".
If someone were to ask me "What's a computer?" I could technically respond with "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures" lol
This is because many words are made up with a concrete meaning. Many made up words with vague meanings inject a sort of false interest into things. "Spirituality" for example.
>If someone were to ask me "What's a computer?" I could technically respond with "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger macro structures" lol
I am not downplaying interest in the study of biology. I am downplaying the fact that you can call an ant colony or the planet earth a living organism. There is no real interest here as it is just a word.
The main difference between a computer and "life" is self replication and natural selection. The added feature of evolution and self replication promotes additional interest and it is not because of vague wording. The delineation between a computer and "life" is utterly clear in this case.
Where it may become unclear is if one day we create machines that self replicate. This may promote philosophical questions like "What is life?" My point is that, the philosophical question is just contemplating a linguistic phenomenon and is a pointless and delusional endeavor.
If you think it’s “obvious” that progressive taxes are better/worse than flat taxes this is an excellent look at the evidence which may make you less confident.
That probably says something interesting about the relationship of flat rate tax systems (as usually proposed) and progressive rate tax systems, although I'm not sure what.
[1] What I mean by "applied serially" is you take you income, and apply the first tax. Your income minus the tax amount becomes the income for the second tax, and so on.
[2] I say "flat rate" rather than simply "flat" because almost no one ever actually proposes a flat tax, which would be the same tax amount regardless of income.
[3] ...which makes it not really a flat rate, but rather a progressive tax with two brackets. I think that every serious "flat" tax proposal I've seen has been this way, so that's what I'm using.
It had so many implications, especially about the future emergence and dominance of the "market state" that I couldn't stop thinking about Neuromancer et al.
Another gem I have found myself rereading more than once, is Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart.
Book: https://web.archive.org/web/20151123024834/http://www.geenst...
A small cult is growing around a woman who claims that the world will end at a specific date and that some will be saved in a specific way. When the date comes and there's neither end of the world nor saving, how will the group react?
“The Science of The Artificial” by Herbert Simon, a multi-disciplinary treatise on the goals of design by practitioners in the physical sciences (physics, bio. etc), non-physical sciences (math, comp. sci, etc) and humanities (econs., psych., etc).
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn, coined the concept of paradigm shift and used it to revisit the history of science that was previously thought to be cumulative and linear.
I must have mentally parsed the “unknown” used by OP as “not widely known” (to the HN crowd), and if you look at a lot of the contributions, many of the authors are not exactly “unknown” either.
I read the original as looking for books that are good in subject X, but not well known in that subject area.
Available online: http://www.opalonline.org/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_Whiteley
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology...
This book literally changed my life and set it on a very different course a few years ago.
It builds upon the 8 circuit-brain model of Timothy Leary, to provide both a map (which is presented as such and not expounded so as to confuse it with the reality it describes), and a practice that is derived from classic, western-compliant core shamanism, as formulated by the anthropologist Michael Harner who created the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (FSS) in the 80's, practice which makes testable the framework presented in the book (so it remains quite pragmatic and not only theoretical), and provides the absolutely delightful properties of:
- not rejecting any part or aspect of reality as we know it, so that biology, emotions, the intellect, social life, sex, drugs, sports, science, religions, yoga, meditation, nutrition, arts, quantum probabilities etc. all have their place in this story;
- doesn't paint itself as THE ONE AND ONLY valid view of reality, but instead offers (and strongly recommend) to integrate and make your own life experiences first class citizens and to adapt the discourse according to them, thus completely reversing the usual pattern of those kind of "revelation" books;
- offers a very coherent and inclusive perspective on reality, borrowing concepts from the science of cybernetics to paint a picture of it in terms of feedback loops that develops a new approach of the mind and its harmony, relying on eight broadly defined "circuits" or "tracks" (like in a car engine) and their interactive and dynamic play to provide fulfillment and as the source to real life creativity...
It is not long but it is dense in content; there is no fluff, and I am fairly certain that any competent hacker (in the broadest sense) with an open mind will find a many very precious tools and ideas in it.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Shamanic-Path-Quantum-Consciousness-C... Official website: http://8circuits.org/ENGLISH/index_ENG.html
Quoting Wikipedia, this book describes the "intellectual divide" between the East and West, and the peculiar nature, according to him, of modern civilization." [1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Gu%C3%A9non
> LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
> SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
[1] http://thedevilsdictionary.com/
INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again.
and
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
Not exactly unknown but Bergson isn't as fashionable as he used to be and often derided for his belief in spiritualism and failure to understand Einstein's relativity.
Yet I've always found his core argument about duration and science (that science only measure discrete moments but never the full motion) has always fascinated me.
(1) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072KDDXC8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
In it he explains the emergence of genetic layers, provides a theory on the emergence of sex and lays out the best argument against gene editing to this date. After reading this book I consider all of the major questions of evolution answered.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3183562-ammi
I read this back in 2009 and remember it as a really interesting and important book especially with the troubling political climate in India over the last decade.
Fantastic historical fiction and the series is mind-blowing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GVFY6BM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
The book is a look at the way ingredients to everyday products are created. It's both entertaining and eye-opening.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2440
Not exactly unkown since it has its own wikipedia article but definitely worth reading, especially if you follow his journeys on Google maps.
https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Bets-Computers-Gambling-Ma...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flash-Grand-Voyage-Ldp-Litterature/...
For those wondering it's basically Pick-Up Artist (PUA) 'literature' for married men. Very sexist red-pill gender theory. A quick google around can confirm this.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2170455672
https://www.turingsquared.com
Of Captain Misson by Daniel Defoe (1728) -- about Libertatia
Drugs and Rights by Douglas N. Husak (1992)
Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World by David T. Courtwright (2002)
1. Grammatical Man, by Jeremy Campbell (1982)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man-information-e...
My introduction to information theory and its diverse set of interrelated applications and phenomena.
2. Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, by William Ophuls (1977)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s...
Distills the Limits to Growth issue to its essence, and looks at the political implications, with a set of estimates of political developments which have played out closely.
3. An Inquiry to the Nature and Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/inquiry-into-the-nature-and-c...
The best-known, but least-read, and most mis-read book on this list. Smith isn't perfect and has flaws. But his message is extraordinarily misunderstood and misrepresented. Even where he is wrong, he is instructive.
4. Commercialism and Journalism, by Hamilton Holt (1909)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/commercialism-and-journalism/...
A short but extraordinarily illuminating read on the influence of money and advertising on the press, coming near the beginning of the era of mass media.
5. Unix Power Tools, by Mike Loukides et al (1997)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-power-tools/oclc/2584502...
The book that really got me "over the hump" in understanding the Unix environment and tools. Now somewhat dated, though still highly useful.
6. A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright (2004)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/short-history-of-progress/ocl...
An exploration of the story, question, and future, of progress.
7. Entropy and the Economic Process, by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/entropy-law-and-the-economic-...
A re-thinking of economics taking thermodynamics into account. Famously difficult to read, but well worth the effort.
8. On the Damned Human Race, by Mark Twain (1962)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/mark-twain-on-the-damned-huma...
A darker, angrier, more bitter side of Twain, cracking open the sanitised version those familiar with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn will know, and giving an insight to the darker side of late 19th and early 20th century America.
9. Energy and Civilization, by Vaclav Smil (2017)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-and-civilization-a-his...
A re-casting of history, not according to spiritual or cultural progress, Great Men, or social dynamics, but the access to and utilisation of energy sources.
10. Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations, by Bernhard J. Stern (1937)
https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag...
A fascinating exploration of the organised opposition to numerous significant technological innovations through the ages, contrary to the conventional story told by mainstream economic and innovation models and stories. Stern's research assistant at the time he was working on this topic went on to become known as a science fiction author, and based one of his first works on this notion: Isaac Asimov.
On the question of compiling such lists: I've recently started keeping a research journal in which I'm trying to capture works of significance that I've read, vaguely inspired by both index-card methods (such as Zettelkasten or POIC) and bullet journals.
The organisation is "BOTI" -- best of the interval.
I will start a two-page spread, dated, of a specific class of entries -- works, videos, authors, ideas, etc. -- and when that closes, start another. Periodically (about every month, for now) I'll select the best of those works for a BOTM list, and at the end of a year, a BOTY list.
Or at least that's the idea.
This may address the question of keeping track of the most significant works (or authors, concepts, ideas, etc.) over time, which otherwise tend to become a bit of a jumble.
The BOTI list and periodic aggregations themselves resemble round-robin databases, or ring or circular buffers or files, though without actually rewriting each specific list. The initial capture levels remain accessible (in the journal) for revisiting, should something prove to have been more significant on subsequent reflection than initially appeared.
A collection of interviews with a hundred ordinary Chinese people in 1984
https://www.amazon.com/Maze-Bummer-Parody-Runner-ebook/dp/B0...
that's the kind of work i have in mind. simple and refreshing.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/819654.Comfort_Woman
From '89, somewhat dated now, but still interesting.
The results were unexpected!
> As soon as I began to study my perception, to look at my own experience, I found that there were different ways of perceiving and that the different ways provided me with different facts. There was a narrow focus which meant seeing life as if from blinkers and with the centre of awareness in my head; and there was a wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body, a way of looking which quite altered my perception of whatever I saw. And I found that the narrow focus way was the way of reason. If one was in the habit of arguing about life it was very difficult not to approach sensation with the same concentrated attention and so shut out its width and depth and height. But it was the wide focus way that made me happy.
The book is full of arresting and innovative insights on awareness and perception. For example, the spotlight analogy for "covert attention" is often attributed to Francis Crick writing in 1984[2], but fifty years earlier Milner writes:
> At any moment there exist in the fringes of my thought faint patternings which can be brought to distinction when I look at them. Like a policeman with a flash-light I can throw the bright circle of my awareness where I choose; if any shadow or movement in the dim outer circle of its rays arouses my suspicion, I can make it come into the circle of brightness and show itself for what it is. But the beam of my attention is not of fixed width, I can widen or narrow it as I choose.[3]
On the topic of first person recountings of mental journeys, but from the other side of the analyst's couch, it's also worth mentioning Operators and Things: The inner life of a schizophrenic[4] a powerful first person account of schizophrenic hallucination and ideation which comes across a little more like a novel than an objective account but is fascinating nonetheless.
1: https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/11/a-life-of-ones-own-...
2: e.g. "(The analogy was first suggested by Francis Crick, the geneticist.)" - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-cons...
3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ntg6OE7haSgC&pg=PA77
4: Online at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/13476 it seems - I read it in paperback in the 80s and only turned that site up with google just now, so ... but the PDF seems to work.
The book had a similar impact on myself & partner after we picked it up randomly from a clearance box in a used book store.
The idea that truly owning one's life, thoughts, behaviour and so on is a project to undertake - and not (as might be commonly assumed for successful healthy indiviuals) an effortlessly given state of affairs - seems remarkable for the time she was writing.
From that point of view, there's something singular about on the one hand her observations being utterly unburdened by psychological theory and on the other the scope of what she's attempting!
It explains the Ether (EPOLA, Electron-Positron Lattice) and states the many proofs for that, as well as explains many hitherto unexplained physics phenomena such as Mass Inertia, the speed of light c, Gravity and the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
You'd think the concept of "Ether" is debunked but after reading the book you'll be convinced it is real.
Eddie Rickenbacker's autobiography is a pretty good story, too - it's hard to believe one man could be so impactful in so many ways - he really had to fend off people who wanted him to be president, and there's little doubt he would have won if he'd run...
Awesome scifi book, it will blow your mind.
Mikhail Bulgakov
And unusual combination of start up story and Holocaust survivor story.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805241280/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_8V...
You Can’t Do Business With Hitler - contemporary analysis of the downfall of German economy before WWII.
Planiverse - think Flatland with a deeper plot and a computer interface.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)
Most people here may have scraped work on decision theory. But Hubbard turns the field into a coherent skillset. Otherwise you're just sitting around talking about decision models instead of using and practicing with them, for everyday living. This is what Hubbard gives you.
"Smart Choices" is a book which may be better known but complements FoDA nicely as an entry-level supplement.
Sounds interesting, but I couldn't find this in a quick preliminary search. Do you have a link handy? The only book titled "Foundations of Decision Analysis" I came across was by Howard and Abbas.
Also, not sure if this is related to the Hubbard you refer to or not, but there's a gentleman named Douglas Hubbard who has written some really excellent material in this area. I consider his book How To Measure Anything to be one of the best / most important books I've read, and it's one I recommend to pretty much everybody.
She comes up with an elegant social theory behind the nature of corruption.
We know on a certain level why people can be seduced by corruption, but she introduces a higher level concept that describes why entire civilizations can be corrupt.
The book is really short as her theory is quite elegantly explained in a short dialogue between intellectuals.
https://writersnoonereads.tumblr.com/
The best publishing house for this kind of work is Wakefield Press:
https://www.wakefieldpress.com/
Personal recommendations:
“The Tanners” by Robert Walser or “The Book of Monelle” by Marcel Schwob
My contribution:
Richard Dawkins called Julian Jaynes's 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, “either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius”
It's a science based look at human behaviour. It's not light reading but it's not a textbook either, it's in-between.
This book will remain unknown just by the virtue of it's weight - this is not 'how to feel better by meditating 10 minutes a day' pop psychology pamphlet, this will take some work to get through :)
Lecture I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA