Godel, Escher Bach. Douglas Hofstadter. Read it when I was seventeen,
understood very little, but was absolutely staggered by what little I did
understand. Godel's Incompleteness theorem changed my life view, if math could
not be 'perfect,' what could?
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 3:59 AM, Thaths wrote:
> Which book made *you*, dear Silk lister, change your mind? How?
Rudy Rucker's _Infinity and the Mind_.
1. It kicked off a lifelong fascination with the concept of infinity.
2. It provided an accessible introduction to Godel's Incompleteness
Theor
The most important book in my life was Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day In the Life
of Ivan Denisovich”, which I read in my teens. Because while I’ve always
read obsessively, all I read up till then was formulaic sci-fi, often
re-reading the same one over and over. It taught me that other kinds of
books
Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama by Daniel
Goleman
As a rationalist and skeptic, I had been extremely suspicious of "woo woo"
claims about meditation, but I was interested is Dan Goleman's research
into meditation and stress and I was intrigued by the "scientific di
I was happy to see The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind on the list in the Chronicle (although it's more than 30 years
old. Closer to 40, I think.) I remember reading it shortly after it came out,
and while some of its conclusions seemed a bit of a stretch, it was
