To Consume

Hand-picked list.

0000 Interdisciplinary Disciplines MOC

• B - Antifragile - Nassim Taleb

0001 Mind and Reality MOC

• C - Minds and Machines

Cognitive Science

general

• B - The Future of the Mind - Michio Kaku
• B - The Most Human Human - Brian Christian
• B - Algorithms to Live By - Brian Christian
• B - Radical Embodied Cognitive Science - Anthony Chemero

intro

• B - Mindware - Andy Clark

• B - The Mechanical Mind - Tim Crane

• B - The Mind’s New Science - Howard Gardner

• B - Metaphors We Live By - George Lakoff + Mark Johnson

• B - Behave - Robert Sapolsky

• B - The Trouble with Testosterone - Robert Sapolsky

• B - Seeing What Others Don’t - Gary Klein

• B - Beyond the Brain - Louise Barrett

• B - Phantoms in the Brain - VS Ramachandran

• B - The Tell-Tale Self - VS Ramachandran

• B - The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat - Oliver Sacks

lower-level

• B - Natural Born Cyborgs - Andy Clark

• B - Consciousness Explained - Daniel Dennett

• B - Human - Michael Gazzaniga

• B - How the Mind Works - Steven Pinker

• B - Cognitive Psychology - Michael Eysenck + Mark Keane

• B - The Stuff of Thought - Steven Pinker

mid-level

• B - Supersizing the Mind - Andy Clark

• B - Women, Fire and Dangerous Things - George Lakoff

• B - Artificial Intelligence Russell and Norvig

• B - Causal Models Sloman

consciousness

• B - Self Comes to Mind - Antonio Damasio
• B - Conversations on Consciousness - Susan Blackmore
• B - The Quest for Consciousness - Christof Koch
• B - Phi - Gulio Tononi

cog neuro

• B - Proust Was a Neuroscientist - Jonah Lehrer
• B - The Synaptic Self - Joseph LeDoux
• B - Brain Cuttings - Carl Zimmer
• B - Incognito - David Eagleman

decison-making, rationality

• B - The Enigma of Reason - Hugo Mercier + Dan Sperber
• B - How We Decide - Jonah Lehrer
• B - Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
• B - Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely

emotions

• B - The Feeling Brain - Elizabeth Johnston + Leah Olson
• B - Molecules Of Emotion - Candace Pert
• B - Descarte’s Error - Antonio Damasio
• B - Looking for Spinoza - Antonio Damasio

neuroplasticity

• B - Neuroplasticity - Moheb Costandi

Philosophy of Mind

• B - Philosophy of Mind - Jaegwon Kim

• B - The Conscious Mind - David Chalmers

• B - Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter

• B - The Embodied Mind - Francisco Varela + Evan Thompson + Eleanor Rosch

• B - Mind - John Searle

• B - On Intelligence - Jeff Hawkin

• B - The Mind’s I - Douglas Hofstadter + Daniel Dennett

• B - What’s It Like to Be a Bat - Thomas Nagel

• B - The Analysis of Mind - Bertrand Russell

• B - The Analysis of Matter - Bertrand Russell

• B - The Mystery of Consciousness - John Searle

• B - Rediscovering the Mind - John Searle

• B - Mind and Cosmos - Thomas Nagel

• B - Touching a Nerve - Patricia Churchland

• B - Tree of Knowledge - Francisco Varela + Humberto Maturana

• B - Mind in Life - Evan Thompson

• B - Waking, Dreaming, Being - Evan Thompson

• B - The Extended Mind - Andy Clark + David Chalmers

• B - Why Heideggerian AI Failed - Hubert Dreyfus

• B - Reasons and Persons - Derek Parfit

0100 Spirituality + Religion MOC

• Most of the Spiritual Books I’ve read over the years. Every book hits differently depending on where you’re at and will def hit different if you read it again after some time away. Hope it helps:) : Meditation

0101 Meditation MOC

• B - The Mind Illuminated - Culadasa

• B - A Path With Heart - Jack Kornfield

• B - With Each and Every Breath - Thanissaro Bhikkhu

• B - Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda

• B - Why Buddhism is True - Robert Wright

• B - Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond - Ajahn Brahm

• B - After the Ecstasy, the Laundry - Jack Kornfield

• B - Be Here Now - Ram Dass

• B - The End of Your World - Adyashanti

Advaita Vedanta (non-dual)

• B - Be As You Are - Ramana Maharshi
• and then: B - I Am That - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Mahasi (Vipassana)

• B - In This Very Life - Sayadaw U. Pandita

• B - Already Free - Bruce Tift

Nei-Gong etc
Damo Mitchell

Zen

• B - Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
• B - An Introduction to Zen Buddhism - D.T. Suzuki
• B - Shobogenzo - Dogen

0104 Buddhism MOC

• B - The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching - Thich Nhat Hanh
• B - What The Buddha Taught - Walpola Rahula

0200 Philosophy + Psychology MOC

Psychology

• B - Blueprint - Robert Plomin (about genes)

• B - The WEIRDest People in the World - Joseph Henrich (western people)

• B - Influence - Robert Cialdini

• B - Escape from Freedom - Erich Fromm

• B - The Art of Loving - Erich Fromm

Self-Therapy

• B - Self-Therapy - Jay Earley

• B - Cognitive Behavior Psychology - Judith Beck

• B - Feeling Good - David Burns

• B - The Upward Spiral - Alex Korb

• B - The Happiness Trap - Russ Harris

• B - The Power of Vulnerability - Brene Brown

Philosophy

Misc

• B - Rationality - Eliezer Yudkowsky

• B - Finite and Infinite Games - James Carse

• B - The Denial of Death - Ernest Becker

• B - On Bullshit - Harry Frankfurt

• B - The Courage to Be - Paul Tillich

• B - Morality and Beyond - Paul Tillich (great book on agape, rec’d by vervaeke)

• B - Practical Induction - Elijah Millgram

• B - Laws of Form - G. Spencer-Brown

• B - Labyrinths of Reason - William Poundstone

• B - The Unconscious as Infinite Sets - Ignacio Matte Blanco

• B - A Thousand Plateaus - Gilles Deleuze + Félix Guattari

Stoicism

• B - Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (Gregory Hays translation)
• B - Letters From a Stoic - Seneca

Magic + Occult

• B - Dark Star Rising - Gary Lachman
• B - Real Magic - Dean Radin

Ancient Chinese

• B - The Path - Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh

Classical West

• B - Thinking Being - Eric Perl

Phenomenology

• on people like husserl
• B - Introduction to Phenomenology - Robert Sokolowski
• B - Experimental Phenomenology - Don Ihde

Existentialism MOC

• C - Søren Kierkegaard - Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity

0300 Social Sciences MOC

• C - Foundations of Modern Social Theory - Iván Szelényi
• B - Intertwingled - Information Changes Everything - Peter Morville

Culture

• B - From Modernism to Postmodernism - An Anthology - Lawrence E. Cahoone (638 pgs - PDF only)

Read First for Politics:

socialism/ communism

• 2 weeks

  • B - The Conquest of Bread
  • B - Socialism - Past and Future - Michael Harrington

• 1 week

• B - Marxism - For and Against - Robert L. Heilbroner

• B - How to Be a Conservative - Roger Scruton

• B - Libertarianism - What Everyone Needs to Know - Jason Brennan

• maybe

  • B - Why Nations Fail
  • B - Main Currents of Marxism - The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown - Lezek Kolakowski (huge tome of 20th century)

0301 Economics MOC

B - Doughnut Economics - Kate Raworth
B - What Then Must We Do - Gar Alperovitz

• Microeconomics
  • B - The Armchair Economist - Steven Landsburg
  • B - Principles of Microeconomics - N. Gregory Mankiw
  • B - Armchair Economist - Steven E. Landsburg

Libertarianism

• B - What Has Government Done to Our Money - Murray Rothbard
• B - How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes - Peter Schiff

Capitalism

• for

  • B - Why Nations Fail - Daron Acemoglu + James A. Robinson
  • B - Capitalism and Freedom - Milton Friedman
    • B - Free To Choose - Milton Friedman
  • B - Anarchy, State, and Utopia - Robert Nozick
  • B - The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich Hayek

• against

  • see socialism & communism stuff
  • B - Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher
  • B - Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty
  • B - 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism - Ha-Joon Chang
  • B - Das Kapital - Karl Marx
  • B - The Origin of Capitalism - Ellen Meiksins Wood
  • B - Debt - The First 5000 Years - David Graeber

• centrist

  • B - Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy - Joseph Schumpeter
    • includes critiques of marx

0302 Politics and Culture MOC

General

• B - Ideologies and Political Theory - Michael Freeden

• B - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Wolff) - Jonathan Wolff

• B - Political Ideologies (Heywood) - Andrew Heywood

• B - The Politics Book - Dorling Kindersley

• C - Moral Foundations of Politics - Ian Shapiro

Communism

• for

  • (mostly anarcho-communism)

  • B - The Conquest of Bread - Petr Kropotkin

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/az5z57/what_are_some_good_books_for_an_introduction_to/

  • B - The Machinery of Freedom - David Friedman

  • B - The Problem of Political Authority - Michael Huemer

  • B - Understanding Power - Noam Chomsky

  • B - On Anarchism - Noam Chomsky

• against

  • B - The God that Failed - Richard Crossman + Richard Wright + Arthur Koestler + Ignazio Silone + Louis Fischer + Stephen Spender

  • B - The Poverty of Historicism - Karl Popper

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/6mdycd/did_mao_really_kill_millions_in_the_great_leap/

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/7d53gj/where_can_i_find_good_quality_criticisms_of/

• more balanced

  • B - Main Currents of Marxism - The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown - Lezek Kolakowski (huge tome of 20th century)

  • B - Marxism - For and Against - Robert L. Heilbroner

  • David Ellerman

Socialism

• for

  • B - Socialism - Past and Future - Michael Harrington

• against

Liberalism

• for
  • Rawls
• against

Conservatism

• for
  • https://twitter.com/michelletandler/status/1463514427643219974
  • B - A Concise Guide to Conservatism - Russell Kirk
• against

Totalitarianism, Fascism

• B - The Anatomy of Fascism - Robert Paxton
• B- The Origins of Totalitarianism - Hannah Arendt
• B - The Dictator’s Handbook - Alastair Smith + Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Democracy

• B - Democracy – The God That Failed - Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Social Justice Issues
General

• B - The Rise of Victimhood Culture - Bradley Campbell + Jason Manning
• Chomsky and postmodernism
• B - The Diversity Delusion - Heather Mac Donald
• B - Kindly Inquisitors - Jonathan Rauch (free speech)

Race

• B - So You Want to Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo
• B - Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
• B - White Rage - Carol Anderson
• B - Intellectuals and Race - Thomas Sowell
• B - Discrimination and Disparities - Thomas Sowell
• B - Race & Economics - Walter E. Williams
• B - Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
• B - Racecraft - Karen E. Fields + Barbara J. Fields
• Data on police shootings and racial bias
• B - Mistaken Identity - Asad Haider

Gender, Identity

• B - The End of Gender - Debra Soh

Class

• B - The New Class War - Michael Lind

0500 Creative Practices MOC

• B - The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman

0503 Architecture MOC

• B - A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander
• B - The Timeless Way of Building - Christopher Alexander

0600 Education MOC

0601 Pedagogy MOC

• B - Notes on My Dunce Cap - Jesse Ball

0602 Self-Improvement

• B - Impro - Keith Johnstone
• B - The Four Agreements - Miguel Ruiz
• B - The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck

0603 Social Skills

• B - Nonviolent Communication - Marshall B. Rosenberg
• B - Never Split the Difference - Christopher Voss + Tahl Raz
• B - Crucial Conversations - Al Switzler + Joseph Grenny + Ron McMillan
• B - Difficult Conversations - Bruce Patton + Douglas Stone + Sheila Heen
• https://www.amazon.com/Motivational-Interviewing-Helping-People-Applications/dp/1609182278

0700 Literature MOC

• B - Permutation City - Greg Egan
• B - The Magus - John Fowles
• B - Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson
• B - The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Robert Anton Wilson
• B - Ubik - Philip K. Dick
• B - Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
• B - Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
• B - Snowcrash - Neal Stephenson
• B - Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
• B - Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
• B - The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin
• B - Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott
• B - The City & the City - China Miéville
• B - Blindsight - Peter Watts
• B - Ulysses - James Joyce
• B - Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

0800 Hard Sciences MOC

• B - The Beginning of Infinity - David Deutsch

0801 Biology MOC

• C - Introduction to Biology - The Secret of Life

0802 Physics MOC

• B - Quantum Enigma - Bruce Rosenblum + Fred Kuttner
• B - Reality Is Not What It Seems - Carlo Rovelli
• B - Through Two Doors at Once - Anil Ananthaswamy

0803 Game Theory MOC

• B - Thinking Strategically - Avinash K. Dixit + Barry J. Nalebuff

0900 The ‘Non-Fictional’ Moments MOC

• B - Becoming Human - Jean Vanier

0901 History MOC

• B - Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
• B - Ideas - Peter Watson

Misc

• https://www.medievalists.net/2021/11/most-common-jobs-medieval-city/

Films

To Watch - Films Movies Shows