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
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
- B - Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy - Joseph Schumpeter
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
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
Films
To Watch - Films Movies Shows