Name: Human behavior
ISBN: 9780801304149

What Hacker News says

stickfigureAug 2023

While I don't think this particular wikipedia page is especially concise, I do think it's a great jumping off point for links you will find interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion

I first learned about the link between temporal lobe epilepsy and hyperreligiosity from Robert Sapolsky's Biology and Human Behavior. From your comments I think you'd find it as interesting as I did.

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stickfigureAug 2022

This question is phrased weirdly because it's not like I listen to the same audiobook over and over every time I take a long drive. Presumably you're looking for "good book that worked well in audio format and is long enough to keep me occupied on a long drive".

I've been on road trips that lasted over a year. Some options that kept me stimulated:

* Most audio plays that target public radio (BBC, ZBS, etc). Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe, etc etc.

* Anything from the Teaching Co. Pick a subject that interests you, you won't be disappointed. If you don't know where to start, go with Robert Sapolsky's "Biology and Human Behavior".

* Bill Bryson's "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" is worth calling out for length and breadth.

* High-budget podcasts. Not "a couple guys jabbering about how to cook" but the crafted ones. Serial is the obvious example, but there are a million more. This American Life. Planet Money. S*Town. The Agent. Darknet Diaries. If your podcast app is halfway decent, the discovery algorithm should keep you busy forever.

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RockyMcNutsOct 2010

Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers, by Will Durant. Written in the 30s, it covers some philosophers who would not be considered influential today, and doesn't do justice to the 20th century. But it's a relatively easy read, and clarified some guys I either didn't read or didn't appreciate in my freshman great books seminar.

Walden and Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau. Ah, the wisdom. Likewise The Essential Gandhi, by Mahatma Gandhi. Haven't read all of it or even as much as I should, but his autobiography of his early years and experiments with truth are the story of a great soul.

The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Various attempts to reconcile the mind-body dichotomy and build a science of cognition.

Human behavior

The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal, by Desmond Morris. If you ask people why they act the way they do, they will probably talk about rational, moral, idealistic justifications... but if you were a primatologist, what would you say about why humans act the way they do? Morris, a zoologist familiar with great apes, describes how human behavior may owe much to ape biology and society as well as to big brains and rational and spiritual pretensions.

Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective by Peter L. Berger. Humans don't really have the capacity to create new behaviors on the fly when faced with new situations, or to respond in real time to new behaviors in others. Instead people internalize roles and scripts that they act out in daily life with small variations, interpret others' actions in light of performances they have seen before, and collectively build shared narratives in a 'social construction of reality'.

How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Thomas Gilovich. A grand tour of the fallibility of homo economicus, and reality torturing heuristic shortcuts that lead us astray.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini. How markets, salesmen, lawyers, small children and other devious hucksters take advantage of our decisionmaking shortcuts for fun and profit.

Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar. Came upon these after reading about his lectures, the most popular at Harvard. A lot of very sound advice to have a more positive outlook. I wish this influenced me more LOL. But applying it is no mean feat. Dan Gilbert also has Stumbling on Happiness, but haven't read that, and Gretchen Rubin, niece of Robert, has a bestseller - happiness is turning into a self-help fad and industry, but it seems empirically based and common sensical.

Economics

The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek. A powerful case against government overreaching and socialism. Focuses on the long run dynamism, information efficiency and evolutionary adaptability of markets which is lost when governments attempt to tame their shorter term inequities. Capitalism and Freedom is also strong, but Friedman, while brilliant, was somewhat more ideological, simplistic and one-sided.

Fortunes Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street, by William Poundstone. Ties together the common quests of pioneers of information theory, investors, and degenerate gamblers and mobsters.

Fiction

The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham. A case study of ways in which different types of motivation can dominate different people in constructive and destructive ways.

The Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott. In each chapter, a different character relates a Rashomon-like point of view of a shocking crime, and through them a mystery is explained, and a complex portrait of India's many faces is revealed.

I have a soft spot for satirical Brit-novels, like Vanity Fair, The Way We Live Now, and Wodehouse.

Biography

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein. An insightful biography of the greatest living investor, or maybe of all time.

Gates, by Manes and Andrews, is also very good.

Science

Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, by Gary Zukav, and The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra, on the unbearable elusiveness of reality. If a particle is just a probability density function of potential interactions with other particles, does the substance of reality reside in the particle, or in the interaction?

Grammatical Man : Information, Entropy, Language and Life, by Jeremy Campbell. Is the substance of reality matter or information, or are they the same? If biology is applied chemistry, which is applied physics, which is applied mathematics, maybe mathematics is the study of formal systems, which is a subset of things that can be computed and decided, ie computer science, which is a subset of things can be expressed and communicated, ie information theory.

The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics by Roger Penrose, a massive grand tour of scientific knowledge and big questions of the late 20th century. When you get done with that, go for the sequel, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe... I haven't yet, but good luck!

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csaApr 2017

My personal area of expertise is cognition and learning. One of the more interesting projects I have worked on was trying to figure out why demonstrably high-intelligence people underperform (often significantly) in medium-term high-stakes tasks (short answer is lack of motivation, poor strategies, and/or anxiety). I have also studied and done work on the performance of high-IQ individuals, and college admissions was definitely a sub-topic of this research and work.

As far as admissions matters, I have worked with and/or on admissions committees for two Ivies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I have never been an admissions officer myself (I am on a different career path), but I am really glad the people who do those jobs seem to love it -- it can be a surprisingly tough job.

A few comments:

- RE similar/boring resumes from Ivy students -- The dirty little secret is that only about 10-30% of Ivy grads actually stand out intellectually. The rest are very meh -- smart and often hardworking, but definitely meh. This doesn't change after they graduate. This may seem to conflict with other comments that I made in this thread, but it actually doesn't. There are a ton of Ivy students who are bringing other things to the table (e.g., recruited athlete, social capital, diversity metrics, etc.), so getting good grades and a good SAT score is enough to push them over the top. Said another way, they may not be interesting intellectually, but they are interesting in other ways that the school values.

- RE strong school crazy side project -- These are the people I love. The best part is that for the most part it doesn't really matter where they go to school -- they will be winners in life. Seek these people out as often as possible, and your life will be rich.

- RE recommended reading 1 -- I am slightly embarrassed to say that I am not up to date on recommended readings for parents since I basically "roll my own" research-backed plans at this point. That said, I can tell you some of the authors I have read who shaped my concepts of learning. I am a neo-Piagetian, so my bias will show in the following list of academic authors: Jerome Bruner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Howard Gardner (be careful about derivative works by others -- they sometimes bastardize his original work), Robert Sternberg, Lev Vygotsky (usu. in summary... he wrote in Russian), David Perkins, Robert Kegan (esp. In Over Our Heads), Kurt Fischer (esp. Human Behavior...), Eleanor Duckworth, and Jean Piaget (seriously, just know the basic idea of stages of child development -- his ideas have been significantly refined over the past few decades). Just search Amazon for these authors, read the reviews, and pick one that sounds interesting. Most of the books are accessible for non-academics, but they are backed by solid research with accompanying solid research publications. Given that I have just given you a list of accessible graduate level readings...

- RE recommended reading 2 -- For high school students and soon-to-be college applicants, I have heard that Cal Newport's books are good. Note that I have not read them myself, but the comments on Amazon and various blurbs seem to show that he is on the right track. That said, I hope that he doesn't provide a formula ("just do these 15 steps to get into your dream school"), because a strict formula won't work since people and contexts can often be very different. I would hope that the main takeaways are abstracted one level so that they can be applied to a variety of contexts. Other than that, I don't have much for you.

- RE great memory -- I am curious about why your daughter memorized the periodic table. Was she encouraged to? Did she do it naturally? Is she normally encouraged to memorize things? Feats of memory often turn into a type of parlor game that young children can use to get positive feedback from adults, and it's an unfortunately easy crutch to lean on. If you are looking for a non-automaton, I would try to steer clear of heavily rewarding this behavior if at all possible. Specifically, let them know that it was a good job to memorize something, but that memorization needs to have a purpose. The big rewards should come with the higher-order thinking accomplishment that the memorization facilitated. That's just my opinion...

- RE general parenting -- Kids are intellectual sponges -- they are naturally born scientists, artists, and sociologists. The best thing you can do is facilitate their exploration and model best practices for them. Help them push their own intellectual boundaries in a relatively safe way (easy to say, hard to do -- short hint is to bring them back with a small success once they have hit cognitive break down). Model good processes for them -- for example, likes-dislikes-questions-improvements review process, revising (or refactoring code, or drafts for papers, or studies for art, or whatever similar concept that top performers do for revisions and development), etc. Modeling good empathy practices from a young age can reap huge dividends. I could go on......

- RE parenting media -- It's hard to do one-size-fits-all media on good parenting. As I mentioned before, people and contexts can vary widely. Another issue is that sometimes parents are bringing their own issues to the table, so seemingly good parenting advice can sometimes go sideways when interpreted through the parent(s) with issues. A top-notch parenting book would probably start with "make sure you have addressed all of your own major issues" and would lose a big chunk of their readership/market right there.

OK, wall of text achieved. I will stop here. Let me know if you have more questions, and we can touch base via other means.

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