How we know what isn't so

What Hacker News says

1. cheeko1234May 2022
   I had written a comment but thought this article conveyed my thoughts better:

   Just the idea of 'independent thought' itself is a contradiction:

   Independent thinking connotes the idea of being able to think on your own, to convince oneself on the truthfulness or validity of information received, rather than being swayed by the opinion of others.

   However, the premise on which the prevailing conception of independent thought is constructed is faulty.

   A Thought is interconnected; no disassociated thinker lives on an island all by themselves.

   Can we truly think on our own, independently, in the purest sense of the term? Aren’t our thoughts inevitably contaminated by the ideas, philosophies, and biases we have deliberately and subconsciously imbibed over the course of our lifetime?

   Besides, it is hard or impossible to evaluate how “independent” our thoughts truly are, for the simple reason thoughts represent the accumulation of our lived and learned experiences.

   Yes, imagination is an important component of thought; yet we do not imagine in a vacuum — we merely adapt and rearrange familiar realities to compose new patterns and entities.

   Or to put it more charitably, don’t we all stand on the shoulders of giants — the teachers under whom we studied at their feet; the parents, families, and communities with whom we imbibed their cultural ethos?

   Granted, some of the more enlightened among us might experience the occasional “quantum leap” in thought processes, thereby giving birth to innovative approaches to solving problems.

   Likewise, when you scratch any of these “independent” thought sequences with the tip of a pencil, underneath you’ll find it is nothing more than existing knowledge repurposed by identifying and combining different patterns and connecting the dots.

   Source of the excerpt above: https://medium.com/the-philosophers-stone/how-independent-th...

   Some useful books and links:

   Naval Ravikant: Let us Not talk Falsely Now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euzoOkBUzsQ

   List of Cognitive Biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/...

   How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life Paperback – March 5, 1993 by Thomas Gilovich

   Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

   Reading most articles from lesswrong.com or slatestarcodex.com

   Slightly unrelated: You analyzing yourself in such critical way reminds me of myself.

   The only persistent solution to this was meditation using Sam Harris waking up app (it's free if you email them).

   https://wakingup.com/

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2. 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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3. rudyfinkAug 2010
   Here are some nonfiction books that I've enjoyed.

   How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life - Gilovich - a good book on the inability of the human mind to accept things as random.

   Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High - Patterson, et all - fluffy but nice short and solid book for better skills at listening and responding in conversation

   Full Throttle: The Life & Fast Times of Racing Legend Curtis Turner - Edlestein - Curtis Turner was an influential figure in the development of what became NASCAR. I enjoyed the book for his character and as insight into a pass time that I had not really understood.

   Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day - Reinhart - His latest book on quality home baking. This is definitely a do along with the book kind of read, but I found it to be easy to follow, appealing to detail, and satisfying in producing delicious bread.

   Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them - Haigh - If you're of age, this is an interesting background in cocktails and their evolution in America.

   I forget whether it was on HN or not, but I've been enjoying this list of great magazine articles http://www.kk.org/cooltools/the-best-magazi.php .

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4. ci5erOct 2020
   1) I have for a long time. Now with Kindles, I don't have to load 10 paperbacks into my computer bag every time I go on a global jaunt. A lot of time in airplanes and hotels gives you a lot of time for this (on average - which is why I said "per week", not "per day"). But, most under 250 page non-fiction books can be polished off in less than two hours. A lot of people spend two-hours/day watching some Netflix movie - this is the same thing.

   2) I guess the ones that are based on subjective interpretation instead of objective fact (whatever that is today). There is a book called "How we know what isn't so" (https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility-dp-002...), and it talks a fair amount about humans can clash by developing different interpretations of reality that they think are really real. I guess this isn't "touchy-feely"; I guess it is just that the reason I got into engineering is that machines are a lot more predictable and understandable than humans (to me). I did not mean to denigrate anyone's choice of book; I just didn't have a better term at hand (I still don't!)

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