The Improving State of the World

What Hacker News says

1. SamPattJun 2024
   I am unabashedly human-centric, and only people suffering from affluenza think otherwise.

   Read "The Improving State of the World" by Indur Goklany.

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2. statquontrarianOct 2020
   I've never created a reading list, so this was a fun exercise.

   Programming:

   * Analyzing Computer System Performance with Perl::PDQ - Gunther

   * The Mythical Man Month - Brooks

   Philosophy:

   * A Journey Around my Room - de Maistre

   * Anger, Mercy, and Revenge - Seneca

   * Schrödinger - What is Life?

   * Man's Search for Meaning - Frankl

   * Essays - Montaigne

   * Ethical Intuitionism - Huemer

   * The Consolations of Philosophy - de Botton

   * A Manual for Living - Epictetus

   * Meditations - Aurelius

   Psychology / Meaning / Purpose / Science:

   * Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace - Dik, Byrne & Steger

   * The Case Against Education - Caplan

   * Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Caplan

   * Dawkins - The Selfish Gene

   * A Confession - Tolstoy

   * Enlightenment Now - Pinker

   * The Better Angels of our Nature - Pinker

   * The Improving State of the World - Goklany

   * The Skeptical Environmentalist - Lomborg

   * Religion for Atheists - de Botton

   * Ending Aging - de Grey

   * Gut Feelings - Gigirenzer

   Fiction:

   * Heart of Darkness - Conrad

   * Candide - Voltaire

   * Brave New World - Huxley

   * Selected Works - Goethe

   * 1984 & Animal Farm - Orwell

   Politics:

   * Obedience to Authority - Milgram

   * The Problem of Political Authority - Huemer

   * The Communist Manifesto - Marx

   * Socialism - von Mises

   * Just One Child - Greenhalgh

   * The God That Failed - Crossman

   * Death by Government - Rummel

   Thought-provoking:

   * Free to Learn - Gray

   * The Beautiful Tree - Tooley

   * Education and the State - West

   * The Machinery of Freedom - Friedman

   * Against Intellectual Monopoly - Boldrine & Levine

   * From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State - Beito

   * The Not So Wild, Wild West - Hill

   * More Guns, Less Crime - Lott

   * Race & Economics - Williams

   * Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men - Hummel

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3. schizoidboyJun 2015
   How do you define sustainability? Various metrics suggest human society has a likely chance of sustaining its most important trajectories: http://radicaloptimism.org/wiki/Human_Society

   See also The Rational Optimist by Ridley, The Improving State of the World by Goklany, etc.

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