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Ask HN: Which textbooks gave a new dimension to your thinking process?

by ggr2342 on 6/5/23, 12:49 PM with 13 comments

Have you read any textbooks that totally made you fall in love with a subject that you knew nothing about and made you further study about it? Or gave you a new mental model to think about things in a different and useful way?

Mention those textbooks and a bit about why that subject may be useful to learn.

  • by kleer001 on 6/5/23, 6:00 PM

    I fell in love with philosophy during a class where the textbook was "Gödel, Escher, Bach." The book explores the interconnectedness of mathematics, art, and music, and delves into consciousness, self-reference, and complexity. It introduced me to Gödel's theorems, Escher's illusions, and Bach's compositions. This sparked a deep passion for philosophical inquiry, leading me to further explore the mysteries of existence.

  • by marapu on 6/5/23, 3:52 PM

    Microeconomics, back in college. It's the stuff you've always thought of, but have never been able to express in a succinct way. At least for me :)

  • by kwant_kiddo on 6/6/23, 6:21 PM

    Never Split the Difference: Because you have to negotiate in life. Nothing feels worse than realising you made a bad deal with an ugly institution/individual. The book shows how to use your leverage in negotiations, and you can easily scim through it in a weekend.

    Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces + Linux Device Drivers 3rd: All the cool tech in my opinion is made with systems-programming. Game-engines, Risk/Pricing Engines, Radar/GPS, Compilers, VM's, OS's, probably also Apples AR goggles are made with systems languages, so likely/sadly C and C++. These two books are real and practical. The Linux one is outdated, but it worked for me.

    Oppenheimers books on Signals and Systems: Because signal-processing. And the Fourier-Transformation is the most unintuitive AND useful piece of mathematics I have used/seen. (Stochastic Integrals is a close second)

    Differential Equations. ODE's, SDE's, PDE's. I don't really have a good book here sadly, but Differential Equations describe the world.

  • by erur on 6/6/23, 1:06 AM

    This is very basic but I read both at a young age and I'm massively happy I did.

    1st one being "Thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Kahneman - completely reshaped my model of how much we are in control of our thought process.

    2nd one was "Thus spoke Zarathustra" by Nietzsche - which is a very difficult read. Overall Nietzsche's approach to philosophy just immediately resonated with me and sent me down a path of thought that's still the foundation of my world model today. The whole approach of seeing life as inherently meaningless so meaning can be chosen at will was a great thing to have growing up. You definitely don't need to read the book to get there though - just reading a summary of what Nietzsche is about will probably be enough.

  • by akasakahakada on 6/5/23, 5:20 PM

    Linear Algebra, literally a new dimension.

    Basically every humanities scholar complains about the complexity of the issue, like social of political, just because of them not knowing linear algebra as a tool. You can solve almost all problem using matrix and tensor.

  • by mejutoco on 6/7/23, 10:46 AM

    Princeton Companion to Mathematics. Having such an encyclopedic volume at hand would have been great as a child. Very clear exposition, and breadth of content, from very relevant people in the field.

    Still waiting for the Physics one, though!

  • by maguay on 6/7/23, 4:31 AM

    Understanding Context, by Andrew Hinton.

    Not directly a textbook per se, but was a deeply educational book for me about designing digital spaces and thinking about interface metaphors from a real-world, architecture-driven perspective.

  • by _boffin_ on 6/7/23, 2:29 PM

    The logic of failure, but it’s not a textbook.

  • by palashkulsh on 6/7/23, 5:50 PM

    Farnham Street blogs as a pdf