Agreed not sure it exactly fits the prompt but this is a really fascinating book. One of those things where I didn’t fully bring into conscious awareness until reading it: statistics are tools that didn’t always exist, and had to be developed alongside multiple philosophical revolutions.
FROM THE HN SHELF
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
Peter L. Bernstein
Economics · A BOOKTypographic jacket · original cover not fetched
FROM THE SHARED SHELF · 2006–2026 SAMPLE
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
6 readers recommend it across 5 discussions
Topics are model-inferred labels.
Keep it on your reading list
THE WORD OF MOUTH
What made it worth passing on?
Original Hacker News comments, in the readers’ own words.
If I had to pick one: The rise and fall of American growth: the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War by Robert Gordon. The gains that we have made in the (early) 20th century are unlikely to ever be repeated, and progress in many metrics has measurably slowed or even stalled since ~1970s (likely being asymptotic). And while the Internet (classified under the Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) chapters) gave a bump in the 1990s, it's mostly been flat since 2004. More economic history with Slouching towards Utopia: an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford Delong. More economic ideas stuff in Value(s): building a better world for all by Mark Carney (ran the Banks of Canada and England). Also Waphsott's Keynes Hayek: the clash that defined modern economics and Samuelson Friedman: the battle over the free market.…
Also recommended in this reply
- After Virtue
- The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War
- Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
- Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing
- French Kids Eat Everything (And Yours Can, Too)
- Getting to YUM: The 7 Secrets of Raising Eager Eaters
- Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing
- Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters
- Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
- Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
- The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes
- The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness
- The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids (and Themselves) by Doing Less
- The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences
- The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession
- The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are
- Value(s): Building a Better World for All
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by James Owen Weatherall https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13356644-the-physics-of-... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13356644-the-physics-of-wall-street) Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines (1953) by B. V. Bowden. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/10719/Faster-Than-Tho... (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/10719/Faster-Than-Thought-A-Symposium-on-Digital-Computing-Machines-1953/)
Also recommended in this reply
Now this is a great list ;) I'll just add: Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story Of Risk
Also recommended in this reply
That book was OK, but the later parts (where he talks about CAPM and so forth) are uninformative to anyone who knows about modern mathematical finance. If you're looking for pop-math/finance books that could change how you look at the world, I'd recomment Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness" instead. Taleb is smug, but he makes an important point: people are way too eager to see patterns where none exist.
Also recommended in this reply
Against the Gods by Peter Bernstein. At worst, a good background education on the history of probabilistic thought. At best, could fundamentally alter your world view.