The Blank Slate

The Old Man and the sea - Hemmingway - so many things, with every reread I find something new. The Heart of the Buddhas Teaching - Thich Nhat Hanh, useful prayers, concepts for understanding and dealing with life and a moral compass for going through it. The Way of Zen - Alan Watts, opened my eyes to different forms of religious experience Also a lot of psychology and philosophy books in undergrad were foundational to my thinking. The Moral Animal, the Moral Landscape, The Blank Slate, The Republic and Plato’s writings on Socrates, Tao te Ching, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, the Tanakh and parts of the Talmud, but many of these were more academic, still holistically they have shaped my thinking and moral compass.

The Selfish Gene & The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins Evolution is the reason we exist! Understanding how it happens and why it can lead to counterintuitive outcomes is very important. He also narrates his own audiobooks and is excellent at it. The Blank Slate & The Better Angels of our Nature by Pinker Both books counter much accepted wisdom. The second book, in particular, will make you think of humanity in a fundamentally different light. The Black Swan & Fooled by Randomness by Taleb The role of chance in everyday life! It plays a big role!

So many, and I wish I could write a long paragraph on each, but I'm unfortunately short on time. I'm posting any in case just one person who hasn't heard of those checks them out and gets value: -Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hosfstadter) -The Mindbody Prescription (John E. Sarno, completely cured my long-term crippling RSI that kept me from using computers and was ruining my life) -Feeling Good (Dr. Burns, cognitive therapy mostly centered on depression, but I want to learn about this before I have depression so that I can avoid it and do 'maintenance' on myself) -The 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman, made me understand a lot more about how people express and receive love, and the problems that arise from mismatched languages in relationships) -Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (you guys probably already know this) -The Blank Slate (Steven Pinker) -The Snowball (Warren Buffett biography) -Influence (Robert B. Cialdini) -Your Money or Your Life (Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin) -When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace (Le Ly Hayslip) -The Halo Effect (Phil Rosenzweig) -The LessWrong.com sequences on rationality

Two great books that really impacted me, both about the horrors of bad research: "Good Calories, Bad Calories", by Gary Taubes, on nutrition and health. "The Blank Slate", by Steven Pinker, on human nature.

I recommend The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.

Influence, Predictably Irrational, Fooled by Randomness, The Blank Slate, House of Cards, and Planar Microwave Engineering come to mind.