The Open Society and Its Enemies

1. The art of doing science and engineering by Richard Hamming. This might be the best engineering book I've ever read. Hamming's breadth and depth are fascinating. His back of the envelope calculations are crazy accurate and early accounts of computing hilarious(real programmers write machine code). There is a great account of his discovery of error correcting codes and a great account of his failure to discover FFT. All in all it's a wonderful book on how to think about things in science and engineering. 2. The open society and its enemies by Karl Popper. This is a great book on open society and liberal democracy. Broadly the book is a critic of historicist theories of Plato and Marx. There is also good philosophy on essentialism and the futility of getting closer to the truth by defining things more precisely. 3. Printing Press as an agent of change by Elizabeth Eisenstein. This account of the impact of the printing press on Europe is very long but worth it. The parts on the scientific revolution are particularly good.

* Philosophy Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation. Surprisingly readable and insightful, even if you don't buy his metaphysics. Einstein had Schopenhauer's portrait on his wall and considered him a genius. * Poetry John Milton - Paradise Lost Powerful and beautiful writing. * Fiction Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel. Funny and a real feast of words (the translation is a work of art in itself) Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain. Haunting and moving Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Dangerous Liaisons. Scandalous, gripping. Ivan Turgenev - First Love. A masterclass in writing. Short, sensitive and exquisitely told. Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time. Exceptionally rich and a beautiful study of love. Reading it is like living another life. PG Wodehouse - the Jeeves series. Hilarious, perfectly frivolous, light and sunny * Non-fiction Stuart Russell - Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control. Potential bad outcomes from AI and what we might be able to do about them Noam Chomsky - Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. How public discourse is shaped and controlled…

Modeling the world generally (as in, why mathematics works and can apply to the real world): =Bertrand Russell= * An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth * A Theory of Knowledge * Logic and Knowledge =W.V. Quine= * Word and Object * Mathematical Logic =Norbert Weiner= * Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine =Smullyan= * Diagonalization and Self Reference Squishy Human Things: Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Norbert Weiner - The Human Use of Human-Beings Bertrand Russell - A History of Western Philosophy Karl Popper - The Open Society and Its Enemies Daniel Dennet - Consciousness Explained E. Abbot Abbot - Flatland

- The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper - Writings on an Ethical Life by Peter Singer - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter - Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

It depends if you want to be knowledgeable "about" philosophy and knowledge or if you want to apply it to you life. * K.Popper (in both cases;): _Open society and its ennemies_ http://www.archive.org/stream/opensocietyandit033120mbp#page... (http://www.archive.org/stream/opensocietyandit033120mbp#page/n7/mode/2up) for "Ars Vitae" (applicable to one's life) * Plato: _Gorgias_ * Marc Aurélius: _Meditations_ * Friedrich Nietzsche: _Beyond good & evil_ I agree with others on Hume, Russell, Husserl. Another great thinker while he does not pretend to be a philosopher is Dan Sperber, I think of 2 books * Dan Sperber (with Deirdre Wilson) _Relevance. Communication and Cognition_ (Blackwell, 1986) * Sperber, Dan (1996) Explaining culture: _A naturalistic approach._ (Oxford: Blackwell) Finally philosophical literature: * Doistoievski: _The Brothers Karamazov_ (question of God is asked)

While it is eye-opening I could hardly recommend the Tractatus unless you get it with a commentary. How about The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Tractatus by Michael Morris? Good call with Karl Popper. On Liberty is archaic somewhat. To recommend just that book by John McCarthy is too narrow, and besides logic and the theory of computation are not a part of philosophy per se. Logic is a tool of philosophers. The theory of computation could possibly be folded into philosophy of mind but I've never seen it done so, there is a strong argument that it should be.

The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig Lila: An Inquiry into Morals - Robert M. Pirsig The Open Society and its Enemies - Karl. R. Popper The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." from "The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost

The Ego and its Own, by Max Stirner. The Open Society and its Enemies, by Karl Popper. The Illuminatus! trilogy. Robin Hobb books (with special mention of the farseer trilogy), Neal Stephenson, Alan Moore, Terry Pratchett.