The Vital Question

It is off-topic, insofar as it's not my field, but let me answer a dual question: The Vital Question by Nick Lane made me think that were I to start over, be young and finish school, I'd study biology and biochemistry.

Pretty old but I read them for the first time in 2019: Microcosmos by Lynn Margulis and Full House by Stephen Jay Gould. Both of them really blew me away and changed my worldview. I also started on The Vital Question by Nick Lane but haven't finished it yet. But I would recommend anyways based on what I've read so far.

1. All of Nassim Taleb's Books - They changed the way I thought about tail probabilities and risk taking + bar bell strategies in general 2. Thinking Fast and Slow - made me think about all of the biases that my mind has that I dont even realize 3. The organized mind - This book gave me a lot of ideas about how I can change my life to live with less distractions and maybe do thinks more efficently 4. The Vital Question - Made me realize how lucky we as humans and complex cellular beings are to even exist. 5. Misquoting Jesus (and all of Ehrman's other books) - Gave me talking points I use against any/all overzealous Christians in my life. The stories of the bible are not remotely close to the stories that where handed down by the people that were with Jesus when he died. Over 100s of years and many errors (and a lot of luck), people decided Jesus was the son of God. Unfortunately for them, the chances of that being true are very very close to zero.

Here's quite a few, but they might be of interest to others. 1. You Have the Right to Remain Innocent: great advice that I had never seen anywhere else (except his video that started the whole thing). 2. The Vital Question: good overview of origin of life research. 3. Fragment: hard science fiction (is that the term?) that delved into evolution and dovetailed with some of the reading I had been doing around that subject. 4. The Science of Navigation: delved into the wonder of current navigational technology and how we got to here. 5. The Lost City of the Monkey God: bought on a lark, made me realize that archaeology can still find new things nowadays. 6. Island of the Lost: historical account of two shipwrecks on the same island at the same time that knew nothing of each other. 7. Protecting the Gift: another eye-opener about being more aware of the ways people _can_ prey on children. 8. Wondrous Contrivances: how people reacted to new techologies in the past. 9. Rig Ship for Ultra Quiet: submariner's account of life during a Cold War operation.