Hacker News Books

It's quite trendy at the moment, but Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari was quite the life changing book. As well as An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Commander Chris Hadfield was a rather inspirational tale.

I'm curious about that as well. I've only read Homo Deus and really enjoyed it.

Yuval Harari's new "Homo Deus" is excellent. I had a blast reading it. It has a number of things from Homo Sapiens but talks about possible future and fundamental things that drive humans to create technology. Absolute one of my top 5 favorite books.

Spot on. I enjoyed Sapiens but Homo Deus was unreadable. He doesn’t understand computers or mathematics, and his predictions about AI seems like all of his knowledge about it came from opinion articles in the NYT. Very weird book.

Another extract from "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow"

Not quite sure about this one.

I didn't read Homo Deus but it is on my to-read-list. If you liked that one, you might also like "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by him.

You'd enjoy Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

I've not read the book quoted in the article, To Be a Machine, yet but another fascinating book on this subject is Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. I highly recommend it!

On that topic Harari's Homo Deus is a pretty interesting read. He argues that Humanism is the de facto "new" (2-3 centuries old) religion. Soon to be replace by the celebration of something even more global -- data.

I started reading Homo Deus yesterday, I'm only about 50 pages in but enjoying it so far. I haven't noticed much doom and gloom in it yet, in fact the first few sections are about the positives of the modern age (advances in medicine, eradication of famine, etc).

A good sibling to EN is Homo Deus by Harari, who puts humanism in perspective. The short gist of it is that humanism is a great fit for modern times, but may be yet another phase as opposed to an objective moral goalpost.

https://quillette.com/2018/03/18/wizard-prophet-steven-pinke...

I enjoyed reading Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (by Yuval Noah Harari) this year which focuses on this subject.

by the same author Homo Deus is also really enjoyable food for thought

I was reading this last night in Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. I see he is one of the tags at the bottom of the page and that the sidebar says the blog owner is collecting articles and excerpts, but perhaps some slightly more clear credit wouldn't go amiss.

If this even remotely interests you, then I'd highly recommend "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" by Yuval Noah Harari

"Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow"[1] by Yuval Noah Harari

[1]https://www.ynharari.com/book/homo-deus/

In "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow", the sequel to Sapiens, the author describes a "focus helmet" being developed by the US armed forces that provides a degree of Vinge-like focus.

Not OP, but as a reader of both Sapiens and Homo Deus, I feel like the latter is a bit of fluff already covered by the end of Sapiens.

Not a bad book, but more baseless theorizing while Sapiens was a really rich examination of history where he author definitely applied a lifetime of study and research.

Homo Deus - A Brief Bistory of Tomorrow

Thanks for sharing this! I recently read Homo Deus and I was wondering how he feels about the first few chapters of his book now with covid-19 having joined the party.

My favorite books of 2016 was, and I can recommend all of them:

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Honorable mention from 2015: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I have just started Homo Deus and my first impression is that is is a worthy sequel.

It might not be read much only because it was recently released but Homo Deus by Yuval Harari is off the chain.

This dude can explain grand ideas encompassing human civilization in (relatively) simple, brief, and entertaining language and I can't get enough of it. I think Homo Deus's forward focus will appeal to the HN crowd more than his more famous Sapiens.

I recently read "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" and in it, the author raises many interesting ideas about consciousness, the mind, self, free will, etc.

Would someone with DP/DR say they possess free will? Would you say you possess free will?

Is the test for "having free will" simply feeling like you have it? Or saying that you have it? Does an AI that says "I am sentient. I possess free will." actually have those qualities? Do we?

Here are the best books I've read over the last few months:

- Lost and Founder - the founder of Moz shares his advice and experience from building a 40M/year company. I found the things he says about building a startup extremely insightful and practically useful. Reading it feels like having a dinner with a friend who shares with you the things he has learned in a very honest, down to earth way. Highly recommend it.

- Rationality from AI to Zombies - probably the most influential book I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of LessWrong essays on science and rationality. (recently they've released an an audio version by the way).

- "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and "Our Mathematical Universe" - two general popular science books I'm enjoying a lot. Haven't finished reading them yet, but so far they're brilliant(and very easy to understand, authors do an amazing job explaining complicated things in a simple, accessible way).

- Hacking Growth - an AMAZING book on "growth hacking". It provides a framework for marketing a startup, gives a ton of practical advice and specific tactics. It breaks down step by step how startups and big tech companies grow their products. Most of the books I've read on the subject were bullshit, but this one is absolutely fantastic, can't recommend it enough.

Other great books I should mention: This Idea is Brilliant, Actionable Gamification, The Design of Everyday Things, The Master Algorithm (great overview of machine learning techniqes), Springfield Confidential (fun behind the scenes from one of the writers on Simpsons), Homo Deus(from the author of Sapiens).

Good point. I don’t mean baseless as worthless, just that it was largely out of the author’s wheelhouse and was more of his projection of ideas without much in the way of evidence. This differed from Sapiens as it was really rich in historical and anthropological sources.

It’s not bad, just not very valuable as an entire book to read. It’s mostly already covered in the final segment of Sapiens.

Homo Deus is certainly based on the author’s general wisdom and draws upon his study of history. It’s always hard to vet “futurists” to see who is worthwhile.

I really enjoy books that span over human civilisation as it's a nice reminder how much we've achieved as a species as well as the destruction we've caused along the way. Have you ever read Bill Brysons a short history of nearly everything?

If you enjoyed that then I would say you would definitely enjoy Sapiens as I found it more interesting and less "text booky". I'm currently reading Homo Deus and enjoying it.

Some books I've enjoyed in the past year:

Wish to laugh?

* Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah

* Yes please! by Amy Poehler

Think?

* Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

* Where Good Ideas Come from, by Steven Johnson

* The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene: An Intimate History both by Mukherjee Siddhartha

Learn (more) about great thinkers?

* Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci or Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

* Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight

Yuval Noah Harari 3 good ones:

* Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

* Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

* 21 lessons for the 21st century

From time to time, I try to put some good ones over here: https://greenido.wordpress.com/?s=book

And for those interested in the future, I would recommend his other book "Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow". I must say that I enjoyed this a lot and I like how he builds his story by references various studies and summarising the key points from them. The book also felt quite "condensed", too often I get a feeling that book has material for long article, but is then artificially expanded. Homo Deus certainly did not have this problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Deus:_A_Brief_History_of_...

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other?

This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapiens.

Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam -
Sapiens / Homo Deus

The book Homo Deus also introduces this idea, but calls them “intersubjective realities”, and they include not only religion, but capitalism. He claims that the strongest of these today is humanism, and even those who are religious usually share the humanist dream. He then goes on to talk about how we will continue to create new ones, some of which are terrifying.

I think that term makes it easier to see how they will continue.

> This is like so many articles and books I've read (several mentioned in this article itself). Ok, AI is a threat to jobs up and down the ladder. I get it. Now what? What are we supposed to do about it?

Did you read "Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow" [1]? It seems to me this book tries to see things a bit further than most do. Basically the author says humanity will try to achieve happiness, immortality and power. If artificial intelligence can be controlled, then it will be used to reach these goals. The quest for happiness and power will then push us into modifying ourselves, to the point we'll turn into either machines or into a completely different species. Either way, that will indeed relegate human beings into a endangered species.

I personally believe there is nothing we can do, because we deeply want happiness, immortality and power, and we can't get them without modifying ourselves into something else.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Deus:_A_Brief_History_of_T...

  - Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon by Valley John Carreyrou
  - Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep by Matthew Walker
  - The Magicians by Lev Grossman
  - Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight
  - How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
  - Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World by Hans Rosling
  - Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
  - Deep Work by Cal Newport
  - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
  - The Phoenix Project by D.M. Cain
  - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
  - Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Tia T. Farmer
  - Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
  - Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
  - Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
  - Linear Algebra by Jim Hefferon
  - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
  - Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
  - Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  - Atomic Habits by James Clear

Most are about self improvement...i wonder if this bias says something about those who recommended the books. Was hoping for some new fiction books to put on my audiobook list.

I started Jan 2016 jobless, I still am. hence the long reading list! Apart from these I've read lots on AngularJS, React, Redux, Python.

* The Short Drop (The Gibson Vaughn Series) - Matthew FitzSimmons

* The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

* Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution - Neil deGrasse Tyson

* Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future - Ashlee Vance

* Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries - Neil deGrasse Tyson

* The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest To Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind - Michio Kaku

* An Innocent Client (Joe Dillard Series Book 1) - Scott Pratt

* WIRED - Douglas E. Richards

* Phantoms - Dean Koontz

* Breakthrough - Michael C. Grumley

* Knots And Crosses (Inspector Rebus) - Ian Rankin

* Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston

* The Tumor: A Non-Legal Thriller - John Grisham

* Kick the Drink... Easily! - Jason Vale

* Hide And Seek (Inspector Rebus) - Ian Rankin

* Tooth And Nail - Ian Rankin

* Nexus (The Nexus Trilogy Book 1) - Ramez Naam

* Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow - Yuval Noah Harari

* Biocentrism - Bob Berman

Forgotten to put reading into that list, I have weeks or months where reading is my goto activity (although less last 12 months). But honestly, despite my curiosity for everything, I don´t believe books can help me become a better version of myself. Books like Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari are interesting, but that´t pretty much it. Then you have books about how to be better at something (yourself), by forming good habits and so on. At the beginning (when I didn´t known much about anything), these books had been useful. But now, nothing I read touches me / changes me a bit. It´s all more of the same. Still useful for conversations, though.

Meditation, tried it several times. I don´t get it. Sometimes, nothing happens in my mind and I just sit there for minutes, observing nothing. Other times I can observe thoughts appearing and wandering off, then I refocus on my breathing technique. Both experiences do nothing for me. I feel the same afterwards, I do the same activities afterwards.

Sapiens/Homo Deus - History of Humankind. Also goes into topics of how money came to be and evolved over time. Homo Deus is the follow up book by the same author which focuses on humanity’s future.

Shoe Dog - Nike founder Phil Knight shares the story of the company’s early days.

Chasing the Scream - History and impact of drug criminalisation (War on Drugs). The author describes the War on Drugs (mostly in US but also describes other countries like Portugal where the policies on drugs are different)

Society has been getting better, but at what cost? Human's have radically disrupted ever biosphere on Earth throughout the past 10,000 years and are almost certainly the prime driver of a current mass extinction of life on Earth. Our global society depends on healthy ecosystems, so where does it leave us when those ecosystems collapse? Every day human life might be getting better, but for how long? Can we sustain modern Western lifestyles for thousands of years? The Romans lived through hundreds of years in relative affluence where their civilization seemed unbreakable. Look at where that empire is today. 70 million years ago dinosaurs were the undisputed rulers of the planet, but where are the dinosaurs now? What's to say that ours is the civilization that lasts forever when all historical evidence is to the contrary?

The sequel Homo Deus isn't as good, and it felt like something that was written in a rush after Harari managed to break into the best-seller list.

The best book I've read on this topic is Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. [1]

It really got me thinking about the next 50 years now that famine, disease and war are all manageable. The next 50 years will have super human AI, billions of superfluous people and eternal life for the privileged few. [2]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow-dp-0...

[2] https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/homo-deus/28074