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Comment by JackMorgan | Hacker News Reader

From a software engineering standpoint:

- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all the exercises is key). This book helped me think about how programs run, how state is stored, how you can build out asynchronous computation, and how you can build your own languages.

- Designing Data Intensive Applications. This book profoundly changed how I think about application performance and data. It describes so much about different kinds databases and query languages, that now I feel like I've got a big picture view of the whole industry.

- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. This book really taught me to think rationally and logically. I think I really did not understand the scientific method until this book.

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I came here to comment HPMoR. It's a little embarrassing because the book is very cringey at times, full of itself, and for those who care, quite sexist. But it has some incredible lessons in how to think rationally, especially in situations where most people don't believe you or are very used to doing things a certain way even when that way has bad consequences.

My favorite part of the book is when Harry goes around trying to collect the signatures of people who believe (on flimsy evidence and against their better judgement) that another character has committed attempted murder. Their refusal to directly advertise their beliefs (thus subjecting themselves to later scrutiny if they're proven wrong) is a direct reflection of how people in real society like to take intellectual and strategic positions without accepting any of the risk or responsibility of being wrong.

It's so embarassing and cringey I couldn't manage to read it at all. I've had more luck with Yudkowsky's other book, Rationality: From AI to Zombies[0], which I've rather enjoyed.

[0]: https://www.readthesequences.com/

Why exactly is being cringey and full of itself fine as a criticism, but being sexist needs its special little carveout "for those who care?"

Using a special little carveout theoretically satisfies two groups of people:

1) Those who won't engage with material if it's sexist

2) Those who think other people are stupid for not engaging with material if it's sexist

As an example, I could write:

> Because the book is very cringey at times and full of itself.

I've said this before, and the response was multiple times "who cares about that, what about how sexist it is? Can you believe how the female characters are written?" And then the topic of conversation is about the sexism of the author (and whether or not I can reliably identify sexism) instead of the content of the book, which is what I wanted to talk about.

I could also write:

> Because the book is very cringey at times, full of itself, and quite sexist

But then the response is either "why are you recommending it if it's sexist?" or "no it's not sexist, why would you say that?" And then the topic of conversation is again about the sexism in the book instead of the content of the book.

When things like HPMoR come up, the conversation trends towards the more controversial parts of it and less about the useful parts. I thought that using "for those who care" was enough of a lead-in to prove that I both (a) understand that the book is sexist and (b) understand that one doesn't have to ignore all of the content of a work just because it's sexist, but... apparently not.

Honestly, fair enough. I didn't initially get that out of that comment, but I can see how you meant it.

> - Designing Data Intensive Applications

I'm curious about how to get the most out of this one. Do you have any recommendations for how to read it? e.g. did you go front-to-back?

I started a reading club at work that met once a week and we'd assign reading about 15-30 pages a week. We'd just have a unstructured chat in the meeting. Maybe I'd prompt people with "did you learn anything interesting from this section?" if people were quiet. There were often enough questions to fill the time.

Also the book could be read out of order, so I'd regularly solicit people to join when starting a new chapter. That helped keep membership to about 5-8.

Also I suggested people put reading the book in their year goals so they'd be motivated to finish.

I think about 6 of us finished the whole book.

> Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all the exercises is key).

I tried this, but got stuck on the first exercise that had you prove some mathematical thing. I concluded that I was too stupid for the book.

You may want to check out the book Concrete Abstractions, I found it helped me with the maths I was lacking for SICP.

Thanks for the recommendation.

>I concluded that I was too stupid for the book.

Never assume anything like this.

You just need different approaches to study different subjects.

Here is an approach which works for me which you might also find useful. There is too much out there to Study and Time is limited so the first thing to do is to Skim, Pick out the main Ideas/Concepts, Figure out their relevance to you and only after that revisit the Topics again if needed in Depth and doing the Exercises as needed. You need multiple passes over the subject matter, each focusing on different aspects and the last couple of passes putting everything together in a personal mental model.

You're probably right, but when you get stuck on one of the first exercises in the first chapter, it's pretty disheartening.

Here is a secret which you might find reassuring :-) Most people (including myself) don't do exercises. Merely doing exercises is overrated. What one needs to do is Read a book, follow closely any worked out examples and try and get at the essence of things; Everything else is secondary.

For example when i first read SICP years ago, i was working on Protocol State Machines and was stuck (at work) on how to design a verification framework for the same which our clients needed to satisfy themselves that our implementation worked correctly as the official specifications laid out. SICP gave me enough knowledge to understand the problem and the enthusiasm to design a simple DSL to solve the same. Thus by reading it and without doing a single exercise (nor learning Scheme well) i had a huge ROI on my Time invested in reading that book.

So have confidence in yourself, and read anything and everything that you find interesting without beating up yourself over not doing it "properly". The point is to get exposed to new concepts/ideas and gain new perspectives/insights on already known knowledge.

Thankfully there's a ton of resources out there in blogs and YouTube to explain each question and answer. I got stuck and needed to use those maybe 10% of the time at least. No shame in that.

never thought i'd see someone mention HPMoR on HN :D

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

The more the merrier :)

I read it recently (and then re-read it twice within a few months), after seeing it referenced here on HN. Seems very much on-brand, and I'm surprised it took me so long to see it referenced.

Strange, the only place I only ever see someone mention hpmor is on HN. In fact, I first heard it from here.

HPMoR seems to be a very popularly disliked fanfiction, judging by r/HPFanfiction

Your third recommendation is fanfiction?

Have you read it? Judging a book by its cover is kinda like judging a book by its cover.

It definitely makes Harry a massive arse if you enjoy the original character, but once I got past that it was actually an interesting read. A lot of the concepts have stuck with me and I've gone on to look into them further.

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