Top products from r/CGPGrey

I'm personally getting a lot of great recommendations who cares if Grey's assistant likes them.

[TLC: High middle ages]
(https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/high-middle-ages.html)
Really interesting professor does a very broad overview of the changes happening in Europe during this time period.

[Unfamiliar Fishes]
(https://www.amazon.com/Unfamiliar-Fishes-Sarah-Vowell/dp/159448564X) Actually most Sarah Vowell books are pretty interesting and entertaining. This one covers the time period of Hawaii from when it was a kingdom to a state, when it's soul is being fought over by missionaries, fruit companies and shipping.


[What I talk about when I talk about Running](
https://www.amazon.com/What-Talk-About-When-Running/dp/0307389839) I'm not a runner, neither is Grey, still a really interesting reflective book.


[Cod: The biography of the fish that changed the world](
https://www.amazon.com/Cod-Biography-Fish-Changed-World/dp/0140275010/ref=sr_1_1?
keywords=cod&qid=1566160678&s=books&sr=1-1)
You need to read this just for the charming cod wars Iceland engages in, also a ton of history and geography.

[Stephen King: On Writing](
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft/dp/1439156816) Very nuts and bolts book about the physical act of writing and a lot of inside baseball about the state of mind King was in while writing some of his most famous books,

Adding Even More Books:

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Hamilton-Ron-Chernow/dp/0143034758. Fascinating book, very thick and goes in depth on the man who helped found the current United States, I always like a good history book, not sure how Grey would like it.

War Made New :Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World by Max Boot

https://www.amazon.com/War-Made-New-Weapons-Warriors/dp/1592403158. Talks about how the shifts in technology helped further the world today. It was interesting in the way Gustavus Adolphus and Helmuth von Moltke created the armies we had in the 20th century. Tech things always fascinate me too.

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004JN1CIS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0.

The history of quantum physics is a subject which I am not sure how it would translate to audiobook format, though helped me partially understand the quantum. May be a turn off if Grey does not want to deal physics again.

I'm not sure how terrible it is, but I'd be pretty curious to hear your thoughts on The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin. My wife talked me in to listening to it and it seems like it has some good ideas on how and why you should externalize memory systems.

If anyone else happens to like those short-format thought collection-style books, two other interesting ones that I really like are:

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

I come back to both of these books repeatedly for creative inspiration, I like them so much. I have yet to read Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, but from what Grey said, I feel like the two that I mentioned might be a little bit more in-depth and may require a bit more work to understand in some cases.

AI - If anybody is having nightmares like Grey on the AI issue I would strongly recommend the recent book: 'What to think about machines that think.' (edited by John Brockman) http://www.amazon.com/What-Think-About-Machines-That/dp/006242565X
It is a collection of short essays by 186 leading thinkers on the question and contains gems by generalists such as Daniel C. Dennett, Susan Blackmore, Martin Rees, Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker and many more specialists in the field. It presents a wide range of well argued views on the question and it seems clear that: 1) We are much further from 'hard AI' than you might think and 2) It is by no means clear that AI poses an existential threat. I particuarly like the argument put forward by Martin Rees (former president of the Royal Society) that AI represents our best hope for the long-term survival of consciouness/thought/meaning in the long term and that any AI would either be a product (descendent?) of humanity or would be an integration of the human mind with a non-organic substrate.

Nonfiction books:

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage.

Showstoppers by Pascal Zachary

https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029356717/codihorr-20

A book about the personalities that created Windows NT. I thought it would be a dry read but I found it a fascinating peek under the covers of early Microsoft.

Amazon description

Showstopper! is a vivid account of the creation of Microsoft Windows NT, perhaps the most complex software project ever undertaken. It is also a portrait of David Cutler, NT's brilliant and, at times, brutally aggressive chief architect.

The go-to text on this whole idea is Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons, a book-long analysis of the ethical implications of this line of thought. It is both brilliant and disturbing, and his analysis ends with a problem he calls the "Repugnant Conclusion," a feature of his utilitarian calculus that I leave to the reader to discover and delight (or despair) in.

Representative selection:

> There are two kinds of sameness, or identity. I and my Replica are qualitatively identical, or exactly alike. But we may not be numerically identical, or one and the same person. Similarly, two white billiard balls are not numerically identical but may be qualitatively identical. If I paint one of these balls red, it will cease to be qualitatively identical with itself as it was. But the red ball that I later see and the white ball that I painted red are numerically identical. They are one and the same ball.
>
> Though our chief concern is our numerical identity, psychological changes matter. Indeed, on one view, certain kinds of qualitative change destroy numerical identity. If certain things happen to me, the truth might not be that I become a very different person. The truth might be that I cease to exist — that the resulting person is someone else.

This isn't technically productivity as much as it is the human condition, but I would absolutely love to hear your and Mike's take on The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Heidt)

So I recently read Sapiens, which is a book that attempts to explain human history from a bit more of a cultural perspective.

I found it absolutely fascinating (and started reading guns, germs, and steel afterwards because I wanted more), and I was wondering if you’ve read it and what you thought about it.



Also, in terms of relating to the podcast, I kind of agree with Grey on just disconnecting (from social media at least). I don’t think it’s psychologically healthy to be exposed to that as often as we are

I work part-time in my university library and then I came across this new book today... coincidence?
I didn't actually look past the cover so I don't know what the content is like, so... thoughts?

edit: The book is called "Humans Need Not Apply:A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"

I guarantee that Grey would recommend reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. On Hello Internet he says that it changed his life.

My pocket space solutions are this pen and this wallet (which currently comfortably houses 6 cards and cash - could probably take more)

/r/EDC is chock full of ideas (and knives and guns that are not at all London friendly)

/u/MindOfMetalAndWheels and /u/JeffDujon, if you two enjoyed Sum the next bookclub should really be Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman.

read "The Support Economy"

I've always thought Hypertheticals could be interesting podcast fodder.

The Curious Life of Krill!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Curious-Life-Krill-Conservation-Bottom/dp/1610918533/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521803072&sr=1-1&keywords=krill

Pre-order your copy of The Curious Life of Krill today!

Instead of the pop socket I prefer the ring stand

Pro: more comfortable for my fat fingers.
Con: cheap make so it get loose after a while

For the pen, might I suggest an Inka or Telepen? Right now my keyring contains more tools than keys and is very handy for that purpose.

This

Can you do verbal judo at some point?

Acording to some surveys that have been conducted by jennifer lawless and Richard L Fox an entire generation of (american) young people consider the idea of running for office a terrible idea, and strongly insist they would never want to.

How would you fix this?