(Part 3) Top products from r/CGPGrey

I think the explanation Grey is looking for is something that a lot of people are grappling with today. One of the best explanations I have found for the same is in the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I am sure Grey has probably already read this book before though it is beneficial to look at it in the context of social media and our brains today. For example, the book talks about Systems 1 and 2 of thinking. While system 1 primarily involves our instinctive reaction, system 2 tries to invoke our brain to try to think. The social media today, including reddit etc are all examples of systems trying exploit our system 1 just to get a visceral reaction without us really using our critical thinking. The fact that there are so many podcasts out there can mean that sometimes even long podcasts can be analysed by our system 1s. I most definitely have been guilty of the same in the past.

One of the reasons Facebook is being blamed for elections today can also come out to this. Its not like people haven't had access to information in the past. Nonetheless, the fact that news today is much more instant and dependent on getting us to click or grab our attention means we really don't critically analyse it as much as we should, leading to the rise of fake news and headlines. Another helpful albeit short book about the same which I can recommend is The People VS Tech which is much more recent and gives a much better context to the ideas of system 1 and 2. This is probably one of the context that can help people think about what Grey is doing in a better manner.

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Clearly, using more of System 1 can deeply affect the way we think, as that is most definitely more comfortable and doesn't easily challenge our brains.

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.

CGP Grey mentions the teleport thought experiment in this episode.

If you enjoy those sort of discussions I very highly recommend the pig that wants to be eaten

A fantastic collection of similar thought provoking excerpts from novels. You might recognize the title from the Hitchhiker's Guide series.

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.

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)

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"

The book that I most strongly recommend to Grey, and like-minded Cortexans, is Rock Paper Scissors by Len Fisher. I also have a LOT of trouble getting into fiction books and I burned through this book because it's hilarious and informative. I think it totally works regardless of how much you know about the subject (I'm studying game theory and it didn't bore me in the slightest).

Book recommendation for those who loved Germs, Guns & Steel.

Why the west rules, for now

It's a colouring book.
Fun fact: THERES A FUCKING KINDLE VERSION

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anatomy-Coloring-Book-Wynn-Kapit/dp/0321832019

Have you read "The cast against sugar"? If yes, what do you think of it?

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

https://www.amazon.com/iCon-Steve-Jobs-Greatest-Business/dp/0471787841

An incomplete list is here.

The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0399580530/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_iofWCbCXGETE6

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

Both of you should read The Circle. The entirety of your conversation about the Facebook building reminded me much of it.

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?

On the "you're seen as crazy if you seriously consider X" topic, I was going to ask about Grey's opinion on cryonics. However, after googling, it turns out they already talked about it around a year ago (link, it's around 10 minutes long), and I had just forgotten. Upon re-listening, I can even remember 2016-me being frustrated that Brady's objection was very uncommon, so most people listening with objections wouldn't have their point addressed.

For more information about cryonics, I'd recommend Tim Urban's Wait But Why article, Why Cryonics Makes Sense.

For more information about an end to aging, I'd recommend the first few chapters of Aubrey de Grey's Ending Aging.