(Part 2) Top products from r/woahdude

he is saying both sort of. life has no meaning, but meaning isn't found within the struggle exactly, rather we exist in between the struggle and we create our own meaning. we are free, we have only to realize that the rules don't apply.

I can give you some advice for reading existentialism and also some places to start.

just curious, tho, how old are you?

there's several ways to approach reading philosophy.

method 1:
when reading philosophy of any kind you can get bogged down in the references and footnotes. when I was just starting out I would get so overwhelmed by things I didn't understand I would give up. don't give up. and don't worry about what you don't understand, just keep reading and see what you get out of it.

method 2:
BEFORE you read a book, read the Wikipedia page on it. back in the day I had to collect Coppleston's history of philosophy volumes to read commentary, but now it's online. so before you read, do some quick background reading so you know a) where the author is coming from/their general point of view/any important details about their life that pertain to understanding the book B) the author's main argument in the book - this will help you pick out his argument and understand it better.

3) some tips: a) read for pleasure. don't feel bad if you hate a book and just can't read it or make sense of it. sometimes later it makes more sense, but it's ok to hate a writer even if everyone else says they're amazing b) read with a pen or pencil in hand - underline things you like, write "I disagree" if you do, sometimes I even write "LOL" if it made me laugh and related to that B) take some notes as you go along whatever you think is important.. a sentence, a point, I use notes to restate in my own words the argument I just read... it helps me get it better and I have a reference in my own lingo that makes sense to me

where to start I would start with two books:

1. Donald Palmer "does the center hold? an intro to western philosophy"
   Amazon price ~2$
   
   get this book if you get no others!
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0073535753/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783700&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=does+the+center+hold&dpPl=1&dpID=51hxbBbmgzL&ref=plSrch
   
   
   2.Walter Kaufmann "existentialism: from Dostoyevsky to Sartre"
   Amazon price 11$
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452009308/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783302&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=walter+kaufmann&dpPl=1&dpID=41lkh1kWkeL&ref=plSrch
   
   after that, depends on what you want to learn, but after the above I would read "Notes from Underground" by Dostoyevsky
   
   then maybe: JD Salinger "Catcher in the Rye"
   
   this was how I learned... after those two I went back chronologically and read Plato(he's foundational and easy enough to grasp), Kierkegaard, Dostoyesky, Camus and Sartre, then I started skipping around once I had a foundation.
   
   with existentialism the important thing to remember is that it isn't an exact philosophy. it was at first a reaction against exact philosophies with prescriptive definitions to how we should live. existentialism, rather, is a shared angst (Wikipedia Kierkegaard Angst) about life, an anxiety in the face of the meaninglessness of life. life has no meaning. now what? if life has no meaning, then all the rules are arbitrary, and you are truly free. free to do and be whatever you want.
   
   good luck on your quest, it's a worthy one.
   
   and my last piece of advice is this: there's no hurry... if a book takes you a year to digest, that's fine! if another takes you a week, ok! another might require 2 months. don't rush, digest the argument and internalize it.
   
   and I'm around on Reddit all the time if you have questions. and don't let philosophy snobs tells you you have to blah blah blah... philosophy should be accessible to all, otherwise it's a stupid endeavor.
   
   again.. good luck.
   

Well, I believe that quantum physics indicates that the space in which we exist is in fact four-dimensional (including time), so the likelihood that we're in fact a dot on a higher-dimensional Mona Lisa is pretty small. Our universe may be 10-dimensional overall, but six of those dimensions split off from our four-dimensional space when energy density dropped shortly after the big bang and are currently curled up in an infinitesimal ball. One hypothesis is that, if you raise energy levels high enough, the 10 dimensions will unify again and the gravitational force will unify with the electromagnetic forces.

For a fantastic explanation of all this, check out Hyperspace by Michio Kaku - it's a book about quantum physics and crazy higher-dimensional stuff, written for people who don't know anything about physics, that reads like a novel.

> http://www.arl.army.mil/arlreports/2010/ARL-TR-5182.pdf

This books is good to read if you get into long range. Trust me it isnt bullshit.
https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Ballistics-Long-Range-Shooting/dp/0615452566

You can buy it Here it's really long, but you can read some stories and leave others, personally, I think the whole book is worth it, one of my favorites of all time

There's a 1997 version on Amazon, but just searching around makes me think that this is a better choice as far as time lines go.

This is the working theory of ethnobiologist Terrence Mckenna in his Food of the Gods book. good read. i would recommend it for all trees.

Actually, all you need is a projector. That's how this sort of thing is done - much like paint by number without the outlines done for you. You might like David Hockney's book Secret Knowledge about the use of optics in art.

Reminds me of the spiral stairs in The Hero and the Crown.

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Dreams-Alan-Lightman/dp/140007780X

If you want to think about time in ways you may not have thought of it, check out this book. Its many little (very interesting) short stories each describing a different scenario with the focus on different facets of time. A must read for those that enjoy seeing things in a different way...

It's a large part of many desert and steppe societies (basically those that live in harsh and unforgiving climates: Inuits, Samis, and other Arctic peoples can be included here) to provide some bare minimum of sustenance and safety to travellers.

In a world where everyone historically (and still do in some modern places) lived a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, it was a basic politeness to provide these things to any traveller, as you may at any day find yourself in a similar position to theirs and having to rely on the same goodwill and custom that you would provide. You can trace some of these customs in places like Afghanistan, Iran, and North Africa to the proliferation of travelling scholars, monks, or other learned men in the Roman Christian period and later in the dar-al-Islam and Caliphate periods.

You can see evidence in this is a number of modern travel journals for contemporary sources. I'd recommend On the Trail of Genghis Khan, about Australian Tim Cope's travels by horseback from Mongolia to Ukraine, or The Places in Between, which covers Rory Stewart's 2002 solo trek across Afghanistan, where he spends nights with Taliban commanders (among others) in the beginning periods of the NATO intervention by relying on a knowledge of these kinds of customs and traditions. They're not scholarly articles by any means, but they provide a modern view of how these customs and traditions still shape contemporary interactions in these places.

Daniel Dennett wrote a book called Freedom Evolves and a huge part of it is based on the concept of this game.

The pictures at the end with weird inventions is all from a book I used to have as a kid called 101 unuseless inventions, http://www.amazon.com/Unuseless-Japanese-Inventions-Kenji-Kawakami/dp/0393313697, great book I remember always cracking up at the ridiculous inventions.

There's actually a novel about it, Natural Selection by Dave Freedman. It's kinda creepy, weird and full of fucking what.

Moar chaos!. If you're the reading man, I highly recommend reading Chaos: Making a New Science about the discovery and applications of fractals and I Am A Strange Loop about fractals and their relation to the concept of self and other things with "strange loopiness".

What do you mean? We already know what's down there, in detail. If you want a picture book, check out The Deep (compiled by Claire Nouvian), mostly a result of a single series of expeditions at and around 2006. Spoiler: mostly cephalopods, jellyfish, and siphonophores

I dont think so buddy

http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Character/dp/0393316041

reminds me of this https://www.amazon.com/Great-Book-Amber-Complete-Chronicles/dp/0380809060

There are pizza cats in this book. Read it. It's the sequel to Satan Burger.