September 2012 Media Thread

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain

A book on introverts in a world where extroversion is the norm, how introverts can better deal with that world, and how extroverts should make better use of the special qualities that introverts possess.

Sadly, the book is typical example of the Malcolm Gladwell school of writing, with a mix of some research, wide extrapolations and the author's ideas all mixed up. And descriptions of how the researchers look -- really?!

I actually think the book /has/ a point, and I think some of the 'findings' make sense; but perhaps a magazine article would be enough for this?

I enjoyed Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. I liked it best for being a tour through the way linguists and cogsci people refined their methodologies (or how much data it took to force them to), more than as a study of cutting edge conclusions.

Social Perception and Social Reality: Why Accuracy Dominates Bias and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy looks like it might be interesting, but I haven't read it yet. (The basic premise is that an unbiased look at the psychological literature confirms that stereotypes are generally accurate and biases generally weak and fleeting.)

Via Davis Kingsley I was introduced to An Elementary Approach to Thinking Under Uncertainty, a little textbook that does a pretty good job of helping students apply the cogsci of rationality to their everyday lives, stuffed full with examples and exercises (which could be a gold mine for CFAR, honestly).

This is probably old hat to a lot of people here, but I recently discovered Ted Chiang and he is fantastic. Genuinely mind-expanding fiction, in the vein of Borges. A couple of specific recommendations, with links to electronic versions, although you should really just buy this book:

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate - The best time travel story ever!

Exhalation

Just finished The Name of the Wind. Lots of great passages, but not enough sweetness and too much bitterness for my taste in fantasy. The retelling of the story by a dispirited hero is an unfortunate format, as we already know that he does not really win in the end.

Hopefully the sequel is better, if I am to believe an Amazon reviewer that "most of the book is about Kvothe having sex and learning how to fight and having sex with people who train him to fight or fight with him."

Started 50 Shades of Grey. So far it reads like Twilight, only Bella is 21 and Edward is a tycoon.

I forgot to post in the August thread, so I'll do it here. I read Fallout: Equestria over a few days, and it was actually really good. (Way better than the current rationalist MLP fic.)

I continue re-reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series of nautical historical novels set during the Napoleonic wars in early 19th century. These are probably the best historical novels ever written, and I see them as one of the great achievements of 20th century literature.

I read three of these last month, finishing with The Far Side of the World. Every page brings delight, and instills a fuller, richer sense of life than almost any other book I've read in years.

Recommendation: the novel 'Spur', by Phil Geusz

Our protagonist has accepted being cursed into the shape of a horse, taking the place of a wealthy man in exchange for luxuries and lots of monthly cash. The wealthy man dies - and to his horror, our hero finds he is still a horse. Events escalate, secrets are revealed, personal growth happens. While not exactly dedicated to Bayesianism or even just rationality, the climax involves the expression of a sentiment familiar to any reader of HPMoR who's gotten to the bits about dementors, and seems to express it quite well in terms readers more familiar with fantasy than science-fiction can appreciate, which could form a stepping-stone to dealing with the idea of existential risks in the real world.

Discovered through this review. Available through Lulu or Amazon for $15, or as a PDF or HTML ebook for $6.

Vilcabamba, by Harry Turtledove, link goes to the free to read short story. Similar scenario to The War of the Worlds, excluding the deus ex machina ending.

I'm not sure how they'd count on a rationalism-o-meter, but I've enjoyed Kadrey's Sandman Slim novels tremendously.

Premise: a man is taken alive into Hell, and put to fighting in the arena. Every injury makes an invulnerable scar. He escapes to LA to get revenge on his fellow magicians who sent him to Hell and killed his girlfriend.

As might be predicted, he has a wiseass sense of humor.

Violence, confrontations, metaphysics, and snark-- if that's what you want, there are four medium-large novels worth of it. The first three are one story arc, and the fourth is a complete story.

I really liked the premise of Awake (starring Jason Isaacs, who you may know better as Lucius Malfoy). A detective is in a car accident that kills either his wife or his son. After he wakes up after the accident, he doesn't have a subjective experience of sleeping. His world has bifurcated into two parallel worlds: one in which his wife is alive and one in which his son is. The two different psychologists he's been assigned to in the different worlds have different strategies for convincing him the other world is a delusion.

A Clockwork Orange: are an accidental error during therapy (the choice of music) and a poor post-release follow-up supposed to be taken as some kind of a morality message?

The Imposter) is a recent documentary about a French man who convinces a Texas family he is their missing teen. Great case study in rationalization, hypothesis-privileging, and psychopathy. The question of what actually happened to Nicholas, the missing teen, looks like a good place to practice the use of Bayes.

Regina Spektor, I've been discovering her stuff over the last few months and I've reached the point where I know roughly all of it. As I think is expected in this thread, all I can really offer here is possibility that blog-reading choices vaguely correlate with musical preferences. Her lyrics are pretty non-inane, especially upon repeated listening. Her variance of musical style is pleasing to me, makes it fun to play and listen to. Nothing especially Less Wrong-y, but I might be forgetting something. Though I don't think I know any composer at all who's (consistently) Less Wrong-y. She has a wild imagination and has written songs about being robots. She's one of those artists whose discography is a tapestry of varied and wonderful worlds that I can never really appreciate unless I'm in the process of listening to it, always a process of both rediscovery and familiarity. (She often writes in the first-person as non-Regina people, from fiction, the bible, or anonymous people; more than half of her songs are probably from the perspective of a different person). There are also lots of moments in her various songs that strike me in the right way, that capture some complex emotion I had never put into words, which gives her songs a sense of salience and intelligence. Some especially enjoyable songs: Us very uplifting, makes you think; Call Them Brothers the man singing is her husband, I like the eeriness; The Party, uplifting, pretty; All the Rowboats, she makes cute noises, quite fast. Back of a Truck, from her unusually jazzy first album.

Disclosure: I play and especially like piano so appear to be skewed towards liking such artists.

I have never been into classical music (my impression having been that it all sounds same-y, with the exception of Wagner, who is totally BOSS). But today I stumbled upon Shostakovich's 8th Symphony (1943) and a commentary to it by a French scholar of music. So sublime and stirring! Look at some videos or pictures of the Battle of Stalingrad while listening.

Recommended related reading: Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor, and A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman, with Beevor's excellent translation. I've read both - damn good, with an uncommon understanding of Russia and what the War meant and still means for us. As a Russian patriot (well... of a sort), I must say that Beevor deserves a medal from our government, not its slander.

Bob Dylan's new album ("Tempest") is perfect. At the time of posting, you can listen to it free on the itunes store. I suggest you do so.

On another note, I'm currently listening to all the Miles Davis studio recordings and assembling my own best-of list. It'll probably be complete by next month, and I'll be happy to share the playlist with anyone who's interested.

I’m excited about two things in September.

1. Animal Collective’s “Centipede Hz.” Years of sampling all kinds of indie rock have left me with only a handful of bands I still check on, and this act is one of them. I haven’t heard the record yet (waiting for my vinyl copy) but have passed the time lolling at this: The new album may not cohere like MPP, but we need to accept the possibility of a record so excellent we don’t understand it yet

2. T-ara’s Sexy Love. My favorite Kpop band. This guy talks about them better than I can. I don’t like it as much as their last two singles, Day by Day and Lovey Dovey but I hope it does well in the charts. They have been having a rough time lately.

The webcomic Prequel, which started as a fan mspaintadventure, is becoming better. The last few updates are great.

I've found that I like platformers with very hard but short levels (so you don't lose a ton of progress when you die, and can thus die hundreds of times trying to beat a single level without getting too frustrated). Recently: League of Evil (the sequel isn't as good, unfortunately) and Super Meat Boy.

Super Hexagon (iOS) warps my perspective. In my first 30 minutes of playing, I managed 26 seconds.

If you liked any of the previous Counter-Strike games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a good (albeit conservative) update, and also quite cheap on Steam.

I've been playing The Binding of Isaac by Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy fame a lot lately. The gameplay is a mix of Smash TV style twin stick arena shooter and the multi-room dungeons from the original Legend of Zelda. The content is randomized, games are quick and you will die a lot. There is also a surprising amount of depth from the various random item drops that change your character. The story is a cheerful mix of deranged biblical occultism and (often literal) dead baby humor.