Recommended reading for new rationalists

Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics - Gary L. Drescher

I'd like to add to the list of requests:

• Please say why you're suggesting it. What did you learn from it? What is its specific relevance to rationality?

A link to a page of Amazon reviews written by Everyman to Everyman doesn't have the same value as a comment from one of us to the rest of us.

What You Can't Say, by Paul Graham.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

Influence is a great book for new rationalists because it highlights a lot of cognitive biases with real-life examples derived from case studies. These examples are placed in the context of how the so-called 'compliance professionals' explout these biases to persuade people, who might otherwise be not so forthcoming.

The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

Paul Graham's "Lies We Tell Kids"

For deep understanding of how computers and especially computation works: "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"

(available freely online: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/)

An obvious one is Richard Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science", which is published in the book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! but can be found online pretty easily.

Edit: The reason why it's a good read is because - all due respect to Randall Munroe - science really does require a lot more than "let's try it and see". That's the basic idea which got the whole exercise started, but we've learned a lot as scientists since then, and Feynman explains a lot.

(Incidentally, the entire book - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) - is a fun read, although somewhat less focused on rationality as a whole.)

Hofstadter & Dennet - "The Mind's I"

Series of essays on self, AI, consciousness, intelligence, ... with Dennet and Hofstadter commenting them. It gives an excellent introduction in the subjects, and a lot of food for thought.

Long time ago since I read that. Maybe I should re-read it and see if it's as good as I can remember...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I

Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, by Reid Hastie & Robyn M. Dawes.

Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, collection edited by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and Paul Slovic

I've tried putting together a list on Goodreads of books recommended on Less Wrong, but it will only be as good as the people who contribute to it.

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/10819.Less_Wrong_Recommended_Reading

Greg Egan's Axiomatic).

This is his first collection of short stories. Half of them are fictional explorations of what it would really be like, for the mind to be literally a physical process of the brain, usually with some near-future technology thrown in to sharpen the issues. The title story is about choosing your own utility function, "Learning To Be Me" is Philosophy of Uploading 101, "A Kidnapping" is about stealing a copy of someone's upload, and the others look at other aspects. "Seeing" uses no future science, only present-day knowledge, but is still squarely a science fiction story -- the science just happens to be already here.

Another strong theme is ethics, and especially the ethical issues that arise from our greater physical understanding of what people are: "Blood Sisters", "The Cutie", "Appropriate Love", "The Moat", "The Moral Virologist", and again "Axiomatic".

"The Hundred Light-Year Diary" is about predestination and free will, a theme that appears in several of the other stories. "Whatever the unchangeable future holds, I'm sure of one thing: who I am is still a part of what always has, and always will, decide it." (A theme of Eliezer's on occasion.)

One story is about the many-worlds theory, and another is about the exponential probability distribution.

After which you can read his second short story collection).

Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter

The Simple Truth seems like another Yudkowsky essay worthy of reading.

Edit: The primary reason to peruse it is to get an understanding of why people like the correspondence theory of truth, as well as to show off a lot of the confusions people have when they try to refute - or even support - the theory.

Satan, Cantor, and Infinity by Raymond Smullyan

Smullyan's books are the best introductions to formal logic I know. They are witty, entertaining, and make you think - without it being work.

The Strategy of Conflict - Thomas C. Schelling

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan

Playing to Win by David Sirlin.

How The Mind Works, by Steven Pinker

Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. To go alongside SICP.

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by TS. Kuhn.

Enormously influential book length essay about how science progresses. Kuhn describes the idea of "normal science" - the everyday activities by which scientists take incremental steps forward. For normal science to be fruitful, it must be carried out within the context of a paradigm - a theoretical framework and set of shared commitments held by a scientific community. If no paradigm exists, or if the current paradigm is flawed, the incremental steps add up to nothing and no progress is made.

This idea is important for anyone interested in doing AI research. AI is a field without a paradigm: hundreds of papers are published every year, but do little to advance our understanding. Every serious AI researcher must confront the deep conceptual problems of the field; he must begin by articulating his own paradigm. There is little point in continuing along in the same style of research carried out by our predecessors: it leads only to esoteric branches of applied mathematics and engineering projects of questionable utility.

Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold.

It's a great story, but there's one scene in it that permanently changed my understanding of rationality: Leo Graf's first lecture to the engineering class where he discusses the relationship between engineering and ethics. The argument applies to all science and ways of applying scientific knowledge - really, to any and all attempts to interact with reality.

Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking, by Thomas E. Kida.

The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, by Scott Plous.

Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely

Understanding Uncertainty, by Dennis V. Lindley.

It's a friendly and practical introduction to the bare minimum the author thinks everybody should understand of probability and decision theory as they pertain to uncertainty and reasoning under uncertainty.

The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright

Before you pick up anything in this thread you would be well advised to peruse How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. This is doubly recommended if reading is one of your primary ways of acquiring knowledge.

The book was published some time ago, but books, and the reading habits associated with them, haven't changed all that much. The authors make the point that most people, even college graduates, read at an elementary level, and that many educational institutions make no effort to improve this. Elementary reading is characterized by a passive and linear approach to reading, and often mistaken assumption about the process, such as that knowledge contained within a book will somehow be retained after a first superficial exposure. The authors introduce more advanced techniques of analytical and active reading, and offer interesting ideas regarding reading material of all kind—though unfortunately the book was written before the internet era—with a major focus on expository works.

Actually, there are many things in this book that I disagree with, and others that I suspect are just downright wrong. But I'm not aware of anything better on the subject, and the most important thing is that it will get a reader thinking about an act that most of us spend very little time reflecting on, despite the fact that we constantly engage in it.

How to mark a book is a short article by Adler that may give you a taste of what to expect.

While I no longer agree with Heinlein's characterisation of people who cannot grasp mathematics, I do think mathematics is a good thing to know. But on occasions when I have tried to explain what mathematics is all about, or to recommend a book which might do the job, I find myself at a loss. "Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction" didn't do it for one person I suggested it to. Does anyone else have suggestions, especially suggestions that worked for themselves or others?

Reaching the specified limit: The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge by William Poundstone.

This is another book which comes at things from lots of angles - it talks about Conway's Life, Maxwell's Demon (in several variations), self-reproduction ... it clears up a number of apparent paradoxes in an engaging and understandable way and explains a lot of really cool concepts on the way to understanding how patterns can arise from noise.

The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase--I haven't reread it since I was a teenager, so this is a little tentative, but it's an introduction to General Semantics, and having it hammered that the word is not the thing, and it's not just that there are exceptions, but the thing behind the word changes over time, were both very worthwhile for me to learn.

By the way, if your idea of General Semantics comes from van Vogt, that's a case of the word really not being the thing.

And why isn't my html working?

Heuristics and Biases, collection edited by Daniel Kahneman, Thomas Gilovich and Dale Griffin

A belated, supernumerary entry (many thanks to taw's recent post for inspiration): How to Lie with Statistics. It is, in essence, a catalog of Dark Arts (and common mistakes) in that field, with some closing remarks on defenses against them.

This is not so much a recommendation as a request. Recently I stumbled on my well-thumbed copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It was given to me when I was pretty young, and was, by and large, the first real book about science I ever read. It covers a great range of topics, from evolution and planetary chemistry to astrophysics and relativity, provides comprehensive historical background, and is written in a very personable style. It led me to Sagan's other work, which led to a broader interest in science and, along with a textbook on modern philosophical thought I chanced upon, sparked my own intellectual revolution that lifted me out of a deeply conservative religious upbringing. The notion of the Cosmic Calendar had a particularly electrifying effect on a boy who had been raised to believe the universe was merely a few thousand years old. The book, of course, was based on Sagan's television series of the same name. It's still an excellent read, and it's a joy to know that some of Sagan's dreams for the future, like that of a roving Mars lander*, have been fulfilled.

However, that illustrates the problem: Cosmos will be 30 years old next year. The number of discoveries, innovations and explorations that have been made since it was published is staggering. While a great deal of the book is still valid, many new chapters could be written. While there are certainly many good books on science being published today, few authors have the range and familiar writing ability of Sagan. While I would still want to be given Cosmos if I were growing up today, I would find much of it out-dated. What other book or books published recently could serve a similar purpose? That is, what modern book would you give someone with little scientific background if you wanted to expand their horizons not just to this or that field but to a great breadth of knowledge?

The beauty of Cosmos, I found, was that while it did not offer comprehensive knowledge of any one subject, it prompted interest in a great many. Furthermore, it was a textbook not written like one. Sagan's informal style made science accessible without insulting his audience's intelligence. Like the television show, it was almost as though he was tricking people into learning without dumbing down any of the material.

The popular equivalent these days (as in, non-fiction books by scientists that climb the bestseller lists) seem to be more philosophically oriented books like Dawkin's The God Delusion. That's all well and good, but what are the popular books on general sciences, books that reach a wide audience and encourage scientific thinking among the general public?

*Although his prediction that images from the lander would be delivered daily to the television sets of millions of enthralled viewers was unfortunately misguided.

PS - Is there a "New Readers Start Here" page, or something similar (aside from "About")? I seem to remember someone talking about one, but I can't find it.

Here's the welcome thread.

This reading list isn't explicitly for our purpose, but many of the books would be appropriate (several are already recommended here). To pick one off the list that I have read: Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained is largely an exercise in speculation, but impressive for its density of reference to scientific literature of the time. If nothing else, it's an explicit demonstration of the non-mysteriousness of an all-too-common choice of mysterious phenomena, and the warnings about the Cartesian Theatre are wise to bear in mind.

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by TS. Kuhn.

Enormously influential book length essay about how science progresses. Kuhn describes the idea of "normal science" - the everyday activities by which scientists take incremental steps forward. For normal science to be fruitful, it must be carried out within the framework of a paradigm - a theoretical framework and set of shared commitments held by a scientific community. If no paradigm exists, or if the current paradigm is flawed, the incremental steps add up to nothing and no progress is made.

This idea is important for anyone interested in doing AI research. AI is a field without a paradigm: hundreds of papers are published every year, but do little to advance our understanding. Every serious AI researcher must confront the deep conceptual problems of the field; he must begin by articulating his own paradigm. There is little point in continuing along in the same style of research carried out by our predecessors: it leads only to esoteric branches of applied mathematics and engineering projects of questionable utility.

A lot of people coming from a background of traditional rationality identify themselves as falsificationists, unfortuneately. For an entertaining demolition of the work Popper and his intellectual descendants, see Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists[1] by the inimitable David Stove.

[1]Also known as: Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism and Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult

The Evolution of Human Sexuality by David Symons

Thinking Strategically by Dixit and Nalebuff. A introduction to game theory. I would have preferred more math, but the case studies are great ways to apply rational thinking to win.

For rationalist polymaths out there, Isaac Asimov's The Roving Mind

I am a student, and have recently found this website through a friend. I am intrigued by the art that you are promoting here, and it strikes a chord with my own dedication to learning and becoming a better person. In the past, I have often preferred autodidactic learning; however, this particular subject seems especially dense and in some cases even dangerous if learned incorrectly. I am thus somewhat apprehensive at proceeding along my own course.

What is a good starting point for someone like me? Is there a single grand summary of the work being done here, or some similar statement of purpose and general principles?

Edward Tufte's books on clear, data-rich information designs, especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

In a different direction than (I would guess) most of the posts we'll see here: I Remember Townsend... by Lizbeth Marcs.

Edit: This is a strange one to recommend, here - it feels more like a reminiscence and political argument than a textbook - but I do so because it gets at the importance of the truth from an angle which isn't common among us thought nerds. It isn't an instruction manual, it's a rousing speech.

I recommend any collection of essays by Stephen Jay Gould.

I know, I know. Yudowsky hates him, John Maynard Smith thinks everyone else hates him, Dawkins gave him his due but disagreed, etc.

But, if you read his essays with an eye toward the workings of the mind, specifically how humans think when they theorize (which I consider his main topic) you will find useful things there that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

The greatest book yet written, Atlas Shrugged is a foundational text of the philosophy of life, reason, and reality. It is dedicated to those who want to "win" and "do the right thing" in general.

The book's philosophy is expressed in a deep, self-consistent context, and the rationalist reader will find that much of the material is consistent with many other things rationalists will read in completely different subjects along their journey.

It is a book all about rationality, in the LW sense of "rationality", and the antithesis philosophies thereof, and it draws the logical conclusions of these opposing philosophies out in the full context of the world at large through a terrific story.

This book is a classic. If you are a rationalist, you would be crazy to ignore it if you haven't read it yet.