Books that make you think differently
This isn't a required reading list. These are books after which something shifted in how I see the world: on aging, the mind, machines, society and abundance. I argue with some of them, and that's useful too.
Pick a spine on the shelf — below it you'll see why the book matters to me.
Shelf
-
Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don't Have To
Extending Youth
After this book, aging stopped looking like a law of nature and became a problem you can work on.
-
Ending Aging
Extending Youth
An engineer's view: aging is a set of damage that can be repaired piece by piece, instead of waiting for a single miracle.
-
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Extending Youth
A sober and at times unsettling look at where the desire to live longer and know more is leading us. I read it because I disagree with it on a lot.
-
The Brain That Changes Itself
The Nature of Mind
The brain keeps changing throughout life, and that's not a metaphor. This is where my confidence comes from that thinking can be rebuilt.
-
The Structure of Magic
The Nature of Mind
This is where I picked up the habit of listening to how people talk about the world: language gives away the map they live by.
-
The Untethered Soul
The Nature of Mind
A simple, precise book about how you are not the voice in your head but the one who hears it.
-
Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
The Nature of Mind
Exploring the mind without religion or esotericism: attention to your own experience as an experiment with results you can verify.
-
Thinking, Fast and Slow
The Nature of Mind
A catalogue of the mistakes the mind makes when it is sure it's right. A good remedy for blind faith in your own conclusions.
-
The Singularity Is Near
Mind and Machine
It taught me to reckon the future in exponentials instead of guessing it with an intuition that is used to straight lines.
-
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Mind and Machine
The most serious conversation about the risks. If you build systems smarter than yourself, you need to think about the consequences in advance.
-
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Mind and Machine
A calm map of the questions about what life will become once intelligence is no longer only biological.
-
The Network State
Free Society
A new society can begin not by remaking the old one, but with people who think alike and have already reached agreement.
-
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Free Society
Cooperation isn't naivety but a strategy that nature tested long before us.
-
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
Free Society
Proof from the facts: for centuries people have protected shared resources without an overseer, as long as they write the rules themselves.
-
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think
Abundance
Scarcity more often turns out to be a question of access, not quantity. For me, the Abundance direction starts with this idea.
-
Utopia for Realists
Abundance
Experiments with basic income instead of slogans: what happens to people when they finally have something to stand on.
Which book changed your view of the world?