Recommendations you can check.
Founder and chief executive of Replit; previously an engineer at Facebook and Codecademy. Writes essays at amasad.me.
7 things
A History of Western PhilosophyBook Bertrand Russell
My favorite books so far: A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel, The Guide to the Good Life by William Braxton, and the Philosophize This! podcast.
From a footnote to “The Stoic of Open Source”, listing his favourite philosophy reading so far.
2016-01-13·amasad.me ↗
A Guide to the Good LifeBook William Braxton Irvine
My favorite books so far: A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel, The Guide to the Good Life by William Braxton, and the Philosophize This! podcast.
From a footnote to “The Stoic of Open Source”, listing his favourite philosophy reading so far. The post gives the author as “William Braxton”; the book is by William B. Irvine.
2016-01-13·amasad.me ↗
Philosophize This!Podcast Stephen West
My favorite books so far: A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel, The Guide to the Good Life by William Braxton, and the Philosophize This! podcast.
From a footnote to “The Stoic of Open Source”, listing his favourite philosophy reading so far.
2016-01-13·amasad.me ↗
Society of MindBook Marvin Minsky
which plausibly breaks down the mind into modules and presents it as if it’s a big piece of software
From his 2016 year-in-review post, in a section on books that helped him come to terms with a physicalist worldview. On the book that started him thinking about the self as an abstraction.
2017-01-08·amasad.me ↗
Rationality: From AI to ZombiesBook Eliezer Yudkowsky
luckily I was aided by a few books that I recommend to anyone who wants to come to terms with this
From his 2016 year-in-review post, in a section on books that helped him come to terms with a physicalist worldview.
2017-01-08·amasad.me ↗
The Beginning of InfinityBook David Deutsch
This book layed out the basis for a hopeful and optimistic Physicalist worldview.
From his 2016 year-in-review post, in a section on books that helped him come to terms with a physicalist worldview. (His spelling.)
2017-01-08·amasad.me ↗
Reasons and PersonsBook Derek Parfit
It includes all sorts of thought experiments that all but destroys the concept of self. I couldn’t finish the book because it was too hard and jargony.
From his 2016 year-in-review post, in a section on books that helped him come to terms with a physicalist worldview. He praises the thought experiments but did not finish it.
2017-01-08·amasad.me ↗
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The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
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The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
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