The best Philosophy books: Reddit reviews

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According to the dictators handbook: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

You should always pay your military.

Edit: if you are like me, then you will read this book and think HTF is Trump president when he is a complete idiot to these rules? Well, sadly, it all makes sense if Trump isn't the 'real' leader here..

You can't directly help, but there are things you can do: Learn. Understand why this is happening and how to fight it. Then, teach.

The book "The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (Amazon link (non-affiliate)) completely changed how I process information about these kinds of things. It talks at length about protests in dictatorships, why they happen, and why they sometimes don't happen. How governments fight them. How and why our own governments sometimes help and sometimes don't.

I really, really highly recommend it.

I see that you are a young man with an inquiring mind! I go into the five aspects of chaos in my book available for order here, as well as the 17 reasons why only tryhards choose Tau.

Understanding what leads to political polarization is a first step in building bridges. The moral psychology research exploring the moral differences between political and religious ideologies is explored in the book <em>The Righteous Mind</em> by Jonathan Haidt, and it is often used by non-partisan citizen groups (such as Citizens' Climate Lobby) as a model for building multipartisan coalitions.

eta: links, author of book

I would exercise caution with most 'speed reading' help books, they're the get rich quick scheme of wannabe intellectuals.

That being said, it's hard to understate the productivity of a skilled reader- the person who can rapidly digest and critically understand written word at the highest level is dangerously effective. Getting to this level takes more work than most speedreading guides will admit.

I've read all sorts of books on this topic and one stands head and shoulders above the rest: How to Read A Book - Mortimer Adler. Its an old book but a classic. If you truly want to improve reading speed AND comprehension, or just want some motivation, this is the definitive place to start in my humble experience. I'm sharing because this book helped me tremendously and I think it will for you as well.

Plenty of opportunity to become well-read in 2019. Best of luck!

P.S. the original edition of this book (1940) mentions prevalence of speed reading books... Fascinating that they were popular back then, and have been around much longer than one might think.

His book is #4 on Amazon. He’s dealing with it just fine, and his message is winning.

You should check out the Better not to have been book. The general idea is that it is more beneficial to have never been born. But, suicide is so hard to accomplish - mentally and physically - that it might not be beneficial to kill yourself.

Besides there are costs involved - say I'm 24, I have finally moved out from parents, live on my own. I have never been as free in my life before. All the childhood that sucked, the school are left behind. Im finally my own person. Health wise this is one of the highest point in one's life. From 30 it's going to go on downhill. Basically this and the next decade are going to be the best time of my life. Might as well make use of it if only to compensate for the shitty early part of my life. If/when it gets bad in my 40s+ I might just opt out of this game, and no family would be great in that regard - I would always be able to leave whenever I would want.

Life is essentially about costs and benefits. Most people trudge on because the pleasure shots they get out weight the suffering and the pain of suicide. It is true for me too (for now). But I would still prefer not to have existed.

/r/antinatalism rules

Just a heads up, the paperback version on the Amazon link doesn't appear to be the Hays translation. I ordered after seeing your post (thanks!) and used this link:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0812968255/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

Might want to edit in smile. before your link as well so charity gets some $$$. :)

For me, it's a bit cheesey but after reading the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, I truly felt that my life was changed. In total, I have tidied up my place twice, the first time only my clothes and the 2nd time, doing my entire apartment. Each time, I've felt a perspective change after. The biggest thing beyond tidying your house was how that book forces to confront your past decisions and change the way you make new ones. I try to do things that "spark joy" for me and this goes beyond shopping or spending money. Speaking of shopping, after you tidy, you are much more careful about buying new things, how you're spending your money and what you're bringing home. Once I finished my tidying festival, as Marie calls it, I was able to shift my focus on to more important things like FIRE and doing thigns in my life that sparked joy.

This is not about thinking. There have been studies showing that education can make you better at defending incorrect information.

We spread and defend incorrect information because it reinforces a pre-existing bias, often subconscious. Information that is shared virally tends to align with one of humanity's trigger points:

• Tribalism (racism, they tuk me jobs)
• Authority (support for police, borders, force)
• Purity ("dirty" immigrants, "bleeding from her whatever")
• Sexual dominance ("I just didn't like Hillary", "Pelosi is a bitch")
• Fairness ("Republicans are hypocrites", welfare queen myths)
• Loyalty (ok for my guy to break the law)

When we focus on intelligence, we are demonstrating the Democratic bias toward rules. Education = competence = success. The Republican brain wants to reward personal exceptionalism. "I succeeded, not because of how hard I worked, but because of who I am."

If we don't understand these triggers, we will continue to be manipulated by them.

Edit: thanks very much to my anonymous gilder, but the ideas are cribbed from Jonathan Haidt's work. Highly recommend you check out either his book or his TED talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=asc_df_0307455777/

I do think it's wrong for you to not stop. I don't think it's wrong for you to NOT want to stop. You made the commitment to marriage and that comes first. I was married in a poly/open/sharing relationship for 16 years and the only way it works is if you put the primary partner first.

Now if you have grown and change and now want to be/stay poly, you need to talk about it. But before you go into the conversation flip it 100%. He's met an awesome attractive younger girl, built like she walked out of dreams and he's loving every minute he's spending with her to the point of making excuses so he can.

How would you feel? more so, if he continued behind your back how would you feel? Using "You wanted this now I like it" is a bit of a cop out excuse. Don't throw the fact that he shared and encouraged a fantasy with you to shame him. You will start to build up the walls of communication between you if you do as well as resentment. This will turn into a quid pro quo situation of "well I let you do X so you HAVE to let me do Y " that is not healthy.

Empathy and understanding are really critical in this kinda relationship.

I would recommend reading The Ethical Slut ( https://smile.amazon.com/Ethical-Slut-Practical-Relationships-Adventures/dp/1587613379 )

It would be naive to assume he's actually killing drug dealers. I recommend The Dictator's Handbook before making any assumptions about why a dictator is allowing violence against a group.

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

For example, let's say an earthquake hits your country and affects 100,000 people on the verge of starvation. Let's say 50,000 support you and 50,000 don't. Guess who isn't getting a single dollar of relief regardless of how much money streams in from Western charities.

You might be interested in The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt which has to do with the moral psychology of the left and right.

The main gist of the book is that people have several different hard wired foundations for morality... things that we are predisposed by human psychology to see as good vs. evil. He tentatively identified five of them as: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, and Sanctity/Degradation (and he later added another: Liberty/Oppression). He ran a variety of studies to get people to rank how important each of these foundations were to them and discovered that people on the left prioritized Care/Harm over all others (Fairness/Cheating was also important to leftists but less so... the other three were not important at all). The right surprisingly was almost as compassionate ranking Care/Harm only slightly lower than the left did but they ranked all others much higher to the point where all five (and later six) moral foundations are ranked roughly equally in the right wing world view. In instances where left and right disagree there is almost always one or more of the other moral foundations which the right is balancing against compassion and which the left is disregarding as unimportant.

The book is of course much more involved that that discussing where and how he came up with his thesis, the experiments he did and his speculation about the social utility of each of the moral foundations and why they appear to be hard-wired in our heads and changes he made to his theory along the way. It's definitely worth reading.

Hey, no problem: Here's a couple I really enjoyed that helped me learn how to really articulate what I think and understand what others were saying about politics in those sorts of discussions:

1. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. This contrasts how liberals and conservatives think about politics in a way that I think makes sense of what can often be really frustrating arguments.
2. Justice by Michael Sandel. This walks you through different ways you can reason about politics so that you can develop sharper and more consistent opinions.

I highly recommend the book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence, by the philosopher David Benatar.

Trump has learned a lot from authoritarian, corrupt leaders throughout history. His playbook is literally from stuff like this https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

It's incredibly rare for people to be reasonable nowadays, especially on the internet.

Being reasonable and measured makes it very difficult to feel/signal virtuous and self-righteous and better than anyone else - and people do seek that sort of reward, especially in increasingly emotional societies. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Prof. Jonathan Haidt addresses this and why that addictive feeling of self-righteousness often drives people to zealotry and extreme positions - they want to be seen as "pure" and "uncompromising". It used to be typical adolescent/teenager behaviour but it's becoming increasingly generalized in adults.

Religion probably served a really important evolutionary function, as well, by ensuring social cohesion around a shared set of beliefs and identities, allowing for tight group bonding which gave some groups a selective advantage. Of course, in today's world this can actually become harmful- particularly when the shared beliefs require a suspension of the sort of objective and reasoned thinking necessary to function in this modern society, or when they inform or motivate antisocial economic or political activities- but I'm not sure it's fair to say that humanity would be better off without it. Maybe on net today, but it's also possible that we may have relied on it in our evolutionary past.

Source, a wonderful book which can really aid in understanding those with whom our worldviews disagree.

> The U.K. has an armed ruling class and disarmed citizenry, which supports this. > > So... Like most of the world outside of the US?

I'm fairly certain that's not true. An armed citizenry raises the opportunity cost of establishing martial law, which is good for helping establish a government with more freedoms. Soldiers willing to shoot at and be shot by their neighbors cost more than soldiers who aren't willing to do that.

There are TONS of people who struggle with it. It's disappointing that she wasn't more understanding. I HIGHLY recommend, as a very first and cost effective step, reading Marie Kondo's book . It discusses the psychology and importance of a clean and tidy space. Her Netflix series is really great, but doesn't conquer the same issues as her book.

This book discusses the importance of a clean sink and the impact it has on everything else in your space! Good luck!!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307455777/

> In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Qyestionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other?

> The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or ”Justice is the most important requirement for a society,” liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. If you have a moral matrix built primarily on intuitions about care and fairness (as equality), and you listen to the Reagan [i.e., conservative] narrative, what else could you think? Reagan seems completely unconcerned about the welfare of drug addicts, poor people, and gay people. He’s more interested in fighting wars and telling people how to run their sex lives.

This isn't quite what you requested, but Adler's How to Read a Book gives you a framework for something similar that can be used with any reading you do. The book features a brief set of questions designed to get you to express the main idea of what you read, how to apply the knowledge, etc. It's far more difficult than it appears, but it makes reading much more rewarding.

The method was introduced to me in my college philosophy classes and has served me well ever since.

You may be interested in reading some of David Benatar's works, namely Better Never to Have Been.

I sympathise with much of Benatar and Schopenhauer's writings, with the degrading climate and environment only reinforcing these beliefs. The only reason I remain a fence sitter is because I know I'm a hypocrite, as well as other philosophical and metaphysical beliefs.

I do however advise you not to pay too much attention to the antinatalism subreddit unless you're well versed in filtering biases. It seems to be heavily populated with misanthropes, and in my opinion is a pretty shallow take on antinatalism as a philosophical idea.

First, a quote: "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." - Marcus Aurelius

Second, seriously, buy the book of wisdom about him. I promise you it's on the shelf with dog-eared pages of every successful person you'll ever meet.

Third, don't worry about the world ending. It's not, it won't.

You're living in literally (literally) the safest, most prosperous time in all of human history. You're fine. Shit is fine.

Get of social media. You're being mislead by dumb people saying dumb things about stuff they don't, nor ever will, understand.

You're just being subjected to the information overload fallacy. That's all.

You think what your read is real. It's not. Example, gun violence in America has fallen to all time historic lows, but reporting on gun violence in the last 20 years has increased 300%. So people think there's some crisis now, when it's the safest it's ever been.

You're fine. The planet is fine. The US is fine. Go enjoy life.

The thesis of this book is : Don’t attack specific truth claims. Undermine faith and epistemology to create critical thinkers.

https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian/dp/1939578094/ref=nodl_

The only time that happens is when the military allows the people to storm the established regime - almost always because the established regime didn't give the military leaders enough money. Typical people cannot, have not, and will never destroy a standing state army.

Relevant CGP Grey video for clarity, but honestly the book Dictator's Handbook is much more thorough.

The Book he based that off of is called The Dictator's Handbook. Its his primary source, and is fantastic.

Been listening to it on my way to work over the last 3 weeks.

Read it, or be like me and listen to it.

Rule #2 in Jordan Paterson's book 12 Rules of Life:

>Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

I suggest OP reads the book if he hasn't already.

> If we all just fuck off to do our own thing and leave idiotic and/or dangerous claims undisputed, shit's going to hit the fan even sooner and harder.

I have a book recommendation for you:

THE RIGHTEOUS MIND by Jonathan Haidt

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/

Here's an Amazon link

And on Audible