The best Science Essays & Commentary books: Reddit reviews

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One probably does not need to store vast quantities of data to get civilization restarted. For example, this book purports to be a good start: https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Aftermath-Cataclysm/dp/0143127047

I've seen it suggested that Gray's Anatomy would provide a huge amount of medical knowledge. A handful of statements like "sickness is caused by living creatures too small to see," "everything is made from tiny indivisible parts too small to see individually," something about basic physics (at the F=ma level), something about the scientific method, something about fertilizer, and then evolution and genetics, etc might save people huge amounts of effort rediscovering technology, medicine, and so on. There was an interview circuit a few decades ago where they asked dozens of famous scientists what one (or three?) books they would want to survive nuclear war, and they all made quite a bit of sense.

You could probably kickstart the industrial revolution with one 10x10x10 room full of well-preserved textbooks.

There are a few like this already but the one that sounds closest to what you're talking about is <em>The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm</em> by Lewis Dartnell. I'd start there for market research and ensure you're offering something in addition to this one.

Two things.

1. Ordering tons of stuff to keep yourself in the MLM is called being Garage Qualified.

2. There is a book called Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, by Michael Shermer. He makes the point that people involved in conspiracies, cults, etc., aren't stupid. They aren't usually poorly educated. It is an interesting read, and your library probably has a copy.

I read it years ago, and it has kept me humble - none of us are above being sucked in by dangerous beliefs or people.

Bad Science by Goldacre is a great book if anyone is interested.

If you like this then you'll really like a book by Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, highly recommended. Anything by Bryson, really.

As a scientist myself, I can tell you that it is difficult but not impossible to reach a scientific consensus.

Since it seems like you want practice good skepticism, I have a good book and podcast recommendation for you.

Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, while not specifically about the coC or Christianity, is a great read on, well, exactly what it says.

Michael Shermer was also on an episode of Mr. Deity some years ago and made some interesting points on skepticism and faith. edit: And honestly, go look through the Mr. Deity Youtube channel. It's an interesting, often satirical look at organized religion and the dumb things people do in the name of religion, featuring: Mr Deity (god), Jesus, Lucy (satan), and Larry (god's PA).

Motivated reasoning plays a strong role in why people persist in believing in bad ideas, even well after they should've discarded them. And faith itself is a powerful amplifier of motivated reasoning. If you already believe in an idea; and the entire idea of faith is to get people to believe in certain ideas strongly; every thought you have about that idea is filtered through layers of motivation and complexes of belief about the world.

When inside a system of beliefs, you see the world very differently than when outside it. That's the entire purpose of systems of belief.

There's a decent book that covers this sort of topic in detail; from people believing in scams, cults, pseudo-science, to holocaust deniers. Why People Believe Weird Things, by Michael Shermer. One insight I pulled from the book is: smart people aren't necessarily less likely to believe in false ideas, or to divest themself of bad beliefs. Smart people are more capable, after all, of coming up with intelligent-sounding reasons to believe in bad ideas. So it's really important to learn skills to test your ideas, and to find trustworthy sources for your information.

Your goal is not to win an argument. Your goal is to convey feedback.

Be professional. You're dealing with a coworker. Doesn't matter what team they are from. You're all working on the same software, and should want to get along to achieve the same goals. Behave as a team, don't put blame on others, don't elevate your opinion or position.

Discuss the bug, not the developer. But before you do, test it to the extreme. Reproduce it a few times, memorize the steps, know the workarounds, grab logs, screenshots. You need evidence. Compare that evidence with any available documentation. Use the evidence and documentation in the discussion. When lacking documentation, try to argue for consistency, compare to a working product, etc.

Learn how to deal with confirmation bias and other logical fallacies. There's plenty of texts on the topic online. I strongly recommend The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe in book form and their podcast.

Use principle of charity. Interpret what the developer with the most benevolence. Assume they are rational and their arguments are sound. This way you might just see something you couldn't before like a new interpretation of the test results, or a new reason for the developers opposing stance.

Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything is a great place to start. Read his introduction in the Amazon preview and you'll get an idea of the books content.

Here's a typical review:

'A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. His challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out? On his travels through time and space, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.'

Good article. I suggest everyone read Michael Shermer's book Why People Believe Weird Things. Shermer is a well-respected skeptic author, and he's very easy to read. He does a monthly column in Scientific American as well.

I am reading his book "Surely You're Joking.." am loving it, until out of nowhere there is a chapter will him calling girls 'bitches' just because they milk guys for drinks. WTF! Kinda pointless chapter and arrogant.

you are in luck - here is the perfect book for you: The Skeptics‘ Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

1. Anyone who knows anything about explosives isn't going to tell a random person on the internet how to make or use them. There are just too many ethical and legal issues.

2. Looking at your posts you clearly enjoy super hero based entertainment. You may enjoy this book https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Superheroes-James-Kakalios/dp/1592402429

I think the two common gateways into engineering are wanting to know how stuff in the real world works and wanting to make the thinks from sci-fi a reality. Sounds to me like you might be one of the people in the later camp. Stay curious.

You might be interested in checking out Bill Bryson's <em>A Short History of Nearly Everything</em>

I'd also recommend Why people Believe Weird Things. Really fascinating stuff.

I stumbled across Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and he's been one of my heros ever since.

• It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.-Richard P. Feynman

edit: ok, i fell for it again. I am a man, and i didnt look up the sub I am writing on... once again.

My teacher always said: "You dont have to know it [by yourself], but you have to know where to look it up." [we were allowed to have a math-formula-book at tests]

and, I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X

I ate it up while at a long train ride. it is a very good explanation about nearly everything science. it was well written and interesting :) Good basis to find out, which topics you want to research more.

DO stuff. If you do stuff, you learn stuff. I like to paint. I need to find out, which brushes work, what paints, what techniques. it is all private research and testing stuff out, that makes me feel proud about my achievements.

The most intelligent of us are more capable of justifying their ‘mistakes’ and fortifying their positions, regardless of rational.

Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me

Why People Believe Weird Things

This reminds me of the Yellowstone chapter in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything:

>Late one night, three young summer employees were engaging in an illicit activity known as “hot-potting”—swimming or basking in warm pools. Though the park, for obvious reasons, doesn’t publicize it, not all the pools at Yellowstone are dangerously hot. Some are extremely agreeable to lie in, and it was the habit of some of the summer employees to have a dip late at night, even though it was against the rules to do so. Foolishly, the threesome had failed to take a torch, which was extremely dangerous because much of the soil around the warm pools is crusty and thin and one can easily fall through into a scalding vent below. In any case, as they made their way back to their dorm, they came across a stream that they had had to leap over earlier. They backed up a few paces, linked arms and, on the count of three, took a running jump. In fact, it wasn’t the stream at all. It was a boiling pool. In the dark they had lost their bearings. None of the three survived.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

This is (one of) the best books to start with, as it covers everything (nearly) Just read the raving reviews

If you are looking for something that doesn't just explain physics but includes other sciences --- I highly recommend 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson.

He is not a scientist but a novelist who worked with scientists to put their concepts into a book a layman can understand. It covers subjects from the Big Bang to Chemistry to Plate Tectonics to Human Evolution and everything in between.

I haven't found any other book that makes the process of learning science so engaging. Every time I do a re-listen (it's fantastic as an audiobook) it reminds me everything in the universe is interconnected in a way religious texts can't match.

What a great question! Your son is at a perfect age to start diving deep into philosophy, broad knowledge, and focused topics that he's interested in. Don't forget fiction, as those are often an important component for developing interpersonal empathy. What kinds of things is he interested in?

I'd tentatively suggest starting with A Short History of Nearly Everything. Depending on how he feels about comics, the graphic novel version of Sapiens is a very accessible primer to higher level concepts about human history, cognition, and society.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. The Bas-Lag trilogy, starting with Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville if you like more fantastical stories. Haruki Murakami if you haven't allready read his stuff. I'd start with one of the shorter ones, maybe A Wild Sheep Chase.

If you like podcasts, check out The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. They also wrote a book with the same name.

I remember a feeling of being pissed when I read and reread the bible in 6th grade hoping to overcome my doubts and realizing it was all BS. The road to calling myself an atheist took decades longer. The Christian gimmick that non-believers burn in hellfire for all eternity is a 'hell' of a demotivator to admitting the word 'atheist'.

If I ever had a 'Holy Crap' moment it was reading Bill Bryson's book, 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. It's a science book written by a non-scientist that covers just about every scientific field and explains it in terms anyone can understand. By the end, I realized none of it needed a god and felt a peace I hadn't since I was a child.

Its the same as this book but this is a NA rebrand?

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0143127047/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_X1BJ34TV62SWVXH3M6ZX?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1

Yes, I have realized this as well. It seems like he's become recently known for talking about how the spike proteins are "cytotoxic", which has been debunked by the scientific community. Again, he seems to have been invited onto Rogan's because of his """interesting""" takes.

Dude, you are obviously smarter than Joe Rogan's target audience. I'd seriously quit listening to that stuff while you're ahead. I used to listen too for a few months around when he had Bernie Sanders on until I noticed he started featuring quacks heavily.
If I can recommend you another podcast, it's The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, or their similarly titled book.

Don’t let downvotes discourage you from asking questions! Just remember to fairly question everything, right?

It would be more time-consuming, but I think you might get a better understanding of where a lot of posters are coming from if you were willing to watch the first season of Cosmos and read the amusing book “Skeptics Guide to the Universe”. These are great stepping stones to establish what is known, unknown, and how good and bad science happens.

The book is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533

If you are in the EU, the English version is available for preorder at e.g. Amazon Germany at https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/0525537112 (just a plain link, no affiliate stuff). I preordered it there to Finland.

I wish a signed edition would become available at the XKCD store...