/lit/ - Literature

>>21822533
dawkins is a retarded intelligence operative who knows that "god" just means geometry but lies anyway

Pic related has redpills on gene editing

Pic related is about dysgenics

Understanding Human History

by Michael Hart

>>21822533
If you like that book read his earlier ones, The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, and The Ancestors tale. There is nothing wrong with reading Dawkins' evolution books, they were praised by many of the actual figures in the relevant field

>>21822533
Anything by E.O. Wilson

>>21822533
>Pop science
Actively detrimental to your scientific learning. Read actual papers if it's all possible.

>>21823293
>the same ideas will magically be impossible to say in a book instead of a paper
Fetishism

I'm neutral on popsci in general but I can't get over how bad the prose is in all those books. I don't care if the subject matter is interesting, I won't waste my time if the language doesn't excite me.

>>21823293
>Read actual papers if it's all possible
This desu, if the science is what you're after

>>21822533
The Science of Discworld (which would more appropriately be titled, The Science of everything except Discworld) is surprisingly good introduction to a pretty broad range of scientific topics.

>>21824128
>>21823293
This is dumb
Nobody just goes straight into reading papers
You need a textbook to get a proper grounding and likely multiple textbooks

5 easy pieces by Richard Feynman

>>21823235
the selfish gene is out of date because group selection has been shown to be a real means of evolution

>>21822533
>The Great Courses the Science of From Language to Black Holes

Don't get bogged down in the math. Hell, skip ahead of you have to, although the first few chapters as essential. This series gives a great introduction to information theory and then how this new paradigm shift helps us use the same basic scientific understanding to explain different levels of emergence: physics to phase transitions in chemistry to genetics to neuroscience to economics. Great intro.

>The Great Courses Mind-Body Philosophy
What contemporary philosophy courses should be. A solid blend of historical positions, summaries of contemporary camps, and plenty of adequate background from cognitive neuroscience.

>Our Mathematical Universe - Tegmark's book is an accessible, fun introduction to cosmology and physics with an eye towards the speculative and the big questions. He blunders at times as he wades into philosophy, e.g. the frequentist explanation of the Doomsday Problem that makes no sense upon unpacking, and oversells acceptance of rational choice derivations of the Born Rule, but overall thought provoking and fun.

Chaos - Gileck - the classic on Chaos theory and its emergence as a field. His The Information on information theory is good too but I have listed better sources.

The Ascent of Information - more big picture look at some aspects of information theory. More popsci and misses some important mathematical grounding so I might do the Great Courses course first.

Pic Related - it's a specialist text but accessible enough. Great intro on time and refutation of the "eternalism is 100% confirmed" arguments of many pop physics books that actually get motivated by bad philosophy.

Bernoulli's Fallacy - a mathematics book but a great explanation of the nuances of probability theory that you don't get taught even in grad school stats. Argues the replication crisis comes from fundemental misuse of frequentism.

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel - a literary introduction using tons of examples from Borges to explain exponents to logarithms to combinatorics to real analysis, to number theory, to graph theory. Math, not science, but great.

Steps to a Science of Biosemiotics - Deacon. Just a long paper and free on Google. Excellent stuff on the nature of life.

Asymmetry: the Foundations of Information - excellent dissertation on information in physics, if you are more comfortable with math and physics you could start here instead of rec 1.

The Case Against Reality - cognitive neuroscience argument against physicalism. I don't buy it but it is good as a way to break up naive realism and see the limits of knowledge. The Idea of the World is a decent follow up.

>Causation: A Very Short Introduction - key to science but badly ignored.

>Nothing: A Very Short Introduction - the "void" is seething with activity.

>Great Courses Philosophy of Science - also excellent

>>21824412
For higher level: e.g. you have done college level mathematics, information theory, biology, physics, and computer science

Pt. 1

I'm big on taking new looks at popular models to try to find ways to reimagine the relationships, hence the Hegel. Hegel was in many ways a precursor to complexity studies and information theory (huge inspiration for Pierce, who has had a huge influence on biology and neuroscience through his tripartite semiotics). Hence him being an important commentator on Adam Smith and the first to recognize market dynamics in political science, also the first Keynesian.


He is incredibly difficult to read though,.so the most skippabale.

>>21824448
More math background needed for some of these topics.

Categories for the Working Philosopher is also good for scientists as it is a more accessible intro to category theory which is brutally abstract but big for some things, such as xz calculus, information theoretic derivations of quantum mechanics, quantum computing, etc.

>>21824323
>group selection has been shown to be a real means of evolution
[citation needed]

>>21824458
Other more basic ones:

Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction - great if math bored you in school as a much better intro

The Lightness of Being - excellent accessible intro to quantum chromodynamics and some QFT.

Storgatz' Synch - good book on the mathematics of self organization. For after an intro on chaos theory.

Great Courses classes on complexity, The Theory of Everything (too much ground but not terrible), and the biology intro if you never had bio 101 (otherwise it is a retread). The mysteries of physics one on time is good if you want to listen to something and don't have time for the one listed above. Black Holes, Tides, and Curved Space Time is good too.

The Function of Reason by Whitehead if you want more theory, difficult though.

For political science I can't recommend Fukuyama's two volume opus enough as a introduction. Covers tons of ground. Also Pinker's The Blank Slate grounds some of this in human biology.

>>21824464
Yeah. Certainly there are good arguments for it, but even better arguments for multi-level selection. Most arguments against multi-level selection is "it's too complex to model."

Also, information theoretic models that look at core algorithms, like "lighter than air flight," that organisms converge on seem to offer an important lens for addressing currently murky areas of selection.

The Central Dogma is certainly showing cracks though, and I think it's sad to see pioneers being attacked for exploring other means of selection.

DESU, it reminds me a lot of how quantum foundations was before the 2000s, orthodoxy maintained from above by ruining people's careers. But there is also an argument that everyone wanting to be Kuhniam paradigm shifters hurts science.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution

Also reminds me, I left What Is Real? a great intro on quantum foundations off my top list >>21824412


Only point against it is it spares no time for It From Bit.

>>21824323
You're incredibly retarded. The book talks about how apparent group selection emerges from information trying to copy itself.

>>21824618
>from information trying to copy itself.
Ah, it's God again.

>>21824633
Only information that is copied isn't lost so only information that contains a mechanism to sustain itself is sustained.