/lit/ - Literature

>>23274655

>>23274655

>>23274736
I have a different book from this author checked out from the library, but I haven't read it yet.
>>23274855
On my to read list.

>>23274855
Bad read, Murray pathologizes poverty, used to justify the horrors that were rampant privatisation, look at the UK now its in the shitter thanks to the politics of book like this

>>23274965
Which one?

>>23274736
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

>>23275380
this one
>>23275686

The David Reich one on ancient DNA. A brief history of time by hawkang. Sapiens is pretty good.

I wish I could go back and unread all this garbage but I recognize it's part of the modern journey through worldviews at this point.

>>23274655
Matt Ridley stuff

>>23275954
Because genes aren't real?

>>23274655
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

>>23275954
Agree, but C. Rovelli isnt that bad

>>23276496
I tried reading this once, but dropped it. Iirc he rags on Norse mythology for no reason. Reeks of jewishness.

>>23274655
>>23274855
these

>>23277878
Did you really put a soijack on your book?

>>23275954
what was Dawkins actually wrong about?

>>23277922
He probably hurt his feelings

I’ve heard this praised but didn’t get to it yet.

Robert Anton Wilson also writes books that could be called popsci like Quantum Psychology, and The New Inquisition.

>>23277887
I'm not Edward Dutton but yes, he did.

>>23274655
selfish gene is a good book an invented the word meme

>>23277938
>I'm not Edward Dutton
Ok, I totally believe you.

>>23275944
YES the david reich book is great
also 10000 year explosion by greg cochran
and james scotts books "seeing like a state" and "against the grain"
someone recommended "after the ice" about human civilization between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago after the ice age and its pretty good so far

>>23277922
He recently said he regrets the decline of christianity. No joke

>>23275024
first good post i've seen in a while

>>23278621
no, he said he regrets the decline of christian culture you fucking retard
in the very same interview he reiterated his conviction that genuine christian beliefs are nonsense

This is a bit on the technical side of pop-sci but it's really good.

>>23278820
And how is it not completely idiotic to miss a culture but condemn the beliefs that directly led to the development and proliferation of said culture?

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

>>23274655
The unit of selection is the organism, not the gene. Dawkins is a pseud. Read Ernst Mayr.

>>23279644
>the unit of selection is a population
ftfy

>>23274655
Decoding the Universe; Charles Seife
Alex's Adventures in Numberland; Alex Bellos
Six Easy Pieces; Feynman
Six Not So Easy Pieces; Feynman


>>23277936
That book is not very good. A lot of /x/-tier sensualist pseudery.

>>23277922
dawkins knows the bible is just a math textbook but he took bribes from The Great Satan to obfuscate the truth

>>23279217
Why can't you just behave like that without dubious metaphysical beliefs?

>>23279644
>The unit of selection is the organism, not the gene
Qrd?

>>23279690
There is no singular unit of selection. Natural selection is happening anywhere there is competition in which the winner becomes more prevalent. Organisms competing to reproduce are naturally selected. Populations competing to avoid starvation are naturally selected. Societies competing to acquire land are naturally selected. Religions competing to convert adherents are naturally selected. Neural nets competing to be iterated on are naturally selected. Political parties competing to control voters are naturally selected.

>>23281354
do you believe that humanity is currently experiencing a lack of natural selection and is accumulating mutational load and that is the reason for the rise of leftism? can you elaborate?

>>23277930
his refutation of aquinas is hilarious to anyone who knows the most basic aristotle
>>23280435
and this is the same kind of retardation. people who genuinely think human behaviour is separable from axiomatic fundamental structural views of reality.

>>23280435
>Dude why don’t you just behave in an arbitrary culturally ingrained way which has no inherent truth value over another one? Why don’t you just do that?
No wonder you people can’t create societies.

>>23281364
>>23281420
please explain why a person can't be magnanimous and forgiving and kind and just without also believing someone performed miracles and died and came back to life 2000 years ago
even if Jesus was literally the first person to ever say preach that kind of morality in the history of the world, I don't see why you can't believe in these ideas sans theology

>>23274655
None. The only way not to be an IFLScience redditor is to understand intermediate math/stats and whichever field you're interested in at at least a first year undergrad level. Once you're at that level you're free to talk about popsci.

What about popmath? Popsci is kinda cringe

>>23281358
Many things are constantly being selected for so I don't know on what level you're suggesting humanity is lacking selection. But if you're talking about mutational load I get the impression that you're directly relating biology and politics, which isn't what I meant. I'll describe what I meant by politics being natural selection then talk about leftism.

Political positions can't meaningfully be stuck on a one or two dimensional space. A political position is just a list of issues people care about and how much they care about each. If you really want to try to describe politics geometrically you need a high dimensional simplex, with one dimension for every possible political motivation possible. There's a dimension for low crime, a dimension for diversity, a dimension for equity, etc. A less geometric way of saying that is that people have a fixed amount of total caring and each one distributes it between each issue it's possible to care about.

A party's political position is also a point on the simplex. A party is more successful the closer it is to the population's individual positions. They get more voters if more people agree with them. In theory this means the party position is going to gravitate towards large clumps of individuals. In reality it balances doing that with gravitating towards lobbyists and money launderers, but ignore that. Political shift of parties is a continual process because the set of individual positions is also constantly shifting, in response to changes in zeitgeist and economy. If people get hungry enough they start shifting all the interest they had in 'transgender rights' to 'having food'. In fact people will naturally shift away from the most popular party when it gets successful enough, because that party has had a chance to give its constituents what they want and ruin everything else. Those constituents start thinking "all this diversity is great but I keep getting mugged so I'm starting to care more about low crime".

Anyways, that's most of what I meant when I was describing politics as natural selection. Nothing too insightful, but on a basic level the theory of evolution isn't either. Any complexity comes from adding more factors, like the opinions of donors being worth more than the opinions of poors, causal relationships between dimensions, powerful people influencing the zeitgeist, etc.

Next, "leftism" is best described as a focus on equity. To whatever extent it's meaningful to say "leftism is rising" I'd interpret it as "the political positions of people and parties are increasing along the equity axis". One reason leftism is rising is that no one had anything else to care about. People aren't hungry enough or unsafe enough, yet. Eventually people will start thinking "all this equity is great but I wish my groceries money wasn't going towards reparations and airplanes would stop dropping on my house".

>>23279209
Ew, no. this reeks of jewishness more than Cosmos (sorry >>23277805) something about the footnotes makes me cringe. Its like he's trying too hard to be counterculture. It reads like a fuckboy trying to get you into bed.

>>23274855
This and pic rel are required pop-sci reading imo.

>>23281702
>The only way not to be an IFLScience redditor is to understand intermediate math/stats and whichever field you're interested in at at least a first year undergrad level.
Done. Now recommend a book.
>>23281712
Recommend a book.

>>23281354
>>23279690
you'll niggas need to read Dawkins' book The Extended Phenotype. It goes into deep exploration of what the unit of selection is. The quick summary is that it is in fact the gene but it is still quite important to consider both the bottleneck of the individual organism and the gene pool as a whole; these are like the immediate environment for the gene.

>>23284144
How is it different from the Selfish Gene?

>>23284374
It's more specifically about the concept of a unit of replication and its phenotype than the Selfish Gene, which is like a general introductory course to evobio. It replies to many of the objections people had about the Selfish Gene as well.

>>23278067
>david reich
Isn't he, like, super-duper racist?

>>/pol/

>>23275944
>>23278067
>The David Reich one on ancient DNA
>YES the david reich book is great
You are either shills, braindead or soulless husks. I hate you and that "gotta mention the holocaust every chapter even though Im talking about prehistory" jew so much

>>23274655
Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." Perhaps not written as what we today would consider popsci, but he writes in a very accessible manner.
His original theory, while somewhat antique today, is undoubtedly still a foundational pillar in understanding modern biology and ecology.

I like Oliver Sachs' books
They're a good look at terribly interesting lives

>>23281358
On the contrary, natural selection is speeding up. In a free society like the US, you can become a billionaire or a drug addict. You can read books or watch porn all day. Those with weak willpower and low intelligence, on average, will not make it. Sure, lots of idiots reproduce, but their descendants will struggle and even if their descendants are successful, this may actually be the start of population drift, anyway. You don’t try to evolve a species by forcing every single organism to mutate in that direction. If that were the case, then there would only ever be one species on the planet!

If people don’t reproduce, then there is clearly something wrong with them. Perhaps they could not adapt to modern society and how to attract mates, or maybe they just don’t value having children (even though they value sex). So then we are selecting for people who are either too dumb to use birth control, or for people who actually want to have children. So what if millions of attractive women whore themselves out into their 30’s and refuse to have children? Do you really want their genes to persist? And so what if Shaniqua has 7 kids with different baby daddies? They contribute to the ecosystem in their own way, and may one day be a different species altogether.

The fact is, with so many people alive today, there are more possibilities for successful mutations, which means more potential for exceptional intelligence.

>>23285659
What you said doesn't necessarily contradict anon's question, which was more related to Ed Dutton's theory of the spiteful mutant then. Of course natural selection triumphs in the end.

>>23285684
People have this assumption that natural selection isn’t taking place because survival is so easy nowadays. Survival may be easy, but reproduction is not. Lots of people aren’t reproducing. That’s natural selection taking place.

>>23285659
You place too much stock into genetics role in human behavior. Nature AND nurture. Willpower can be cultivated. Positivism is a deadend

>>23285690
Yeah and it's selecting for rather bad stuff at the moment. Essentially stupid, impulsive people.

>>23285690
It's taking place just not under what Dutton calls "harsh Darwinian conditions" i.e. nature. High IQ normal people are having children and so are the dummies and far leftists it's mostly a hollowing out of the liberal midwit.
That said I agree women are effectively saving us from complete civilizational entropy by refusing to fuck anyone but top-tier men.

>>23274655
>ITT: recommend me jewish psyops

>>23275024
>>23278818
Explain exactly how the UK implemented anything that was in that book

>>23274655
About chaos theory. Before picking up this book I knew something called chaos theory existed, but for some reason never inquired further. This book gave me stronger awe response than learning about quantum mechanics for the first time.

>>23285659
Back in reality western IQ is dropping.

>>23274855
I found this at an Iranian couple's house once. What could they have meant by that?

>>23285659
>In a free society like the US, you can become a billionaire or a drug addict. You can read books or watch porn all day
The latter types of people in your examples definitely have more kids than the former.

bump

>>23286935
personal fav

>>23279209
Second this one. I'm about 1/3 through it and absolutely changed my perspective of how the human mind works. It's a bit challenging but worth reading.

>>23282454
Stop being a ignorant faggot and read it first.

I don't know if it's science enough but I guess it's pop enough. I'm also currently reading it so I can't spoil the ending (yet).

>>23285659
>If people don’t reproduce, then there is clearly something wrong with them. Perhaps they could not adapt to modern society and how to attract mates, or maybe they just don’t value having children (even though they value sex). So then we are selecting for people who are either too dumb to use birth control, or for people who actually want to have children. So what if millions of attractive women whore themselves out into their 30’s and refuse to have children?
Based and true, but there are problems with this. We, as a society, are exponentially getting older, hence we have mass immigration. Of course, it is not the answer, as these people cannot bear the weight of civilization on their own, sadly. We are at an impasse. I recommend funding into gene editing (state-sponsored eugenics) and greater funding into AI and the sort. To essentially abolish the requirement for human labour.

>>23277938
This is already cringe but imagine how cringe this will look in 10 years.

>>23277878
I want to give Dutton a hug

>>23281635
doesn't work like that niggy

>>23274655
A short history of nearly everything and a brief history of time. If you want baby steps first

>>23279209
I really like this guy from the lectures he has on youtube. Even when you dont agree just a nice vibe to him.

He has this big blind spot in saying free will doesnt exist(i agree) and therefore responses to crime should be pragmatic, not punitive or punishing. He makes this totally unfounded assumption that crime is punished only because people are responsible for their actions, nothing to do with deterrence or the satisfaction of societies non philosophically founded gut hatred of certain criminals, or even as a tool for maintaining an oppressive social hierarchy that doesnt care about free will. The assumption is punishment only exists for the one narrow reason he challenges

>>23285642
>that "gotta mention the holocaust every chapter even though Im talking about prehistory" jew
kek who is this?

>>23293441
Doesn't address the question. At most, this passage says that you can't call an agnostic morality "Christian" but it doesn't say you can't practice it anyway.
Why don't you just explain why in your own words instead of citing someone who proudly called himself by words like Godless and Antichrist?

Loved the parts about the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Linear B.

>>23290710
>I'm also currently reading it so I can't spoil the ending (yet).
It's probably nothing serious. After all, it's not like the author was assassinated or anything.

>>23297092
Isn't this infamously bad?

>>23297092
this is neoliberal doodoocacapeepee

>>23297131
If you're adhering to principles to get an outcome you'll be quick to abandon those principles when they seem like they're not working like in the predictable cycle that always happens when exploiting the established system becomes temporarily advantageous until the exploiters ruin the system so there's nothing left to exploit and building based on principles becomes stronger again.
When there's excess the eaters win, when there's not the builders win and build up excess.
This is the same kind of repeating cycle that killed the reindeer of st matthews island and made the mating rituals of this parrot so complicated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCsHuoVABgI
If your faith in God depends on an outcome that outcome is your god, God is put lower in the logical hierarchy that organizes your mind, you're an idolater. Job didn't lose faith when God stopped giving him rewards.

>>23299027
That's a neat video but it and the rest of your post still have nothing to do with what I asked. What you seem to be saying is
>adhering to principles to get an outcome is bad
>it's bad because you'll get a bad outcome such as this parrot situation
>so you should avoid this bad outcome and adhere to my principles which will get you a better outcome
Kinda incoherent if you ask me. Anyway I don't see what this has to do with whether or not someone should believe in a particular set of miracles from the ancient past.

>>23284125

>>23281712
>>23284125

>>23281712

>>23281712
.

>>23299126
Good grief.
>Road to Reality
Pretentious.
>A complete guide to the laws of the universe
Beyond pretentious. And let me guess? Normie-hogs just gobble this slop up?

>>23299123
>I don't see
Then you complain and work against them when people try to help you.
If we see the inherent universal value in always being the builder, aligning with the Creator even when things appear bleak we can avoid being like these animals running willingly into traps of temptation.

>>23299137

Seconding this. Derbyshire's two pop-math books are lively and not-stupid, although they are still just historical (relatively) light reading. But then the fact that he was subsequently canceled for sensible realtalk about black people just endears him to me.

Where pop-math is concerned, I also recommend Berlinski's Tour of the Calculus, a reasonable intro on its subject matter for the layperson.

It’s more about ethics in medicine and science research but highly recommend Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean
Checked it out from the lubrary and literally could not put it down….

>>23274655
I read someone saying that Dawkins delayed the advance of studies on genetics and natural selection by at least 20 years because of the idea that natural selection can only be considered at the level of the gene and not of groups, or something like that.

>>23299126
What does this cover, exactly? Things like classical mechanics or only more high level stuff?

Reading this now. Will share results.

>>23301391
Wish this shitty site would update it's shitty fucking UI. Forgot pic.

>>23285659
>The fact is, with so many people alive today, there are more possibilities for successful mutations, which means more potential for exceptional intelligence.
This is untrue. All those people are alive at a time when individuality is the least important and the superorganism of society is at the peak of its power. Humanity is experiencing a massive selective pressure in accordance with its own socially constructed mass delusion, not reality. This is a sort of all-encompassing Fisherian runaway where the signal (social integration) has become completely disconnected from its intended meaning (reproductive success)
It's empirically demonstrable to be false, because the true geniuses (Einstein et al.) were limited to a period of time in the early-mid 20th century - there is probably something about the information age that precludes genius.
Besides, exceptional intelligence is directly dysgenic, not adaptive.

>>23275024
>Bad read, Murray pathologizes poverty, used to justify
Terrible way to look at books.
I can't think of anything worse than refusing to read something because it a priori challenges your sociopolitical viewpoints. If you're so insecure in your beliefs that you're afraid you might be "convinced" by accidentally reading wrongthink, maybe those beliefs deserve to be challenged.

>>23278818
It's a terrible post.

>>23277805
I seriously don't want to believe that people like you actually exist in the world. But there you are. Unlearned, ignorant, brutish, squatting in the dark with your club, jumping at shadows. Thinking "Norse mythology" is your "identity" and getting outraged on a centuries-dead religion's behalf as if it's an insidious plot by The Other to attack your ex post facto adopted way of life.

>>23301752
try not to cry about it

>>23296956
>I really like this guy from the lectures he has on youtube. Even when you dont agree just a nice vibe to him.
agreed and I found most of Determined worth reading, except he seems frequently to pick stories that let him conclude with 'and that's how stupid people like republicans, religious types, anti vaxers and climate deniers are shitting up the world shit, kids. Ffs follow the science!'. A bit too much like sam harris or steven pinker at times.

>>23301779
How can I not? It's terrible to see minds with so much potential destroyed like that. It's one of the greatest tragedies of life that so many people are doomed to forever be victims of propaganda and dopamine addiction.

>>23302257
If we're "unlearned, ignorant, brutish, squatting in the dark with our clubs, jumping at shadows, thinking "Norse Mythology" is our "identity" and getting outraged on a centuries-dead religion's behalf as if it's an insidious plot by the Other to attack our ex post facto adopted way of life" then I fear we may have little potential. In fact, anon, we may be worthless goyim who should just be slaves.

I wish everyone read this and that there were serious proposals to curb light pollution, noise pollution, and caffeine

>>23302419
anyone got the link that debunks this? it paints the author as something like a sleep deprivation alarmist. Maybe walker is right, but the piece is worth reading too.

>>23301752
Shut up jew.

>>23274655
I know this is not exactly related to the question, but I believe that popsci in general does more harm than good. To write a successful popsci book you have to cut the math, cut the chemistry, cut all the "hard" stuff, so the masses, who were led to believe that thinking is hard, will not be scared off. Is that really the way forward? How can something that omits the methods, the way of thinking, of a discipline serve as means to make it more popular? The first thing a physicist writing popsci does, is try his hardest to cut as much math as possible, no matter that all of physics is expressed — and sometimes solved — through math. If I were to write a popsci book on biochemistry or genomics I'd have to cut all of the organic chemistry reaction mechanisms and discrete mathematical methods. What would be left? The interesting part is in the calculations, planing reactions. What is scary and has to be cut out if one wishes his writing to be popular, is the heart and soul of the discipline. Why curse someone with a heartless soulless husk, rather than guiding him to understanding? While in high school and younger I read some popsci books, and after each one I was left feeling void and stranded. Why don't I feel I understand the field any more than before reading? Even worse, I understood it less. Only thing I gained was a handful of stories I could repeat to my friends, and hope they would not inquire further. "On the Origin of Species" is a good popsci book precisely because it isn't popsci. It is a rigorous proof and analysis of an idea from multiple angles, addressing criticism and FAQs. It is a book written for everyone willing to spend time with it. On the contrary, popsci is worthless, disinterested layman will not read it, interested layman or hobbyist will starve his mind to death or succumb purely to trivia relay, a specialist or professional will not waste his time on such books. If you are interested in biochemistry open Stryer's Biochemistry and read a chapter that interests you, omitting all that is boring. If evolution interests you read Darwin, or Futyama.

>>23303465
Undergrad textbooks are close to what true popsci should be, they give you the rough idea of all big problems and solutions of a chosen field, and equip you with preliminaries necessary to seek precise concrete answers, solutions or ideas in primary literature. What do people want to get from popsci? Certainly they're not getting the ability, at most curated ideas and answers that they don't understand even if they think they do. You might say that popsci is useful for sparking the interest, but I believe that true interest does not need kindling. We don't need more people coming to science with false ideas about what it is and how it is done, who after a brief period either leave discontent or settle and make the field more mediocre, because they were falsely led to believe that science is what it is not. Small but true, absorbing and meaningful work, is better than false work, no matter how grand it appears. But which popsci books invite you to ponder a problem for couple days? Why don't they equip you with necessary tools, so that after some time you could see the books conclusion through your own understanding, rather than absorbing the authors interpretation. I have met too many people harmed by popsci who were but mere trivia machines, and after several iterations could not even see that they were making false claims: "we share 70% of DNA with bananas!" not really, it is not so simple; "chlorophyll and hemoglobin only differ by whether they bound Fe or Mg ion!" categorically, no. There is no understanding without thinking, and modern popsci is too much focused on entertainment. Even though my words might've led you to believe that I hate the common man, I don't. I'd just much rather see him experience the joy of science in his own life, rather than marvel at all the weird vaguely expressed ideas in the books, tv shows and similar media. If an alpinist wanted other to experience the thrill of exploration, would it not be better for him to nudge them to explore the most immediate nature, rather than write about his marvelous adventures in the mountains?

>>23303465
>>23303466
Can you condense your message into a line or two so more anons will read it? Thanks :^)

>>23303466
>Undergrad textbooks are close to what true popsci should be
What are some good and readable undergrad books? Most textbooks are terrible.

>>23303502
most books are terrible. Ones I mention I found to be not tedious. If you're looking for a specific discipline just open any book that seems to be the typical undergrad book and if it's terrible don't read it. Surprisingly, monograph type textbooks while they appear to be for specialists are quite approachable, eg. Biology of Termites: a modern synthesis (http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=4FC9284EF7C77D1D227B029CEB6D74A9)) has a quite beginner friendly introduction, provided that other chapters are heavier in jargon, but truth be told we are all novices when faced with new knowledge and have to look things up while reading.

>>23303465
Like documentaries all the recent ones are shit. QED is short, interesting the entire time and actually explains things. Relatively complex math is made easy and intuitive with Feynman diagrams. In the process it also helps explain why some things are hard to describe without something like math.
Selfish Gene is a nice index of subjects to explore further with interesting real life examples. It's historically significant as an answer to "tooth and claw" even though most of the relevant academic work comes from elsewhere.
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

>>23303465
>>23303466
>>23303502
>>23303472
>>23303898
I thought some more, and came to the conclusion that I need to say more on the matter.
It's not that the books are necessarily bad in themselves, there are some good ones: QED was written by Feynman (which means it's good), Monod wrote some bio–philosophical works on biological systems, and although he firmly believed cell to be a machine (or bioreactor) he certainly wrote something worth reading, Kreb's ecology although a textbook is partially a popsci book, and in its introduction it references Platt's "Strong Inference" paper, which (barring some technicalities) could be considered a good popsci text. But it does not matter whether the text you read is wrong if you are not thinking. Any of these texts could be butchered by a bored professor or incompetent teacher forcing their stupidity on their students. As you cannot learn science (or anything) passively, your reading is as valuable as what you do with it. There should not be a distinction between popsci books and science books, because now textbooks are boring and popsci is stupid

Bump

>>23300203
The first 400 pages are math so that you can understand the remaining 700.

>>23299144
It's a dense 1100pg book on mathematical physics written by a Nobel laureate. Your observations are pretentious.

>>23302436
He's still more right than wrong. Sleep deprivation is a real issue and it comes back to fuck you up in old age.

>>23303465
I came to a similar conclusion regarding hard-science books. In addition, one need actively engage with the subject, and repeatedly, lest one should forget what you read. Well, that also applies to non-fiction books in general. The way I do it is by making Anki cards.

>>23299126
Penrose is a based ascended schizo crank in a good way who can actually back up his shit.

Imagine calling a science book pretentious because it includes math.

Not math heavy at all, but some background in stats will help. A good read for managers and people who have to work with data. I've seen so many very intelligent people still get caught up in fundamental errors when dealing with stats.

>>23301394
>>23301391
I thought it was shit and stopped at chapter 1

Pop-sci is to science what those dumbed down reworkings of Shakespeare are to literature. Nothing worth concerning oneself with was ever easy. If you aren't willing to put in the effort to climb the mountain you don't deserve to see the view from its peak, either.

This is PSI btw......

https://www.instagram.com/reverse.feedback/

Gravity's Rainbow