Now Reading

I agree.   I think the sequels are each bleaker and bigger than the one before.  The third one straight up gave me the most existential dread I've ever experienced reading ANY book.  Which one in the series you like best really depends on the kind of person you are, but for me, each sequel is better than the one before.  It's a very unique writing style too, every 15 pages or so is a super interesting idea that COULD be its own book.   And it's like that for the entire series.  You have to really like science too, I would not recommend this book to just anybody.  It takes a certain mind.   Just incredibly clever, and very big ideas.  The guy is a genius imo.

Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe. Even though I don't actually agree with the basic premise that reality is fundamentally mathematics, it's still a very interesting look at modern cosmology and current trends in theoretical physics and astronomy. Cosmology is probably anyway the most speculative field of science there is. I've been reading Stephen Wolfram's and Roger Penrose's work before and I don't really agree with either of them in cosmological matters, but it's all interesting stuff.

Also I've been reading the Infinite Jest for months now.. I'm about halfway through..

I feel I should next read some crappy scifi or fantasy to balance this shit out.

  On 11/11/2020 at 3:20 PM, gnarlybog said:

I just blasted through the first two books of Liu Cixin's The Three Body Problem trilogy. Damn... mind-bending sci-fi. Strong recommendation.

Just started reading it, thanks for mentioning it here ! Liking it a lot so far.

  On 11/12/2020 at 9:29 PM, Extralife said:

It's really great if you are into reading postmodern novels a la House of Leaves.  Lot of changes in style, huge focus on typefaces and design, and heavy into the sci-fi.  Started very slow, but once it picked up steam I couldn't put it down.  Has sort of a pulp novel within a novel and a soundtrack written by Strictly Kev/DJ Food.  Hits all the right boxes for me

I'm currently a tad too tired to dive into a novel written in English, but will grab a copy and will most certainly read it right when / if finishing the whole Three Body Problem saga. I'm also appeal by the typographic experimentations it seems to offer, reminds me of Nicola Barker's H(a)ppy.

read the quotations of chairman mao in a couple days. the parts that related more to tactics were pretty badass, the parts that were more clearly just straight propaganda//rallying the troops gave me a "you had to be there" kinda vibe

reading some jean baudrillard in french. i like baudrillard but sometimes his imagery is a little flashy for my taste. can't tell when i'm agreeing with his basic ideas, and when i'm just getting carried along by cool visual metaphors.

capital volume 3 & the odyssey (still)

re-reading difference & repetition (in english). forgot just how dense this thing is. reading five pages takes me like an hour. far less incomprehensible than it was a year ago, though, which suggests that my attempt to homebrew a philosophy degree is progressing!

i want to start reading the works of neitzsche in german but i dunno when i'm getting around to it. i generally try to read at least 10% the total number of pages of each book on my "currently reading" list each day. rn i have four books on the list (one which is of course over 1000 pages) & getting through those takes a few hours, so i dunno Neitz u might have 2 hold tite my dude

De l'inconvénient d'être né: I admit, I got into reading Cioran a couple years ago solely because of OPN song titles, but he's actually pretty good

The Black Swan: I read Antifragile last year. Still haven't figured out how much I actually like Taleb as a writer, and how much I just vibe with his core project of exploring chaos & complex systems. Also I watched his 2018 Google talk on youtube & it kinda reminded me of that Sam Hyde TED talk from back in the day

Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe is getting pretty tedious in the second half as he's building straw men that oppose his views with no real counter arguments and then claim that people who don't agree with him are "100% unscientific". He also has little sense of modern philosophy of mathematics or metamathematics. He just skips the theoretical foundations of mathematics pretty much completely. Also a lot of the arguments he says rest on the assumption that there is a Theory of Everything that is mathematical and explains everything. But since we haven't found one yet I think that's a pretty fucking big leap of faith, lol.

Mneh, maybe I still try to get through the book.

^saw Tegmark on a conversation/debate episode of PBS Spacetime a couple months ago. he seems like he’s gone off the deep end into almost hippydippy territory. i think he did some really important real science/math at some point in the past but i am unfamiliar so i’m just blabbering really. said all that to say not surprised by what you’re saying...no one would blame you for not finishing it. but sometimes those out there stances are the most interesting (and obv very often very wrong)

  On 11/24/2020 at 4:37 PM, zkom said:

claim that people who don't agree with him are "100% unscientific"

not terribly familiar with him or his book but yeah, in general when ppl start doing this sorta shit (or reference "the science" as some sorta unified transcendental validator of whatever the individual happens to be arguing for) i go "nah nope i'm out, friend"

  On 11/24/2020 at 4:47 PM, auxien said:

^saw Tegmark on a conversation/debate episode of PBS Spacetime a couple months ago. he seems like he’s gone off the deep end into almost hippydippy territory. i think he did some really important real science/math at some point in the past but i am unfamiliar so i’m just blabbering really. said all that to say not surprised by what you’re saying...no one would blame you for not finishing it. but sometimes those out there stances are the most interesting (and obv very often very wrong)

I like reading speculative cosmological stuff, like Wolfram's ideas that reality is actually based on cellular automata which I find interesting but don't believe for a second, lol. But Tegmark is pretty full of himself in the book and comes off as really condescending seeing how little he actually understands mathematics research. I think this review, written by a mathematician, hits the nail on the head, particularly the last paragraph https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/31/our-mathematical-universe-max-tegmark-review

I'm reading about 5 books right now, I like to chop and change.

I started reading this after watching My Octopus Teacher, it's pretty good and covers some of the same ground as another book:

Which is interesting but a little dry, lots and lots of comparing the mind to a basic computer and what-not. 

  On 11/24/2020 at 5:39 PM, zkom said:

I like reading speculative cosmological stuff, like Wolfram's ideas that reality is actually based on cellular automata which I find interesting but don't believe for a second, lol. But Tegmark is pretty full of himself in the book and comes off as really condescending seeing how little he actually understands mathematics research. I think this review, written by a mathematician, hits the nail on the head, particularly the last paragraph https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/31/our-mathematical-universe-max-tegmark-review

ha that breakdown of the book makes it sound unbearable to me. any form of multiverse hypotheses, especially the extra complex version he’s saying Tegmark is suggesting, is just ludicrous imo. i’m with you on finding that stuff interesting (jesus fuck that Wolfram shit i’d almost forgotten about it...thanks for giving me a chuckle) but i just can’t entertain it too often these days.

  On 11/24/2020 at 5:49 PM, MadameChaos said:

I'm reading about 5 books right now, I like to chop and change.

I started reading this after watching My Octopus Teacher, it's pretty good

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that is a good one, picked it up last year because like 15 people here recommended it over the last few years lol

  On 11/24/2020 at 5:49 PM, MadameChaos said:

I'm reading about 5 books right now, I like to chop and change.

I started reading this after watching My Octopus Teacher, it's pretty good and covers some of the same ground as another book:

Which is interesting but a little dry, lots and lots of comparing the mind to a basic computer and what-not. 

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Loved both of these. The octopus book was obviously fantastic and the mind book really helped make clear that the mind, too, is probably a collection of prefab parts working together. Stephen Pinker was pretty cool before he started talking about things he knows nothing about (history).

  On 11/24/2020 at 7:31 PM, rhmilo said:

Stephen Pinker was pretty cool before he started talking about things he knows nothing about (history).

I've only read some of Pinker's linguistic-related work, which I found to be quite pleasant. But yeah I've noticed that anti-liberals on the left & the right all have it out for the guy. I assume he must have some kind of RIchard Dawkins thing going on, where any time he attempts to step out of his lane & do larger social commentary it's a painful experience

  On 11/24/2020 at 8:29 PM, Cryptowen said:

I assume he must have some kind of RIchard Dawkins thing going on, where any time he attempts to step out of his lane & do larger social commentary it's a painful experience

Yup, very much this. The closing chapter of "The God Delusion" is wonderful, but the rest is just painful to read. Guy doesn't know the first thing of what he's talking about. Such a shame because I love his biology and evolution books.

I think I figured out why I've had a mixed response to Taleb's work - his writing style is often fairly chaotic & random. IE in the space of a single chapter/subsection/paragraph he might drift from fairly dense statistical analysis, to self-helpy musings, to trashtalkin philosophers, to personal anecdotes, to silly jokes involving his made-up characters, etc etc. It made his books feel rather unfocused, but now that I'm consciously aware of the fact, I feel like I can better appreciate the fact that it's almost certainly intentional (seeing as he's mostly writing about chaos & randomness)

I'm reminded of a novel I read 10 years ago: The Dice Man by George Cockcroft. Essentially the premis is that a nondescript man working a restrictive career as a psychiatrist in the early 70s + in the midst of a midlife crisis begins to use dice roles to determine his decisions for every choice that comes up in his life, and that this eventually leads to his life spiraling off in totally unpredictable directions. Also apparently the book itself was written using the same method, ie dice roles to determine plot points & overall tone. This central idea was very interesting to me (still is) - the idea, basically, that by embracing the infinite minute chance variables present in every moment, a person can easily break up the systematic stagnation in their life. But the novel itself was kinda trash

Now all that to say, maybe 10 years of life perspective would allow me to go back & find more depth in it now, than I did then. Maybe. I dunno. In any event I think Taleb (and Deleuze) gives me what I hoped to get from that book: an actual investigation into the nature of complex systems, and what actual potentialities might be available for utilizing chance.

Now reading - the extensive and beautifully written text in Disco Elysium

  On 11/28/2020 at 9:40 PM, Cryptowen said:

The Dice Man 

it warms my soul to know that afx twin was probably reading the same dumb shit as me at age 19

Thanks to the hype train here I just blasted through vol. 1 of Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem trilogy.

Normally not much of a SciFi reader but this was great. Lots of technical stuff but most of it was quite fun. The bit where they try to unfold a photon was Lem level hilarious.

Hype is justified. On to book two.

  On 12/9/2020 at 7:32 AM, rhmilo said:

Thanks to the hype train here I just blasted through vol. 1 of Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem trilogy.

Normally not much of a SciFi reader but this was great. Lots of technical stuff but most of it was quite fun. The bit where they try to unfold a photon was Lem level hilarious.

Hype is justified. On to book two.

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Hehe exactly the same here :)

  On 12/9/2020 at 9:08 AM, Stickfigger said:

The "Now Reading" thread on WATMM; very enlightening 

Welcome to WATMM. Come for the music, stay for the book recommendations, movie recommendations and tv show recommendations.

And the grumbling of old people about youngsters these days.

The third book in R.F. Kuang's Poppy War saga was finally released and I'm reading that now for a change. The trilogy is a grimdark fantasy set in a fantasy version of China. Kind of combining the Opium wars, Japanese occupation, Communist revolution, etc all in one fantasy setting where superpowered shamans act as avatars of gods. And by grimdark I mean it's both really grim and dark. Lots of good ol' violence, murder, torture, raping and drug abuse. Major characters killed, traumatized and maimed left and right. So if that's your thing then it's pretty entertaining.

the cloud of unknowing (teaching myself middle english)

wilhelm reich's the function of the orgasm (full disclosure i own multiple chunks of orgonite)

henri bergon's matter & memory (the original french version, too lazy to do the accent marks with my keys tho)

thinking fast & slow (it was on a free stuff shelf. there's some nuggets but dunno if i'll finish it, it feels kinda entry-level tbh & i'm morally wary of these sort of models of consciousness)

i have a pdf of capital as power i'll be starting this week because i'm taking a break from marx but still want stuff in this general realm

You don't really need to learn Middle English. It would surprise me if you don't already understand it (apart from the occasional weird word).