Motivated by 7w5's recent journal post, here is what I have been reading and contemplating during lock-down:
1.
Map and Territory by Eliezer Yudkowsky: Highly recommended for understanding the communication gap between experts and laymen. The theme is treating rationality as an art form improved through rigorous training akin to a martial art. Would pair well with
Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by Edwin Jaynes.
Here is a relevant passage: "Oh, and you'd better not drop any hints that you think you're working a dozen inferential steps away from what the audience knows, or that you think you have special background knowledge not available to them. The audience doesn't know anything about an evolutionary-psychological argument for a cognitive bias to underestimate inferential distances leading to traffic jams in communication. They'll just think you're condescending."
2.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber: Basically a more rigorous origin story for how economies emerged. Proposes an alternative to barter as the origin of currency. Highlights the importance of tribal structure and inter-tribal tribute. Within tribes, communal structure was pervasive with little evidence of bartering. This makes much more sense to me based on my intuition of human evolution. Currency could possibly have emerged in chiefdoms where Dunbar's number would have been surpassed.
3, 4.
The Origins of Political Order and
Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama: Within the same theme as Debt above touching on the emergence of social institutions and how they are subject to adaptive pressures.
5.
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker: I think this guy goes a bit too far at times with brain-equality, but I do get why he does it (to counter differential group selection narratives in favor of individualism). It is almost a requirement, if you are (or want to become) a popular scientist, to ignore personality, intelligence, sex differences, and so forth. For most people, believing that genetic variation is null relative to cultural variation is an okay narrative but it still leads to people being in over their heads.
Steven Pinker is at the forefront of psycho-linguistics. This is a very interesting area and explains a lot about why humans are different from other species. Languages seem diverse, but they all follow a set of very predicable rules (universal grammar). This book looks deeper into this. Pairs well with
On Language by Chomsky.
6.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn: This is a classic that I have known about but never got around to reading it. Proposes a non-linear structure of scientific development and popularized the idea of a paradigm.
7.
The Evolving Self by Robert Kegan: I skipped this a while back and read
In Over Our Heads. This book adds a bit more substance and background to the latter. I see now a bit better Jacob's point on how his model is primarily aimed at social interaction which makes it a bit biased towards extroverts. I came up with a basic symmetrical model that mirrors into the introverted dimension.
inter-individual <- institutional <- interpersonal <- imperial <- impulsive <- incorporative -> intuitive -> independent -> imitative -> initiative -> inter-formal
So, they both start at incorporative with the extroverted progression on the left and the introverted progression to the right. Very much intended to fit square pegs in round holes by retaining the in-/im- pattern.
This book meshes well with Fukuyama's work above to help define a system of cultural evolution. I developed some rough analogies between genetic and cultural evolution (I am sure others have too): Gene -- Meme, Sex -- Communication, Organism -- Agent, Lineage -- Accent, Species -- Language, Ecosystem -- Institution, and Biome -- State.. or something like that.
8. Reread
Angels Fear by Bateson: Very interesting book.
9.
The Power of Babel by John McWhorter: Basically "a natural history of language" that explains the consequences of human aggregation on language diversity. Touches on various evolutionary trends such as erosion and grammaticalization. The few surviving languages co-evolved with writing which slows evolution and persists more reliably across generations.
10, 11.
The Unfolding of Language and
Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher: The first is along the same lines as above, but I find it slightly more annoying to read. The second book is at odds with Pinker's book above as it attempts to make the case that different languages alter your perception differently. There seems to be very little evidence of this. For one, it is hard to measure perception. Secondly, convincing people with argumentation is very difficult with an inference gap of one or greater (touched on in
Map and Territory above). Speaking a language allows you to engage in tribal communication but the particular grammar of it has very little affect on your personality/perception/judgement in my estimate.
12.
Please Understand Me 2 by David Keirsey: Reiterated the types and strengthened my intuition on the temperaments. The temperaments are a good place to start with personality noobs.
Looking forward to getting this book Wednesday:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089278TWR ..which just came out from Michael Pierce. He is a fairly smart INFJ who makes YouTube videos on the cognitive functions and types.
13, 14.
American Nations and
American Character by Colin Woodard: The first was interesting. I have not been hooked into the second one, yet. Looks a bit more ideological which can be good or bad.
15 - 25. Partially reading over a dozen textbooks primarily on biology. Driven to link genetics to the emergence of social institutions. This is a big leap!
26 - 35. Partially reading books, manuals, or websites on computer science and programming. Technical and dry stuff that I am looking to leverage into web development and graphics design.
So, how do I broaden the knowledge of as many fourth-order thinkers as possible by implanting a meme-complex into their minds using the internet while it still stands? By mixing art, history, and science into a irresistible collage that defies all preconceived boundaries of thought, I suppose.
EDIT: Fixed extroverted-introverted chain. Missed a step and the alignment was off.
With st and surf? Firefox is slow on openbsd and youtube is unusable. How do you overcome this?