2016-08-11

Non-Fiction Book Reviews

These are fairly well known, however there is a chance you haven't read all of them - in which case, this might be helpful.

Good and Real - Gary Drescher ★★★★★
This is one of my top favorites from rationality-themed books. Goes over a lot of philosophy, while showing a lot of clear thinking and meta-thinking. Number one replacement for Eliezer's meta-philosophy, if it had not existed. The writing style and language is somewhat obscure, but this book is too brilliant to be spoiled by that. The biggest takeaway is the analysis of ethics of non-causal consequences of our choices, which is something that actually has changed how I act in my life, and I have not seen any similar argument in other sources that would do the same. This book changed my intuitions so much that I now pay $100 in counterfactual mugging without second thought.