I won't offer names, but I have a contrarian piece of advice: whenever you find yourself 'resonating' too much with a certain thinker, a certain religion, ideology etc. stop, take a deep breath and start asking why that is.
The odds that any particular person will always be right are basically zero. It's way more likely that you're just consuming things that reinforce prior beliefs and make you feel good.
Make sure that you're periodically engaging with people who challenge your beliefs.
It's akin to "What's your favorite book?" being responded with "Have you considered that books maybe be untrue and are just reinforcing your biases?"
It's become regular and tiresome on HN to have these "provocative comments" on top. When I click an Ask HN, I come for answers, not for someone educating me on how the question is stupid.
And in particular there is a 3-volume series that was available for a few years that put together a lot of the work he had done during his lifetime, even though his most popular seemed to be "As a Man Thinketh".
It's been a number of years since I last read them, and unfortunately the publisher above went out of business so you can generally only find the titles above used, but I did enjoy the philosophy/thinking shared in the writing, even if their titles may indicate a somewhat religious slant, overall I'd say the writings focus more on leading a good life.
This is a good reminder I should read them again to refresh my memory on all that is discussed within the pages however, since it has been probably over 15+ years since I first read them thoroughly.
Jeffrey Sachs is my favorite public intellectual these days.
He has known a lot of powerful people, so when he discusses world events, he doesn't need to talk out of his behind. He's a serious enough scholar that there's substance behind his views.
He's not particularly iconoclastic. His opinions are mildly progressive, nothing outlandish.
What I value about him is that he's relentlessly reasonable, and that's hard to find online.
Epicurus. In addition to his life changing philosophy, check-out his physics. His notion of Clinamen [0] is basically quantum mechanics from 23 centuries ago.
Peter Zeihan seems to have a very strong handle on geopolitics. Do not approach his work lightly... it's very depressing if you're not in the US.
Daniel Schmachtenberger gave me a strong heads up on societal energy blindness
Kevlin Henney taught me far more about programming than I thought I even needed to know. I'll never approach multi-threaded programming the same way again.
Eric Weinstein made me aware of the embedded growth obligations that have de-ranged so many of our institutions. It was quite a wake-up call.
Alan Turing for model of computation
Kurt Gödel for incompleteness theorem
Erwin Schrödinger for "What is life?" book
Hugh Everett for many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
Seth Lloyd for ultimate physical limits to computation
John von Neumann for self-replicating spacecraft or von Neumann probe
Robin Hanson for Grabby Aliens model
Nick Bostrom for idea of existential risk
Richard Dawkins for many God debates and books
John Stuart Mill for Harm principle
Elon Musk for rockets reusability
Diogenes for simplicity and Diogenes and Alexander anecdote
Horace for Exegi monumentum poem
It's a question about favorites, so everyones opinion is equally valid.
For example, I like Heloise d’Argenteuil. Her view on marriage being contractual prostitution was a fun & thought provoking read back in my college days. However, she's hardly my favorite thinker.
Francis Xavier is my favorite public thinker. That's not because he's the greatest thinker that ever lived (I'd put Democritus as that one), but rather because he's one of the founders of the order of monks that educated me in high-school/college. He's who I resonate with. It's not a value judgment.
Any homogeneous group has a limited number of opinions. Knowledge is a strength. The uniformity of this community is a great weakness, not a "healthy spectrum".
I love Zach but I actually prefer his brother (Greg Weiner). Doesn't quite fit here, in that it's not exactly a matter of "resonating" with me; I often disagree with his positions. But in doing so I find I learn a lot about the issue, the other side, and myself.
Well, I suggest you search them on youtube to have an accurate representation. They all have multiple interviews available. I will probably butcher them and it's not going to be exhaustive, but from the top of my head:
Peter Thiel: His contrarian views enlightened me many many times, for example his views that higher education is not a temple of knowledge anymore, but a big elitist economic bubble. I also suggest you read his book Zero to One, I liked it a lot.
Elon Musk: One could argue he's not really a thinker, since he's working so much on his businesses. Even so, it's evident that he thinks a lot and very deeply. He's willing to figure out the big picture of what's good for humanity and go all-in on it.
Rand: Her philosophy and her system of values which is in a deep contrast with what is preached everywhere else. This would be a start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQVrMzWtqgU
What’s your view on Thiel supporting Trump? Why would a deep thinker support a charlatan, destructive and narcissistic person like Trump? Zero to one had some good ideas.
And Elon apparently isn’t really a deep thinker. A good hype person… yes. Most of his projects are vanity projects, e.g hyperloop, neurolink, self driving cars etc. He badly wants to be seen as a real life Tony Stark. He’s also a narcissist and a terrible leader… e.g. the hyperloop project was to derail a public transport project.[01]
There is also a good video series outlining Musk’s false claims [02]
And Rand’s ideas are toxic [03]… just look at the state of America… huge inequalities in the richest country of the world. Or UK also getting worse… thanks to a similar mindset. Dog eat dog world… self interest trumps helping others to maintain a stable society.
I didn't write my choices to start debating them with people. People are more than what you or I think of them. Be mindful of your reductionist view towards other people. You have done that 3 times in your reply.
2- Yeah, no. Elon has accomplished more than all of us and it will surely stay that way until we die. So I'm not going to tolerate you calling him a hype person, a narcissist and a terrible leader when he has a track record of immense success. He's aiming high with ambitious ideas, who cares if Hyperloop didn't work after all. Try to make a business successful and see how difficult it is.
3- You seem again, to rely on opinion hit pieces to forge your ideas.
I believe this forum exists so people like us can have a civilized debate. Hence why I wanted to find out more why you support the people you listed.
1) Supporting Trump - a populist - was a terrible idea. Thiel's rationale doesn't make sense in this context. If you support a known liar and narcissist who doesn't care about the country then you get what we have now - an ever more divided country and 6th of Jan insurrection attempt - where people died.
2) When experts in the field Musk has businesses in are calling him out on his false claims then I think it's not just opinion based but based on fact. When it comes to Hyerloop, he had no intention to make it a success. It was purely to benefit his business - Tesla. Selling Tesla as self-driving cars and people believing it has cost actual lives as well. Again - Elon doesn't care - he only cares about himself. Or what about calling a rescue diver a pedo. This alone tells you a lot about his character.
3) Look at the state of the US - do you think it's going well? A lot of those folks that are in power believe in Rand's ideas.
So it's not opinion based - but observational and listening to the expert and scientific community.
I agree with you - we need bold visionaries - but Thiel and Musk are not those people. Both are exploitative.
Montaigne once said that he often found himself listening to multiple perspectives and being convinced by all of them, even when they contradicted one another.
Yup, I think that his views on how governments and bigco operate are spot-on. Manufacture of Consent was eye opening for me. I disagree with him politically. Also, anarchy is not so far away from libertarianism.
I think if you agree with him on government, big corporations and manufacturing consent you pretty much just agree with him :D What do you disagree with?
> Also, anarchy is not so far away from libertarianism.
At some point I thought the same, but I think there are some core differences that would eventually lead to vastly different real world results. Mostly I think they stem from two ways of looking at people: either as primarily individuals who voluntarily form (contractual) bonds with others (this would be the libertarian take), or primarily as social creatures who try to carve out some room for their individual freedoms but always remain part of an organic whole (think of Kropotkin, mutual aid etc.).
If I remember correctly he's been advocating for socialism a lot in his late years, which I think would be even worse than what we have today and would naturally descend into totalitarianism like it happened so many times in the past.
I think he's been advocating for libertarian socialism consistently for his entire life. He's always careful to distinguish it from state socialism, as in, for example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr_Qp5k5zDY
Nicholas Taleb (skeptic/economist), Alexander Wales (rationalist author), /r/rational (rationalist fiction), Chapo Trap House podcast (leftist politics, comedy), Richard D Wolff (economist), Stephen West (philosophy historian), Jonathan Blow (game designer, skeptic programmer), Vitalik Buterin (kinda the only crypto person I trust who is genuinely smart)
Then of course Noam Chomsky / Slavoy Zizek (famously-rigorously-intelligent leftists). William Macaskill (Effective Altruism, moral utilitarianism at its finest). Adam Curtis (prescient documentary-style reporter).
Long list to not have a female on... feelsbad. Um - not sure how to change that - it seems like at least partially a general topic of interest thing? Not so many women in the philosophy/tech/economics/world-politics space? Kinda should actively search for that now tbh
Edit: I was downvoted to negatives presumably for saying "ngl some cringe names around here"... referring of course to the much larger collection of Rand and Peterson fans than I expected. I have since acknowledged my mistake, that use of woke terms like "cringe" in this neutral-thought safe-space is itself clearly a far greater crime and thus my post should be cancelled, and there is no irony in that or inherent political bias embedded in the platform by maintaining such neutrality as sacrosanct above passive-aggressive behavior like mine
If you're fishing for female philosophers but aren't feeling inspired you can always punch in "feminism" on your computation device, that's the one field where women are unquestionably the hegemons.
A lot of the books being recommended during the heights of BLM were also by women, so you can probably cast your net into that topic and get a good haul.
The odds that any particular person will always be right are basically zero. It's way more likely that you're just consuming things that reinforce prior beliefs and make you feel good.
Make sure that you're periodically engaging with people who challenge your beliefs.