Looking for books to recommend to friends who crave interesting stuff to read, but turn to guys like Jordan Peterson and Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson because that’s the trendy, popular, easy to digest stuff in the public eye right now. In particular because as evidence below, I don’t have a ton of good suggestions on hand right now. Also looking for books for *me* to read that I might not have.
In particular, looking for books or short reads that:
(a) Help give a broader perspective on US and global history and politics than the grade-school “pop” historical and global narratives many of these people buy directly into. The stuff that would help dispel the simplistic narratives many of these people work from - “The US generally does the right thing globally”, “Communism was the enemy of democracy”, “Socialism is all about big government and regulation”, “The Western world is responsible for almost all major achievements”, etc. Books on US interventions and brutal capitalist regime change in South America, US imperialism globally, the spanish civil war, the socialist party in the US, socialist and communist movements abroad, the rise of fascism in the US and other countries in the 20th century, labor movements, etc.
Suggestions: People’s History of the United States, Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros, Umberto Eco’s essay on Ur Fascism, Chomsky books?
(b) Help people understand leftist perspectives, instead of endlessly working with the strawmen of them presented in these popular liberal works.
Suggestions: The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (perhaps it’s time to sneer at me for this suggestion), Jacobin’s The ABCs of Socialism.
(c) Help give a broader perspective on the history of social justice, works that show how “moderate-washed” figures like MLK, Gandhi, and Mandela were actually quite radical, and how many of the scary SJW ideas they hear about through <insert alt-right propaganda subreddit> have a legacy in civil rights movements and academic philosophy.
Suggestions: Letter from a Birmingham Jail, MLK’s 1967 speech to the APA.
(d) In general any works that give actually academic but also accessible views on any topic to combat the entire “Experts suck and you never have to listen to what they say, you just have to think about it!” autodidact philosophy that pervades the rationalist community. Can be in your niche of interest.
I think /u/FashionSense is essentially right about this, but if you’re going to try it, you need to find the most Rationalist-adjacent, sciency, or “non-ideological” stuff possible rather than just throwing Marx or some shit at them. Here’s some possible ideas:
-What Intelligence Tests Miss by Keith Stanovich – a critique of IQ based largely on the cognitive biases and heuristics research program. This even got a write-up on LW a long time ago.
-Adapting Minds by David Buller – extremely thorough brick-length debunking of orthodox evo psych, no politics included.
-Descartes Error by Antonio Damasio – affective neuroscience and the neurological importance of emotion to decision-making processes. Jaak Panksepp might also be good here and has some debunkings of evo psych.
-Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You by Agustin Fuentes – doubles as a great intro to basic concepts in biological anthropology and succinct debunking of HBD. Also has the benefit of not being written by Stephen Jay Gould, who makes them froth at the mouth.
-1491 by Charles C. Mann – A good popularization (they exist!) of the history of European contact, development of the Columbian exchange, etc. Good for debunking sciency sounding Jared Diamond type history. Also worth looking into James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, but it might be a little too commie in places. Europe and the People Without History by Eric Wolf is the advanced version, though definitely way too commie.
-Science As Social Knowledge by Helen Longino – A feminist analytic does phil of science and STS, including (FORMAL) logic. A major case study is biology of sex/gender, so also doubles for debunking a lot of crappy gender essentialism.
-The Funding of Scientific Racism by William H. Tucker – The title might be too triggering (ad hom!), but it’s a fairly dry history of the Pioneer Fund from when it was founded (1930s) to the time publication (early 2000s). Unlike many histories of this type, it traces a straight through-line from old-school eugenics to contemporary figures who would become the godfather’s of today’s HBD movement.
-The Enlightenment by Dorinda Outram – this is a revisionist (and nicely brief) take on the Enlightenment with a more social history spin. It debunks the idea of the Enlightenment as any singular thing and shows the on-the-ground reality of the time period the philosophes existed in.
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life
Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities
eds. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back
These are all pretty accessible.
How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff would be a good start
Venkatesh Rao’s Ribbonfarm might be a decent way to transition out of the LW/SSC sphere. It’s very similar in style but with a much broader palette. When you see the much wider world he writes about, all the Team Red / HBD / Intellectual Dark Web shit just isn’t as fascinating anymore.
Current Affairs is killing it in the Culture Wars. It’s a great transition point just because he specifically kicks the asses of Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and other right-wing-nerd golden calves.
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series. Beautifully crafted left-wing, postmodern space opera, with a highly rationalist protagonist.
“What Went Wrong? Reflections on Science by Observation and the Bell Curve”, by Glymour. (Contains math.)
ETA: Also, Graeber’s Debt, and his excellent responsiveness to his Amazon-review critics (though it seems like you have to dig a bit to find his responses. I’m not sure how to link them directly.)
I am totally, 100% behind that view. The likes of Peterson and Murray have been able to cement their pernicious views by appealing to their own authority, and Damore’s argument for why women might be biologically determined to disinterest in programming was mostly an appeal to authority. If you can’t at least read a scientific paper and judge its claims for yourself on the paper’s own terms, you’re bound to wind up getting manipulated by someone.
I haven’t read much of it, but I bet Finkelstein’s What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage fits the bill.
IIRC ContraPoints and Hbomberguy talk about this somewhere: that their turn to leftism wasn’t because of any particular books but because of a general curiosity and love of reading.
They point out that it’s not so much about what you read, but rather how you approach your reading - with a critical, curious, and above all, a humble, attitude.
This is in contrast to the right who typically venerate certain figures as geniuses and heroes for bravely arguing against the status quo. But no one person is infallible, and a cultish following of certain thinkers isn’t productive nor helpful. It reflects their (often unconscious) reliance on individualism as a way of understanding the world.
The Black Jacobins- C.L.R. James, a leftist history of slavery and the slave rebellion in Haiti.
Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change- George Marshall, hopefully it would make them consider why they and their IDW heroes refuse to confront the horror of climate change. (Also recommend This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate-Naomi Klein, but it huge and would be a bit masochistic to require a lobster to read it.)
My next three are fiction because I get the feeling a lot of IDW fans simply don’t read that much fiction and I think it would be a net positive if they did.
A Canticle for Leibowitz- Walter M. Miller Jr., one of the best anti-scientism novels written.
The Awakening- Kate Chopin, my favorite feminist novel. I can imagine the IDW fans not understanding its message but I think it will stick with them and give them pause.
Lastly, A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole, largely because it’s my favorite novel and I think every one should read it. But I also think IDW fans share many tendencies with Ignatius J Reilly and maybe reading that book would allow them to see their own absurdity.
“Thank you for arguing” by Jay Heinrichs. It’s a book about rhetoric.
I found it immensely useful in my personal life because I found when I implemented it, it reduced conflict between myself and other people. It also was eye-opening because it made me realise that rationalists suffer from an over-reliance on one form of rhetoric - logos - whilst completely ignoring ethos and pathos. Both are very important to at least understand - even if you don’t want to use them yourself - because other people use and respond to them.
The meaning of science by Tim Lewens for a contemporary introduction to philosophy of science.
The man of reason by Geneviene Lloyd. It’s a historical account of western philosophy about the association of rationality with masculinity and as a consequence with objectivity and the association of emotions to femininity and irrationality. Might also want to check her latest book Enlightenment shadows.
Nations and Nationalism since 1780 by Eric Hobsbawm for a counter of naive arguments about what a nation is -nationalism makes nations, not the other way around. His other book, The invention of tradition is a good choice too.
Measurement in psychology by Joel Michell for some better philosophical understanding of measurement theory and psychological measurements like IQ and educational attainment (obviously quite technical stuff). The topic is way more contentious and murky than people are willing to admit. This should be a good counter to a naive surface level acceptance of IQ and other psychological tests and their interpretations. They can dismiss Gould, but they cannot dismiss people like Michell that have dedicated their academic careers thinking about these topics.
A short course on intellectual self-defense by Normand Baillardeon for good critical thinking skills.
The secret to our success by Joe Henrich for an actual understanding of human diversity.
Madness and Civilization - Michel Foucault (or really anything by Foucault, but this in particular). Good introduction to the ways science, even when it is true and accurate, is used as a tool by the powerful to bludgeon the powerless and make sure they stay in their “rightful place”.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn. Good demonstration of how scientific progress doesn’t work the way most rationalists think it works.
Against Method - Paul Feyerabend. Continuation of the above theme from Kuhn. Actually more radical than even I accept, but it wouldn’t kill them to at least be exposed to it.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center - bell hooks. Much more approachable and accessible than most feminist writing, which sometimes has an unfortunate tendency to stray into the tendency of modern academia of opaque verbosity.
Fifth, basically any SF book that’s neither “heroic Men of Science save the day with their superior intelligence”, nor military SF. I don’t care which, pick one. It could be The Dispossessed, Solaris, Xenogenesis, whatever. I hate to jump into the annoying “lol stop reading white male authors” thing, because that’s always reductive and unhelpful, but it sort of fits here.
If these people could read, they wouldn’t be like this.
As FashionSense has already pointed out, just assigning people readings isn’t really going to change their mind. If someone’s reading Yud and Hanson then they’re probably already rather dedicated to a certain right-wing outlook. Peterson I would include in this group less because of his viral fame, I think he’s reaching a lot of people who are basically just dupes and aren’t really as committed ideologically.
I became curious about leftism in the wake of the global financial crisis - there will probably be a lot more room to talk to “Rationalists” after the silicon valley bubble bursts.
Anyway, here’s a few recommendations (most are pretty short, Fanon’s piece is the longest):
Lenin - The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Marx - Value, Price and Profit
Aime Cesaire - Discourse on Colonialism
Frantz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth
I think giving effective alternatives has to do with what they are motivated to read and study. I don’t really think people study stuff for studying in itself. Certain things are going to pique their interest. I see that you mention a lot of things that have to do with the left perspective. That’s certainly useful for some people who are not already on the left. For example, if somebody is poor and want to find out why, Chomsky might be a good alternative to them turning on the conservative talk show radio. But are rationalist-inclined people in a similar mode of seeking? Are they going to be open to, say, what socialism is really about? I don’t know myself. But in case you’re not considering the motivations of your audience you might just end up with a correct-the-record-on-leftism reading list that they might not be motivated to engage with.