9 Books That Will Make You a Smarter Person
There are some books that are so mind-blowing that they change
how you see yourself and the world forever.
Here are nine underrated books that completely changed
how I see the world and can do the same for you.
The Mosquito by Timothy Wingard
This may be the strangest history book,
but it takes something you normally never think about, the mosquito
and shows how it influences almost everything.
For most of human history,
roughly 30 to 40% of all deaths were caused
by mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria, typhoid, and dengue.
Mosquitoes dominated social concerns, political decisions,
and the outcomes of some
of the most consequential wars in human history.
From the fall of the Roman Empire to the American Revolution
to the slave trade, much of human history was dictated
by the reality of disease, and nothing carried
disease quite like mosquitoes did.
The Replication Crisis by Richie
This book is incredibly important
because most laypeople don’t realize there is a massive replication
crisis going on in the social sciences.
In fields such as economics, psychology, and sociology,
more than 70% of the research does not replicate reliably
when tested by other scientists.
Richie does a great job of explaining how research gets fudged
and the incentives within the peer-review system behind it.
It is a hugely important read for anyone
who wants to take scientific inquiry seriously,
making you far more skeptical of the data you come across.
A Critical Look at Democracy
If you are a democracy-loving Westerner with a romantic image
that giving more power and voice to the people makes us all better off,
this book will challenge your views.
It shows an abundance of data and examples suggesting that,
in many cases, greater amounts of democracy result
in worse outcomes for populations.
This happens because most people are either uneducated
on the issues or simply too busy to educate themselves
on the plethora of concerns in their community.
While democracy is clearly better than other forms of government,
it requires a necessary check and balance.
You need to balance Democratic populism with a layer
of highly educated experts and elites
who can actually get things done.
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Becker was an obscure philosophy professor who found out
he had terminal cancer and wrote this book on his deathbed.
His simple argument is that death terrifies
us so much that we unconsciously seek out ways
to metaphorically live forever.
He calls these our “immortality projects.”
- These projects are why people are driven to run for government, write books, have children, and build statues.
- It is why people become deeply invested in charitable causes and political conflicts.
- It is the ego’s way of creating something in the world that will outlast itself.
While these projects give our lives meaning
and are necessary for psychological health,
when our immortality projects clash with other people’s,
war and violence ensue because we are literally willing
to die so our projects may survive.
The Medium is the Message by McLuhan
Monumentally influential in the 60s, 70s,
and 80s as television rose to cultural prominence,
this book’s insights are more relevant
than ever in the social media age.
McLuhan argued that the content of media is mostly inconsequential.
Whether you are watching cooking shows or murder mysteries,
the content has far less cognitive effect than the medium
in which you consume it.
Every medium interfaces with our brains in distinct ways,
training us how to consume information and perceive the world.
- Television: A passive form of media where you wait for what it shows you, encouraging your critical thinking to turn off.
- Reading: Requires active participation and critical thinking to comprehend the information in front of you.
The nature of the media that organizes society determines
the character of the people within it.
Today, social media caters to us individually,
enveloping us in our own distorted forms of reality perfectly
suited to our tastes and fears,
which drives a subtle loneliness
and narcissism we have never faced before.
The Lessons of History by Will Durant
Will Durant spent his entire career writing an 11-volume set called
The Story of Civilization, clocking in at over 13,000 pages.
Upon completing it, he wrote this small,
100-page book summarizing everything he learned
about humanity and civilization.
It lays out 12 seemingly straightforward lessons
with wide implications, covering topics like:
- The importance of geography on the fates of entire empires.
- The way technology dictates geopolitics.
- The ubiquity of prejudice and competition both within and between societies.
It is a lifetime worth of study compressed
into just 100 pages of wisdom.
The Progress of Scientific Knowledge by Coon
Written in the 1960s, this classic is about the messy
ways in which knowledge progresses.
Coon points out that while small, iterative improvements
come from within our conventional systems,
large breakthroughs typically come from total outsiders
who have no stakes in the current institutions.
Because they threaten current power structures,
these huge leaps are typically ridiculed and suppressed at first,
only slowly winning out over the long run.
This concept applies to human organizations in general.
People rewarded by conventional wisdom will unconsciously
try to preserve it and prevent large advancements.
Meanwhile, outcasts and outsiders will take long shots
at drastically remaking conventional wisdom,
mainly because they have nothing to lose.
The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Hendrik
“WEIRD” stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich,
and Democratic.
Hendrik notes that WEIRD people are psychometrically
different from the rest of the world,
possessing different personalities, cognitive behaviors,
and even neurological differences.
The book asks why Europe—once a backwater compared to
the Middle East and China—experienced industrialization
and the Enlightenment.
The answer has to do with Catholic Church marriage laws.
Early popes passed strict laws stating you couldn’t marry
within your family, take more than one wife, or get divorced.
This hamstrung feudal lords, preventing them
from consolidating power like monarchs elsewhere.
The result was a geopolitically unique, highly competitive,
and industrious region with more genetic diversity
and economic mobility than ever before.
Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger
Like many people, it is easy to grow up with an apocalyptic
assumption about climate change,
where the reality always seems far worse than what most believe.
Shellenberger is a former climate activist
who has traveled all over the world helping environmental causes,
and this book is essentially an argument
for everyone to calm down.
It presents a smart, well-researched, and optimistic viewpoint,
arguing that the situation is not as bad as we think,
there is hope, and the alarmism in apocalyptic rhetoric
is likely counterproductive.
