Effective Altruists discussion

Has anyone taken a look at this post in the ea-forum: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/5f/e... ? How many of the books have you read and what did you think of them? I have read 'thinking, fast and slow' and 'never eat alone'. The next book on the list I want to read is 'how to measure anything'.

Hoo boy. I'm embarrassed to say I've only read "Thinking, Fast And Slow", but many *many* of the listed books have been on my to-read -list for several years.

I don't really know why I've never actually read them.

I can relate, I mainly joined goodreads to keep track of what I'm (not) reading. I hope it motivates me a bit. I think I need to set some more precise goals to get around reading some of the books on the reading list... How did you like 'thinking, slow and fast' ?

*fast and slow

I liked it quite a lot; Kahneman has a easy writing style that made the reading enjoyable.

It has been many years since I read the book and I've since learned that some of the cited research didn't replicate (namely, the priming studies), but for the most part the book should still be accurate enough.

It's a little worse than that; at least five phenomena he strongly endorses have fallen (and probably more; I'm not a specialist and will have missed things).

Still like 80% or 90% current though.

I think it's well worth reading. It was one of the most fun things I read, and EAs and rationalists do tend to mention several of its concepts frequently (e.g. System 1/2, the notion of a heuristic, the notion of a cognitive bias, etc)

Interesting, I didn't know that part of his research was disproven. I also really like the book, it contains lots of phenomena that are important tor rationalist, I agree.

I've read Poor Economics which is well worth a read. I'm surprised I haven't run into more EAs who have read it. I found it as foundational as say Doing Good Better.

I've also read The Lean Startup and So Good They Can't Ignore You. The core ideas from these I think are absolutely essential though you can get the gist of these core ideas quite easily without the depth the books go into. So recommending either depends on how much you know already and want to know on either of the topics these books touch. I think The Lean Startup is far more "necessary" since it's ideas are less intuitive whereas the ideas in So Good They Can't Ignore You most EAs have been exposed to by virtue of being EAs.