Primarily because the book claims to give you tips for getting by on ridiciousl amounts of sleep. I figure if I can get myself down to 4 hours of sleep that might make the book worth it.
I've taken like 5 psych courses back in my college days and am in the middle of a career switch to the health field currently, I don't know how that is recomended, unless your body is naturally designed to sleep shorter hours. My guess is the book is trying to do something like "catch REM cycles", if that is the case, I don't see how it's a good idea. As far as I know the prevailing theory still holds to a "sleep debt", moreover the mind and immune system will wear down over time. I would recomend running it by your doctor if you are serious about it.
Note: I am not saying to be a pussy about it and listen to everything the doc says, or come up with a lame ass excuse for 8 hrs of sleep a day. I am just saying trying to alter/battle your biology with a long term goal could be an exhausting and losing battle in this situation. Trying not to sleep/ changing ones biological homeostasis while not under obvious neccesity while trying to study can dohellish things to people.
William:I've taken like 5 psych courses back in my college days and am in the middle of a career switch to the health field currently, I don't know how that is recomended, unless your body is naturally designed to sleep shorter hours. My guess is the book is trying to do something like "catch REM cycles", if that is the case, I don't see how it's a good idea. As far as I know the prevailing theory still holds to a "sleep debt", moreover the mind and immune system will wear down over time. I would recomend running it by your doctor if you are serious about it.
The book has a section on how to control and even extend your REM cycles. So I think thats what the guy is referring to. I could see that as being useful, though I thought the black periods outside of REM were needed for the body as well, primarily mental rest.
haha you guys are really brining' me down
william, yah it sounds that's like the part of the author's plan (making the little sleep you get quality sleep by some how targeting the REM cycle).
i would not say i'm super serious about the endevour. i'm certainly not looking for a lifestyle change. i was just looking into it because last week from like sunday to thursday i was working on about 2 hours of sleep a night and felt horrible (2 exams and a delieverable due at work). so i wanted to see if there were tips for easing the pain of extended almost-all-nighters.
i will prob give some of his tips a try, but would def abandon if they started to lead to health problems.
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine - Elvis Presley
lol, well I guess you ought to try out something. If you can catch REM patterns, it isn't a bad way to make a hellish week easier I suppose. The problem would be if you put too much focus on it and destroy your bodies homeostasis, you are just adding that much more stress.
Also, and this sounds chincy as hell; but a nicehealthy breakfast helps, and laying off of really heavy meals in general. Also, eat an early dinner and go to bed somewhat hungry if you can, or not bloated at least.
haha thans for the tips. I was actually doing good about avoiding heavy meals during the day (to avoid postprandial somnolence--i googled that shit!) but i would ussually gorge right before taking a nap (found it helped me go to sleep faster). but that's a bad idea? it might explain why i found it so hard to wake up (well that and 2 hours isn't much sleep at all).
I just finished Robin Dunbar's How Many Friends Does One Person Need. Which ironically had not much mention of the Dunbar Number, but did pretty much everything else in a whirlwind of short chapters of explanations about things in social life from an evolutionary standpoint. From animal brain size and mammalian polygamy to explaining why people kiss and speculation on religion and theory of mind.
Also finished the first volume of Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs. This guy seems about the most levelheaded and normal guy that could be president. He was a mathematician and a very reluctant general; always wanted to be a college professor instead. He didn't even plan on going to West Point. And even has surprisingly a lot of self-knowledge and candidness. For instance, reflecting on the fact that he was never forced to lessons or other work in life by coercion. Or in telling us what a disaster annexing Texas and fighting Mexico was, despite reluctantly fighting in that war.
Besides my interest in Austrolibertarianism, I am a physician with board certification in sleep medicine. First, daytime performance is mainly related to total sleep, not specific sleep stages- thus trying to do something with REM sleep is unlikely to be successful. The purpose for REM sleep is unknown, it looks very similar to awake by brain waves- it used to be called paradoxical sleep. Also, I would strongly advise against sleep restriction. Studies have been done with short term sleep restriction that show, at least in the short term- sleep restriction for 4 hrs a night for a week will prevent a return to baseline cognitive function
but i would ussually gorge right before taking a nap (found it helped me go to sleep faster). but that's a bad idea? it might explain why i found it so hard to wake up
Yeah that is part of the problem, you go to sleep faster but it becomes a chore to wake up. If you can somehow get yourself "excited" about waking up for breakfast (go gormet on the stuff if you have time), and make your body want to wake up (due to being hungry) it may help.
Btw, Student, I recall you asking on free banking literature. I've already posted this once here on the main frb thread, but since I'm desparate to have people read it, I thought I would link to it here for you: "The Theory of Free Banking". The "short macroeconomic note" you can ignore, as it's not a position that any important endorses in the free banking school, but the core of it is a straight paraphrasing of what Selgin writes in his book.
Instead of reading An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals just yet, I read Hume's A Dissertation on the Passions (the latter is only 36 pages long). I'm very glad that I did. It is a natural follow-up to An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, and a natural preface to Enquiry... Morals. Hume's theory of morals is largely built on his theory of passions, which in turn is largely built on his theory of the understanding. That is why his Treatise of Human Nature devotes an entire book to each of those topics in that order reversed. However, his Treatise was not intially well-received by the philosophical community (he said it dropped "still-born" from the presses). So he tried to make his case again (this time with more art and directness) with his Enquiries (Understanding and Morals). However, Treatise Book II, on the passions, did not get a similar rewrite until later in his Dissertation on the Passions. And that was not published until after his death (he was still editing it near the end of his life). So it has become Hume's most neglected work. That is a shame, because the Dissertation is much more compact and forceful than Book II of the Treatise, and anyone who reads neither the Treatise nor the Dissertation will have a huge gaping hole in his understanding of Hume's philosophy, because his theory of the passions provides the connecting link between his theory of the understanding and his theory of morals.
I recommend anyone taking up reading Hume to...
1. Start with An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
2. Read either A Dissertation on the Passions or Book II of A Treatise of Human Nature (preferably the former)
3. Next one should read either An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals or Book III of Treatise.
Regarding #2 above, the possibe problem with reading the Dissertation is its rarity. You can find it in paper form conjoined with the Natural History of Religion at Amazon. But as far as free electronic copies, I was only able to find it at the Open Library, and not in the most readable formats. The raw scan is written with the old convention of using what looks like a "f" for the inital "s" of every word (which you can also see in the original Declaration of Independence), which makes it somewhat difficult to read. And the epub version is a plain, unedited image-to-text conversion, so that is even harder to read, with all the errors. I ended up just reading the raw PDF scan on my computer screen, which was okay, because, again it's only 36 pages.
Regarding #3 above, it would be easy to suppose that Enquiry... Morals would be a better introduction to Hume's theory of morals than Book III of the Treatise, because perhaps it is similiarly more forceful. However I can't say for certain either way yet, because I haven't read the former yet (that's up next). However, according to Hazlitt in The Foundations of Morality, Hume's excellent formulation of rule utilitarianism is much more fragmentary and incomplete in the Enquiry than it is in the Treatise. So Book III of the Treatise might be best after all.
Don't ask me why I randomly decided to put so much thought into this....
Daniel James Sanchez: Don't ask me why I randomly decided to put so much thought into this....
I appreciated it.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
I'm almost finished reading Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes. Here is David Gordon's review.
I'm reading Principles and Methods of Law and Economics by Nicholas Georgakapoulos.
"I'm not a fan of Murray Rothbard." -- David D. Friedman
Some great younger reader recommendations:
"The Trojan War" by Olivia Coolidge. This sums up the War from the marriage of Thetis to the return of Odysseus, it has pictures, goes over a few of the Greek tragides (Trojan Woman, Philoctetes). Good for kids between 5/6 - 13
"Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece" by Gustav Shwab. This is the single best simplified prose anthology I am aware of, and great for any kid. An adult could probably even get use out of its very detailed prose of the Trojan War, in which almost the complete Iliad and Odyssey are in, but in simplified prose form. I grew up on this book.
I have on order the Richard Lattimore (my favorite Hellenistic translator by far) translation of The New Testemant which will supposedly show the very visceral, unpretnetious, and in some cases very simplistic language the texts were written in.
I finished Kirzner's The Economic Point of View last night. By the way, I suggest the book to anyone interested in the epistemological origins of praxeology. Kirzner covers, mostly, what economists have thought their science dealt with, ranging from early beliefs that economics was a science which studied wealth, or the attainment of wealth, to the study of exchange, money, et cetera, with two great chapters on Robbins's contributions and then Mises's praxeology. While he doesn't really go into praxeology in terms of its applicability as a methodology, the chapter serves the purpose of explaining why the axiom of purposeful human action is important and why it was chosen as the axiom from which to deduce the rest of economic theory. It's a great book, and the new Liberty Fund edition includes the rationality debate between Becker and Kirzner, which is interesting.
With that book finished, I'm moving on to Lawrence R. Klein's The Keynesian Revolution. I'm reading this in preperation to reading Keynes's The General Theory, cover to cover, which is the seventh book on my "short-term reading list" (number four is DeLong's The End of Influence, but I tried reading it a bit last night, and I'm not sure I can bring myself to do it; first was Human Action, second was Time and Money, and third was Kirzner's book — more progress than what I usually make).
Jonathan, could you write a short review of End of Influence whenever you can?
Brad DeLong perhaps sees himself as a nonideological economist, because he recently showed a speech where he said that even though he is a "card carrying neoliberal", he feels that economics justifies certain interventions - that is to say that economics has led him to conclusions the opposite of his political beliefs.
Whereas you have said that End of Influence is more politics than economics. It sounds suspiciously similar to Paul Krugman's political manifesto Conscience of a Liberal, which just talks about "income inequality" and addressing it as a problem, without ever explaining the premise that it is a bad thing that some people have more money than others.
Well, I read the introduction last night, and they (Cohen and DeLong) open by writing,
During, World War I, the world's long-reigning superpower, Great Britain, faced a disturbing development: Just when the nation really needed it, Britain no longer had the money. The money had shifted to the United States, where it accumulated for the next sixty years, and then began to drain away.
I can't comment with absolute accuracy, but it seems as if Cohen's and DeLong's thesis is that money is what allows countries shape global political policy. There is some praise for neoliberal economic policies in the introduction, but it seems to me that their thesis is mercantilistic. It wasn't money which caused the transfer of status as world power from Great Britain to the United States, it was the fact that the United States was a greater industrial power. It seems to either conflate money and wealth, or confuse the purpose of money in relation to the amount of global wealth.
But, I'll have to read the book. I might read it in between lectures or something.
Scratch Klein's book for now. I'm going to read Man, Economy, and State.
Daniel James Sanchez: Instead of reading An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals just yet, I read Hume's A Dissertation on the Passions (the latter is only 36 pages long). I'm very glad that I did. It is a natural follow-up to An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, and a natural preface to Enquiry... Morals. Hume's theory of morals is largely built on his theory of passions, which in turn is largely built on his theory of the understanding. That is why his Treatise of Human Nature devotes an entire book to each of those topics in that order reversed. However, his Treatise was not intially well-received by the philosophical community (he said it dropped "still-born" from the presses). So he tried to make his case again (this time with more art and directness) with his Enquiries (Understanding and Morals). However, Treatise Book II, on the passions, did not get a similar rewrite until later in his Dissertation on the Passions. And that was not published until after his death (he was still editing it near the end of his life). So it has become Hume's most neglected work. That is a shame, because the Dissertation is much more compact and forceful than Book II of the Treatise, and anyone who reads neither the Treatise nor the Dissertation will have a huge gaping hole in his understanding of Hume's philosophy, because his theory of the passions provides the connecting link between his theory of the understanding and his theory of morals. I recommend anyone taking up reading Hume to... 1. Start with An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 2. Read either A Dissertation on the Passions or Book II of A Treatise of Human Nature (preferably the former) 3. Next one should read either An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals or Book III of Treatise. Regarding #2 above, the possibe problem with reading the Dissertation is its rarity. You can find it in paper form conjoined with the Natural History of Religion at Amazon. But as far as free electronic copies, I was only able to find it at the Open Library, and not in the most readable formats. The raw scan is written with the old convention of using what looks like a "f" for the inital "s" of every word (which you can also see in the original Declaration of Independence), which makes it somewhat difficult to read. And the epub version is a plain, unedited image-to-text conversion, so that is even harder to read, with all the errors. I ended up just reading the raw PDF scan on my computer screen, which was okay, because, again it's only 36 pages. Regarding #3 above, it would be easy to suppose that Enquiry... Morals would be a better introduction to Hume's theory of morals than Book III of the Treatise, because perhaps it is similiarly more forceful. However I can't say for certain either way yet, because I haven't read the former yet (that's up next). However, according to Hazlitt in The Foundations of Morality, Hume's excellent formulation of rule utilitarianism is much more fragmentary and incomplete in the Enquiry than it is in the Treatise. So Book III of the Treatise might be best after all. Don't ask me why I randomly decided to put so much thought into this....
Just finished Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. While Hazlitt was right that his treatment of rule utilitarianism is better organized in Book III of A Treatise, in just about every other regard Enquiry is far superior (and anyway, reading Hazlitt's discussion of Hume's rule utilitarianism in Foundations of Morality would nicely fill in that lacuna). What a book! I was reminded of Gerard Casey talking about how whenever he reads Human Action, he is so stimulated that he has to take breaks to walk around the room. This book had the same effect on me. This book is not of antiquarian interest only. Modern discourse is so wanting of an undertanding of its lessons, that it is absolutely cutting edge. I would rank it as one of the top 5 most important book to read in the social sciences, up there with Human Action, Theory and History, Man, Economy, and State, and Foundations of Morality. The version available from Adelaide (in both HTML and EPUB) is much easier to read than the version at the Online Library of Liberty.
Now on to the lengthy, but pleasant, task of reading the 660 pages of the OLL's edition of Hume's Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, which contains the essays that first made him famous (even though they have since become overshadowed by his initially-ignored more abstract works, and are not today widely read).
I. Ryan:I appreciated it.
Same here. I've read the Treatise and most of the Essays, but only recently learned about the Principles of Morals, and was unaware of A Dissertation on the Passions. And Liberty Fund's Essays is really under 600 pages, and the text and spacing are fairly large. It won't take as long as you might think.
Thanks for the mythology recommendations William.
The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.
Yours sincerely,
Physiocrat
I finished Barnett's The Structure of Liberty. It is an excellent argument for a polycentric order, particularly since it takes what I think is the best approach: emphasizing the intractable problems of social activity which any political philosophy must grapple with. As with the writings of the great classical liberals, I cannot believe anyone could finish this book without thinking that a decentralized, depoliticized order is the best system available to us imperfect beings. It should be especially prized for being an ancap book from the perspective of a practicing lawyer. Barnett knows his economics and moral history, but he is able to provide insights about the spontaneous development of law and legal institutions that people like Friedman, Hayek, Benson, de Jasay, et al could not be expected to know. His work as a prosecutor also inspires a heavy emphasis on the dangers of enforcement error and abuse.
Though I just received de Jasay's Social Contract, Free Ride, my mind could use a break. I think I'm going to read Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism at my leisure. Something that doesn't need frequent contemplation or note-taking.
Soon, however, I would like to delve into Mises' epistemology. I've read Human Action, but didn't comprehend the importance of the first 100 pages until much later. I hope to reread HA soon, but I want to get the epistemology down first. Does anyone have any recommendations for this endeavour? Should Theory and History be considered Mises' definitive work? Should I read Epistemological Problems of Economics first, last, at all? Would anyone recommend a certain order in reading T&H, EPoE and the first section of HA? And in light of this blog post, are there any Hayekians who would recommend reading Hayek's take before getting too engrossed in Mises' epistemology?
In the introduction to Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, Mises enjoined the reader to consider Human Action and Theory and History his true contributions to epistemological thought.
I would go at it in the following order...
Also, there is this truly great opportunity coming up, in which all the above works will be covered and explained...
Michael J Green:I finished Barnett's The Structure of Liberty. It is an excellent argument for a polycentric order, particularly since it takes what I think is the best approach: emphasizing the intractable problems of social activity which any political philosophy must grapple with.
I think that's a great book! And it's incredibly underexposed in the libertarian community. The phrase "polycentric constitutional order" has much less shock value than anarchism, but I never actually put it into practice.
Thanks Danny; that's exactly what I was looking for.
And StrangeLoop, I have seen the book mentioned now and again, but it definitely seems underappreciated. The price is certainly responsible in some part; hopefully there will some day be a second edition at a lower price. This kind of book should not be forgotten. (I'm also happy to say that, after reading the excellent Enterprise of Law, I got an affordable copy of Benson's To Serve and Protect)
Michal J Green:(I'm also happy to say that, after reading the excellent Enterprise of Law, I got an affordable copy of Benson's To Serve and Protect)
Great! To Serve and Protect is one of the best expositions of privatized justice ever written (I ordered a much cheaper used version).
As my waiting-to-fall-asleep iTunes audiobook, I just finished listening to Will Durant's The Story of Civilization, Volume 2: The Life of Greece. It was magnificent. My first exposure to Durant was his The Story of Philosophy. His chapters on Plato and Aristotle were so excellent, that I wished he could have also spent more time on other Greek thinkers. I figured that The Story of Civilization (which was written subsequently) was probably more of a general history, and that the Life of Greece volume would not include much discussion of the actual content of ancient philosophy. I have been delighted to find how wrong I was. He discusses all of it: the Miletian natural philosophers, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenedes, Democritus, the Sophists, Aristippus, Diogenes the Cynic, Arcecileus, Theophrastus, Xeno the Stoic, Epicurus, the Hellenistic Scientists, and more on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. And he discusses all of him with all the clarity, insight, and integration that I've come to love his writing for. What's more, he purposefully casts aside the lame tradition, common with historians of Ancient Greece, of neglecting the Hellenistic Era. Next up on my iTunes, Volume 3: Caesar and Christ, Durant's history of the Roman Era.
Also, as my following-my-wife-around-Taipei-City iPhone audiobooks, I just finished listening to The Classical Economists: Beginning a New World of Economic Insight by E.G. West and Karl Marx: Das Kapital: From Capitalist Exploitation to Communist Revolution by David Ramsay Steele. Both were edited by Israel Kirzner, and both were quite good. Next up for listening on my iPhone: The German Historical School of Economics: Welfare Capitalism Begins by Nicholas Balabkins.
For my unexpected-idle-time iPhone Stanza App book, I'm halfway through the EPUB of Mises' The Causes of Economic Crisis And Other Essays Before and After the Great Depression. And for my work-break reading on my Nook ereader, I'm almost halfway through Hume's Essays, Moral, Political, Literary. Those men were two of the brightest lights that ever burned on this Earth.
I just started reading that book about Greece by Will Durant. After reading Our Oriental Heritage, which is the first book in the series. I agree that they are excellent books. Our Oriental Heritage was written in 1935, I think. And at the end of the book, predicts a conflict between Japan and the US. Though, he uses the capitalist theory of imperialism (workers not being able to afford their own product, so companies must look for and control markets abroad to have anyone to buy the products). This was before the 'affluent' society, when the opposite was the case. But certainly Durant has a good and objective eye for facts. And some of the details in this book are depressing.
All the books in this series, I think, are available for free over at archive.org in a number of formats. Including audio on some of them.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=story%20of%20civilization
Also for history buffs, I recommend Gore Vidals Narratives of Empire series: Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, Washington DC. Lest you think the US was ever a 'republic' that minded its own business only (which even 'libertarians' are so wont to believe). Vidal brings the scholarship and actual documents to life in these historical novels. The US seems to be the only nation-state in history that never had any pretense of its own business or some limit to expansion and force. Even reading some of the angry amazon.com reviews of these books is great.
In Our Oriental Heritage, Will Durant also predicted China's economic and world-political comeback (again this was him writing in the 1930s).
Moving along, read Rollback and reviewed it on amazon, about 30 pages into Libertarianism Today. Reading "Crush It" for motivation. Beginning the process of beefing up my math skills, hoping to enter phd program for math at GMU.
Read until you have something to write...Write until you have nothing to write...when you have nothing to write, read...read until you have something to write...Jeremiah
Does anyone knows a good book about entrepreneuring?
Reading Hazzlitt's THE INFLATION CRISIS, AND HOW TO RESOLVE IT.
He talks about the Weimar Republic, the place we are going to. Oddly enough, at a time the govt was printing a quadrillion marks a day, economists were insisting there was no inflation.
He also describes in detail the effects of govt stimulus and quantitative easing on production. Not very positive.
My humble blog
It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
I'm reading the Mises Discussion Forum at the moment.
Jeremiah, I'm hoping to get a masters in math. I was going to major in math, but I felt it would add another year of undergraduate studies, and that's not something I want to do. What kind of preparatory math classes do you suggest I take for a masters? I'm not really sure what a masters covers. I might minor in math just for preperation.
I'm currently reading Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own again. I do love how Stirner demolishes the Communist Manifesto before it even was written. Stirner's always captivated me.
I also finished Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It). An astounding case again Biblical inerrancy while still being very much Christian. It is an amazing demolishing of "New Atheism" (that is to say, the core of the book's purpose takes away stereotypical argumentations in its favor), fundamentalism, and current apologetics, while still being Christian and placing Christianity at its beautifully unique core. Fantastic work. Shows that Christianity shouldn't be about pathetic apologetics and should embrace errancy in a good way.
Further, I have ordered five books I can't wait to get on:
- Hayek's The Sensory Order (neuroscientific foundation for methodological dualism? I'm in.)
- Anthony de Jasay's Justice and Its Surroundings, and Political Philosophy: Clearly (this man is still by far my favorite libertarian political theorist these days)
- L.A. Rollins The Myth of Natural Rights (I'm dying to see his argumentation - I ordered this book before but I got a different book that seems to provide a "response to critics" thing that I never knew existed, and it just rocks my socks)
- Stephen Finlan's Problems With Atonement: The Origins Of, And Controversy About, The Atonement Doctrine. I'm glad I finally ordered a copy. It shows how penal substitution atonement (that Jesus "died for your sins", or rather, needed to be "sacrificed" for God) is not only a really bad theological doctrine, but also it was not even a part of orthodox Christianity until much later. As a result, I do think by getting rid of penal substitution atonement, Finlan's wonderfully researched theology shows how ancient orthodox Christianity is very much existential in how they saw Jesus. It all comes together beautifully.
Those sound fascinating EternalMind.
I just finished listening to the audiobook of Caesar and Christ, Will Durant's history of the Roman era. Wonderful stuff. Now I'm listening to his medieval history, The Age of Faith. I'm a bit stymied with my progress through Hume's Essays, because I can't get my Nook eReader to wake up (I may need to send in the battery for a replacement). But that might be a saving grace, because it gives me more time to read all the Mises Dailies for my Mises Weekly podcast.
@Jonathan M. F. Catalán
Sorry for the delay, i've been on vacation. Math is an involving subject. I've been out of school for four years now, teaching seventh grade math for a couple of years and college freshmen for the last year plus. Needless to say, i've lost a lot of my skill sets and have been reworking may through a calc textbook. For most masters degrees they require 18 credits of 300-400 level math and top notch GRE math scores. Many universities have entrance exams also. You need at least 2 semesters in calc with analytic geometry, a course in differential equations and solid foundation in linear algebra.
Hyperion
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under - Mencken
I am reading the "History of Ancient Egypt" on Wikipedia.
What I am reading
Fiction: An Alt History Mystery called "Fatherland". Pretty good. :)
Non-Fiction: Re-reading Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett. I am no philosopher, but to me his version of compatabilism is the only one that makes sense.
What I should be reading
Wooldridge's Introductory Econometrics textbook for an exam next week. :(