6 books that changed how I see the world

there have only been a few books that I've read that have actually changed the way that I see the world these were the sorts of books that help me think about the world differently and also solve problems that I had been experiencing in my own life these books help me answer questions about life or the internet or anxiety you know stuff like why do I feel like I have to work all the time or why am I always anxious or what is the internet doing to our brains or our minds or the way that we

interact with each other so I'm going to share some of those books with you today starting with these books about the internet because of the internet we have access to more information than basically anybody in human history just find any fact and you could look it up almost immediately and this has really changed our relationship to knowledge so even though we have all this information and we know a lot more we're a lot less wise just because you can look up any fact on Google doesn't mean that you understand it so a professor of mine

from graduate school Michael Lynch actually wrote this book The Internet of us and this book really is about what the internet is doing to us in one part of the book Michael challenges himself to answer four questions what is the capital of Bulgaria is a four-stroke outboard engine more efficient than a two-stroke what is the phone number of my US Representative and what is the best reviewed restaurant in Austin Texas this week and in the book he shows just like how much work it takes to answer those questions because he's not using the internet sometimes

he had to go find an encyclopedia or a dictionary in order to get to the bottom of something other times he had to go and ask for help he had to find you know a mechanic who could talk to him about boat engines to find out what the best reviewed restaurant in Austin was and he was in Connecticut he had to call a lot of people the irony is that by not using the internet he's actually arguably more connected to other people and to the world around him that was also one of those books that

convinced me that philosophy could be about those topics that affect all of us but I don't think it's actually the fact that we're all so connected that's the main problem with the internet I think one of the hard things that we have to figure out is what to do about truth and falsity on the internet sometimes we just like log on and just start talking and we don't really care if what we say is true or false what we do is just kind of with each other and is kind of a technical term in philosophy

actually especially if you read this book by Harry Frankfurt on the idea is that is speech that doesn't care about the truth it's not lying the liar knows what's true and they say the opposite because they're trying to manipulate you someone who's bullshitting just doesn't care I think on the internet we also might just call that Vibes and go to any comment section and you see some people who care about the truth but it's a lot of Vibes and it's a lot of is one of those Concepts that sounds a little silly at first but

it's one of the few philosophical Concepts that I think about every single day when I'm seeing what people say on the Internet or when I'm listening to myself talk or I'm just thinking about life and maybe we'd all be a little better off if there was less on the internet I wonder how many times is going to make it into the final video so there should be a little number down here right now and I guess the lesson from all of these books is that we should prioritize the truth and we should prioritize wisdom whatever

the hell wisdom is and the internet might not be a place where you can go and seek out wisdom all too easily especially now that it's being filled with more AI slop that certainly isn't wise next we're going to talk about some books that help me think about anxiety but first I want to tell you about today's sponsor short form short form is one of the leading providers of book summaries and here's how I think you should use it shortform makes in-depth guides to various topics like this one about effective altruism this is a philosophy

that's been in the news a lot especially with Sam bankman freed a few months ago and short form provides a kind of a reading guide for it you know when I was talking to short form about their product they said something that I was really glad to hear which is that they don't view book summaries or their product as a replacement for reading it's a different way of discovering or reviewing or learning but it doesn't actually replace reading the book you can also use short form to check out books in advance and see if it's

a book that you want to read so that way you can figure out if it's a book that's worth your time you might only read a dozen books a year and so you want to pick the right books and short form could help you do that if that sounds good to you then I have some good news short form is offering a discount to my audience just use my link down below that's short.com Jared Henderson you will get 20% off and a free trial so thanks to short form for sponsoring this video and now let's

talk about these books about anxiety you may be shocked that I am a man with these sorts of glasses and this beard and that I have an anxiety disorder we can pause for a moment so you can pick your jaws up off the ground there are philosophical class Classics about anxiety uh like this book from kard which are sort of famously hard to read but I want to highlight a different book about anxiety it's by a modern author named Samir Chopra this is anxiety a philosophical guide what a cover too I just love the way

it looks anxiety is one of those things that many of us suffer from and it's a cause of great distress and many of us are looking for a cure we are looking for a way to just simply stop being anxious chopra's book is a book of philosophical counseling and it's drawing on things like Buddhism and heiger and other phenomenologists and existentialists and trying to integrate them into a big picture view of what anxiety is but also what anxiety teaches us about being human the conclusion really is that anxiety is just part of being a human

being it's a kind of Terror at our own limits and some of us feel that Terror a bit more acutely than others fing on the Buddha Chopra tells us that anxiety is a reminder that ourselves are more diffuse and disorderly than we would like to imagine and if he's right about that then anxiety is actually teaching us about human nature and the nature of the self and if we learn more about what it's like to be human from anxiety Then this could actually make us more compassionate to our fellow human beings even those who aren't

maybe suffering horrifically from anxiety but honestly one of the things I think that's given me the most trouble when it's come to my anxiety has been the way that I think about work I always feel like I need to work and I often let work come to take over other parts of my life and a couple of books have kind of helped me remember what work's proper role is in your life one of them actually is Aristotle's nikan ethics now I'll tell you about the nikan ethics in just a second but I want to mention

that I basically run a book club on substack where I do these read alongs it's like a newsletter where I write about various topics but I do these weekly posts about various works of philosophy and literature and people read along with me and we just finished reading Aristotle's nicoman ethics I'll put a link down below though you can read all the stuff that I wrote we spent 3 months reading the nicoman ethics together and I thought it was great in book 10 of the nickan ethics which is the final book in this work Aristotle says

that the point of work is Leisure and it's basically like you work so that you can leisure in the same way that you go to war so that you can eventually have peace and Leisure for Aristotle is sort of the absence of necessary work that then allows you to do the things that really matter and for Aristotle because he's a philosopher maybe Isn't So surprising that what he thought really mattered was doing philosophy I love to read about philosophy and think about philosophy and write philosophy so I'm on board with Aristotle's View and it kind

of reminds me though that work all the stuff that you do to make a living exists so that you can go and do all those other things that matter now there's more that matters in life than just philosophy right being with your family and your friends these are also big important Aristotelian themes but the work that you do which for so many of us is how we even Define our social identities all of that is in service of those things that actually matter and it's helpful to be reminded of that it's especially be helpful to

be reminded of that if you're working what David Graber called a job we got to bring the counter back now jobs are what we might think are good jobs in that they often pay well and they often even have social Prestige but as Graver describes them they're jobs that don't need to exist they're socially useless or maybe even harmful to the world and it would be better if you didn't have to work them uh I used to work in Tech I don't work in Tech anymore and I'm very happy about not working in Tech because

I suspect that a lot of tech jobs are jobs under the sort of Graber meaning of the term and if I'm going to spend eight hours a day at work I would like to be doing something that I think actually has value and actually matters and I don't think I was getting that when I was working those other kinds of jobs if you have to work a job that you hate because it lets you pay rent or take care of your family or get health insurance I get it but if you ever have the opportunity

it's helpful to think about the kind of job that you want and whether or not it's and I think that should be the final number but we feel sort of compelled to keep working no matter what and there is there have been many works that have tried to explain this kind of Spirit and the term that's been used by sociologist has often been the Protestant work ethic and they get that from this book by Max vber well we're not going to talk about the vber book though I think if you wanted a better exploration of

the work ethic and the different ways that it sort of impacted how we think about work there's a new book from Elizabeth Anderson who a great living philosopher this book is called hijacked and I think it is the best exploration of the idea of a work ethic both in its positive and negative forms and it has really affected the way that I think about work and I've been writing and thinking about work a lot more as a topic because I feel like it's like one of those philosophical topics that everyone has to think about especially

in this economy and Anderson has been one of the most helpful writers for me she obviously writes for an academic audience that might be the most academic book we've talked about on this video but I think most readers if you've read a little bit of philosophy could read it and get something out of it all right I think that's it for this video thanks for watching I'd love to hear books that have changed the way that you see the world and as always I hope you got something out of this and I'll talk to you

soon