Derek Sivers

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My life was changed by four sentences in four books

Geography is four-dimensional: https://sive.rs/4d

Geography is four-dimensional

1993 communal internet shaped me: https://sive.rs/netizen

Cambridge Language Surveys: Chinese - by Jerry Norman

Netizen

I’m not autistic, but my heroes are.

Since we moved from city to rural land, to a house where the bathroom and kitchen are outside, my boy observed: “This year there are way more full moons.”

My favorite LLM prompt: “List the top cities in {COUNTRY}, and anthropomorphize each one, listing the good-natured stereotypes and jokes that other people in {COUNTRY} say about people in this city.”

You Can Just Do Things - by Cate Hall and Sasha Chapin

Good book on cultural psychology: Tribal. Great insights and examples of how change happens on the personal, cultural, and institutional level. My notes at https://sive.rs/book/Tribal

Fascinating book: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness - https://sive.rs/book/Conscious19 - uses one true story, 19 times, of the laughing brain patient - https://sive.rs/u12 - in the format of Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei - https://sive.rs/book/WangWei - to explore the subject.

Great book: Elephant in the Brain: https://sive.rs/book/BrainMotives You have hidden motives and subconscious incentives. Two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. Instititutions do this too: wasteful because they’re serving hidden purposes no one acknowledges. Great insights throughout.