Found in 3 comments on Hacker News
yboris · 2022-11-30 · Original thread
A book that made me see how carefully and how well we can ascertain a nebulous concept in social science:

Culture Of Honor: The Psychology Of Violence In The South by Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen

https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Honor-Psychology-Violence-Dir...

The authors use a variety of independent evidence (historic, lab experiments, etc) to show that a culture of honor exists, what it is, how it is perpetuated, and how we can make predictions based on it. This book is superb!

yboris · 2022-09-10 · Original thread
In psychology, I think Culture of Honor is absolutely stellar:

Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South by Richard E. Nisbett & Dov Cohen

https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Honor-Psychology-Violence-Dir...

The authors weave together a basically airtight argument for their thesis, drawing on historical, sociological, and experimental evidence to describe and explain the phenomenon called "culture of honor". It's a short book and really worth reading to see how well an argument can be made.

yboris · 2022-08-10 · Original thread
I have found (academic) analytic philosophy to be a great way to slow down and think clearly. So I propose exposing yourself to well-thought-out arguments to see the kinds of "moves" people make.

A good place to start may be with the book by Daniel Dennett: Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking https://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools-Thinking-...

Similarly, it's great to read good science books with careful arguments. One of the best I think is Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Honor-Psychology-Violence-Dir... -- the authors use a variety of independent experiments to make their conclusions.

In general, it's probably worth learning a bunch of psychology too - to understand others better (along with the variety of cognitive biases people have). A classic book in this direction is Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expand...

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