Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology has radically changed my view of almost everything, including software development. I’m able to cut through a lot of controversial issues by using its methods to ask incisive questions.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology...

I posted these links elsewhere in the thread, but I think they'll be of special interest to HN readers, who might want to know about the more technical aspects of her philosophy.

An index of her thoughts on many topics: http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html

A graduation speech which summarises her views on philosophy in general: http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html

Her most technical work, her theory of concept-formation (and the book that sold me on her ideas): https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology...

> in the history of science, progress with concepts and causality did well where the new methods would need Nevada full of disk drives of data. E.g., space flight navigation is based, first, on Newton's law of gravity and second law of motion, not on fitting massive of data via deep learning.

If you're thinking about conceptual reasoning vs. purely data-driven reasoning, you'd really get a lot of value from reading Ayn Rand's theory of concepts. Yes, she's very unpopular amongst modern philosophers, so all I'll say is you should read her writings and judge for yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology...

Two people used her philosophy as a basis for a book on induction and the history of the scientific method:

https://www.amazon.com/Logical-Leap-Induction-Physics-ebook/...

Here's a free taster: http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html

I remember puzzling over the mathematical definition of "implies" in first year CS. I understand why it is defined the way it is in the context of mathematical logic, but I always puzzled at a deeper issue: when were we going to learn how connect symbolic logic to reality? Combining the truth values of P and Q seemed relatively straightforward. But how did you work out those truth values in the first place? How did ambigous words apply to a complex reality?

I later found out that Aristotelian logic held the answers, and modern symbolic logic was a weird set of mathematical formalisms that wrenched out one part of classical logic (propositions) but omitted the theory of terms (concepts), without which, logic becomes a system of meaningless symbol games. This is the book that showed me a world of logic both perfectly rigorous and perfectly descriptive of human cognition: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology... (if the author's name triggers you, obviously this book is not for you, but if you enjoy far-out intellectual adventures, you'll be in for a mind-blowing ride).