Jonathan_Graehl comments on Book Recommendations - Less Wrong

25 Post author: NancyLebovitz 09 August 2010 08:03PM

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Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 10 August 2010 06:17:33AM *  3 points [-]

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - psychological stress damages human health - tedious but important (and well sourced)

Probability Theory - the Logic of Science (Jaynes) - only halfway through it. I can't justify its length unless I were really willing to work through all the computation shown (I'm not). The text is still somewhat meaningful if you merely read it.

Long, unexplained list:

  • The Wasp Factory, The Player of Games, Matter (Iain Banks)
  • Return from the Stars
  • Lilith's Brood
  • Cyteen
  • Godel, Escher, and Bach (EGB)
  • His Dark materials (juvenille, mediocre movie, but fun)
  • Black Company
  • Malazan Book of the Fallen
  • The Glass Bead Game
  • Jane Eyre
  • The Dispossessed
  • The Feynman Lectures on Physics
  • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
  • The Gods Themselves
  • The Ugly Little Boy
  • Permutation City
  • A Fire Upon the Deep
  • Neuromancer
  • Diamond Age
  • Anathem
  • Lovelock
  • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
  • Songmaster
  • Enchantment
  • Kushiel's Dart
  • The Shadow of the Torturer (Book of the New Sun)
  • The Deed of Paksenarrion
  • Flatland
  • White Light
  • The Eyre Affair
  • Pronoun Music
  • The Ground Beneath Her Feet
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
  • Air: Or, Have Not Have
  • Never Let Me Go
Comment author: TobyK 10 August 2010 08:08:19AM 1 point [-]

Seconding the Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

It's like Catcher in the Rye for serial killers

Comment author: NaN 10 August 2010 09:43:22PM 3 points [-]

| Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

But stomach ulcers aren't caused by stress, they're caused by Helicobacter pylori -- although it seems like stress might slightly increase your risk of getting them.

Seeing how the book appears to have been first published long AFTER that discovery, I'm a little suspicious regarding the quality of the research.

Comment author: realitygrill 11 August 2010 01:25:10AM 0 points [-]

I hadn't made that connection, but I do still endorse any of Robert Sapolsky's books. They're pretty much the only ones that I've liked in biology.

I also second Iain M. Banks.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 11 August 2010 03:18:04AM *  2 points [-]

But stomach ulcers aren't caused by stress, they're caused by Helicobacter pylori -- although it seems like stress might slightly increase your risk of getting them.

I think "slightly" understates the medical consensus that stress is an important cause of ulcers. See http://www.aventinomedicalgroup.com/documents/Stress_PU_JAMA.pdf, which notes that more than 80% of people with H pylori do not develop ulcers.

(I have a personal interest in this topic, because I used to have ulcers, which was cured by taking a combination of antacids and antibiotics to kill off H pylori, but I'm pretty sure that in my case stress contributed to having ulcers in the first place.)

Comment author: [deleted] 11 August 2010 03:23:17PM *  0 points [-]

Wow, that's an interesting read! Until I suspected that I had H. Pylori, I believed peptic ulcers were mostly due to stress (apparently I missed the popular consensus memo). After I found out the more common view, I realized that I was still confused; the dismissal of stress given the bacteria seemed unmotivated, given its role in enabling many other diseases. (Turns out, for me, it was stress all along, but probably no ulcers!) Thanks for the article.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 11 August 2010 04:09:11AM 0 points [-]

I'd heard that also.

I don't recall to what degree Sapolsky acknowledges it.

Ulcers are definitely not the core topic of the book; it's stress (and its varied effects).

The book both explains historic experiments and changes in scientific consensus, and cites studies properly. Of course I have no way of vouching for his selection of evidence, but there is plenty of it.

Comment author: tonsure 11 August 2010 05:35:25PM *  0 points [-]

The guy knows his stuff and can be quite entertaining.

Check his video over on EDGE on TOXO (the cat lady parasite). At the end he mentions an avenue for research he's working on into a possible mechanism by which stress damages chromosomes

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sapolsky09/sapolsky09_index.html

20 minutes well spent.

I agree the Zebra book was a little boring, but it fits right in w/ the recurrent OB theme on status and health

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