Your favorite pdfs?

4 Post author: Solvent 18 September 2011 11:18AM

I just got an iPad, which means that for the first time in my life it's convenient for me to read long documents from the internet. I've often looked at things and thought, oh, if I ever have some capability to read that, I should. However, I haven't made a list.

So. What documents in pdf form, or long websites, should I read now that I can? Any recommendations?

 

EDIT: Thanks for the advice. I'm particularly excited to read Godel, Escher, Bach. I've also downloaded the ePub of the Sequences, and I'm going to certainly look at Strategy of Conflict. Thank you very much for the links.

Comments (28)

Comment author: lessdazed 18 September 2011 02:23:07PM *  7 points [-]

Appropriate for this forum: Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity by Scott Aaronson

Comment author: __Emil__ 18 September 2011 03:40:17PM 6 points [-]

ciphergoth has made an epub version of Eliezer's posts, which can be read with iBooks on the iPad (or iPhone, iPod Touch). I would recommend this over a PDF version, as you cannot adjust line lengths with PDFs. I've been reading the sequences in this way recently. Before discovering this, I used the Instapaper app to save the LW web pages.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 September 2011 06:48:47PM *  4 points [-]

If you go to 4shared, you can find a lot of PDF books that have seen prominent mentions or recommendations around here. For example:

Gödel, Escher, Bach
Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences
How the Mind Works
The Nature of Rationality
Good and Real
The Strategy of Conflict

You can also take a look at Bostrom's or Hanson's papers, or at SIAI's list of publications. They are pretty interesting.

Comment author: Solvent 18 September 2011 10:42:15PM 3 points [-]

Thank you so much for that list. GEB has been on my to-read list for ages.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 September 2011 10:51:45PM 0 points [-]

Your welcome. Though, if you are going to read GEB, I think this DJVU has better formatting... does anybody know if there is a good DJVU reader for iPad?

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 19 September 2011 02:34:39PM 1 point [-]

Convert it back to PDF...

Comment author: somervta 19 August 2012 05:59:02AM 0 points [-]

Needs a password to download...

Comment author: [deleted] 19 September 2011 03:06:03PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: Eugine_Nier 18 September 2011 06:10:02PM 4 points [-]

Thomas Schelling's "Strategy of Conflict". Pdf version here thanks to Alicorn.

Comment author: Hyena 18 September 2011 07:10:15PM 1 point [-]

I loved this book in college, it was a major eye-opener for me.

Comment author: billswift 18 September 2011 04:04:02PM *  4 points [-]

Computer Science, including AI - University of Cambridge Computer Lab Tech Reports http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-table.html

http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/

http://www.intechopen.com/books and http://www.intechopen.com/journals

And National Academies Press - http://www.nap.edu

You will find lots of interesting books, no matter what your specific interests are.

Comment author: Hyena 18 September 2011 01:53:29PM 3 points [-]

First and foremost, textbooks. I cannot emphasize enough how useful the iPad is vis-a-vis reading on a computer for any long-form material. If you've been putting off sequences, now is a good time as well.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 18 September 2011 11:44:29AM *  0 points [-]

I don't think posts like this should be appropriate even in Discussion.

Comment author: Hyena 18 September 2011 01:43:09PM 9 points [-]

The appropriateness of the post depends entirely on the set of answers asked after. It is therefore incumbent on LessWrongians to answer with PDFs which are rationality-enhancing or which explore its associatd issues.

Comment author: Unnamed 19 September 2011 01:23:29AM 0 points [-]

Several of Greg Egan's stories are available online for free.

If you're interested in long-form journalism, here's a list of recommendations for recent articles and here are some recommendations for classic articles.