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edanm comments on Open Thread, May 26 - June 1, 2014 - Less Wrong
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Reading "The Selfish Gene" teaches enough evolutionary biology to understand what the field is about, to understand the basics of the field, and to be able to converse on it intelligently.
What book can I read that will do the same for me in:
Medicine/biology/physiology (e.g. able to understand the very basic concepts of what a doctor does)
Law (e.g. able to understand the very basic concepts of working as a lawyer).
Bonus points - if the book on Law explains the practical difference between common-law and civil-law.
Thanks!
Metafilter has a classic thread on "What book is the best introduction to your field?". There are multiple recommendations there for both law and biology.
Law Comic -- not a book, but very easy to read.
Relatedly, The Law of Superheroes is a funny look at applying Law to pretend cases that could happen in a world with superheroes. Very recommended.
It works well for what I want, but isn't in-depth enough to really leave me feeling that I've learned law. But the law is tricky in that, afaict, it's a lot of details and unofficial know-how, so many it's not a field where a book like I describe could exist.
That description kinds of reminds me of How to Succeed in Evil, although I'm pretty sure the law in there isn't very accurate.
Can we extend this question to virtually any major field?
The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
For molecular biology, a really good, short, well-written introductory overview is The Machinery of Life.
A good introductory textbook.
I don't think that's the right approach.
A textbook is in many ways the opposite of what I want. In-depth look at a narrow part of the field. I want just the opposite. Also, something that's more about giving the story behind the field and making the field interesting.
Another good example - Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics taught me enough to understand the idea behind economics, the basic vocabulary, how an economist approaches things, etc. To learn more, I'm now looking at textbooks on Economics, but I definitely wouldn't have started there. And for the vast majority of people that I want to just know a bit of economics, Basic Economics is perfect. (Potentially even some lighter texts cold work, e.g. Naked Economics).
For most fields, there are textbooks designed to provide breadth and motivation, and to introduce arbitrary newcomers to the basic method and style of the subject. Sometimes a popular book will be better, but textbooks are often undervalued because reading a textbook is weird.
I agree that textbooks are undervalued, but I'm still unsure that textbooks that meet my requirements exist.
Do you have any examples of textbooks that help a layperson understand economics in the way I envision that's better than a more "popularized" book?
I read Principles of Economics by Mankiw. This is the only economics textbook I've read, so I'm not a great source for a recommendation, but I think this book is likely to be lead to a better understanding than a non-academically marketed book.
The table of contents is fairly detailed. (I'm able to view this under "Search inside this book"). You can see this is not a narrow text, but that no topic is dwelled on to the point of tedium. Each chapter is only 20-30 pages of so, and that covers an introduction, results, and examples. The examples ("In the news"/"Case Studies") are clearly chosen to interest a layperson who has some interest in economics, including an introduction to some lesswrong staples like signaling and voting. There are introductory chapters that try to introduce the economic approach, but most of the meat is in inducting from the gazillion examples and topics presented. The headings for Chapter 23 (explaining GDP) are a good example of the background technical knowledge that this book assumes (almost none).
Remember also that textbooks are absolutely brimming with pictures and graphs, which seldom appear in large numbers in non-textbooks. This alone is a serious advantage of textbooks. In this case, there is also a little math involved, but the "Graphing: A Brief Review" section should give you an idea of the level required.
What are the weaknesses of the format? It's doesn't push the narrative-social-interest button. Meaning, it doesn't follow a particular person through a particular story, which we're hardwired to find interesting. Related to this, it's also weak on history of economics. If I remember right, there are some nods to foundational figures (Adam Smith), and then a little bit on the evolution of modern macroeconomics.
It's not like it's trivially easy to tell whether a textbook is good ahead of time...
Yes, it can be tricky. But this is true of all information sources to some degree, and the problem is usually solvable with simple heuristics and some search effort.
I've found Amazon (or other website) reviews to be a fairly helpful guide. It's important to read the reviews themselves, to see if you fit with the reviewing audience, before interpreting the numerical ratings.
I've also had success simply searching for "best X textbook", or "best X textbook for beginners". Look for discussions on specialist sites (like MathOverflow, or a physics forum), or recommendations from academics with proven communication skills.
One dilemma specific to academic textbooks is that beginners have only read one or two books, while experts have read so many books they have forgotten what it is like to be a beginner. Another problem with textbook recommendations is that people recommend really dense books to signal their intelligence.
Edit: If anything, the reviews of popular books are more likely to be hyped and biased for irrelevant reasons than reviews of textbooks, once you filter out the people who were assigned the book in a class they don't want to take. For example, popular books on psychology versus a Psych 101 textbook.
Asking people who you trust for recommendation might be a better heuristic than seeking a book yourself. In this case I think asking other LessWrongers is a good strategy.