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what is your favourite book ever
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You are currently reading a thread in /sci/ - Science & Math

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Only allowed to post one guys
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>>8137036
Lets see what books affected your careers sci
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>>8137036
Book?
Name of the Wind
/sci/ book?
prob Freakonomics
text book?
Spivak's Mechanics for Mathemagicians
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Gödel, Escher, Bach
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>>8138314
Are you serious mate
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>>8138328
Yes
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>>8138328
NOT AN ARGUMENT.
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I don't read many books to be honest, orthough I really should...

As of now this has really changed my view of our world.
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>>8137036
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Gonna cheat. It is not my most favourite book ever - but it is red-hot /sci material.
I scavenged it from a skip (dumpster) it is literally a rocketeers handbook - detailing sketches,tech drawings, fuel mixes and test results from the dawn of rocketry.
its fucking amazing. Our entire space program is based upon a team who were developing rockets for film sets in the 1920's to 30's..

Any /sci guy who ever wants to develop their own rockets needs to get a copy of this - the fuel mixes alone make it probable home security would want this off the shelf.
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>>8137036
>Only allowed to post one
Easy.

Textbooks are a Diamond Dozen.
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for a long time, it was lord of the flies. it was the first book to really get me interested in reading. then, for a while it was shibumi. i read that back in 07-08. it was the first fictional/action/movie-esque book i'd read. before that, it was all school recs; so shakespeare was also interesting to me, but never quite like i really wanted to be.

hmm. then in college, i picked up plato's works; the republic became a favorite. then i read seneca or nietzsche; i don't recall the order per se, but i think seneca was my favorite author for a while. i read up on a bunch of other stoic philosophers because of the way he talked about those ideas; pretty much made me one too, and it was smart choice.

hmmm. then nietzsche: naturalism and interpretation; this was the fist academic textbook i'd read front to back. i loved the way nietzsche was argued for here - naturalism was a way of life. plus i just dug his whole god-is-dead and we have killed him vibe. really smart guy.

over the past few years it's been more sporadic.

taleb's the black swan

is pretty much the only thing that stands out in my head now; i don't think i've finished a book in about 8 months to a year, cuz nothing has grasped my interest lately. it's as if i'm being intellectually stymied...

if watching videos counts, i was really into buddhism for a while

boner
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>>8137036
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>>8138573
I was thinking to pick a book from Camu's work, is it a good place to start?
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>>8138615

already post here but ust saying imma get this cuz you made it sound so chool man
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... It tolls for thee.
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>>8138573
>>8138648
>>8138664
>>8138681
Great picks.
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The High Frontier by Gerrard O'Neil
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>>8138664
First book to get me into modernism. Humbled me and I legit cried after it. I have no idea why, but it had to do with seeing my life become that.
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>>8138376
Wolfram came off as incredible full of himself, and did very little to further understanding of natural phenomenon. It is an interesting book tho.
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Ray Monk also wrote a biography of Oppenheimer that I need to check out soon.
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>only allowed one
nah

if it's non-textbook then "a mathematicians apology" by hardy.

Favourite textbook is Rudin which was my first exposure to real maths.
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>>8137628

>infantile cartoons
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And if you're speaking textbooks, then probably "VI Statistical Physics" by Nolting. As a physical object, I love for "Sheaves in Geometry and Logic" in the yellow Springer version
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>>8137632
>Spivak's Mechanics for Mathemagicians
to be honest I've only read his historical guesses and interpretations in the first chapter, but that one feels ill-guided. A mathematican making up his own story of what physics is, in a way that seems to consistent to him, which is then naturally such that other mathematicans can easily accept it
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>>8139039
That's probably why I can't get into Landau.
I'm always looking for proof of every little claim.
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>>8138664
>storybook about sad rich people
This book convinced me that literature is the most cringe inducing art form.

inb4 a dumb pretentious /lit/ poster says "you don't get it because if you got it then you would think it was good".
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>>8137036
Blew my mind.
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>>8138700
ahh shieet. great book.
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>Having taste this bad.

Ayn Rand reads like a /pol/lack trying to write fan fiction.
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>>8138573
At least the stranger is a good piece of literature. The myth of sisyphus just comes off too much as wannabe philosophy.
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English and philosophy major turned math PhD ratings (these are not reviews of books, their reviews of your taste given these are your BEST books of all time. For example, Batman begins is a solid movie, but you are mentally retarded if it's your favorite movie of all time):
>>8138314
0/10

>>8138573
6/10 for same reason as above

>>8138648
7/10

>>8138664 >>8138681
10/10

>>8138700
7.5/10

>>8139030
9/10. Probably 10/10 if I was a bit more hipster.
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/sci/ loves Russian textbooks usually but,

>no Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, or Nabokov, Chekov,

Also,
>No Kafka, Joyce, Faulkner

>at least there's two Hemingway

I get it, book nerds... It makes you look better educated and interesting if you don't talk about the giants, but they're the western canon for a reason.
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See pic.

Runner ups: Enneads, Euthyphro, GEB, Anima, The Tale of Genji, Upanisads, Daodejing, Summa Theologica, Essays of Montaigne, On the Origin of Species, Finnegans Wake, Moravagine, Stoner, The Arabian Nights, Remembrance of Things Past, The Trial, Ulysses, Le Morte Darthur, Barchester Tower, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, The Karamazov Brothers, War and Peace, The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma, Moby-Dick, Macbeth, Hamlet, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, A Clockwork Orange, The Canterbury Tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Alice in Wonderland, Don Quixote, Ficciones, 100 Years of Solitude, Aké, The Magic Mountain, The Sound and the Fury, The Education of Henry Adams, Absalom Absalom, The Warden, The Golden Notebook, Parade's End, Peace, Aeneid, Iliad, Odyssey, Theban Plays, The Divine Comedy, Four Quartets, The Waste Land, The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, Lolita, Infinite Jest, Watchmen, Beowulf, The Scarlet Letter, Blood Meridian, SICP, Hartshorne's Algebraic Geometry, The Road to Reality.
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>>8138648
>Textbooks are a Diamond Dozen.
They are what?
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>>8139302
>when you waste so much time on a funpost that the result becomes unfunny
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My favorite book. It came out when I was a teenager and it got me into science. Without it I don't think I'd be an Astrophysicist today.
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water ship down
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>>8138314
I'm on page 700/1200 (stupid e-reader app, it's like 600 pages at most IRL), it's pretty entertaining, but I wouldn't consider myself an objectivist or a libertarian. I'm interested whether the people who are calling you out on it have read it or are just here from /pol/ to meme.
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>>8139074
Economics student here, is this really worth it?
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>>8137036
As of now? This one.
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>>8138664
Got his dick shot off right?
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>>8139381
It's not a proper textbook but it cites a lot of experiments and covers some basic introductory game theory. Essentially it gives a probabilistic model for decision making based on game theory and economics with evidence based experiments from neuroscience. I'm not sure how useful it is to economics in general but it's a good read that makes a convincing argument, in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Glimcher
>The field of Neuroeconomics began to develop in the late 1990s. Glimcher was instrumental in the bourgeoning of the field.[5] He published one of the first academic papers in neuroeconomics which appeared in the journal Nature in 1999 co-authored with the American Neurobiologist Michael Platt.[6] His first book, Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain: The Science of Neuroeconomics (MIT Press) was published in 2003 and is often identified as the first book to use the word Neuroeconomics.[7] That book won the PROSE Award for Best Medical science book of 2003.[8]
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>>8139065
My prof said that one should read Landau AFTER they've learned physics, because it's very concise, but it is worth it. He's one of the more respected profs too, so not just some idiot who is bragging.
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>>8139398
I'm pretty far into my physics sequence.
I just want to go deeper into Lagrange and Hamilton's stuff.
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sadly, I don't read much anymore... but I read this one some years ago, and it blew my mind.
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>>8137036
Is this book better than Sipsers?
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>>8139506
The older edition. The new one is watered down to hell like sipser.
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>>8138573
A while ago The Myth of Sisyphus actually was some really good motivational material for me and may very well have made me take a few steps back from the intense depression I was experiencing. I'm a lot more stable now, but man that book really helped me out.

And then The Stranger came along during another big period of depression in my life and I also credit it with helping me get out of that one. I was so emotionally stunted at the time due to my depression that having a character to identify with (Mersault) so heavily was really cathartic for me.

10/10
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>>8139302
>finnegans wake
>'daodejing'

kek, i believe you read all those books, mate, tbqh.
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>>8138326
>Gödel, Escher, Bach
why?
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>>8139344
look at this pop-sci cuck, bet you also think Black Science Guy is beneficial in some way as well. Go back to undergrad.
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horton hears a who
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>>8137036
My Women's Studies textbook was pretty great.
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>>8140500
>being unironically this pretentious, LITERALLY

just
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>>8140508
Kys
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>>8139592

Have you read it
? It's great.
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Mine is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. She had a masterful grasp of dialogue and storytelling, as her main thing was traveling to tell stories to audiences.

I'm a chemist now.
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>>8140508
But it's actually a pretty good book.
If you like reading it can be a really fun book.
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>>8140500
I had a friend once who gave me such a strong, glowing recommendation for Finnegan's Wake that I went out and bought a hardcover copy the very next day.

I don't talk to that friend anymore.
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>>8138615
Could you scan it and upload to libgen? I haven't found it anywhere. plsplspls
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>reading non-fiction

your autism is showing
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It really makes you think.
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I only read non fiction now about improving skills, but favorite story of all time was a star wars book about the bounty hunters and their adventures. That was >10 years ago.
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Easily.
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>>8137036
>fav book
pic related
>fav /sci/ book
weyl's philosophy of mathematics and natural history
>fav textbook
Mac Lane & Moerdijk's sheaves in geometry and logic
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>>8137036
hell yeah
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>>8140479

KEK
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>>8140479
maximal kek
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>>8137036
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>>8144258
Odette was such a fucking Stacey though.
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>>8144281
kek no argument there
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>>8144341
I dont really know how to express myself in english, but she definitly is the typical XXth century's roastie. She doesnt have any kind of intern reflexion; she is just completly empty, but yet she feels entitled to a certain treatment, just because she is a grill.
And she was probably a prostitute before meeting Swann and the Verdurin.
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>>8138314
Libertarian here. Why do people read that book? Why not just read nonfiction books about libertarianism? Why does anybody read Ayn Rand at all? Her ultra-capitalist view of the world gives libertarianism a really bad rap.
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>>8144379
You're right, but she is entitled to a special treatment not because she is woman, but because she is a beautiful woman, beauty is an accurate measure of the value of a woman not their intelligence, women are made to be beautiful, not smart, you just have to be a man and keep your woman in check, not like what faggot Swann did.
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>>8144417
Well, it's obviously easier to read a story than non-fiction. Also there's the vicious cycle of people reading that book, then recommending it to others.
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>>8137036
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>>8137036

Harry Potter 4.
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>>8138968
have you read the american prometheus by Kai Bird?
Great book about oppie, better than monk
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>>8137036
Don Quixote is GOAT.
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I have not read many books. Philip K Dick's are pretty good.
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>>8137036
Ender's Shadow series, although for a classic I quite enjoy fahrenheit 451
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>>8145285

Good tastes, friend.
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This was the last book to affect me.
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>>8138700
Shiiieeeeet. The book that shows how christianity alone could destroy a culture
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>>8139030
Now thats what I call edgy
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Bhavagad Gita

Followed by time machine by what's his name
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>>8147956
H.G. Wells, I presume
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>>8137036
What would /sci/ recommend, spivak's calculus or "Calculus: an intuitive and physical approach"?
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>>8148963
Stewart Early Trancendentals
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>>8138674
no start with the greeks
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>>8137036
t. CS major
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>>8138332
Who would win in a fight, Stefan Molymeme or Norman J. "Unload my 9 on the real number line" Wildberger?
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>>8146924
Delillo is guru
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>>8149878
But Wildberger can't shoot the reals if they're not well-defined
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>come for god tier scientific textbooks
>get entry level /lit/core
delete thread
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>>8150244
Another thread in which people spam the same five textbooks and then have the same arguments about them would have been much better.
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Notes from Underground.
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>>8151034

I don't get the joke.
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>>8151034
Of the /sci/-frequenters that would respond seriously to a thread of this nature (off-topic, blog), a large percentage of them are likely to be in high school.
>>
Nice thread.
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Rigth now enjoy opera drunk with scotch and you thread make me think on homero and the problem of tbe 200 years of difference between the oddisei and the illiada and the fact pf the both are of the same author
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>>8151034
I don't understand. Are you saying their taste is childish? I haven't read many of those books but I thought that Lolita was great.
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>>8141146
some nice tauism to go with your autism
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>>8139071
what do you expect from fiction
its basicly thoughts about something thats not real.
it carries no significant truth that is derived by logical deduction.
some weird mix of emotion and thought.

why even bother to write such a skidzoid fest down on paper.
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Introduction to Commutative Algebra
Atiyah & MacDonald

The most elegantly written math textbook I've ever read. It's prose with the the elegance and terseness of poetry.
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>>8149349
thanks mate
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>>8139030
>trying this hard
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Ionesco, Les Chaises
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>>8140479
this guy fucks
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>>8151471

> [math] a + b = b + a [/math]

Are you fucking kidding me?!?!?!
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>>8151780
nice bait
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>>8151780
That's a good start. Now generalize.
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I dunno, it's one of those books that makes you think.
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>>8151034
>Sad!

Only retards and Donald Trump end their posts with a one word sentence like this.
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>>8152491
>implying they're mutually exclusive
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>>8138968
Wittgenstein was such an amazing philosopher, and he taught me that I can win arguments with a firepoker.
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>>8153009
Also, this is probably mine, because his arguments against Cartesian Skepticism helped me a lot in developing my views of the world.
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