Which of these (or some other tome you want to mention) blew you away the most?

[Triple Zero]

i thought the bit where they talked about how all stuff is connected via invisible wires and these wires were somehow life and also a dual reality or something was pretty cool. was that in that book?

cause it was pretty cool, and he talked about it convincingly, but all in all, it was just scifi. cause, psssst, things don't really work like that (yeah, but WHAT IF .. )

but what's an infotweaker?

[LMNO]

Oh yeah, the cruciable*, and Jane as a conciousness.




Oh, and I suppose an infotweaker is one who tweaks info.














*wrong word.  Insta-communication thingie

[The Apex, The Harmony Of]

The 3 most influential books too me so far are something like (no order):

Peter J Carroll - PsyberMagick: Advanced ideas in chaos magick.
I love this book because its like a 'timebinding' book (korzybski term  ) that contains a plethora of information about a wide range of subjects in so little pages.

Roger Penrose - Shadows of the mind
To tell the truth I havnt actually read ALL this book. But im going to re-read it again very soon. I originally started it about a year ago and gave up because I just lost where I was in his arguments and reasoning.
Im sick of alot of popular books on Science since they all seem to same the same thing, follow the given dogma and stop at important details "...theres not enough room in this book to elaborate without getting into technical details". I like the Penrose books because I dont know technical Math and Physics but he doesnt hold back and goes into all the details regardless and I normally find myself following along well. Plus he goes into lots of alternatives, fallacies, paradoxes etc

John Gribbin - Stardust
Just wow. The recyling of planets, stars and people and the roles all the chemical constituents play. How the elements were made inside stars and came to make us etc.

Iv had a bunch of fiction books influence me as well. Mostly sci-fi like Baxter, McAuley, Haldeman, Clarke, K Dick...plus a book I just finished by Greg Bear "Blood Music". At the moment Im working through the "Future Classics" and each one iv read has been fucking unreal.

[Jasper]

Ansible.

Infotweaker is a word I heard but wasn't explained to me so I appropriated it as the name of my behaviors regarding information.

I found the entire discourse on the nature of intelligence very stimulating.  Alien intelligence, viral, electronic, so on.  The Jungian Cloning thingy they did seemed to me like an easy way to save the plot that turned into a great way to end the series.

[Triple Zero]

Oh, and I suppose an infotweaker is one who tweaks info.

"Tweaking refers to fine-tuning or adjusting a complex system, [usually an electronic device]. Tweaks are any small modifications intended to improve a system."

so you finetune information?

is that like doing a spellcheck or something?

[Cainad (dec.)]

I don't remember exactly what led me to it, but I read the PD first (this HTML version) and was entranced. After that came the Apocrypha Discordia, and I was lucky enough to spot a copy of Illuminatus! in a bookstore this past summer.

[Jasper]

I read the 2nd volume of Illuminatus! first around fourteen, then went back and found the whole series at age sixteen, then quickly went for a copy of PD after.

[Diseris]

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax

- learned way to early that reality was not only mutable, but also arbitrary.

followed closely by the PD.

[Doktor Loki]

I'd read the Principia, the Apocrypha, the Book of Eris, Illuminatus, all that, but what really did it was The BotSG, and even more so Revelation X.

Those books kicked my brain just the right way, I guess.

[Cain]

James Gleick - Chaos: Making a New Science
Hell, its got mad props from Douglas Adams and Douglas Hofstadter and its hella easy to read and understand.

Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Not only does Nietzsche rage against the religions and "morals" of his time, expressing his sarcastic and often humourous absolute scepticism, he also takes digs at science (for being too reductionist - a claim repeated by the Chaos Theorists and Gleick above).  A thoroughly iconoclastic book.

The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Mushashi
The quintissential Japanese strategy guide.  The object of the lesson is that the lesson never ends, and to never rely on anything external to yourself to succeed.

A Perfect Spy - John le Carre
Probably his best book, its an excellent piece of writing that illustrates how conflicting personalities can exist in one person until something triggers that person off and they can no longer maintain the contradictions of their life.  A fictional study in psychological chaos.

[Cramulus]

(this HTML version)

That HTML version was my first version of the Principia as well. I printed the whole thing out and carried it with me everywhere. I was fifteen or sixteen, and had recently cast aside Christianity in favor of atheism, then atheism in favor of Taoism (they're not exclusive, but meh), then finally Taoism in favor of Discord. Recently I cast Discord away in favor of Discord, then cast that away in favor of Discord.

When I was 17 I bought Illuminatus! totally randomly. (I think it was on sale)
When I found out it was about Discordia, I went 

other books / authors I sometimes find relevant to my personal version of Discordja
-Cosmos by Carl Sagan - underscores the universe's beauty
-Prime Chaos by Phil Hine - underscores the power and mutability of beliefs
-parts of Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter - made me fascinated by pattern recognition and creative process
-some Carlos Castaneda
-Edith Hamilton's retelling of Greek Mythology - underscores the harsh, impersonal arbitrariness of the universe
-The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell)
-Fight Club
-Parts of the Apocrypha Discordia

I think the movies Waking Life and I Heart Huckabees also influenced my beliefs a bit.

[Cain]

Heh, none of my books are actually really Discordian in any sense.  I like some of them (Prometheus Rising etc) but in general they confirm a worldview I inherited from the above books I mentioned.

[Jasper]

Truly spoken.  I've really just been using Discordia as an umbrella term for whatever I'm believing or thinking at the time for several years.

Oh, "Blink" was a big one for me too.

[Apikoros II]

Hmmmm, great stuff! Prof Cramulus, you really like Hamilton's translations? When it comes to Myth, give me Campbell anyday. To paraphrase the guy in The Man who Shot Liberty Valence, If the truth sucks print the legend.

But reading these replies, I think am gonna start a movie thread to see what people say...

Oh, and my reading list has expanded some what now I think.... May Eris always keep Amazon selling used books. Can we start a sticky with a "Must Read or Face the Wrath of <<Insert witty thing here, I'm tired and not feeling witty>>> thread? With links and stuff? And maybe hats?  Yah, each author we name has to be shown in a picture wearing a hat. Or the book has to wear a hat. Either way...

[Cain]

Sounds like an interesting idea.  I could edit the first post in the thread and have the rest devoted to peoples suggestions, where they can debate the merits of a certain book going on "the list."