Bookmarks. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. Skunk Works, Ben Rich. summarising responses to this. When you read this you realise that UK parties are something like 50-60 years behind understanding TV so its no surprise theyre bad at new technology. On War, Clausewitz. Worthlin. I blogged on it here. For this unprecedented project in world history Groves had no huge central staff, he worked with a brilliant woman and a tiny staff with truly extreme decentralisation. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. Working Backwards, by Amazon alumni. , Carville & Matalin. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. Genres Politics David Deutschs books. Fab: From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, Gershenfeld (MIT). The vaccine taskforce a) created huge value for the UK and the world, b) would no way have happened without [typo original!] Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. Caitlyn Scott-Lee is said to have been found in a forested area next to a playing field at the 44,000-per-year Wycombe Abbey School on Friday night. David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. , von Neumann, 1955. Im reading this summer. You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. The basic arguments remain critical today. His boss and predecessor was Kelly Johnson who wrote this short list of principles. Then nationalism became generally despised by educated liberals, and so on We cant know how our own ideas will appear in the future but its fascinating how little we try to imagine how foolish our own views will inevitably appear to those looking back on us. Rationality, Vernon Smith. Mathematics: A short introduction, Gowers. ), Notes from the Underground, Dostoyevsky. He left his Downing Street role following an internal power struggle, amid claims the PM's then-fiancee had blocked the promotion of one of his allies, Lee Cain, after months of internal warfare . Mandelbrot. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. Their favourite argument is the laughable its a small island, about as sensible as a general saying Alexander the Great was using cavalry so its out of date. This by Fields Medallist Terry Tao, maybe the greatest mathematician alive, is brilliant and incredibly useful for someone like me explaining a lot of fundamental concepts in non-technical language. His boss and predecessor was Kelly Johnson who wrote. If you get into it you have no right to be bitter, youre the one who sat down and joined the game People who dont succeed, people whove had long bad times like Renoir Renoir was the best director ever are people who didnt want to make the kind of pictures that producers want to make. A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. Keynes essay on Newton is great: He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than10,000years ago Why do I call him a magician? Fascinating. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. I wrote this blog which has a further reading list. , Charlie Munger. In all of these struggles I tried to follow Boyds advice such as, and in all of them, as the opponents OODA crumbled I observed what Boyd said would happen: it starts to feel like your opponent is working for you, the more they try, the worse it gets (e.g when Cameron called the press conference to denounce lies about the fact that Turkey was in the process of joining the EU!). Sources of Power, Klein. , Gustave le Bon. By Reagans pollster. Lines and Curves, Vassiliev and Gutenmacher. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. Like Hoskyns (below) genuine rare insight and almost totally ignored. Sign in The media laughed and many said its so boring. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Six Easy Pieces, Feynman. Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. Ive flicked through books on post-Thatcher UK general elections but never found them interesting enough to read in full. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. Influence, Cialdini. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. The philosophising Tolstoy fought against the picture of an infinitely complex system in which most thoughts and actions fade to zero significance quickly but a few connect to others with highly non-linear effects. Many interesting developments and the launch of the 2024 campaign may be only a few weeks away, if Trump announces on 4 July as is being discussed in Mar-a-Lago. one of my terrorist demands when Boris asked me to go to No10, 21 July 2019). What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. Follow Zvi. He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin, . Its crucial to remember both aspects of this genius-monster without whom probably no World War I, Lenin, Hitler etc summed up by Salisburys two comments: One misses the extraordinary penetration of the old man and he will do things of which it would be absurd to suspect any other statesman in Europe. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). If you want to understand modern culture, the 19th Century smashup of the traditional world with the capitalist, liberal and increasingly atheist world, and what deep forces lie behind the ideas we see all around us, its the best book. Doing the Impossible, Slotkin. Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! Classic on teaching children programming, recommended by Alan Kay and Bret Victor. ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. Anybody who goes to Hollywood can see right away what the setup is Hollywood is Hollywood, theres nothing you can say about it that isnt true, good or bad. For this unprecedented project in world history Groves had no huge central staff, he worked with a brilliant woman and a tiny staff with truly extreme decentralisation. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. , Franzen. Classic text, university level. (A counterfactual: if Thatcher had taken his advice in the early 1980s and rejected the emerging Single Market plan and embarked on civil service reform?). He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. , Marcus du Sautoy. In the search I came across Boyd. , Ben Rich. Ive got a list of a few dozen people I follow on Twitter (I use Tweetdeck + Lists for Twitter) and will make this public shortly. I applied his basic ideas in the euro campaign, in the 2004 North East referendum, in thinking through education reform and trying to get the Department for Education to do what I wanted, in the Brexit referendum, in solving the 2019 impasse, in No10, and to removing this PM since spring 2021. , Murray Gell Mann. You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. Two adjacent questions: 1) what signals of memes/news predict that X is likely to emerge from the noise and become one of the few stories/memes thats significant e.g the process of the Wall falling has started with small events which are detectable but almost nobody notices or realises what a big deal they will be in a few weeks, how soon can we detect X is happening then predict X is Y% likely to be a big story, with what confidence? dominiccummings.substack.com. People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. On digital fabrication. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. Viz the famous lists, Yes to Renoir, Welles, Chaplin, Keaton, No to Fellini (tried to watch 8 1/2 at least five times and fallen asleep fast every time) and Hitchcock. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. , Spivak (2008 edition). Yudkowskys Sequences, the core document of the rationalist movement. Short stories, Flannery OConnor my wife gave me these, theyre little known and absolutely brilliant, the closest to Dostoyevsky of anything in the 20th Century Ive read. Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. I really liked this classic but a lot was beyond me. Ciceros letters. Also the club of those who write about UK politics a) are rarely interested in how power really works, b) are almost never interested in management, how to get hard things done, or how organisations work, c) think theyre an expert on communication but are not a general problem for hacks who confuse understanding journalism with understanding communication. I wrote some essays on the history of maths and computing which have further reading lists. The Misbehaviour of Financial Markets, Mandelbrot. I put * next to 7 which is a guess at what people 100 years hence will find most interesting on this list. Theres no question about this. His. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. Mathematics: Its content, methods and meaning, Kolmogorov et al. For example: , Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. Very very telling that in a recent interview with Tyler Cowen, the recent head of the CIA was clearly unaware of this work, which includes results showing that his own agency is routinely bested by people like unemployed grandmothers in a hut in Central America. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. As Strauss said, Nietzsche despised anti-semites and the sort of characters who controlled the Nazi party but it also cannot be ignored that in attacking ideas and clearing the ground for new values, he also prepared the ground for communism and fascism: Nietzsche did not mean it in the way people like Hitler and Mussolini meant it, but through his negations, he prepares it. Dominic Cummings is a man known to be fond of reading lists (Oliver Wright writes).But while the prime minister's chief adviser exhorts others to read books on subjects such as . I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. There's a big bad enemy out there, possibly with superior weaponry but. On May 22, 2020, The Guardian and Daily Mirror newspapers in the UK published details of how Dominic Cummings, senior aide to the British prime minister, had broken lockdown rules by travelling 420 km to a family estate with his wife (who had suspected COVID-19) and child. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. Very very telling that in a recent interview with Tyler Cowen, the recent head of the CIA was clearly unaware of this work, which includes results showing that his own agency is routinely bested by people like unemployed grandmothers in a hut in Central America. Sun Tzu. , Kahneman. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. The Method of Coordinates, Gelfand, Glagoleva, Kirillov. Tyler Cowen, Patrick Collison and others have been trying to push some of the principles of how to do hard things into economics and government, in similar ways to some of my arguments over the years. Also cf. The Story of Mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. *Come and See ( , Russian). The Limits of Quantum Computers, Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008). While No 10 was trying to get a grip on the pandemic, news came in . The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. Psychologie des foules, Gustave le Bon. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. Again the meta-lesson: the media often obsesses with specific horrific stories which for a few days absorb SW1 attention, but there is no interest in actually solving the institutional problems and the institutions will successfully resist change during a media panic then go back to business as usual. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. Rosen on military innovation, very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. Next week I'll write something for subscribers only on 'Some basics of how to do regime change'. Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. The more I study the more clear it is that luck plays a crucial part in almost all famous successes. Again the meta-lesson: while everybody wants to know what are they investing in? almost nobody pays any attention to how do they organise Berkshire, why is it so different, how does this relate to extreme performance?. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist! Also cf. NB. Also. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. , Zeilinger. A classic non-specialist introduction to reasoning. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. Almost the only good business book I have read on strategy. I blogged a series on this great book starting. Fascinating. Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. , one of the best movies ever made. Linked, Barabasi. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. Will. Remember that approxmitately no MPs and few in Congress are aware of these facts or ideas yet they speculate confidently about Putins thinking on nuclear weapons. , Morris Kline. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) The politicians soon are on the next current thing too. NB. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, Hunter S Thompson. Please just ask one question as precisely as you can, it will increase the chance I answer. Most economists cant synthesise worth a damn. He did not try to influence todays arguments but instead tried to prepare the future, an approach of great power partly because, as Monnet said, theres almost no competition. Aug 25, 2022. Audacity to Win, Plouffe. Thames Valley Police have confirmed that her corpse was discovered on Friday, April 21, just before midnight. LKY, Boyd, Groves all say the same). This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. Keynes essay on Newton is great: , the core document of the rationalist movement. A short companion book to his famous lecture series, Tips on Physics: a problem-solving supplement, which was unpublished for many years and seems to be generally unknown, is super-useful. Although Nietzsche despised nothing more than the radical left, he became extremely influential on it, perhaps because nobody else so thoroughly demolishes the foundations of liberal democracy, although, in a further twist, few of the left realise the extent to which they are influenced by him. The best biography in English (probably any language) is, . Nelson, biography by John Sugden. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. British political writing depends hugely on assuming that much of the newspaper coverage is roughly true, so given much is actually invented it means the books repeat a lot of fake news and miss the point. While some lessons are specific to time/place (e.g how the Senate works in 1950) the most important lessons from all such books are quite abstract and common and I assume this will be true of these classics. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). I was amazed and desperate. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. People who climb to the top of the science system tend to defend the system rather than support change, even when they realise how bad it is. A billionaire should provide copies to all elected politicians. Then I realised the truth. . The best book on politics. Richard Muller. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. I know some of them. The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. The peacetime bureaucracy knew what it valued. *Renoir La Grande Illusion; La Regle de Jeu (Renoir said of the rage about the film, shot in 1938 between Munich and war, that hed showed a society in the process of disintegration, so that they [the characters] were defeated at the onset the audience recognized this. , Slotkin. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson (2013) is a brilliant introduction to many ideas about computation, physics and quantum information. Ive read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). are classics about the presentation of information by the worlds leading expert. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. W hen Dominic Cummings arrived in Downing Street, some of his new colleagues were puzzled by one of his mantras: "Get Brexit done, then Arpa". Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. Quotes. If youre involved in Isaac Physics and want to discuss how it could continue please get in touch.). The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss. The title comes from Revelations 6 (7-8): And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) Please leave errors and suggestions below, Ill tweak and add over time and notify of updates. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. , Bhattacharya. He had promised to resign if there was any finding against and kept his word.
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