Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! Dynamics of 2024. The best book about Gdels Theorem (according to the editor of Gdels Collected Works) which explains why almost everything one reads about it including by some famous scientists (e.g. , in contrast to most professional economists who influence media debate on regulation who have no idea of how government really works and how destructive it is to make simple things take years, how it drives people away, rewards the worst people and companies etc. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. 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. 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. but most do not realise the last chapter is about Nietzsche and the Last Man, and this chapter is the most relevant today. I wrote some essays on the history of maths and computing which have further reading lists. Follow Julia Galef. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. 59. It was night, bombs were exploding, and mothers were covering their children with whatever bedding they had, and then they would lie on top of them. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. Makers of Modern Strategy, Paret et al. , Plouffe. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. A widely praised new biography of John von Neumann, the man Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli et al thought was the smartest person they knew. Ive written a few things about his work. His book 'Causality' is the leading textbook in the field. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status, You can replace Hollywood with Westminster, picture/movie with political strategy, producers with MPs, and money with the public. Gdels Lost Letter & P=NP (on maths, logic, P=NP, computational complexity), Steve Hsu (in general, and if interested in extreme talent Steve blogs a lot on this). Her recent book, The Scout Mindset, was excellent. (NB. , Beinhocker. The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. or waste the most important element in conflict. Thoughts on past and future of the Buffett system, Charlie Munger. , very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. 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. 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. The Quark and the Jaguar, Murray Gell Mann. Psychologie des foules, Gustave le Bon. If you want to follow the cutting edge of this research follow Steve Hsus blog, which you should anyway. 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 big problem for UK political discussion is people focus obsessively on the immediate interest of the London media rather than trying to think about, . , Nietzsche. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. , Robin Lane Fox. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. E.g Around 1848 nationalism was an elite opinion held by educated liberals who thought of liberalism and nationalism as naturally, and morally, connected, while uneducated peasants were less nationalistic. Book accompanying an OU course. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read Paul Grahams essays. Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. A good biography of Dirac, The Strangest Man, Farmelo. Theres no question about this. His. Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. 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. *Chaplin City Lights, The Gold Rush, Modern Times, Great Dictator. Rationality, Vernon Smith. He was a mathematician who got interested in how markets work. I wish there was something similar on the history of the LMB at Cambridge, one of our crown jewels which Whitehall (and the VC office) has gradually buried with stupid regulation. From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. , Leonard Susskind (2013). All ideas welcome. Will live players use the next five months to build build build or waste the most important element in conflict, time, and let non-player characters stumble into a set of critical decisions in November? ), Dostoyevsky. The Method of Coordinates, Gelfand, Glagoleva, Kirillov. A Cavendish Quantum Mechanics Primer, Professor Mark Warner. Richard Muller. Elite opinion in London today is dominated by very similar people with very similar education and very similar views that inevitably include assumptions that will prove false like the British navy rules the waves (true and a useful heuristic for many decades then suddenly and drastically not true) and values that will seem evil/comical. Please just ask one question as precisely as you can, it will increase the chance I answer. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. 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. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (3 volumes), Morris Kline. It is, therefore, practically unknown in SW1. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). , Polya. But this also means theres always billion dollar bills on the pavement sometimes even trillion dollar bills, like do vaccines much faster and smarter than usual in spring 2020, and like now with 2024 approaching. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. In particular Ill add textbooks, history and philosophy which Ive largely left out. . that will prove false like the British navy rules the waves (true and a useful heuristic for many decades then suddenly and drastically not true) and values that will seem evil/comical. If hed run the Hillary campaign in 2016, no Trump as President. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. Re Clintons 1992 campaign which influenced the Blair 1997 campaign. For example: , Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. If you read Boyd youll see how lessons recur across Alexander, Nelson, Groves et al. is considered a classic but Ive not read. We look back on history and abstract over decades or centuries, judging the ideas that held sway for a few decades and sneering at how formerly all the world was mad as Nietzsche put it. 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. , John Hoskyns. Then nationalism became generally despised by educated liberals, and so on We cant, how our own ideas will appear in the future but its fascinating how little we, to imagine how foolish our own views will inevitably appear to those looking back on us. Professor Sides Dominic Cummings Nov 22, 2022 59 134 Ask Me Anything Monday 28 November, 1900-2100 Dominic Cummings Nov 21, 2022 57 310 Dominic Cummings' answer is to make Britain "the leading country for education and science". , Charlie Munger. *Come and See ( , Russian). (3 volumes), Morris Kline. Brexit and VL in No10 (original official advice was to go with the useless bureaucratic EU scheme even though wed left so a fortiori it would have advised the same had Brexit not happened, but credit to the Cabinet Secretary for backing Vallance and me with the PM), c) the elite world resolutely refuses to consider procurement generally or the VTF in particular in the context of Brexit good/bad, d) in 2021 the VTF was effectively closed and turned into a normal entity rather than given the money and goal of replacing current vaccines with new ideas to solve the variants problem with safer technology, e.g nasal vaccines, e) this too is a non-subject in SW1. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. ! I will publish soon a chronology of 1862-67 following the twists and turns of Schleswig-Holstein, the escalating conflict with Austria, the domestic conflict running through the period. A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. , Spivak (2008 edition). Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. Great DVD documentary too. Dominic Cummings He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements(and that is what gives the false suggestion of his being an experimental natural philosopher), but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. , Marcus du Sautoy. In the search I came across Boyd. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. , Carville & Matalin. While some characters from the ancient world, such as Themistocles or Alexander the Great, would be as interesting to study in minute detail we dont have the sources. A good biography of Dirac. Producers didnt want to make a Renoir picture even if it was a success. Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. , Klein. Calculus, Spivak (2008 edition). which egg to use for IVF. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. Although some other officials and senior figures had also broken the lockdown rules, this transgression was the first to . In all of these struggles I tried to follow Boyds advice such as, connect yourself to sources of power, disconnect your opponent 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!). I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). Please post questions below. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. The real reason is most people in politics dont want to face the big questions about what government is for and how to do it better (and especially dont want to face the quality of people). By Reagans pollster. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. Essential companion (and very much ignored by most Americans) to The Federalist Papers - the so-called Anti-Federalist Papers (AFP): http://resources.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/Constitutional/AntiFederalist/antifed.htm, https://history.nycourts.gov/about_period/antifederalist-papers/, Re Monnet ~ https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/october-2020/the-eu-godfathers-wall-street-roots/ and Draghi ~ https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2021/the-sphinx-who-reshaped-europe/, This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. . Alls Fair, Carville & Matalin. A big problem for UK political discussion is people focus obsessively on the immediate interest of the London media rather than trying to think about whats really important. Also though, everybody has bad luck and those who survive long enough to get good luck are very perseverant. ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems). . I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. Zvi reviews Tyler Cowens new book, Talent. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. judge timothy kenny political affiliation. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. Cummings' understanding of modern genetics, IQ, evolutionary psychology, child development and neuroscience, as evidenced by his blog and advice to Michael Gove when education minister, is a. Next week I'll write something for subscribers only on 'Some basics of how to do regime change'. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. (I used this to argue for checklists and transparency over the repeated failures of social services with child abuse when in the Department for Education 2011-14. 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?. Posted January 13, 2014 . The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides. The real reason is most people in politics dont want to face the big questions about what government is for and how to do it better (and especially dont want to face the quality of people). Who is Dominic Cummings? by Lee Kuan Yew. A good biography of Einstein by Isaacson. The most interesting intelligent person writing on American politics who a) really knows a lot of history, b) understands the rationalists but is not of them, and c) whose version of regime change includes ending democracy, is Curtis Yarvin. The Misbehaviour of Financial Markets, Mandelbrot. Review of the disintegration of the Tories in the context of Brexit, SW1 vs, perspectives on risks of Brexit/Remain, and, and save the trolley to Get Brexit Done despite our reservations. His Memoirs are fascinating and so is this biography by Duchne. (Politicians also constantly make this mistake in hiring journalists to do communication, almost always a bad idea.). Reagans White House was better at communication than any other in the modern era partly because they did not rely on normal political staff but brought people in from Hollywood. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. , von Neumann, 1955. Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Classic text, university level. , Gertner. 121. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. 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. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. Re Clintons 1992 campaign which influenced the Blair 1997 campaign. The best book on politics. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. 2h It is not a forecast & says explicitly 'this is not a forecast' 2 1 What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! Cummings was his most senior adviser his de facto chief of staff and the architect of the Tories' 2019 landslide victory in the general election. The critical meta-lesson is the same for all the below: Grovess last personnel report concluded that his effectiveness is unfortunately lessened somewhat by the fact that he often irritates his associates, but he has extraordinary capacity to get things done. Then he was effectively fired.
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