E.g his few pages on, which few economists seem to know about! Almost the only good business book I have read on strategy. , Burton. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). , summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. The best book on politics. He understood politics and government in a way I think almost nobody in 20th Century politics did and influenced it more than almost any elected leader. A lot of Boyd (including getting inside your enemys OODA loop) is interpreting Sun Tzu after 2,000 years of case studies proving him right plus some modern ideas. (general reader). Click repeat). (I knew Mark, a professor at Cambridge, who spent a huge amount of time over the past decade helping state school pupils get hold of great physics material via Isaac Physics. Perhaps America has elections every four years, power supply is ~100% reliable in the First World, Europe wont see millions killed in wars again, nobody lives happily/normally to 200, robots cant escape control and kill vast numbers of humans, children should study curricula controlled by the state, I support policies that undermine traditional ideas about the family will seem as quaint in 2052 as Bertrand Russell being taught by a grandfather whod met Napoleon that British naval dominance is a fact of life. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. In the meantime Ill post another tomorrow. Keynes essay on Newton is great: , the core document of the rationalist movement. The Greatest Communicator, Worthlin. Theres no question about this. His Art of Doing Science and Engineering is considered a classic but Ive not read. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. . (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). In the search I came across Boyd. Mr Cummings is Boris Johnson's chief adviser. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. 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. Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. , Ben Rich. 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, . Zvi reviews Tyler Cowens new book, Talent. Doing the Impossible, Slotkin. Dominic Cummings Judea Pearl is one of the most important scholars in the field of causal reasoning. Warning, its an accurate portrayal of atrocities on the Eastern Front therefore truly horrific. Dominic Cummings Most claims you read about psychological manipulation are rubbish. (NB. The peacetime bureaucracy knew what it valued. Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. , very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. Just like despite ARPA-PARCs success, almost no science funding is done like that in the world (hence why I made the creation of. The best biography in English (probably any language) is Otto Pflanzes three volumes. (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?). Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: textbook on QCs, one of the top ten cited physics books ever written. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. 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. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. 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 remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. ), , Waldrop. If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss. ! The Art of War, Sun Tzu. Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. The media laughed and many said its so boring. Also the club of those who write about UK politics a) are rarely interested in how power really works, b) are almost, 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. Ive written blogs on some other important books: Paynes recent books on nuclear weapons. , Zeilinger. , Adam Smith. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie The Battle of Algiers, one of the best movies ever made. Ive read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. Turings Cathedral, George Dyson (son of Freeman). He is not a member of parliament and is not elected. Classic text, university level. 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. 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. It also corrects a lot of modern books that have reverted to the World War I was a terrible accident / railway timetables idea in fact crucial nodes in the Prussian deep state network were trying to force war in summer 1914 and to manipulate Wilhelm II into going along with their plans. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. A good introduction to P=NP?. 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. Theres no question about this. His. Pentagon Wars, Burton. Fab: From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, Gershenfeld (MIT). Mathematics: A short introduction, Gowers. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. Although some other officials and senior figures had also broken the lockdown rules, this transgression was the first to . Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. , Gertner. I was amazed and desperate. Can we survive technology?, von Neumann, 1955. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. Psychologie des foules, Gustave le Bon. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. I blogged on it here. Some of the unpublished stuff in Gdels Collected Works is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. Many who used them went on to the famous Kolmogorov schools.). , Charlie Munger. , Franzen. In general Colin Grays work. , you see a world historical genius skip between vast scales of time and space, connecting tiny things happening this moment to the biggest things affecting decades or centuries to come. Ciceros letters. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. Posted January 13, 2014 . , Gowers. Charlie Munger has written and spoken extensively about mental checklists/models he uses, not just for investing. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, read Bret Victor, a rare genius. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. Some of the. Mindstorms, Seymour Papert. From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. Had I included everything I knew and shown the whole truth, even I could not have watched it. If theres one film to show Nietzsche brought back from the dead, maybe this is it. 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". , Courant. 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. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. He understood politics and government in a way I think almost nobody in 20th Century politics did and influenced it more than almost any elected leader. Aug 25, 2022. You can download that version (2.0) here. I found his Nobel lecture fascinating and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. 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. 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. There's a big bad enemy out there, possibly with superior weaponry but. A classic on the 1972 campaign. Colonel John Boyds briefings are great. His boss and predecessor was Kelly Johnson who wrote this short list of principles. He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems). Reckoning With Risk, Gigerenzer. I wrote some essays on the history of maths and computing which have further reading lists. So, let's conclude this list with two of his scientific heroes. (Ive recently read some of the media commentary about 2019 that I ignored at the time and its amazing how many hacks thought I was trying to use vNs game theory. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. 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. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) Our impression was there is valuable low hanging fruit for governments, hedge funds, campaigns, Thucydides. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. 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? In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? . Highly recommended. Rationality, Vernon Smith. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. 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. Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. Main allegations as Dominic Cummings gives evidence to MPs on the government's early handling of the COVID outbreak in the UK. Brilliant physics books for the interested non-specialist written by a top physicist, widely praised by Nobel Prize winners, used in his Berkeley course voted best course on campus. 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. , Carville & Matalin. I really liked this classic but a lot was beyond me. Classic text, university level. The Limits of Quantum Computers, Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008). and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. Richard Muller. A billionaire should provide copies to all elected politicians. . by Lee Kuan Yew. 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. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. Popular intro to network theory. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. One of Britains most senior and respected civil servants, Michael Quinlan, wrote this paper after retiring. It would be ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. 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. My blog with other books HERE. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. Skunk Works, Ben Rich. I should have read this, havent, will. 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. , Paret et al. LKY, Boyd, Groves all say the same). Gawande. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. Also see Nietzsche on the pre-Socratics. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! Start trial Already a paid subscriber? Expert Political Judgment, and Superforecasters, Tetlock. Most educated people remain unaware of how little home environment affects IQ/education nor that modern analysis of DNA has confirmed the data from decades of twin/adoption studies. Classic on teaching children programming, recommended by Alan Kay and Bret Victor. . Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 on the hideous science funding system. or waste the most important element in conflict. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. . 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 . (Politicians also constantly make this mistake in hiring journalists to do communication, almost always a bad idea.). , Frank Close (2011). If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. Solving Mathematical Problems, Terence Tao. 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 People, ideas, machines in that order! Robert Coram wrote a biography. Functions and Graphs, Gelfand and Glagoleva. 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!). Genres Politics Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. 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. Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. One must not be squeamish about admitting this (Strauss). A good biography of Dirac, The Strangest Man, Farmelo. , Hardy. 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). Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. He was a mathematician who got interested in how markets work. , von Neumann, 1955. A classic book on mathematical problem solving. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below.). He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin, . He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. . A lot of Boyd (including getting inside your enemys OODA loop) is interpreting Sun Tzu after 2,000 years of case studies proving him right plus some modern ideas. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. The United Kingdom parliamentary second jobs controversy of 2021 began with Owen Paterson and his lobbying and breach of Commons advocacy rules, which led to his resignation on 5 November, and this was followed by extensive press coverage and debate about the second jobs of other MPs, particularly Geoffrey Cox.Cox, a former Attorney General, registered a total income of 970,000 in 2020, for . I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. Sun Tzu. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. Ive written a few things about his work. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is Bismarck. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. Dominic Cummings 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. Cummings described a "completely insane situation" in March 2020 when a bizarre cocktail of events came together on one day. The main biography of Buffett, The Snowball, is also interesting. 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. NB. was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. NB. Professor Sides Dominic Cummings Nov 22, 2022 59 134 Ask Me Anything Monday 28 November, 1900-2100 Dominic Cummings Nov 21, 2022 57 310 The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. Follow Julia Galef. I'm thinking re 'What should Labour do to win the next election'. , Robert Caro. Brexit and VL in No10 (original official advice was to go with the useless bureaucratic EU scheme. For the beginner, by a Fields Medallist. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. Why it's in AOC's interests to challenge Old Joe. Retweets. ): how much was the. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. Most economists cant synthesise worth a damn. 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. His point about the fundamental importance of error-correction in political institutions was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Caitlyn Scott-Lee, was found dead near Wycombe Abbey School. He was a mathematician who got interested in how markets work. They have insurgent energy and feed on grievance. Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! Click repeat), , Hamming. A striking thing: notice how they take regulation and speed extremely seriously because they have direct experience of it, 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. The difficulty comes from the fact its psychologically very hard to stick to and almost all bureaucracies operate with incentives and culture that push in opposite directions. If interested in how a government could take seriously, , follow these debates. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie. , Professor Mark Warner. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. 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). He also wrote a, A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. On expert decisions under pressure, like firemen. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. Most of the world is not like this! This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. All ideas welcome. No question, it's Dominic Cummings. Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. By Reagans pollster. Posted January 13, 2014 Source: Pexels There's a lot of hope today that playing mindless brain training games will make you. I was not. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible do not talk about it publicly because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. The classic Cummings campaign is in the Star Wars rebel-alliance mould. The greatest deeds are thoughts (Some confusion about his ideas is a result of his sister who was a Nazi supporter and edited things he wrote to distort his actual views. , Klein. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. (Ive recently read some of the media commentary about 2019 that I ignored at the time and its amazing how many hacks thought I was trying to use vNs game theory. *Come and See ( , Russian). 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. The main biography of Buffett, , is also interesting. Behavioral Genetics, Plomin. Plato. Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). True of Bismarck (only appointed because of meltdown in royal circles), true of the likes of SpaceX (an explosion away from bankruptcy) and Steve Jobs (tried to sell early and was turned down), true of Brexit We just dont see all the stories of very able people trying really hard who get taken out by bad luck early in the story. (Some confusion about his ideas is a result of his sister who, a Nazi supporter and edited things he wrote to distort his actual views. On prediction. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. Lines and Curves, Vassiliev and Gutenmacher. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. 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. The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. Welles dismissed the French auteur theory as not relevant to the old Hollywood where the producers called the shots, not the directors. How to Solve It, Polya. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. Rosen on military innovation, very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. Thoughts on past and future of the Buffett system, Charlie Munger. The river was also burning. The Substack blog he started in June last year is not cheap - 10 a month for an erratic and irregular output via email - but it's worth it. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. My essay on an 'Odyssean' Education - Dominic Cummings's Blog My essay on an 'Odyssean' Education On the evening of Friday 11 October 2013, the Guardian published a draft essay of mine - ' Some thoughts on education and political priorities ' (links here and here ). is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. Dominic Cummings, a special adviser to UK education minister Michael Gove, discusses technological advances (quantum computing, 3D printing, energetics etc. I searched for explanations. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. And notice that despite their vast success Buffett & Munger have had almost zero success in persuading anybody to run their companies the way they run Berkshire! The Dance of the Photons, Zeilinger. NB. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on.