Mandelbrot. Highly recommended. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. 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. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. Thoughts on past and future of the Buffett system, Charlie Munger. I blogged a series on this great book starting here; if you only read one of these blogs make it this one on the most important issue, great people (NB. 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. He also wrote a, A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. 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. Re Clintons 1992 campaign which influenced the Blair 1997 campaign. , Sipser (2005 edition). Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. , George Dyson (son of Freeman). Im reading this summer. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. Cummings has also instructed the advisers to read High Output Management by Andrew Grove, the former chief executive of computer-chip manufacturer Intel, who "warns that success breeds. Posted January 13, 2014 Source: Pexels There's a lot of hope today that playing mindless brain training games will make you. Psychologie des foules, Gustave le Bon. A classic non-specialist introduction to reasoning. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. I was not. Whenever and. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is Bismarck. I thought this was outstanding and every young person aspiring to be influential in politics should read it. 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. The best book on politics. Some of the. Audacity to Win, Plouffe. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. ! What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? 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. One of the most critical lessons? What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. Classic text, university level. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist!). Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. The Misbehaviour of Financial Markets, Mandelbrot. Dominic Cummings Judea Pearl is one of the most important scholars in the field of causal reasoning. One of Britains most senior and respected civil servants, Michael Quinlan, wrote this paper after retiring. Expert Political Judgment, and Superforecasters, Tetlock. one of my terrorist demands when Boris asked me to go to No10, 21 July 2019). My wild Westminster Dubbed 'The Gazelle' by the press, she was a trusted aide who babysat Boris, chauffeured Dominic Cummings and chaperoned Carrie Johnson when the PM was ill. As a new television drama depicts Downing Street during the pandemic, Cleo Watson describes her whirlwind year at No 10 Dress to thrill Feeling gilty? 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. The Idea Factory, Gertner. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. , Kahneman. Just like despite ARPA-PARCs success, almost no science funding is done like that in the world (hence why I made the creation of ARIA one of my terrorist demands when Boris asked me to go to No10, 21 July 2019). Kahneman bravely admitted hed ignored some of his own lessons in believing studies he shouldnt have believed. Ive written blogs on some other important books: Paynes recent books on nuclear weapons. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie The Battle of Algiers, one of the best movies ever made. Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. , Slotkin. Almost no MPs, journalists or academics have any idea about just how costly such bureaucracy truly is or how these bureaucracies truly work and the criminality and near-insanity theyre capable of. 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. 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!). The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. His point about. I started like everyone young assuming those at the top of politics must be smart, interested in policy and great at organising things. Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos (1988). Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. In the meantime Ill post another tomorrow. 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. Buy the book, support Zvi. Im reading this summer. His boss and predecessor was Kelly Johnson who wrote this short list of principles. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. With Bismarck you can follow the twists and turns of a true (and monstrous) genius in great detail and learn an extraordinary amount about how politics, government, war and diplomacy truly work. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. I'll post final LKY notes tomorrow. 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. , 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. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. E.g his few pages on, which few economists seem to know about! SW1 suffers such extremely powerful wilful blindness even an event as big as covid doesnt puncture consciousness in many important ways. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. 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. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith. 121. Book accompanying an OU course. , Zeilinger. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). . A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. It is, therefore, practically unknown in SW1. , Murray Gell Mann. 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 . 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. You and your research, Hamming. ): how much was the. One of the most critical lessons? Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. 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. , Hardy. Also see Nietzsche on the pre-Socratics. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. The Art of War, Sun Tzu. 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?. 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. Also though, everybody has bad luck and those who survive long enough to get good luck are very perseverant. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. NB. (3 volumes), Morris Kline. AT&T could only support it when a monopoly. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. Almost no MPs, journalists or academics have any idea about just how costly such bureaucracy truly is or how these bureaucracies truly work and the criminality and near-insanity theyre capable of. , Klein. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. summarising responses to this. David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. , Gigerenzer. Functions and Graphs, Gelfand and Glagoleva. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. And a very recent post, AGI Ruin, summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible do not talk about it publicly because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. This will also show you why high performance is so hard it is totally hostile to normal bureaucracies dominated by large numbers of middle managers. Brexit and VL in No10 (original official advice was to go with the useless bureaucratic EU scheme. 406. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. If interested in how a government could take seriously, , follow these debates. Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. 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. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. Skunk Works, Ben Rich. Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. Autocracy has wide variance in performance one minute you have Bismarck in charge, the next you have Wilhelm II firing him and trying to govern himself in an appalling disaster that took the best educated country in the world towards Nazism. Her recent book, The Scout Mindset, was excellent. For the beginner, by a Fields Medallist. The resignation of Dominic Raab. *Chaplin City Lights, The Gold Rush, Modern Times, Great Dictator. 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. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. What is mathematics?, Courant. was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. Dominic Cummings, a special adviser to UK education minister Michael Gove, discusses technological advances (quantum computing, 3D printing, energetics etc. The Nazis did indeed think they were creating a new world beyond good and evil, so did Stalin. 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. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. The best book on politics. Makers of Modern Strategy, Paret et al. So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. Dominic Cummings told Parliament that his ex-boss, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was "unfit for the job" and that government incompetence lead to thousands of excess Covid-19 deaths. 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. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). I was not. 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. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: Why the world needs quantum mechanics Quantum Computing for Everyone Quantum Computing for the Determined. The main biography of Buffett, The Snowball, is also interesting. , Paret et al. This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. the word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. ), The foundational crisis of mathematics, set theory, Hilbert, Godel, and Turing. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) Start trial Already a paid subscriber? 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. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. 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. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. dominiccummings.substack.com. The peacetime bureaucracy knew what it valued. 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). 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. He is not a member of parliament and is not elected. The best biography in English (probably any language) is, . (NB. (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. 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 . Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. 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. 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. He also wrote a book on neural networks. ), Dostoyevsky. Nelson, biography by John Sugden. on the hideous science funding system. , Bhattacharya. *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. 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. , Ben Rich. Lines and Curves, Vassiliev and Gutenmacher. , Robert Caro. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, Morris Kline. 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. This will also show you why high performance is so hard it is totally hostile to normal bureaucracies dominated by large numbers of middle managers. The classic Cummings campaign is in the Star Wars rebel-alliance mould. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. Most economists cant synthesise worth a damn. 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. 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. . 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. 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. AT&T could only support it when a monopoly. Youll understand more of how SW1 really works than from all PM memoirs of the last 30 years combined (PMs never face why they dont control much of Whitehall even after theyve gone). 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. , Nietzsche. On Renoir and Hollywood: It would be ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, Hunter S Thompson. If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Worthlin. Collison has a webpage summarising responses to this. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. No question, it's Dominic Cummings. NB. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is, . Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). Also. 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. On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. Solving Mathematical Problems, Terence Tao. 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. Why Superforecasting is top of Dominic Cummings' reading list Perhaps hoping his colleagues will be able to see into the future, the prime minister's chief adviser has advocated a book on how to. NB. Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. Kahneman bravely admitted hed ignored some of his own lessons in believing studies he shouldnt have believed. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. The insider account of the Manhattan Project by its legendary leader. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. For us its often seen as high level political philosophy but it was bashed out by Hamilton et al as part of a brutal political struggle including many dirty tricks on both sides. I wrote, which has a further reading list. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. The politicians soon are on the next current thing too. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. Richard Muller. Linked, Barabasi. Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. Dominic Cummings's Odyssean reading list might make you smarter. (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?). Like Hoskyns (below) genuine rare insight and almost totally ignored. Colonel John Boyds briefings are great. 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. , Gelfand and Glagoleva. Physics for Future Presidents, and Energy for Future Presidents, Richard Muller. A classic non-specialist introduction to reasoning. I thought this was outstanding and every young person aspiring to be influential in politics should read it. Boris Johnson has backed his top aide Dominic Cummings, saying he "acted responsibly, legally and with integrity" when he drove 260 miles to County Durham to isolate with his family. We can now test fertilised eggs for common risk factors such as mental disorders and heart attacks and choose which egg to use for IVF. For example: , Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below.). Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. . Some of the unpublished stuff in Gdels Collected Works is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. Complexity Economics, Beinhocker.