(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. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. 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 the hideous science funding system. Number, Dantzig (1930, updated 1953; new edition 2007). The Greatest Communicator, Worthlin. 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. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. (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 regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. , Charlie Munger. He also wrote a, A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. (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. Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 80 This thread is only visible to paid subscribers of Dominic Cummings substack Subscribe to view Keep reading with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to Dominic Cummings substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. Never At Rest, Westfall. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. I was amazed and desperate. 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. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). , Nietzsche. Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. 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. , Kahneman. The main biography of Buffett, The Snowball, is also interesting. 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 smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. 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. (NB. Producers didnt want to make a Renoir picture even if it was a success. 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, nationalistic. If interested in how a government could take seriously, , follow these debates. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss. Someone should run a prize for the best 10,000 word essay summarising the fundamental lessons of this book (which I havent read in full, just skimmed, because of time not a judgement). In Pursuit of the Travelling Salesman, Cook. Im reading this summer. The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides. One of Britains most senior and respected civil servants, Michael Quinlan, wrote this paper after retiring. *Come and See ( , Russian). Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! The Quark and the Jaguar, Murray Gell Mann. Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. , Beinhocker. Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. 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. 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. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. A short companion book to his famous lecture series. The truth is that they recognized themselves my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. , Gertner. Plato. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. ): how much was the. The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. 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. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. Many who used them went on to the famous Kolmogorov schools.). He also wrote a book on neural networks. 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? Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Physics for Future Presidents, and Energy for Future Presidents, Richard Muller. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. Also cf. ): how much was the effectiveness bound up with the dangerousness the failure of alignment and/or the inherent drive of high intelligence to escape constraints/control/alignment with others goals? Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. 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. Posted January 13, 2014 . A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. But the storyteller makes this picture incredibly beautiful. Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. which egg to use for IVF. (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. By Andy Hayes, news reporter Thursday 27 May 2021 06:28, UK Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson, Carrie Symonds and even Dilyn the dog have been the focus of numerous explosive claims from 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. Some of the. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. By Reagans pollster. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. You and your research, Hamming. Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. The Federalist Papers. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. Yudkowskys Sequences, the core document of the rationalist movement. Much (mis)quoted, rarely read. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! Will. 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. The insider account of the Manhattan Project by its legendary leader. , Terence Tao. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider, 1960 and The Computer as a Communication Device, Bob Taylor, 1968. This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. Worthlin. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. The Dance of the Photons, Zeilinger. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. I should have read this, havent, will. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! 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. Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: Why the world needs quantum mechanics Quantum Computing for Everyone Quantum Computing for the Determined. . Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. Also Democracy in America. 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. It is by far the best insider book Ive read on modern UK politics and the only one that realistically and honestly faces a) the failures of MPs as managers and systems thinkers, and b) the failures of the civil service. Richard Feynman was a giant of theoretical physics who famously defined science as "the belief in the ignorance of experts". Also see Nietzsche on the pre-Socratics. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. . What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. The Dream Machine, Waldrop. The more I study the more clear it is that luck plays a crucial part in almost all famous successes. The critical meta-lesson is the same for all the below: practically nobody has any interest in extreme performance and all governments in the west will try to stop you applying these lessons. By Reagans pollster. 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. Mathematics: Its content, methods and meaning, Kolmogorov et al. Click repeat). , Marcus du Sautoy. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. but most do not realise the last chapter is about Nietzsche and the Last Man, and this chapter is the most relevant today. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. NB. 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. , Gustave le Bon. Main allegations as Dominic Cummings gives evidence to MPs on the government's early handling of the COVID outbreak in the UK. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible, because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. 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. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). 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! 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. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. Lines and Curves, Vassiliev and Gutenmacher. ), Notes from the Underground, Dostoyevsky. . The Book of Why (general reader). , Morris Kline. Quotes. Who is Dominic Cummings? Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. Keynes essay on Newton is great: , the core document of the rationalist movement. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist! He is not a member of parliament and is not elected. He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 Dominic Cummings has hit back at Boris Johnson's partygate defence, accusing him of spreading "further misinformation". 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. Dynamics of 2024. 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. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. One must not be squeamish about admitting this (Strauss). Blurb endorsement by Einstein. On expert decisions under pressure, like firemen. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. 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. Also. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver. Book accompanying an OU course. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is, . Popular intro to network theory. 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). Someone should run a prize for the best 10,000 word essay summarising the fundamental lessons of this book (which I havent read in full, just skimmed, because of time not a judgement). A Cavendish Quantum Mechanics Primer, Professor Mark Warner. , John Allen Paulos (1988). 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? (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) Welles dismissed the French auteur theory as not relevant to the old Hollywood where the producers called the shots, not the directors. 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. Most economists cant synthesise worth a damn. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. Likes. David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. The point that Producers didnt want to make a Renoir picture even if it was a success is really important. In the search I came across Boyd. (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. 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. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. If interested in how a government could take seriously accelerating progress, follow these debates. 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. 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. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! Ive flicked through books on post-Thatcher UK general elections but never found them interesting enough to read in full. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. , Ben Rich. , 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. 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. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. For example: The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. For the beginner, by a Fields Medallist. 121. 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. 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 . Much (mis)quoted, rarely read. One of the most critical lessons? Classic text, university level. 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? Book accompanying an OU course. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below. All ideas welcome. This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. Influence, Cialdini. 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. Mandelbrot. The Power Broker, Robert Caro. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Caitlyn Scott-Lee, was found dead near Wycombe Abbey School. ), genetics, expert judgement, finance and many other topics with the focus on how education policy has to cope in order to train problem solvers for the coming challenges. I was amazed and desperate. The Nazis did indeed think they were creating a new world beyond good and evil, so did Stalin. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. I'll post final LKY notes tomorrow. Like Hoskyns (below) genuine rare insight and almost totally ignored. 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. A billionaire should provide copies to all elected politicians. Notes on Colin Grays Strategy and Defence Planning, following on from military innovation, The Kill Chain, nuclear (sorry for slow progress on Payne). Im reading this summer. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist!). A widely praised new biography of John von Neumann, the man Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli et al thought was the smartest person they knew. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. A classic book on mathematical problem solving. , which was unpublished for many years and seems to be generally unknown, is super-useful. Classic text, university level. There's a big bad enemy out there, possibly with superior weaponry but. Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. On expert decisions under pressure, like firemen. 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. He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin here as did Paul Christiano here. , Carville & Matalin. My blog with other books HERE. On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. (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 year later he lost a power struggle with. 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.
Brain Imaging for Global Health