Warning, its an accurate portrayal of atrocities on the Eastern Front therefore truly horrific. ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. I should have read this, havent, will. (NB. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. judge timothy kenny political affiliation. 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. Why? 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. , Nietzsche. 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". A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. 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. His point about. 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. The Nazis did indeed think they were creating a new world beyond good and evil, so did Stalin. , Bhattacharya. 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). Now It Can Be Told, General Groves. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. Dominic Cummings The politicians soon are on the next current thing too. By Reagans pollster. ): how much was the. Zvi reviews Tyler Cowens new book, Talent. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. . 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. A year later he lost a power struggle with. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. (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. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. 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?. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Producers didnt want to make a Renoir picture even if it was a success. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos (1988). It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. The Book of Why (general reader). Histories of the Standard Model: The Second Creation, Crease & Mann (1996) and The Infinity Puzzle, Frank Close (2011). Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. The Nazis did indeed think they were creating a new world beyond good and evil, so did Stalin. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? The Quark and the Jaguar, Murray Gell Mann. Please, . If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read. And a very recent post. The main biography of Buffett, , is also interesting. , John Hoskyns. was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. NB. Ive written a few things about his work. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, read Bret Victor, a rare genius. I was amazed and desperate. He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. 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. , Kahneman. 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. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. I know some of them. 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. Rohls multivolume biography on Wilhelm II is brilliant and, like Pflanze, a whole political education in itself. Tyler Cowen, Patrick Collison and others have been trying to push some of the principles of how to do hard things into economics and government, in similar ways to some of my arguments over the years. Click repeat). *Come and See ( , Russian). On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. 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. How to Solve It, Polya. , Dantzig (1930, updated 1953; new edition 2007). one of my terrorist demands when Boris asked me to go to No10, 21 July 2019). , Adam Smith. 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. 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. If youre involved in Isaac Physics and want to discuss how it could continue please get in touch.). The Ascent of Man, Bronowksi. The Art of War, Sun Tzu. So, let's conclude this list with two of his scientific heroes. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. 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 Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. 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. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. 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. Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. In general Colin Grays work. NB. A good biography of Dirac, The Strangest Man, Farmelo. I thought this was outstanding and every young person aspiring to be influential in politics should read it. Much (mis)quoted, rarely read. Review of the disintegration of the Tories in the context of Brexit, SW1 vs Vote Leave perspectives on risks of Brexit/Remain, and why some of the VL team decided to go to No10 in 2019 and save the trolley to Get Brexit Done despite our reservations. Kahneman bravely admitted hed ignored some of his own lessons in believing studies he shouldnt have believed. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is, . If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. 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. , Seymour Papert. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. If you read Boyd youll see how lessons recur across Alexander, Nelson, Groves et al. I like reading stuff about people where incentives and feedback work, from used car salesmen to fortune tellers. Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche. 2h It is not a forecast & says explicitly 'this is not a forecast' 2 1 Sun Tzu. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. Dominic Cummings has hit back at Boris Johnson's partygate defence, accusing him of spreading "further misinformation". You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. LAncien Rgime et la Rvolution, de Tocqueville. 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. Ill do a separate list on science funding. Gawande. By Reagans pollster. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. 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. A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. or waste the most important element in conflict. (on maths, logic, P=NP, computational complexity), (in general, and if interested in extreme talent Steve blogs a lot on this), 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. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. He also wrote a, A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. The main biography of Buffett, The Snowball, is also interesting. Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. One must not be squeamish about admitting this (Strauss). 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. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. The best biography in English (probably any language) is Otto Pflanzes three volumes. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. Great DVD documentary too. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible, because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. , Courant. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider, 1960 and The Computer as a Communication Device, Bob Taylor, 1968. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. 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. . People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. 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. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. , Murray Gell Mann. Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. High Output Management, Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. If interested in how a government could take seriously, , follow these debates. Fascinating. 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. , Professor Mark Warner. Then nationalism became generally despised by educated liberals, and so on We cant know how our own ideas will appear in the future but its fascinating how little we try to imagine how foolish our own views will inevitably appear to those looking back on us. , Frank Close (2011). , Ben Rich. Brexit and VL in No10 (original official advice was to go with the useless bureaucratic EU scheme. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. . I like reading stuff about people where incentives and feedback work, from used car salesmen to fortune tellers. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. Just like despite ARPA-PARCs success, almost no science funding is done like that in the world (hence why I made the creation of. Viz the famous lists, Yes to Renoir, Welles, Chaplin, Keaton, No to Fellini (tried to watch 8 1/2 at least five times and fallen asleep fast every time) and Hitchcock. , Leonard Susskind (2013). Six Easy Pieces, Feynman. I blogged on it here. Re Clintons 1992 campaign which influenced the Blair 1997 campaign. , John Allen Paulos (1988). 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. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. . 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. Mandelbrot. Keynes essay on Newton is great: , the core document of the rationalist movement. Highly recommended. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. Dominic Cummings Dec 13, 2022 40 94 #4 Regime Change, America 2024 Trump's disastrous error. You and your research, Hamming. , very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: textbook on QCs, one of the top ten cited physics books ever written. Classic text, university level. 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. Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. Dominic Cummings's Odyssean reading list might make you smarter. Calculus, Spivak (2008 edition). 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. So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. The vaccine taskforce a) created huge value for the UK and the world, b) would no way have happened without [typo original!] 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. Can we survive technology?, von Neumann, 1955. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, David Deutschs books. 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). I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. The politicians soon are on the next current thing too. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. , von Neumann, 1955. He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin here as did Paul Christiano here. 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. , 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 you want to follow the cutting edge of this research follow Steve Hsus blog, which you should anyway. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist!). 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! On prediction. , Gustave le Bon. 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.
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