This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is, . , Frank Close (2011). In the search I came across Boyd. ): how much was the. You can download that version (2.0) here. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). Then I realised the truth. I started like everyone young assuming those at the top of politics must be smart, interested in policy and great at organising things. Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. RT @zebulgar: Step aside Andy Grove, I believe @chughesjohnson has written the new bible for managers Took me a while to work through my reading list so I could start this, but the writing is phenomenal, let alone the content Must-read for any founder, but especially after your Series A . The peacetime bureaucracy knew what it valued. Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. Rosen on military innovation, very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. 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. (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?). The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith. How to Solve It, Polya. 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, . Likes. Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Please, . Michael also wrote the textbook on QCs, one of the top ten cited physics books ever written. Welles dismissed the French auteur theory as not relevant to the old Hollywood where the producers called the shots, not the directors. . A good biography of Dirac, The Strangest Man, Farmelo. This by Fields Medallist Terry Tao, maybe the greatest mathematician alive, is brilliant and incredibly useful for someone like me explaining a lot of fundamental concepts in non-technical language. 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. Alls Fair, Carville & Matalin. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. 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! Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: textbook on QCs, one of the top ten cited physics books ever written. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. , Burton. If interested in how a government could take seriously, , follow these debates. The resignation of Dominic Raab. This is the Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. Much (mis)quoted, rarely read. ), Dostoyevsky. The media laughed and many said its so boring. Keynes essay on Newton is great: , the core document of the rationalist movement. . 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. Classic on teaching children programming, recommended by Alan Kay and Bret Victor. NB. Dominic Cummings on Twitter: "RT @zebulgar: Step aside Andy Grove, I On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, David Deutschs books. Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. Ive written a few things about his work. His book 'Causality' is the leading textbook in the field. The best book on politics. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. He did not however go quietly or in apologetic mode. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. Lines and Curves, Vassiliev and Gutenmacher. . 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. , Marcus du Sautoy. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. Sun Tzu. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. I searched for explanations. If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read. by Lee Kuan Yew. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. Predictive text? Why Superforecasting is top of Dominic Cummings I should have read this, havent, will. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. , Nietzsche. A good introduction to P=NP?. Sign in He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin, . Also though, everybody has bad luck and those who survive long enough to get good luck are very perseverant. 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. ), Notes from the Underground, Dostoyevsky. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. Dominic Cummings substack | Substack Also, Defense In Atomic War. 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. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. Sources of Power, Klein. One must not be squeamish about admitting this (Strauss). An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. 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. 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. NB. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. The Limits of Quantum Computers, Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008). What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? , Klein. 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. My blog with other books HERE. Makers of Modern Strategy, Paret et al. 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). As long promised (sorry! 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. , Plouffe. I like reading stuff about people where incentives and feedback work, from used car salesmen to fortune tellers. 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. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. A widely praised new biography of John von Neumann, the man Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli et al thought was the smartest person they knew. Dominic Cummings on Twitter Dominic Cummings on Twitter: "@drjennings Try reading before tweeting why some of the VL team decided to go to No10 in 2019, Thoughts on past and future of the Buffett system, , Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008), Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director, https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/october-2020/the-eu-godfathers-wall-street-roots/, https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2021/the-sphinx-who-reshaped-europe/. Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. , maybe the greatest mathematician alive, is brilliant and incredibly useful for someone like me explaining a lot of fundamental concepts in non-technical language. He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin here as did Paul Christiano here. A good biography of Dirac. You often read versions of those really at the edge of this research do not predict fast timetables. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. , 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. Follow Zvi. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! Mathematics: Its content, methods and meaning, Kolmogorov et al. The media laughed and many said its so boring. He had promised to resign if there was any finding against and kept his word. Click repeat). Dominic Cummings: What is the scandal about? - BBC News On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. 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. You and your research, Hamming. Opinion | The 'Political Anarchist' Behind Britain's Chaos - The New 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. . Work for Dominic Cummings at your peril, but his take on the state's In Pursuit of the Travelling Salesman, Cook. Worthlin. Reckoning With Risk, Gigerenzer. The vaccine taskforce a) created huge value for the UK and the world, b) would, have happened without [typo original!] I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. Classic text, university level. Functions and Graphs, Gelfand and Glagoleva. . , Paret et al. the failure of alignment and/or the inherent drive of high intelligence to escape constraints/control/alignment with others goals? 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. In War and Peace, 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. Great DVD documentary too. David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. Also see Nietzsche on the pre-Socratics. Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. ; 2) how to map the spread of memes and identify critical nodes in the network that, if influenced somehow, can amplify or dampen signals? Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. I searched for explanations. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver. Dominic Cummings 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. Gawande. Calculus, Spivak (2008 edition). 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. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist! Also Democracy in America. the word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). 26. Who is Dominic Cummings? Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. 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, X is Y% likely to be a big story, with what confidence? , summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. 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. Genres Politics The Man from the Future, Bhattacharya. His boss and predecessor was Kelly Johnson who wrote. Expert Political Judgment, and Superforecasters, Tetlock. steve stricker wrist lock; what channel are the st louis cardinals playing on today Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. 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 classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. Skunk Works, Ben Rich. Re Clintons 1992 campaign which influenced the Blair 1997 campaign. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. Notes on Colin Grays Strategy and Defence Planning, following on from military innovation, The Kill Chain, nuclear (sorry for slow progress on Payne). A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. 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. In particular read. His point about. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is Bismarck. LAncien Rgime et la Rvolution, de Tocqueville. Update to Trump v Biden blog of last September. Clausewitz. How to predict news? 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. Twitter Web App Retweets This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. His Memoirs are fascinating and so is this biography by Duchne. For the beginner, by a Fields Medallist. I'll answer some over the next 48 hours, on Friday I'll focus on live questions/discussion, then tidy up after. The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. Dominic Cummings Offers a Sorry-Not-Sorry for U.K. Lockdown Breach Thames Valley Police have confirmed that her corpse was discovered on Friday, April 21, just before midnight. Its crucial to remember both aspects of this genius-monster without whom probably no World War I, Lenin, Hitler etc summed up by Salisburys two comments: One misses the extraordinary penetration of the old man and he will do things of which it would be absurd to suspect any other statesman in Europe. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. 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. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. 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. The Dominic Cummings guide to management | Financial Times This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. LKY, Boyd, Groves all say the same). 59. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. 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. Also the club of those who write about UK politics a) are rarely interested in how power really works, b) are almost never 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. Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Sipser (2005 edition). This is false. , Gelfand and Glagoleva. A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. 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 . Im reading this summer. , biography by John Sugden. The Idea Factory, Gertner. . Elite polarisation, Cicero & fishponds. 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! There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. Very very telling that in a recent interview with Tyler Cowen, the recent head of the CIA was clearly unaware of this work, which includes results showing that his own agency is routinely bested by people like unemployed grandmothers in a hut in Central America. Some of the. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. The basic arguments remain critical today. , Hunter S Thompson. 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 . Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche. A mathematicians apology, Hardy. *Chaplin City Lights, The Gold Rush, Modern Times, Great Dictator. ), 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. The Art of War, Sun Tzu. But the storyteller makes this picture incredibly beautiful. , Adam Smith. High Output Management, Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. some Kay emails, Sydney Brenner interview on the hideous science funding system. Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) / Twitter No question, it's Dominic Cummings. Dominic Cummings: Key points from his evidence to select - Sky News From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. The Dance of the Photons, Zeilinger. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. Richard Muller. (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. This is false. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. , Charlie Munger. Brexit and VL in No10 (original official advice was to go with the useless bureaucratic EU scheme. (I used this to argue for checklists and transparency over the repeated failures of social services with child abuse when in the Department for Education 2011-14. In general Colin Grays work. NB. 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. 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. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. Want to Get Smarter? Read Something on This List On War, Clausewitz. Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. 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. is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. Most of the world is not like this! A classic non-specialist introduction to reasoning. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. , Robert Caro. How to predict news? A widely praised new biography of John von Neumann, the man Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli et al thought was the smartest person they knew. I blogged a series on this great book starting. The uncomfortable truth about Dominic Cummings's campaign playbook David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. Then nationalism became generally despised by educated liberals, and so on We cant, how our own ideas will appear in the future but its fascinating how little we, to imagine how foolish our own views will inevitably appear to those looking back on us.