Popular intro to network theory. 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. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. United Kingdom parliamentary second jobs controversy They have insurgent energy and feed on grievance. The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. Twitter Web App Retweets This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. 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. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. If hed run the Hillary campaign in 2016, no Trump as President. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. It would be ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. I wrote, which has a further reading list. Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. 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. Dominic Cummings: look closely to see the traps he is setting 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. Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. 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? Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. Makers of Modern Strategy, Paret et al. Some of the unpublished stuff in Gdels Collected Works is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. Psychologie des foules, Gustave le Bon. If you read Boyd youll see how lessons recur across Alexander, Nelson, Groves et al. the word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). Dominic Cummings on Twitter: "@drjennings Try reading before tweeting Gawande. , Professor Mark Warner. A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. A classic book on mathematical problem solving. which egg to use for IVF. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. Rosen on military innovation, very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. Genres Politics 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 think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). Please just ask one question as precisely as you can, it will increase the chance I answer. It also corrects a lot of modern books that have reverted to the World War I was a terrible accident / railway timetables idea in fact crucial nodes in the Prussian deep state network were trying to force war in summer 1914 and to manipulate Wilhelm II into going along with their plans. The Dream Machine, Waldrop. . 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. 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. If interested in how a government could take seriously accelerating progress, follow these debates. Many who used them went on to the famous Kolmogorov schools.). Many who used them went on to the famous Kolmogorov schools.). The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. In particular Ill add textbooks, history and philosophy which Ive largely left out. 406. The insider account of the Manhattan Project by its legendary leader. (Politicians also constantly make this mistake in hiring journalists to do communication, almost always a bad idea.). The Federalist Papers. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. A billionaire should provide copies to all elected politicians. A classic based on his famous Lectures. 121. Most economists cant synthesise worth a damn. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. by Gomme and Andrewes, two of the great 20th C classical scholars. ), Dostoyevsky. 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. I wrote this blog which has a further reading list. The Quark and the Jaguar, Murray Gell Mann. 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. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. But the storyteller makes this picture incredibly beautiful. LKY, Boyd, Groves all say the same). The Nazis did indeed think they were creating a new world beyond good and evil, so did Stalin. Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. is considered a classic but Ive not read. 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). Posted January 13, 2014 . Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. Dominic Cummings Jul 15, 2021 39 66 Last week I wrote re: Why I went to No10 in summer 2019. 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. A short companion book to his famous lecture series. 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. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. , Slotkin. Partly accessible to a non-specialist with some maths already, though very challenging for most including me. Some interesting things I've read recently - Substack (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). He was a mathematician who got interested in how markets work. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver. Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. , Courant. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. 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. 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 . , Terence Tao. (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. The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. Dominic Cummings on Twitter In all of these struggles I tried to follow Boyds advice such as, 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!). Most of the world is not like this! In Pursuit of the Travelling Salesman, Cook. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. AT&T could only support it when a monopoly. I blogged on it here. The best book on politics. Behavioral Genetics, Plomin. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. , biography by John Sugden. 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? 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. For example: The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. , Bhattacharya. Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Sipser (2005 edition). *Come and See ( , Russian). Charlie Munger has written and spoken extensively about mental checklists/models he uses, not just for investing. , Robin Lane Fox. This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. E.g his few pages on maths and economics which few economists seem to know about! On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, read Bret Victor, a rare genius. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. (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 contrast to most professional economists who influence media debate on regulation who have no idea of how government really works and how destructive it is to make simple things take years, how it drives people away, rewards the worst people and companies etc. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. *Chaplin City Lights, The Gold Rush, Modern Times, Great Dictator. 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. Thoughts on past and future of the Buffett system, Charlie Munger. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. One of the most critical lessons? Dominic Cummings substack | Substack Apr 18. New blog: Insiders & graduates across the West swallowed nonsense on 'AI stole it for Brexit/Trump' after 2016, in 2024 it will be used, maybe by Russia & China as well as both campaigns, so we shd expect an even more chaotic election. The best biography in English (probably any language) is, . Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. The truth is that they recognized themselves my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. His book 'Causality' is the leading textbook in the field. Predictive text? Why Superforecasting is top of Dominic Cummings A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Caitlyn Scott-Lee, was found dead near Wycombe Abbey School. A good biography of Dirac. , Paret et al. Elite opinion in London today is dominated by very similar people with very similar education and very similar views that inevitably include. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. A short companion book to his famous lecture series, Tips on Physics: a problem-solving supplement, which was unpublished for many years and seems to be generally unknown, is super-useful. (NB. The basic arguments remain critical today. Professional Reading - Tatler UK - Department of Defense - OverDrive If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville.