dominic cummings reading list

Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. (NB. Classic text, university level. Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. The Man from the Future, Bhattacharya. Fab: From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, Gershenfeld (MIT). AT&T could only support it when a monopoly. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. , which was unpublished for many years and seems to be generally unknown, is super-useful. I wrote some essays on the history of maths and computing which have further reading lists. the word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. ): 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? A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. A classic on the 1972 campaign. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos (1988). The Dominic Cummings guide to management Boris Johnson's adviser plans to put business leaders' strategies into practice Andrew Hill Dominic Cummings, the prime minister's senior adviser, has. (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. Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. By Reagans pollster. Fascinating. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. The Dance of the Photons, Zeilinger. From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Cummings is Boris Johnson's chief adviser. , Kahneman. If interested in how a government could take seriously, , follow these debates. 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. Follow Zvi. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. on the hideous science funding system. Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, Morris Kline. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. . , Morris Kline. I blogged on it here. I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). Retweets. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie The Battle of Algiers, one of the best movies ever made. , Professor Mark Warner. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. 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 People, ideas, machines in that order! Robert Coram wrote a biography. , Bhattacharya. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). They have insurgent energy and feed on grievance. (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?). Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. Dominic Cummings 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. There's a big bad enemy out there, possibly with superior weaponry but. Expert Political Judgment, and Superforecasters, Tetlock. People who havent studied it often mock Fukuyamas The End of History 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. which egg to use for IVF. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. A classic book on mathematical problem solving. Dominic Cummings Dec 8, 2021 93 726 Subscriber-only AMA, Friday 12-2 UK time. April 22, 2023 156 Comments. 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. He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin here as did Paul Christiano here. 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. It was night, bombs were exploding, and mothers were covering their children with whatever bedding they had, and then they would lie on top of them. , Scott Aaronson (2013) is a brilliant introduction to many ideas about computation, physics and quantum information. 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. How to Solve It, Polya. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. A mathematicians apology, Hardy. 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. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Pentagon Wars, Burton. 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. NB. 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. , Klein. 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). Classic on teaching children programming, recommended by Alan Kay and Bret Victor. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. 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. This is false. . Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. Also cf. 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. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). Dominic Cummings Dec 13, 2022 40 94 #4 Regime Change, America 2024 Trump's disastrous error. Our impression was there is valuable low hanging fruit for governments, hedge funds, campaigns. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. The insider account of the Manhattan Project by its legendary leader. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. Popular intro to network theory. 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. Like Hoskyns (below) genuine rare insight and almost totally ignored. NB. 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. The vaccine taskforce a) created huge value for the UK and the world, b) would no way have happened without [typo original!] The media laughed and many said its so boring. Many who used them went on to the famous Kolmogorov schools.). Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. You can download that version (2.0) here. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. Ive written blogs on some other important books: Paynes recent books on nuclear weapons. The Limits of Quantum Computers, Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008). He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. , Spivak (2008 edition). Lines and Curves, Vassiliev and Gutenmacher. Dominic Cummings's Odyssean reading list might make you smarter. Audacity to Win, Plouffe. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. Dominic Cummings Judea Pearl is one of the most important scholars in the field of causal reasoning. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. ; 2) how to map the spread of memes and identify critical nodes in the network that, if influenced somehow, can amplify or dampen signals? NB. Book accompanying an OU course. (general reader). Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). Also cf. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. Makers of Modern Strategy, Paret et al. Causality, Judea Pearl (advanced). 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?. Kahneman bravely admitted hed ignored some of his own lessons in believing studies he shouldnt have believed. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. 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. People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status. 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. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. 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 title comes from Revelations 6 (7-8): And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). , John Hoskyns. 26. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. . 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. Number, Dantzig (1930, updated 1953; new edition 2007). Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. Dynamics of 2024. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! (I spent ~2 years reading a lot of books on this ~2005-15. Nelson, biography by John Sugden. Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. 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. (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. Perhaps America has elections every four years, power supply is ~100% reliable in the First World, Europe wont see millions killed in wars again, nobody lives happily/normally to 200, robots cant escape control and kill vast numbers of humans, children should study curricula controlled by the state, I support policies that undermine traditional ideas about the family will seem as quaint in 2052 as Bertrand Russell being taught by a grandfather whod met Napoleon that British naval dominance is a fact of life. 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. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. 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. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. Our impression was there is valuable low hanging fruit for governments, hedge funds, campaigns, Thucydides. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. I should have read this, havent, will. The Method of Coordinates, Gelfand, Glagoleva, Kirillov. 2h It is not a forecast & says explicitly 'this is not a forecast' 2 1 Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Warning, its an accurate portrayal of atrocities on the Eastern Front therefore truly horrific. Gawande. 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. (Politicians also constantly make this mistake in hiring journalists to do communication, almost always a bad idea.). A year later he lost a power struggle with. . It is, therefore, practically unknown in SW1. *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. 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. , 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. 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. Then I realised the truth. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. 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. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. , Nietzsche. You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. Rohls multivolume biography on Wilhelm II is brilliant and, like Pflanze, a whole political education in itself. The Dream Machine, Waldrop. Elite opinion in London today is dominated by very similar people with very similar education and very similar views that inevitably include. 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. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, read Bret Victor, a rare genius. , summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. 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. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. For example: , Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche. Zvi reviews Tyler Cowens new book, Talent. NB. de Tocqueville. Doing the Impossible, Slotkin. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. One must not be squeamish about admitting this (Strauss). I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). He was a mathematician who got interested in how markets work. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. 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. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). So, let's conclude this list with two of his scientific heroes. Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox. , General Groves. 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? Also. Kahneman bravely admitted hed ignored some of his own lessons in believing studies he shouldnt have believed. 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. Follow Julia Galef. If hed run the Hillary campaign in 2016, no Trump as President. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. It would be ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. 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? , Beinhocker. 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. Dominic Cummings Jul 15, 2021 39 66 Last week I wrote re: Why I went to No10 in summer 2019. (NB. So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. If you want to follow the cutting edge of this research follow Steve Hsus blog, which you should anyway. Turings Cathedral, George Dyson (son of Freeman). AT&T could only support it when a monopoly. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) , Gigerenzer. Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. , Ben Rich. Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. Please, . The Power Broker, Robert Caro. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. A classic book on mathematical problem solving. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. Dominic Cummings, a special adviser to UK education minister Michael Gove, discusses technological advances (quantum computing, 3D printing, energetics etc. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Likes. Six Easy Pieces, Feynman. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. (NB. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. Theres no question about this. His Art of Doing Science and Engineering is considered a classic but Ive not read. Then I realised the truth. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. Highly recommended. the failure of alignment and/or the inherent drive of high intelligence to escape constraints/control/alignment with others goals? Almost the only good business book I have read on strategy. On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? Keynes essay on Newton is great: , the core document of the rationalist movement. Apr 18. Also though, everybody has bad luck and those who survive long enough to get good luck are very perseverant. 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). On expert decisions under pressure, like firemen. Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. 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. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. are great. 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. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). ), Modern works on war / strategy (NB. Now, perhaps, they have some idea of what that. High Output Management, Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith. This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. . The Misbehaviour of Financial Markets, Mandelbrot. , Adam Smith. 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. The best book on politics. and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. 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 . The basic arguments remain critical today. 121. We can now test fertilised eggs for common risk factors such as mental disorders and heart attacks and. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. I like reading stuff about people where incentives and feedback work, from used car salesmen to fortune tellers. A good biography of Dirac, The Strangest Man, Farmelo. 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. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. , and let non-player characters stumble into a set of critical decisions in November? by Lee Kuan Yew. 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. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. I'll post final LKY notes tomorrow.
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