Genres Politics Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. It is, therefore, practically unknown in SW1. In particular read. The river was also burning. 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 can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. . Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. 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. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist! A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. which egg to use for IVF. SW1 suffers such extremely powerful wilful blindness even an event as big as covid doesnt puncture consciousness in many important ways. On expert decisions under pressure, like firemen. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. *Chaplin City Lights, The Gold Rush, Modern Times, Great Dictator. , Nietzsche. How to Solve It, Polya. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. LAncien Rgime et la Rvolution, de Tocqueville. 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. Below is a summary of the main ideas. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. 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. Calculus, Spivak (2008 edition). I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. , Bhattacharya. Working Backwards, by Amazon alumni. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. Sign in 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). . Dominic Cummings Dec 8, 2021 93 726 Subscriber-only AMA, Friday 12-2 UK time. 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? If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read. Mandelbrot. was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. Pentagon Wars, Burton. 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. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. Their favourite argument is the laughable its a small island, about as sensible as a general saying Alexander the Great was using cavalry so its out of date. The more I study the more clear it is that luck plays a crucial part in almost all famous successes. 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 . Caitlyn Scott-Lee is said to have been found in a forested area next to a playing field at the 44,000-per-year Wycombe Abbey School on Friday night. , General Groves. Follow Julia Galef. 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. Ciceros letters. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. , Gelfand and Glagoleva. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) Classic on teaching children programming, recommended by Alan Kay and Bret Victor. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. 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 . , Murray Gell Mann. I searched for explanations. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. (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?). Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. A year later he lost a power struggle with. 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. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). You often read versions of those really at the edge of this research do not predict fast timetables. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. This is false. 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. , Gigerenzer. The Limits of Quantum Computers, Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008). At every session I attended I could feel the unanimous disapproval of the audience.), Risky Business (Sometimes you just gotta say, what the fuck, make your move, what the fuck brings freedom, freedom brings opportunity, opportunity makes your future), War and Peace (the 1960s Russian TV series is really an epic movie), Whos Afraid of Virginia Wolf (Burton & Taylor). , Terence Tao. Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. 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. The truth is that they recognized themselves my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. 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? As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, David Deutschs books. Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider, 1960 and The Computer as a Communication Device, Bob Taylor, 1968. Most of the world is not like this! (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?). A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. Aug 25, 2022. The resignation of Dominic Raab. Sept. 7, 2019 Dominic Cummings, special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson of . The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. the failure of alignment and/or the inherent drive of high intelligence to escape constraints/control/alignment with others goals? 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. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. , Robin Lane Fox. 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. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. His book 'Causality' is the leading textbook in the field. Professor Sides Dominic Cummings Nov 22, 2022 59 134 Ask Me Anything Monday 28 November, 1900-2100 Dominic Cummings Nov 21, 2022 57 310 On Renoir and Hollywood: It would be ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. 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. Thames Valley Police have confirmed that her corpse was discovered on Friday, April 21, just before midnight. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. 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. Just like despite ARPA-PARCs success, almost no science funding is done like that in the world (hence why I made the creation of. Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. We look back on history and abstract over decades or centuries, judging the ideas that held sway for a few decades and sneering at how formerly all the world was mad as Nietzsche put it. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible do not talk about it publicly because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible, because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. Then I realised the truth. Expert Political Judgment, and Superforecasters, Tetlock. , von Neumann, 1955. *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. Main allegations as Dominic Cummings gives evidence to MPs on the government's early handling of the COVID outbreak in the UK. , Burton. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. 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. For the beginner, by a Fields Medallist. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. High Output Management, Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. On digital fabrication. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. A classic book on mathematical problem solving. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. Update to Trump v Biden blog of last September. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. , Kahneman. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. Great DVD documentary too. By Reagans pollster. Dominic Cummings, a special adviser to UK education minister Michael Gove, discusses technological advances (quantum computing, 3D printing, energetics etc. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. Ive written a few things about his work. From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. *Come and See ( , Russian). Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Our impression was there is valuable low hanging fruit for governments, hedge funds, campaigns. Her recent book, The Scout Mindset, was excellent. is considered a classic but Ive not read. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. 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. If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read Paul Grahams essays. , summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. If hed run the Hillary campaign in 2016, no Trump as President. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. Physics for Future Presidents, and Energy for Future Presidents, Richard Muller. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. Why? Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. 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. , Morris Kline. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status. If interested in how a government could take seriously accelerating progress, follow these debates. Im reading this summer. , biography by John Sugden. 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. The main biography of Buffett, , is also interesting. You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. Richard Feynman was a giant of theoretical physics who famously defined science as "the belief in the ignorance of experts". (NB. Book accompanying an OU course. 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. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. The Nazis did indeed think they were creating a new world beyond good and evil, so did Stalin. The insider account of the Manhattan Project by its legendary leader. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. (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. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. . Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. Just in Time, John Hoskyns. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. khloe kardashian hidden hills house address. (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. 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. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. 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. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. , Gershenfeld (MIT). , Sipser (2005 edition). Alls Fair, Carville & Matalin. A good biography of Einstein by Isaacson. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems). The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. 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. Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. , Paret et al. I found his Nobel lecture fascinating and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. , Charlie Munger. , Plouffe. 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. Why? Elite opinion in London today is dominated by very similar people with very similar education and very similar views that inevitably include. 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). 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. 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). Blurb endorsement by Einstein. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: Why the world needs quantum mechanics Quantum Computing for Everyone Quantum Computing for the Determined. Please, . 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. I'll answer some over the next 48 hours, on Friday I'll focus on live questions/discussion, then tidy up after. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. A widely praised new biography of John von Neumann, the man Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli et al thought was the smartest person they knew. Popular intro to network theory. Much (mis)quoted, rarely read. How to predict news? I started like everyone young assuming those at the top of politics must be smart, interested in policy and great at organising things. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. Rosen on military innovation, very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Beautiful Evidence, and Seeing With Fresh Eyes, by Edward Tufte are classics about the presentation of information by the worlds leading expert. There is a great. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. Theoretical Minimum, Leonard Susskind (2013). Partly accessible to a non-specialist with some maths already, though very challenging for most including me. Fascinating. , Polya. . The Dream Machine, Waldrop. If you want to follow the cutting edge of this research follow Steve Hsus blog, which you should anyway. I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. I blogged on it here. 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/. The Story of Mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy. Can we survive technology?, von Neumann, 1955. Their favourite argument is the laughable its a small island, about as sensible as a general saying Alexander the Great was using cavalry so its out of date. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. 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. 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. True of Bismarck (only appointed because of meltdown in royal circles), true of the likes of SpaceX (an explosion away from bankruptcy) and Steve Jobs (tried to sell early and was turned down), true of Brexit We just dont see all the stories of very able people trying really hard who get taken out by bad luck early in the story. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from 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. Collison has a webpage summarising responses to this. A classic non-specialist introduction to reasoning. Dominic Cummings Most claims you read about psychological manipulation are rubbish. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. 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. Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. 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. Dynamics of 2024. Richard Muller. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. 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. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. Ill do a separate list on science funding. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. are classics about the presentation of information by the worlds leading expert. It would be ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. I really liked this classic but a lot was beyond me. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 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. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. This is false. 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.