I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. The best book about Gdels Theorem (according to the editor of Gdels Collected Works) which explains why almost everything one reads about it including by some famous scientists (e.g. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. On prediction. I know some of them. 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? 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. Reckoning With Risk, Gigerenzer. A classic on the 1972 campaign. This is the Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. I blogged on it here. Collison has a webpage summarising responses to this. I started like everyone young assuming those at the top of politics must be smart, interested in policy and great at organising things. Just like despite ARPA-PARCs success, almost no science funding is done like that in the world (hence why I made the creation of ARIA one of my terrorist demands when Boris asked me to go to No10, 21 July 2019). I wrote some essays on the history of maths and computing which have further reading lists. Re Clintons 1992 campaign which influenced the Blair 1997 campaign. (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. I thought this was outstanding and every young person aspiring to be influential in politics should read it. We can now test fertilised eggs for common risk factors such as mental disorders and heart attacks and. , Gelfand and Glagoleva. the word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). Blurb endorsement by Einstein. Mindstorms, Seymour Papert. , Carville & Matalin. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! Great DVD documentary too. (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. (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. So, let's conclude this list with two of his scientific heroes. Book accompanying an OU course. Update to Trump v Biden blog of last September. Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. 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. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. 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. 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). 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. 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. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. . 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). Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, Hunter S Thompson. 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? (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. Retweets. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. Click repeat), , Hamming. A classic on the 1972 campaign. steve stricker wrist lock; what channel are the st louis cardinals playing on today Professor Sides Dominic Cummings Nov 22, 2022 59 134 Ask Me Anything Monday 28 November, 1900-2100 Dominic Cummings Nov 21, 2022 57 310 Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. (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. Worthlin. The best book on politics. Rohls multivolume biography on Wilhelm II is brilliant and, like Pflanze, a whole political education in itself. You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. Dominic Cummings has hit back at Boris Johnson's partygate defence, accusing him of spreading "further misinformation". I was amazed and desperate. Like Hoskyns (below) genuine rare insight and almost totally ignored. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Although Nietzsche despised nothing more than the radical left, he became extremely influential on it, perhaps because nobody else so thoroughly demolishes the foundations of liberal democracy, although, in a further twist, few of the left realise the extent to which they are influenced by him. 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. Re George Mueller, the man who managed the Apollo program. 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. How to predict news? Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. Gdels Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse, Franzen. are classics about the presentation of information by the worlds leading expert. 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. 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. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist!). Book accompanying an OU course. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos (1988). Also. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. 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. Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. The main biography of Buffett, , is also interesting. E.g Introduction to Strategic History, Modern Strategy, Strategy and Defence Planning (reading now). Please just ask one question as precisely as you can, it will increase the chance I answer. By Andy Hayes, news reporter Thursday 27 May 2021 06:28, UK Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson, Carrie Symonds and even Dilyn the dog have been the focus of numerous explosive claims from Dominic Cummings Partly accessible to a non-specialist with some maths already, though very challenging for most including me. Classic on teaching children programming, recommended by Alan Kay and Bret Victor. If youre involved in Isaac Physics and want to discuss how it could continue please get in touch.). 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, . Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. Ive flicked through books on post-Thatcher UK general elections but never found them interesting enough to read in full. Our impression was there is valuable low hanging fruit for governments, hedge funds, campaigns. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider, 1960 and The Computer as a Communication Device, Bob Taylor, 1968. , Charlie Munger. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith. 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. (NB. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, read Bret Victor, a rare genius. The Man from the Future, Bhattacharya. The peacetime bureaucracy knew what it valued. 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. Mr Cummings is Boris Johnson's chief adviser. 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. Just in Time, John Hoskyns. , Seymour Papert. 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. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? Thinking, fast and slow, Kahneman. From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. His. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. 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. Brexit and VL in No10 (original official advice was to go with the useless bureaucratic EU scheme even though wed left so a fortiori it would have advised the same had Brexit not happened, but credit to the Cabinet Secretary for backing Vallance and me with the PM), c) the elite world resolutely refuses to consider procurement generally or the VTF in particular in the context of Brexit good/bad, d) in 2021 the VTF was effectively closed and turned into a normal entity rather than given the money and goal of replacing current vaccines with new ideas to solve the variants problem with safer technology, e.g nasal vaccines, e) this too is a non-subject in SW1. Why? 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. The basic arguments remain critical today. , von Neumann, 1955. I searched for explanations. The best biography in English (probably any language) is, . 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. The Misbehaviour of Financial Markets, Mandelbrot. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. . Dominic Cummings Dec 8, 2021 93 726 Subscriber-only AMA, Friday 12-2 UK time. ): 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? He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. Turings Cathedral, George Dyson (son of Freeman). , Leonard Susskind (2013). The Substack blog he started in June last year is not cheap - 10 a month for an erratic and irregular output via email - but it's worth it. Apr 18. 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. Nelson, biography by John Sugden. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. Twitter Web App Retweets This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. My essay on an 'Odyssean' Education - Dominic Cummings's Blog My essay on an 'Odyssean' Education On the evening of Friday 11 October 2013, the Guardian published a draft essay of mine - ' Some thoughts on education and political priorities ' (links here and here ). Please leave errors and suggestions below, Ill tweak and add over time and notify of updates. There is a great Commentary by Gomme and Andrewes, two of the great 20th C classical scholars. Dominic Cummings 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. Alls Fair, Carville & Matalin. , 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. Then I realised the truth. Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. 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. Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). The Ascent of Man, Bronowksi. SW1 suffers such extremely powerful wilful blindness even an event as big as covid doesnt puncture consciousness in many important ways. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. . Michael also wrote the textbook on QCs, one of the top ten cited physics books ever written. 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. As long promised (sorry! Theres no question about this. His Art of Doing Science and Engineering is considered a classic but Ive not read. I'm working on a Reading List as requested by many, coming in the next 2-3 weeks A classic book on mathematical problem solving. 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. The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. Six Easy Pieces, Feynman. A striking thing: notice how they take regulation and speed extremely seriously because they have direct experience of it, 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. 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. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: Intolerance; Tokyo Story; Bicycle Thieves.). If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. , Paret et al. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. He is not a member of parliament and is not elected. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Caitlyn Scott-Lee, was found dead near Wycombe Abbey School. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. 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. 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. On War, Clausewitz. Dominic Cummings, a special adviser to UK education minister Michael Gove, discusses technological advances (quantum computing, 3D printing, energetics etc. Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche. The river was also burning. Gawande. Ill do a separate list on science funding. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, David Deutschs books. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. or waste the most important element in conflict. I was not. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. Zvi reviews Tyler Cowens new book, Talent. ), , Waldrop. Also cf. Can we survive technology?, von Neumann, 1955. The vaccine taskforce a) created huge value for the UK and the world, b) would, have happened without [typo original!] Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. The more I study the more clear it is that luck plays a crucial part in almost all famous successes. 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. The Method of Coordinates, Gelfand, Glagoleva, Kirillov. The media laughed and many said its so boring. , Robert Caro. A year later he lost a power struggle with. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. Dynamics of 2024. 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. , Zeilinger. I wrote, which has a further reading list. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. LAncien Rgime et la Rvolution, de Tocqueville. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. High Output Management, Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. 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. If hed run the Hillary campaign in 2016, no Trump as President. Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. Boris Johnson has backed his top aide Dominic Cummings, saying he "acted responsibly, legally and with integrity" when he drove 260 miles to County Durham to isolate with his family. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is Bismarck. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. 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. Also Democracy in America. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. Also see Nietzsche on the pre-Socratics. (I spent ~2 years reading a lot of books on this ~2005-15. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. Clausewitz. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. The Story of Mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy. on the hideous science funding system. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. Elite opinion in London today is dominated by very similar people with very similar education and very similar views that inevitably include. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. It is, therefore, practically unknown in SW1. , Hardy. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. Physics for Future Presidents, and Energy for Future Presidents, Richard Muller. 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). Buy the book, support Zvi. In all of these struggles I tried to follow Boyds advice such as, connect yourself to sources of power, disconnect your opponent 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!). On digital fabrication. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. Influence, Cialdini. Aug 25, 2022. 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. 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. , Plouffe. I really liked this classic but a lot was beyond me. The classic Cummings campaign is in the Star Wars rebel-alliance mould. The resignation of Dominic Raab. 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! 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. Also the club of those who write about UK politics a) are rarely interested in how power really works, b) are almost, 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. ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. I blogged a series on this great book starting. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. 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. , Robin Lane Fox. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. *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. , Courant. Rosen on military innovation, very relevant to discussions on things like drones and AI in Ukraine. 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. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is, . Thoughts on past and future of the Buffett system, Charlie Munger. , 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. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. , Murray Gell Mann. 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/. I was amazed and desperate. Dominic Cummings's Odyssean reading list might make you smarter. The title comes from. 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. So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. Dominic Cummings . Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson (2013) is a brilliant introduction to many ideas about computation, physics and quantum information. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. NB. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie The Battle of Algiers, one of the best movies ever made. Follow Zvi. Follow Julia Galef. There's a big bad enemy out there, possibly with superior weaponry but. Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. I like reading stuff about people where incentives and feedback work, from used car salesmen to fortune tellers.
