dominic cummings reading list

Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. 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. By Reagans pollster. Then I realised the truth. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. Also Democracy in America. Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Retweets. , Terence Tao. 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. Alls Fair, Carville & Matalin. Mindstorms, Seymour Papert. A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist!). was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. This is false. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. 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. I'll answer some over the next 48 hours, on Friday I'll focus on live questions/discussion, then tidy up after. , Courant. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, David Deutschs books. I was amazed and desperate. Most economists cant synthesise worth a damn. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. 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 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. (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. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. The Idea Factory, Gertner. His Memoirs are fascinating and so is this biography by Duchne. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. You and your research, Hamming. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. . Now, perhaps, they have some idea of what that. Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider, 1960 and The Computer as a Communication Device, Bob Taylor, 1968. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. 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. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. Turings Cathedral, George Dyson (son of Freeman). 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. Ive got a list of a few dozen people I follow on Twitter (I use Tweetdeck + Lists for Twitter) and will make this public shortly. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). He also wrote a book on neural networks. I was amazed and desperate. He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. 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. 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. If interested in how a government could take seriously, , follow these debates. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. Cummings' understanding of modern genetics, IQ, evolutionary psychology, child development and neuroscience, as evidenced by his blog and advice to Michael Gove when education minister, is a. The Nazis did indeed think they were creating a new world beyond good and evil, so did Stalin. The best biography in English (probably any language) is Otto Pflanzes three volumes. Also, Defense In Atomic War. Almost the only good business book I have read on strategy. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. 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. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. 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. 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. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible do not talk about it publicly because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. Below is a summary of the main ideas. Likes. Doing the Impossible, Slotkin. Just in Time, John Hoskyns. 121. Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson (2013) is a brilliant introduction to many ideas about computation, physics and quantum information. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. 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. The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. , Paret et al. . How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. 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. 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. The insider account of the Manhattan Project by its legendary leader. 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!). , and let non-player characters stumble into a set of critical decisions in November? He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin here as did Paul Christiano here. , which was unpublished for many years and seems to be generally unknown, is super-useful. , Frank Close (2011). I know some of them. , Klein. 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. David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. I started like everyone young assuming those at the top of politics must be smart, interested in policy and great at organising things. On War, Clausewitz. The Ascent of Man, Bronowksi. 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. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. Kahneman bravely admitted hed ignored some of his own lessons in believing studies he shouldnt have believed. Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! Im reading this summer. Influence, Cialdini. Start trial Already a paid subscriber? Also see Nietzsche on the pre-Socratics. 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. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. I'll post final LKY notes tomorrow. , 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. Can we survive technology?, von Neumann, 1955. Zvi reviews Tyler Cowens new book, Talent. 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. de Tocqueville. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. 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. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. I'm thinking re 'What should Labour do to win the next election'. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: theory as not relevant to the old Hollywood where the producers called the shots, not the directors. 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 He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. Cummings described a "completely insane situation" in March 2020 when a bizarre cocktail of events came together on one day. You often read versions of those really at the edge of this research do not predict fast timetables. 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). How to predict news? 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! I really liked this classic but a lot was beyond me. Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. ), genetics, expert judgement, finance and many other topics with the focus on how education policy has to cope in order to train problem solvers for the coming challenges. Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. 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. Some of the. Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, Morris Kline. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. which egg to use for IVF. (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?). This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. 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. , Robin Lane Fox. In particular Ill add textbooks, history and philosophy which Ive largely left out. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, read Bret Victor, a rare genius. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. by Gomme and Andrewes, two of the great 20th C classical scholars. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). Physics for Future Presidents, and Energy for Future Presidents, Richard Muller. Never At Rest, Westfall. A mathematicians apology, Hardy. 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? There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. The Art of War, Sun Tzu. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. I enjoyed/learned from Isaacsons biography of Steve Jobs. Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: Why the world needs quantum mechanics Quantum Computing for Everyone Quantum Computing for the Determined. There is a great Commentary by Gomme and Andrewes, two of the great 20th C classical scholars. If you want to follow the cutting edge of this research follow, , which you should anyway. , Adam Smith. 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.

Sam Siesta Key Net Worth, King George Hospital Wards, Articles D