(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. Alls Fair, Carville & Matalin. One of Britains most senior and respected civil servants, Michael Quinlan, wrote this paper after retiring. I'll post final LKY notes tomorrow. . Cummings has also instructed the advisers to read High Output Management by Andrew Grove, the former chief executive of computer-chip manufacturer Intel, who "warns that success breeds. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Caitlyn Scott-Lee, was found dead near Wycombe Abbey School. April 22, 2023 156 Comments. AT&T could only support it when a monopoly. Some interesting things I've read recently - Substack , Nietzsche. It would be ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. NB. by Gomme and Andrewes, two of the great 20th C classical scholars. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. David Deutschs books. Six Easy Pieces, Feynman. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, Hunter S Thompson. Yes its striking that looking at my internet favourites for politics there are no UK-based political blogs/writers I regularly read. His point about. Please, . 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. Although some other officials and senior figures had also broken the lockdown rules, this transgression was the first to . A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. , Klein. de Tocqueville. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. A good biography of Dirac. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. If youre involved in Isaac Physics and want to discuss how it could continue please get in touch.). Calculus, Spivak (2008 edition). Cummings was his most senior adviser his de facto chief of staff and the architect of the Tories' 2019 landslide victory in the general election. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. 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. Fascinating. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. , Terence Tao. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. 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. 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. He had promised to resign if there was any finding against and kept his word. 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. Mr Cummings is Boris Johnson's chief adviser. Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. The politicians soon are on the next current thing too. A short companion book to his famous lecture series. , Plouffe. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. Notes on Colin Grays Strategy and Defence Planning, following on from military innovation, The Kill Chain, nuclear (sorry for slow progress on Payne). Ive written a few things about his work. Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. But the storyteller makes this picture incredibly beautiful. 26. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. ; 2) how to map the spread of memes and identify critical nodes in the network that, if influenced somehow, can amplify or dampen signals? , Spivak (2008 edition). 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. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. 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 ). (Politicians also constantly make this mistake in hiring journalists to do communication, almost always a bad idea.). It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is Bismarck. The Book of Why (general reader). The Power Broker, Robert Caro. I really liked this classic but a lot was beyond me. Dominic Cummings on Twitter: "Reading List https://t.co/ZKDXNCltbH Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. 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. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. If you get into it you have no right to be bitter, youre the one who sat down and joined the game People who dont succeed, people whove had long bad times like Renoir Renoir was the best director ever are people who didnt want to make the kind of pictures that producers want to make. 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. 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. Mathematics: Its content, methods and meaning, Kolmogorov et al. 121. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. 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. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. Also. Update to Trump v Biden blog of last September. The 10 brains behind Dominic Cummings - UnHerd 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. (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. 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. Please post questions below. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. Ill do a separate list on science funding. ! About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. As long promised (sorry! 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. Bookmarks. Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. Expert Political Judgment, and Superforecasters, Tetlock. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. Whenever and. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. 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. Dominic Cummings on Twitter , Adam Smith. The best modern subject for those interested in how political decisions are taken and effective action in politics/government is, . Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. How to predict news? Click repeat). 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). Ask Me Anything, Friday 10th - Dominic Cummings substack Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. , Beinhocker. 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). Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. 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 . Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. Genres Politics Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). Ive flicked through books on post-Thatcher UK general elections but never found them interesting enough to read in full. If you want to follow the cutting edge of this research follow, , which you should anyway. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. People who climb to the top of the science system tend to defend the system rather than support change, even when they realise how bad it is. Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: Why the world needs quantum mechanics Quantum Computing for Everyone Quantum Computing for the Determined. Mindstorms, Seymour Papert. Dominic Cummings, a special adviser to UK education minister Michael Gove, discusses technological advances (quantum computing, 3D printing, energetics 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. The best biography in English (probably any language) is, . Timeline: How the Dominic Cummings controversy unfolded 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? ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. Elite opinion in London today is dominated by very similar people with very similar education and very similar views that inevitably include. ), , Waldrop. 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. , Carville & Matalin. Most of the world is not like this! Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. Professional Reading - Tatler UK - Department of Defense - OverDrive 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. Just in Time, John Hoskyns. In the meantime Ill post another tomorrow. 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. I started like everyone young assuming those at the top of politics must be smart, interested in policy and great at organising things. by Lee Kuan Yew. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. This is the Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. The main biography of Buffett, , is also interesting. Some of the unpublished stuff in Gdels Collected Works is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. Buy the book, support Zvi. 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. This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: theory as not relevant to the old Hollywood where the producers called the shots, not the directors. 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. Classic text, university level. People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status. 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/. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. 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. 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. , Hardy. The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. Why Superforecasting is top of Dominic Cummings' reading list Perhaps hoping his colleagues will be able to see into the future, the prime minister's chief adviser has advocated a book on how to. 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). Histories of the Standard Model: The Second Creation, Crease & Mann (1996) and The Infinity Puzzle, Frank Close (2011). Who is Dominic Cummings? LKY, Boyd, Groves all say the same). 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. Non-fiction books on politics fail to give you this crucial sense. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. Makers of Modern Strategy, Paret et al. Dominic Cummings Tells of Boris Johnson's Inept Covid Policy - The New Dominic Cummings Most claims you read about psychological manipulation are rubbish. Dynamics of 2024. Apr 18. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. NB. (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist!). Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. You often read versions of those really at the edge of this research do not predict fast timetables. Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. ): how much was the. Dominic Cummings Offers a Sorry-Not-Sorry for U.K. Lockdown Breach The top adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson caused a furor after it was learned he had driven 260 miles to his parents'. (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. Causality, Judea Pearl (advanced). Doing the Impossible, Slotkin. , summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. 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. ), Modern works on war / strategy (NB. Some Thoughts on Education and Political Priorities - Goodreads The uncomfortable truth about Dominic Cummings's campaign playbook , 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. I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. , Seymour Papert. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. 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. United Kingdom parliamentary second jobs controversy Steve Jobs advised Obama to do the same but it didnt happen. 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. If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie. 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. Theres no question about this. His. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) You often read versions of those really at the edge of this research do not predict fast timetables. I thought this was outstanding and every young person aspiring to be influential in politics should read it. The brutal truth about Dominic Cummings | Letters The classic Cummings campaign is in the Star Wars rebel-alliance mould. Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson (2013) is a brilliant introduction to many ideas about computation, physics and quantum information. the word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). All ideas welcome. , maybe the greatest mathematician alive, is brilliant and incredibly useful for someone like me explaining a lot of fundamental concepts in non-technical language. Posted January 13, 2014 Source: Pexels There's a lot of hope today that playing mindless brain training games will make you. Ive read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. the failure of alignment and/or the inherent drive of high intelligence to escape constraints/control/alignment with others goals?
