Now It Can Be Told, General Groves. I like reading stuff about people where incentives and feedback work, from used car salesmen to fortune tellers. 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). 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. A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. Im reading this summer. (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. One of Britains most senior and respected civil servants, Michael Quinlan, wrote this paper after retiring. *Come and See ( , Russian). Solving Mathematical Problems, Terence Tao. The media laughed and many said its so boring. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. They have insurgent energy and feed on grievance. 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. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. A mathematicians apology, Hardy. , Adam Smith. Buy the book, support Zvi. Linked, Barabasi. 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. , Gershenfeld (MIT). From Third World to First World by Lee Kuan Yew. No question, it's Dominic Cummings. This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? Number, Dantzig (1930, updated 1953; new edition 2007). 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 . Im reading this summer. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. 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! Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. Quotes. 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. Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider, 1960 and The Computer as a Communication Device, Bob Taylor, 1968. NB. , Marcus du Sautoy. Gdels Lost Letter & P=NP (on maths, logic, P=NP, computational complexity), Steve Hsu (in general, and if interested in extreme talent Steve blogs a lot on this). , Courant. 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. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty. Clausewitz. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. On digital fabrication. A widely praised new biography of John von Neumann, the man Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli et al thought was the smartest person they knew. , Gigerenzer. Also the club of those who write about UK politics a) are rarely interested in how power really works, b) are almost never 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. So a philosopher simultaneously prepared the ground for Hitler, deeply influenced todays Left, and personally hated Bismarck and anti-semites. 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. Skunk Works, Ben Rich. . Great DVD documentary too. Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Ive written a few things about his work. Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. Most of the world is not like this! , Beinhocker. , which was unpublished for many years and seems to be generally unknown, is super-useful. Our impression was there is valuable low hanging fruit for governments, hedge funds, campaigns, Thucydides. Classic text, university level. Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. (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. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's Rasputin, is happy to watch the country blow up if he gets what he wants. You can download that version (2.0) here. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. , 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. 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. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. Expert Political Judgment, and Superforecasters, Tetlock. I blogged on it here. 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'. 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. A good biography of Einstein by Isaacson. The media laughed and many said its so boring. The critical meta-lesson is the same for all the below: practically nobody has any interest in extreme performance and all governments in the west will try to stop you applying these lessons. (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. For this unprecedented project in world history Groves had no huge central staff, he worked with a brilliant woman and a tiny staff with truly extreme decentralisation. Dominic Cummings Judea Pearl is one of the most important scholars in the field of causal reasoning. 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? The Dream Machine, Waldrop. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. This is not true of blogs like Marginal Revolution. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. Gdels Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse, Franzen. Michael Nielsen on quantum mechanics and computers: textbook on QCs, one of the top ten cited physics books ever written. (NB. 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!). was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. I wrote this blog which has a further reading list. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. New blog: Insiders & graduates across the West swallowed nonsense on 'AI stole it for Brexit/Trump' after 2016, in 2024 it will be used, maybe by Russia & China as well as both campaigns, so we shd expect an even more chaotic election. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. The resignation of Dominic Raab. Cowen & Collison handed out fast grants to researchers during covid and at my request advised UKRI on how to speed up in spring 2020. . A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. one of my terrorist demands when Boris asked me to go to No10, 21 July 2019). The greatest deeds are thoughts (Some confusion about his ideas is a result of his sister who was a Nazi supporter and edited things he wrote to distort his actual views. 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. Orson Welles thought Renoir the greatest director. Also. The Quark and the Jaguar, Murray Gell Mann. Theres no question about this. His Art of Doing Science and Engineering is considered a classic but Ive not read. I blogged a series on this great book starting. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 Dominic Cummings told Parliament that his ex-boss, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was "unfit for the job" and that government incompetence lead to thousands of excess Covid-19 deaths. The basic arguments remain critical today. You often read versions of those really at the edge of this research do not predict fast timetables. Much (mis)quoted, rarely read. There is a great. Yudkowskys Sequences, the core document of the rationalist movement. The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. If you read Boyd youll see how lessons recur across Alexander, Nelson, Groves et al. Dominic Cummings Jul 15, 2021 39 66 Last week I wrote re: Why I went to No10 in summer 2019. The cynicism/realism remains shocking. If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. Sources of Power, Klein. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Caitlyn Scott-Lee, was found dead near Wycombe Abbey School. I'm thinking re 'What should Labour do to win the next election'. is considered a classic but Ive not read. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below. If you want to follow the cutting edge of this research follow, , which you should anyway. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible, because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. , Ben Rich. While No 10 was trying to get a grip on the pandemic, news came in . Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. He did not however go quietly or in apologetic mode. (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. dominiccummings.substack.com. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. Partly accessible to a non-specialist with some maths already, though very challenging for most including me. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. Rohls multivolume biography on Wilhelm II is brilliant and, like Pflanze, a whole political education in itself. April 22, 2023 156 Comments. A good biography of Einstein by Isaacson. A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. NB. , biography by John Sugden. LAncien Rgime et la Rvolution, de Tocqueville. On May 22, 2020, The Guardian and Daily Mirror newspapers in the UK published details of how Dominic Cummings, senior aide to the British prime minister, had broken lockdown rules by travelling 420 km to a family estate with his wife (who had suspected COVID-19) and child. Thoughts on past and future of the Buffett system, Charlie Munger. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. A general introduction to number theory, topology, calculus and other subjects. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. This is the Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. He is not a member of parliament and is not elected. . Please, . Charlie Munger has written and spoken extensively about mental checklists/models he uses, not just for investing. Next week I'll write something for subscribers only on 'Some basics of how to do regime change'. ), Modern works on war / strategy (NB. 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. One of the most critical lessons? Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos (1988). Ive flicked through books on post-Thatcher UK general elections but never found them interesting enough to read in full. The best book on politics. Book accompanying an OU course. What is mathematics?, Courant. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. Just like despite ARPA-PARCs success, almost no science funding is done like that in the world (hence why I made the creation of. A classic based on his famous Lectures. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. 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 . Dominic Cummings Most claims you read about psychological manipulation are rubbish. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. 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. , John Hoskyns. , Zeilinger. 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. Again the meta-lesson: while everybody wants to know what are they investing in? almost nobody pays any attention to how do they organise Berkshire, why is it so different, how does this relate to extreme performance?. 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). The Method of Coordinates, Gelfand, Glagoleva, Kirillov. 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. If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read Paul Grahams essays. Warning, its an accurate portrayal of atrocities on the Eastern Front therefore truly horrific. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. 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. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! It is, therefore, practically unknown in SW1. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. Re Clintons 1992 campaign which influenced the Blair 1997 campaign. ), Dostoyevsky. Theres no question about this. His. The Limits of Quantum Computers, Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008). For example: The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. Pearl led a revolution in thinking about causation from inside the then tiny field of AI. 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. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) People who havent studied it often mock Fukuyamas. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. A short companion book to his famous lecture series, Tips on Physics: a problem-solving supplement, which was unpublished for many years and seems to be generally unknown, is super-useful. are classics about the presentation of information by the worlds leading expert. Notes on Colin Grays Strategy and Defence Planning, following on from military innovation, The Kill Chain, nuclear (sorry for slow progress on Payne). On prediction. A classic on the 1972 campaign. 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. 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. Please use comments below for reading suggestions, not general Q&A. Posted January 13, 2014 Source: Pexels There's a lot of hope today that playing mindless brain training games will make you. Audacity to Win, Plouffe. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements(and that is what gives the false suggestion of his being an experimental natural philosopher), but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. but most do not realise the last chapter is about Nietzsche and the Last Man, and this chapter is the most relevant today. 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? Turings Cathedral, George Dyson (son of Freeman). Please just ask one question as precisely as you can, it will increase the chance I answer. Almost anything good you read on strategy and conflict is based on ideas you see here. , von Neumann, 1955. (NB. (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. The critical meta-lesson is the same for all the below: Grovess last personnel report concluded that his effectiveness is unfortunately lessened somewhat by the fact that he often irritates his associates, but he has extraordinary capacity to get things done. Then he was effectively fired. E.g his few pages on, which few economists seem to know about! His. On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, David Deutschs books. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. 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. Why it's in AOC's interests to challenge Old Joe. Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. (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 peacetime bureaucracy knew what it valued. Like Hoskyns (below) genuine rare insight and almost totally ignored. 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! He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. ): how much was the. 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. I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). Rationality, Vernon Smith. Working Backwards, by Amazon alumni. David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. Makers of Modern Strategy, Paret et al. Thames Valley Police have confirmed that her corpse was discovered on Friday, April 21, just before midnight. Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. 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 searched for explanations. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. In the search I came across Boyd. , Paret et al. I know some of them. Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. In the search I came across Boyd. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. A classic non-specialist introduction to reasoning. Dominic Cummings Dec 13, 2022 40 94 #4 Regime Change, America 2024 Trump's disastrous error. Nobel-winner, Feynman sparring partner, co-founder of Santa Fe Institute, wrote a book on complex systems for the general reader. (Politicians also constantly make this mistake in hiring journalists to do communication, almost always a bad idea.). and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. 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. A good introduction to P=NP?. 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. Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 80 This thread is only visible to paid subscribers of Dominic Cummings substack Subscribe to view Keep reading with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to Dominic Cummings substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
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