On dynamic tools, interface design, Seeing Rooms, new ideas about programming, tools for thought, and so on, David Deutschs books. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. His. 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. I know some of them. High Output Management, Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. E.g rapidly speeding up construction/housing/infrastructure, how to accelerate scientific discovery and technological development. Dominic Cummings on Twitter: "@drjennings Try reading before tweeting There's a big bad enemy out there, possibly with superior weaponry but. Causality, Judea Pearl (advanced). On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. Why? Nelson, biography by John Sugden. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. I'll answer some over the next 48 hours, on Friday I'll focus on live questions/discussion, then tidy up after. Dominic Cummings Most claims you read about psychological manipulation are rubbish. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. 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. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie. 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. (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). 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 ). , Marcus du Sautoy. 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. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. Lines and Curves, Vassiliev and Gutenmacher. 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. And a very recent post, AGI Ruin, summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. 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. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. In general Colin Grays work. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. The Art of War, Sun Tzu. by Rumelt. I'm thinking re 'What should Labour do to win the next election'. Yudkowskys Sequences, the core document of the rationalist movement. , Leonard Susskind (2013). Turings Cathedral, George Dyson (son of Freeman). (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist! 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. , Gustave le Bon. I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. An inspiration for changes to maths teaching I pushed in 2011-14, including trying to get a maths for Presidents course going. (general reader). Alan Kay, one of those present at the creation, says its by far the best history. The river was also burning. Dominic Cummings's Odyssean reading list might make you smarter. 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. AT&T could only support it when a monopoly. The peacetime bureaucracy knew what it valued. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. Before the current lockdown scandal, he was best known for. Want to Get Smarter? Read Something on This List The point that Producers didnt want to make a Renoir picture even if it was a success is really important. Physics for Future Presidents, and Energy for Future Presidents, Richard Muller. 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. Also you cant understand our world unless you have a sense of Nietzsches profound influence on 20th Century artists, thinkers, and politics. Im reading this summer. Also, Defense In Atomic War. I blogged a series on this great book starting. The Dominic Cummings guide to management | Financial Times 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. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. 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. Ill do a separate list on science funding. Complexity Economics, Beinhocker. (Also note that the oversight for Groves was a group of just four who met with no secretariat and no formal records.) Retweets. What does it say about the West that their newspaper propaganda was much higher class than most elite philosophy now? The title comes from. The brutal truth about Dominic Cummings | Letters His boss and predecessor was Kelly Johnson who wrote. A classic book on mathematical problem solving. 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). A good biography of Einstein by Isaacson. Ask Me Anything, Friday 10th - Dominic Cummings substack , Burton. 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/. Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. Useful introduction to some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Newton to e and complex numbers. The Story of Mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy. 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 read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). 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. Please, . Worthlin. 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. Below is a summary of the main ideas. Six Easy Pieces, Feynman. A striking thing: notice how. 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 Curtis Yarvin. (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. In particular read. 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. A short companion book to his famous lecture series. Fab: From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, Gershenfeld (MIT). Richard Feynman was a giant of theoretical physics who famously defined science as "the belief in the ignorance of experts". 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. This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. If you read Boyd youll see how lessons recur across Alexander, Nelson, Groves et al. . He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. He also wrote a, A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin here as did Paul Christiano here. Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. A good biography of Einstein by Isaacson. , George Dyson (son of Freeman). , Charlie Munger. Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. , Gertner. The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. A good biography of Dirac. Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. (3 volumes), Morris Kline. 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. One of Britains most senior and respected civil servants, Michael Quinlan, wrote this paper after retiring. Comments - Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Quotes. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. One must not be squeamish about admitting this (Strauss). Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson (2013) is a brilliant introduction to many ideas about computation, physics and quantum information. 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. . Dominic Cummings substack | Substack 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. Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. Also. Partly accessible to a non-specialist with some maths already, though very challenging for most including me. It is, therefore, practically unknown in SW1. , Dantzig (1930, updated 1953; new edition 2007). A mathematicians apology, Hardy. I started like everyone young assuming those at the top of politics must be smart, interested in policy and great at organising things. Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. steve stricker wrist lock; what channel are the st louis cardinals playing on today The main biography of Buffett, , is also interesting. I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. was the fundamental reason I think Brexit is the right idea and the EU is doomed to fail in important ways. There is a great. A Boyd ally wrote about his time in the Pentagon dealing with the extreme nightmare of procurement. While No 10 was trying to get a grip on the pandemic, news came in . 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. They have insurgent energy and feed on grievance. Had I included everything I knew and shown the whole truth, even I could not have watched it. If theres one film to show Nietzsche brought back from the dead, maybe this is it. If youre involved in Isaac Physics and want to discuss how it could continue please get in touch.). Dominic Cummings on Twitter: "RT @zebulgar: Step aside Andy Grove, I ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. I thought this was outstanding and every young person aspiring to be influential in politics should read it. but most do not realise the last chapter is about Nietzsche and the Last Man, and this chapter is the most relevant today. (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. 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. . 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. Next week I'll write something for subscribers only on 'Some basics of how to do regime change'. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. A classic on the 1972 campaign. I searched for explanations. Update to Trump v Biden blog of last September. Youll see its very similar to Grovess principles (above). The Quark and the Jaguar, Murray Gell Mann. , 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. All ideas welcome. Dominic Cummings, the Man Trying to Take Down Boris Johnson - Intelligencer , 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. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. 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. Cummings described a "completely insane situation" in March 2020 when a bizarre cocktail of events came together on one day. People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status. 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). northwood dominic cummings And a very recent post. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). I like reading stuff about people where incentives and feedback work, from used car salesmen to fortune tellers. Now, perhaps, they have some idea of what that. 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. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. What is mathematics?, Courant. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. I blogged on it here. Alls Fair, Carville & Matalin. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! Whenever and. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. LKY, Boyd, Groves all say the same). , Courant. 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. by Gomme and Andrewes, two of the great 20th C classical scholars. Groves (fired), Bob Taylor (fired), George Mueller (not funded to push on to Mars after the moon), Renoir The list goes on and on. On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. Dominic Cummings Dec 8, 2021 93 726 Subscriber-only AMA, Friday 12-2 UK time. 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. For example: , Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. . Dominic Cummings 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. If you havent read it dont read another modern book until you have. Work for Dominic Cummings at your peril, but his take on the state's Timeline: How the Dominic Cummings controversy unfolded (A great highlight of Oxford for me was four-hour tutorials with RLF on Athenian democracy, Thucydides, Alexander etc.). I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. I've read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). Insider account of how the legendary Skunk Works worked by a guy who ran it. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. The best biography in English (probably any language) is, . Ive written a few things about his work. The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss. 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. The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides. Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Caitlyn Scott-Lee, was found dead near Wycombe Abbey School. , Robin Lane Fox. The Cummings effect: politics, trust, and behaviours during the COVID (I spent ~2 years reading a lot of books on this ~2005-15. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible, because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. A classic based on his famous Lectures. 19 Apr 2023 07:47:58 SW1 suffers such extremely powerful wilful blindness even an event as big as covid doesnt puncture consciousness in many important ways. 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. The politicians soon are on the next current thing too. Brexit and VL in No10 (original official advice was to go with the useless bureaucratic EU scheme. , Seymour Papert. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics. A billionaire should provide copies to all elected politicians. The Ascent of Man, Bronowksi. Classic text, university level. The Deputy Prime Minister resigned yesterday because a lawyer found against him on two of the eight allegations made. He also wrote a book on neural networks. Follow Zvi. which egg to use for IVF. Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. Like Hoskyns (below) genuine rare insight and almost totally ignored. The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. Some of the unpublished stuff in Gdels Collected Works is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. , John Hoskyns. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. The politicians soon are on the next current thing too. summarising responses to this. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. Their favourite argument is the laughable its a small island, about as sensible as a general saying Alexander the Great was using cavalry so its out of date. The Book of Why (general reader). one of my terrorist demands when Boris asked me to go to No10, 21 July 2019). A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. Never At Rest, Westfall. Aug 25, 2022. I should have read this, havent, will. Audacity to Win, Plouffe. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. Like with ARPA-PARC its fascinating to see how funders ignore such successful examples. Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. Like LKY, crucial if you really are interested in practical planning for high performance government. Los Alamos was crucial but it was part of a much vaster infrastructure of engineering projects, intelligence, planning and so on. Mathematics: Its content, methods and meaning, Kolmogorov et al. 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!). Book accompanying an OU course. Calculus, Spivak (2008 edition). Anyone interested in terrorism and counter-terrorism should watch Pontecorvos movie The Battle of Algiers, one of the best movies ever made. I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. , John Allen Paulos (1988). , Robert Caro. , and let non-player characters stumble into a set of critical decisions in November? Almost the only good business book I have read on strategy. 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. He was a businessman who understood systems thinking and was the first head of the Policy Unit in No10 for Thatcher. We can now test fertilised eggs for common risk factors such as mental disorders and heart attacks and. Am told that the Loebs translated by Shackleton Bailey is the best translation. I was not. Interesting on the psychology of selling and marketing. 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. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. For example: The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Had I included everything I knew and shown the whole truth, even I could not have watched it. If theres one film to show Nietzsche brought back from the dead, maybe this is it. 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? Review of the disintegration of the Tories in the context of Brexit, SW1 vs Vote Leave perspectives on risks of Brexit/Remain, and why some of the VL team decided to go to No10 in 2019 and save the trolley to Get Brexit Done despite our reservations. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. In 2018 I asked some academics to consider this and we built a crude tool. If you read Boyd youll see how lessons recur across Alexander, Nelson, Groves et al. A Cavendish Quantum Mechanics Primer, Professor Mark Warner. 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). A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. (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. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. the word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). Opinion | The 'Political Anarchist' Behind Britain's Chaos - The New 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.
