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. David wrote some of the breakthrough papers on quantum computers. ), The foundational crisis of mathematics, set theory, Hilbert, Godel, and Turing. Although some other officials and senior figures had also broken the lockdown rules, this transgression was the first to . Ive read at least some of (almost) all of them and (almost) all of most titles I refer to (not all the textbooks). I googled recently after getting no reply to an email and learned to my dismay that he died of cancer last year. (Planning to see some classics Ive missed: theory as not relevant to the old Hollywood where the producers called the shots, not the directors. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver. is extraordinary, e.g his secret search for the truth about Leibniz. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith. 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. Dominic Cummings's Odyssean reading list might make you smarter. The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande. This shows the critical meta-lesson again: those in power have no interest in high performance. A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. For the beginner, by a Fields Medallist. If youre thinking of doing a startup or just curious about how to do hard things you should read. Almost no MPs or senior officials study him or are even midly interested. Most of the world is not like this! Six months later tens of thousands died for the lack of such skills. If you want to stop Trump in 2024 you should figure out what you could offer Plouffes wife to let him do it. Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. Ill do a separate list on science funding. 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. 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. Next week I'll write something for subscribers only on 'Some basics of how to do regime change'. Ill do a separate list on science funding. 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. Functions and Graphs, Gelfand and Glagoleva. Theres no question about this. His Art of Doing Science and Engineering is considered a classic but Ive not read. on the hideous science funding system. 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? Will. Quotes. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. 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. Kahneman bravely admitted hed ignored some of his own lessons in believing studies he shouldnt have believed. ), here are some books and a few papers I recommend. Now It Can Be Told, General Groves. Then I realised the truth. 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. and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. 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. 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. 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. Hes a very unusual thinker and much more right much more often than just about anybody, partly because of how he thinks. , John Allen Paulos (1988). The replication disaster means you have to be careful about what you believe but its still a good book. 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. Behavioral Genetics, Plomin. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. In Pursuit of the Travelling Salesman, Cook. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. Worthlin. On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. 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. , 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. , Slotkin. (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. 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. ; 2) how to map the spread of memes and identify critical nodes in the network that, if influenced somehow, can amplify or dampen signals? A good biography of Dirac, The Strangest Man, Farmelo. Also though, everybody has bad luck and those who survive long enough to get good luck are very perseverant. The classic Cummings campaign is in the Star Wars rebel-alliance mould. Blurb endorsement by Einstein. *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. If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. by Gomme and Andrewes, two of the great 20th C classical scholars. About Robert Mosess grip on NYC. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below.). Collison has a webpage summarising responses to this. Some supported this approach but as youd expect the worst hated it. Causality, Judea Pearl (advanced). Zvi reviews Tyler Cowens new book, Talent. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. The best biography in English (probably any language) is, . , Leonard Susskind (2013). You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. Ciceros letters. , Adam Smith. What is moral behaviour is not the same question as what are the principles of high performance in politics! SW1 suffers such extremely powerful wilful blindness even an event as big as covid doesnt puncture consciousness in many important ways. The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. Plato. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible do not talk about it publicly because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. (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. 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. 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. Reading List - Dominic Cummings substack Reading List Dominic Cummings Jun 26, 2022 79 127 As long promised (sorry! , Gertner. People dont realise that nobody in movies is interested in money Theyre really interested in its all an ego trip, status, You can replace Hollywood with Westminster, picture/movie with political strategy, producers with MPs, and money with the public. 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. You can learn from him about how to get very hard things done without admiring his character. judge timothy kenny political affiliation. The Art of War, Sun Tzu. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. Many ideas you see from others (e.g Taleb) derive from Mandelbrot. 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. Audacity to Win, Plouffe. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. 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. No doubt about that Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. Like all the best political advice you dont need to be clever to understand it. Yudkowskys Sequences, the core document of the rationalist movement. I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. , Scott Aaronson (2013) is a brilliant introduction to many ideas about computation, physics and quantum information. Ive written a few things about his work. Two of the most important documents on the computer revolution by two of the critical figures in ARPA/PARC. Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Sipser (2005 edition). (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. Buy the book, support Zvi. 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. 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. 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, X is Y% likely to be a big story, with what confidence? 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. One must not be squeamish about admitting this (Strauss). A striking thing: notice how. In general Colin Grays work. 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. Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider, 1960 and The Computer as a Communication Device, Bob Taylor, 1968. 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. His boss and predecessor was Kelly Johnson who wrote this short list of principles. Its fascinating both for getting hard things done and how to reform science funding. Our impression was there is valuable low hanging fruit for governments, hedge funds, campaigns, Thucydides. Elite opinion in London today is dominated by very similar people with very similar education and very similar views that inevitably include. This is the Newton biography and its brilliantly done with intense love and care for its extraordinary subject. Cited by many professional mathematicians as an inspiration. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. Predictions on AGI can be Straussian. This is false. I know some of them. 26. The Limits of Quantum Computers, Scott Aaronson (Scientific American, 2008). Solving Mathematical Problems, Terence Tao. Dominic Cummings Jul 15, 2021 39 66 Last week I wrote re: Why I went to No10 in summer 2019. Linked, Barabasi. 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! Ive only read a few excerpts of these but reading them all is a project for later this year. Looks at the bigshots of modern military thinking. Dominic Cummings has hit back at Boris Johnson's partygate defence, accusing him of spreading "further misinformation". Rohls multivolume biography on Wilhelm II is brilliant and, like Pflanze, a whole political education in itself. 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. 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. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. The more I study the more clear it is that luck plays a crucial part in almost all famous successes. Mandelbrot. 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 word strategy is a) used differently in military books, b) used differently over time, c) constantly misused in politics.). 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. (I spent ~2 years reading a lot of books on this ~2005-15. , Klein. If interested in how a government could take seriously accelerating progress, follow these debates. Based on a course Susskind taught in San Francisco to give people a basic physics education. Bookmarks. 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. Main allegations as Dominic Cummings gives evidence to MPs on the government's early handling of the COVID outbreak in the UK. In particular read Alan Kays The Power of the Context and watch the two-part YCombinator talk he gave. 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. The smartest person Einstein said he knew wrote one of the first things on existential risk. Highly recommended. This is false. Dominic Cummings Dec 13, 2022 40 94 #4 Regime Change, America 2024 Trump's disastrous error. 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. Dynamics of 2024. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. I should have read this, havent, will. The truth is that they recognized themselves my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. Its crucial to remember both aspects of this genius-monster without whom probably no World War I, Lenin, Hitler etc summed up by Salisburys two comments: One misses the extraordinary penetration of the old man and he will do things of which it would be absurd to suspect any other statesman in Europe. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. A Cavendish Quantum Mechanics Primer, Professor Mark Warner. A modern version of Polya for children, by aFields Medalist. April 22, 2023 156 Comments. Something on how ideas change over different time scales. On War, Clausewitz. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. Charlie Munger has written and spoken extensively about mental checklists/models he uses, not just for investing. , 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. Dominic Cummings Sign in I blogged on it here. Its often found in terrorist safe houses when raided. 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 hed run the Hillary campaign in 2016, no Trump as President. Also cf. Click repeat). I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). by Rumelt. 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 . (This series was written for the Russian correspondence school a way of giving talented maths pupils a useful curriculum in such a vast country. If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. 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! 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. 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 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. A reader with no more than GCSE Maths can read this introduction to maths from Greece through the birth of calculus. Below is a summary of the main ideas. A great textbook by the worlds leading scholar on the subject. The best book on politics. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems). I know I should like Dickens, the Russians loved Dickens, but I just couldnt enjoy it, probably a school effect, and I should retry. What is mathematics?, Courant. I wrote, which has a further reading list. . 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 This is true even of those who frequently complain about this phenomenon. 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. , Paret et al. On the 50th anniversary Munger reflected on why his partnership with Buffett had been so successful and Buffetts personality. I blogged a series on this great book starting. I enjoyed/learned from Isaacsons biography of Steve Jobs. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Rumelt. The Story of Mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. NB. Vernon Smith, economics Nobel-winner, argues that TOMS provides a better basis for economic models and prediction than modern neoclassical economics.