, Bhattacharya. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory. Governments find it very, very hard to fund such ventures. I applied his basic ideas in the euro campaign, in the 2004 North East referendum, in thinking through education reform and trying to get the Department for Education to do what I wanted, in the Brexit referendum, in solving the 2019 impasse, in No10, and to removing this PM since spring 2021. How to predict news? Genres Politics 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. 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, nationalistic. I did pinch ideas from how Bismarck dealt with the Prussian constitutional crisis.). 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? 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. April 22, 2023 156 Comments. 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. , Dantzig (1930, updated 1953; new edition 2007). Richard Feynman was a giant of theoretical physics who famously defined science as "the belief in the ignorance of experts". I think hes right that most academics assume models for how this works that are clearly not how people really think under pressure. There are fields like professional mathematics and equity investing where institutions mean the best people are recognised over time. Skunk Works, Ben Rich. . The media laughed and many said its so boring. I thought this was outstanding and every young person aspiring to be influential in politics should read it. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. Classic on teaching children programming, recommended by Alan Kay and Bret Victor. Partly accessible to a non-specialist with some maths already, though very challenging for most including me. I really liked this classic but a lot was beyond me. A good biography of Einstein by Isaacson. The Snippets format doesnt work well and Im rethinking how to do it. A scholarly history of maths, not for a general reader. Follow Julia Galef. Hard question (relevant to AGI safety debates! (NB. Mathematics and the Physical World, Morris Kline. If youre in Georgia, visit her house in Milledgeville. (If anyone knows if his remarkable secretary, Mrs. OLeary, left any records or an oral history please leave links below. and I suspect it would be one of the most useful things to force politicians and senior officials to read. I started reading him around 1999 when I first got involved in politics. A remarkable 19th Century book about propaganda and politics that influenced Lenin, Hitler and PR pioneers like Bernays. If we could predict events like the fall of the Berlin Wall better it would have huge value. Those who think very fast timetables are plausible, because (partly) they worry about the effects of their comments. It amazes me how many scientists and economists know nothing or almost nothing about it. I advised spads and officials to read this in 2019 and ignore the media. A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. He opted out of the traditional science funding system early. Considered by many in Silicon Valley to be the best book on the details of management. Colonel John Boyds briefings are great. Aug 25, 2022. or waste the most important element in conflict. Also though, everybody has bad luck and those who survive long enough to get good luck are very perseverant. I searched for explanations. Collison has a webpage summarising responses to this. On typical problems dealing with statistics, Bayes Theory, and how to improve understanding of probability. The truth is that they recognized themselves my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. Why? If you want to understand the modern intellectual classes media, academia and politics this plugs you straight into their psychology. Please post questions below. the failure of alignment and/or the inherent drive of high intelligence to escape constraints/control/alignment with others goals? 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?. Start trial Already a paid subscriber? This excellent short book introduces quantum mechanics using A Level maths. , Frank Close (2011). Nelson, biography by John Sugden. I wrote some essays on the history of maths and computing which have further reading lists. A billionaire should provide copies to all elected politicians. 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. Dominic Cummings' answer is to make Britain "the leading country for education and science". For example: The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Pflouffe ran the Obama 08 campaign and 2012 re-election. Ditto for the Johnson volumes (Ive not read) when Caro publishes the last. He replied to Yudkowskys AGI ruin, . I was amazed and desperate. Book accompanying an OU course. 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 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. 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. . , Polya. The river was also burning. 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? A striking thing: notice how they take regulation and speed extremely seriously because they have direct experience of it, 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. (3 volumes), Morris Kline. If you read his blogs and trusted him on covid over the entire CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucracies, youd have come out far ahead. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been proved repeatedly wrong.). (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. Jean Monnet created the ECSC and EEC/EU. (Steinbergs recent book has interesting stuff but has many errors of fact/date and interpretation.) I wrote, which has a further reading list. On War, Clausewitz. The story of Turing, von Neumann and the computer. 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. , Gershenfeld (MIT). A classic book on calculus / analysis designed for undergraduates. The director was evacuated from the horror of Stalingrad as a child: The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. A history of the amazing Bell Labs which famously won more Nobels than most EU countries. Also, Defense In Atomic War. How Roger Ailes packaged Nixon with actual campaign memos reproduced at the back. The Deputy Prime Minister resigned yesterday because a lawyer found against him on two of the eight allegations made. The media laughed and many said its so boring. Oppenheimer is better known but Groves was his boss. Number, Dantzig (1930, updated 1953; new edition 2007). If one could observe a discussion between Bismarck and one politician from the 20th Century, he might be the most interesting choice. , summarising the arguments on why artificial general intelligence is so dangerous and why controlling these dangers is so very hard. judge timothy kenny political affiliation. Steve has a startup that is a leading player in this emerging field. , Murray Gell Mann. (Politicians also constantly make this mistake in hiring journalists to do communication, almost always a bad idea.). Dyson, Hawking) is wrong. 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. 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 For example: , Andy Grove, ex-founder/CEO of Intel. A big problem for UK political discussion is people focus obsessively on the immediate interest of the London media rather than trying to think about whats really important. 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. A striking thing: notice how. 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. 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. Many academics predicted OpenAIs approach would not work but have been. (A counterfactual: if Thatcher had taken his advice in the early 1980s and rejected the emerging Single Market plan and embarked on civil service reform?). Retweets. 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. 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. Why? , 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. There is a great. This is false. Interesting how some fields (e.g airlines, surgery) have significantly improved performance while others have not, and the barriers to improvement. 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. Dominic Cummings (Dostoyevsky was Nietzsches favourite novellist!). The basic arguments remain critical today. 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). 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. , Kahneman. As the craziness of 2024 approaches his ideas will be much more influential in some circles than you will realise from the media. Perhaps America has elections every four years, power supply is ~100% reliable in the First World, Europe wont see millions killed in wars again, nobody lives happily/normally to 200, robots cant escape control and kill vast numbers of humans, children should study curricula controlled by the state, I support policies that undermine traditional ideas about the family will seem as quaint in 2052 as Bertrand Russell being taught by a grandfather whod met Napoleon that British naval dominance is a fact of life. If you read Boyd youll see how lessons recur across Alexander, Nelson, Groves et al. Vast amounts of what you read on this is rubbish. A history of ARPA-IPTO and Xerox PARC: how the internet and PC revolution was created. 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. It was a direct inspiration for my terrorist demand to Boris, July 2019: we must create an ARPA. 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. by Rumelt. The Ascent of Man, Bronowksi. If you really are interested in policy and how someone tries to bring principles of high performance to government, this is essential. (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. Perhaps America has elections every four years, power supply is ~100% reliable in the First World, Europe wont see millions killed in wars again, nobody lives happily/normally to 200, robots cant escape control and kill vast numbers of humans, children should study curricula controlled by the state, I support policies that undermine traditional ideas about the family will seem as quaint in 2052 as Bertrand Russell being taught by a grandfather whod met Napoleon that British naval dominance is a fact of life. Follow Zvi. LAncien Rgime et la Rvolution, de Tocqueville. Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche. 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. On connections between quantum physics, computation and information theory.
Menü
