Most of life is execution. To execute in the right direction, seeing the world clearly is the core challenge.
These are some of the books which have helped me see the world a little clearer:
The Beginning of Infinity
Deutsch does a great job of exploring the extent that our experiance of the world today is the product of knowledge acumulation. You would not survive the night without clothes in Oxfordshire. Clothes are knowledge.
We can build a lot more knowledge. As we do our understanding of what is normal will change. Breathing in space will be as normal as surviving the night in Oxfordshire.
He also explores how to evaluate theories. We don't have a perfect criteria for this and he does a good job of building intuition of how to evaluate in the interim.
His essays, in particular Optimism, pessimism and cynicism capture some of his core ideas, albeit in a very condensed fashion.
Mathematics in Western Culture
What we think of as "common knowledge" was once cutting edge mathematics.
To see the future - do the maths.
Critique of Pure Reason
Kant trys to find axioms for morality. Instead he does a very good job of exploring the inconsistancies that develop when you try.
This has been taken further by Gödel and Wittgenstein. But to really get a sense of the real world errors Kant is invaluable.
This line of thinking permeated science and philosophy for +2k years. If you haven't read this it's very likely that you are (as I was) implicitly assuming that the universality he was aiming has been solved. It's not and it's worth finding out why.
Against The Gods
It took us +10k years to build the number line, we've only been exploring probability for ~500y.
What we are seeing in Machine Learning is perhaps at best the early industrial revolution era.
The Emergence of Probability
Probability is a very big deal. It's also very new - see above.
For most of human history we really really really didn't have a clue how to tackle this.
Hacking charts the emergence of uncertainty and chance as ideas from ground zero. The constant rebasing of words is funky to read however it really hits home the point that these ideas are still stabilising.
Von Neumann: Can We Survive Technology?
This is a short essay written in 1955 while he was a member of the Atomic Energy Commision
He reframes politics as a complex technological scaling problem.
Michael Nielsen: Principles of Effective Research
Nielsen played a key role in building quantum computing and this is aimed at helping physicists do research.
If you swap "research" for "work" then this is the most incisive life advice I have ever read.
He also has an interesting perspective on the challenge of balancing "problem solvers" with "problem creators". I think most people would probably be more comfortable with the phrasing "framing a problem". However that speaks to his point - its creating not just messing with the edges. Read it here
Request for books / papers
I am currently going deep on:
- rebuilding my understanding of probability from measure theory up. Currently reading Cox's "Algebra of Probable Inference". If you have any personal favorites from this journey then plaese share!
- history / long term dynamics of finance. I've just finished Bernstein's "Power of Gold" and I'm currently reading Goetzmann's "Money Changes Everything". If you have any suggestions (books or papers) please ping me.