Sixth Group of Books I Read in 2025

Reading Period: September 25 - Present

1. Reinforcement Learning (P), by Richard Sutton

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/739791.Reinforcement_Learning

    According to Goodreads, this is my 500th book. Wow. Also, over the last few months I finally made it through a series of technical ML books (Linear Algebra Done Right, Deep Learning, and Reinforcement Learning), of which I had been wanting to finish for years. For maybe a moment, I should probably reflect on the fact, and celebrate, that I have turned into quite the literature power user. In some sense it seems fitting to end the first 500 on this book, as now all of my reading goals to date are basically accomplished. 

    Five and a half years years ago, I wrote down a list of life goals: 100 mile ultramarathon, watch 1,000 movies, read 500 books, publish a book, get married, have kids. Now only the last two are outstanding, and as I am engaged, it seems those are not far off either. Reading has transformed me as an individual, and I consider it central to my identity and my success. Fiction has expanded my horizons and worldview, and while I've learned a bit from school and work, I've learned far more from the world of nonfiction. In some sense the CFA curriculum, where I was forced to read finance textbook after finance textbook, is a greater contributor to my current reading ability (I can literally just crush a book like Reinforcement Learning in a week). But regardless, this muscle is still extraordinary to me.

    Now, onto the book. It's is fairly old (originally published in 1998), but Richard is a legend. There are likely two "buckets" of AI that are going to transform the world forever, deep learning and reinforcement learning. In my opinion, advancements in reinforcement learning are way more powerful, scary, and transformative. Even with modern neural nets, it took RLHF to spark broad usefulness. As we undertake the age of autonomous agents interacting with their environment, the sheer "bitter lesson" could soon be that humans can't compete. Overall, this was a great intro into the state of the RL world 27 years ago. It's worth the overview, although given all the advances since it's probably nearing the end of its comparative advantage. Still worth the read now, and maybe for the next couple years.

Fifth 10 Books I Read in 2025

 Reading Period: August 11 - September 25

1. How the Word is Passed (A), by Clint Smith

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55643287-how-the-word-is-passed

    Very emotionally resonant book, I could hear Clint's passion in every sentence. I liked Between The World and Me a lot better, a book with similar themes, but this one still packed quite the punch. This book is certainly very good. But it is first worth mentioning that it sustains an extremely high Goodreads rating, and with any book of this topic it's hard to know if this means anything. My worry with picking up a book like this is that I get hit with a book of little intellectual value that maintains high ratings due to audience capture or political signposting. The books of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, for example, have been said to maintain their status not by their inherit merit but by their signaling. As another example, you can imagine not many moderates/leftists reads far-right literature, so reviews of far-right books will be heavily skewed/praiseworthy.

    There were a few moments when the book clearly leans into modern political rhetoric, such as this statement: "Which meant he needed significant republican support. These were people who had built careers on political ideas that were harmful to black people." Both "build careers on" and "ideas" here, in particular, strike me as interesting. It is not surprising that Clint thinks modern republicans are bad (pro-policing, anti-DEI, economic status-quo), but Clint claims the "ideas" are harmful. People like Thomas Sowell would disagree, and there is enough nuance here that if not uncharitable, the claim is at the very least rhetorically ineffective. Clint also states that "I asked him if there would ever be an America in which White Americans were not actively working to keep themselves positioned atop the nations racial hierarchy." I am not certain what "actively working" means here, and it seems to convey that Clint sees modern racial issues as explicit oppression (rather than simply passive "working", like being against DEI). This is a totally fine statement for him to make; I include it because once I read it, I understood the book a lot better. The history of slavery has shaped Clint's view of the world, and the book is in a sense grappling with stories that explain to the reader how this legacy survives in the modern era (which is not far removed). Clint also states something along the lines of "did people come together in 1776 and make some pretty radical ideas, yeah", but actually this form of government is not novel and we cannot forgive the sins of the slave-owning founding fathers etc. I think he underrates the concept of individual liberty here, and how the US sparked a surge of democracy and revolution for the oppressed around the world, even if we concede the words here were written by imperfect and perhaps entirely immoral people. 

    Also, it's distressing to hear the rhetoric of groups like the "Sons of the confederacy" in this book, but one can argue that these people are bottom-of-the-barrel stupid and don't represent any significant slice of the American populace. A better tell for widespread racism is the fact that some crazy high number of white Americans (maybe around ~10%) wouldn't want their child dating someone of a different race. Now some of this may not be as racist as it seems (a Polish grandmother for example wanting to continue the Polish bloodline and not approving a marriage to an Irish-Catholic), but there's certainly a hell of a lot of racism. Clint sees the removal of statues of historical figures with Confederacy/slaveholding ties as important, and is distressed that there is resistance to this. I'd argue most people don't care and many just see it hard to draw the line (and removing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues would seem strange). I'm personally fine with removing Confederate statues, but I don't see it as a very important milestone in the greater fight against injustice, there are many other battles on this front I'd rather be fought. And this is coming from someone who is only lightly opposed to Sherman's March Part II, where us northerners take another victory lap and go through and burn the South once again.

    The central error that I believe Clint makes is over-extrapolating historical injustice to political issues he currently cares about. In a society where virtually everybody dramatically and horrifically under-extrapolates this injustice, this is far from a sin. But I actually think it hurts his message quite considerably. In some ways we devalue the horrors of slavery when we equate them to modern criminal justice reform. It's not uncommon to compare the plight of slavery with those on death row, but it should be. I have lawyer friends who have spent countless hours pro-bono in Texas seeking to get innocent people off of death row, and its obvious that a lot of public uproar from these cases tends to be regarding those wrongly convinced. But Clint ignores this aspect, and draws many parallels between guilty criminals and slaves. Clint quotes a prisoner who states he believes he's "going through the very same thing folks fought and died for."  Clint also details the gruesome death-penalty-deaths of a variety of individuals, and points out how quickly the jury deliberated on some of these cases as a point to continued current racism. But it's hard to avoid confronting the conservative talking point here. Which is this: guilty people on death row are not slaves, they are there because they murdered innocent women and children; drawing this parallel is unhelpful. I am not making this claim, but Clint makes no effort to counteract this obvious argument. Many of the death row case examples he gives don't survive this "Fox News" style layup: I looked up the most egregious case Clint highlights, and it was for a man who murdered his kids. Now, the current US prison system will certainly be looked upon with horror in future generations. In addition to racial injustice, the mere conditions in which an average prisoner has to endure (even if guilty) are horrific and distressing. In some sense this book is right up my political-viewpoint alley, but I think Clint stretches too much here in order to make a point. 

    This all being said, the book shines when discussing with unflinching honestly how horrific the institutionalized system of slavery was. And this discussion is so well written and well argued that I'd argue that this book should be required reading in every high school. Clint does a phenomenal job with his historical analysis that its hard not to feel a whiplash of emotions with every page. He states that slavery wasn't simply a dehumanization, it depended on human sentience. It required a subject that could be terrorized, and essentially oppressed and tortured into submission. This wouldn't work with a machine, the slaveholders needed the power dynamic of crushing a human soul in order to maintain such a horrific hellscape of immorality decade after decade. The sheer evil apparent in this system is so baffling, so unbelievably inexcusable, it makes me want to renounce my "humanity," whatever that is.

2. Letter from the Birmingham Jail (P), by Martin Luther King Jr.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203899.Letter_from_the_Birmingham_Jail

    "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is Freedom."

    MLK is certainly an incredible writer. Well reasoned, convincing, and inspiring. He states that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere" and "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Similar to Civil Disobedience, MLK states that "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law." He also states that the police officers cracking down on "illegal" protests are using "moral means to preserve immoral ends." What is more immoral, to peacefully protest segregation in the streets, or to arrest and break up these protests in order to uphold a wildly evil and immoral system of institutionalized racism?

    I found MLK's religious rhetoric convincing, and resonated with a fairly long criticism he leveled against the church:

"There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought and end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are."

3. Sixth of the Dusk (P), by Brandon Sanderson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23397921-sixth-of-the-dusk

    Quite the change of pace. Another great novella from Sanderson, not much else to say.

4. Pale Blue Dot (P), by Carl Sagan

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61663.Pale_Blue_Dot

    It took me a while to finish, but overall I really enjoyed the book. The first chapter is one of the best chapters of non-fiction I've ever read. Carl makes the claim that: "On the scale of worlds - to say nothing of stars and galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal." He also states that: "If I had to guess - especially considering our long sequence of failed chauvinisms - I would guess that the Universe is filled with beings far more intelligent, far more advanced than we are." I also really liked his insistence on space exploration, and what it means for humanity: "We lack consensus about our place in the Universe. There is no generally agreed upon long-term vision of the goal of our species - other than, perhaps, simple survival." It's hard to not want to reach for the stars after reading: "Their eventual choice, as ours, is spaceflight or extinction."

    However, the book gets lost a bit in hard science. This is fine, but the material is fairly old so there is just better content out there at this point (A Short History of Nearly Everything comes to mind). Still, I found Carl's discussion of nuclear war fascinating. It's always interesting to read the perspective of an expert in one field who is writing a novel comment on the current events of the time. Carl states: "Not only do we often ignore the warnings of the oracles; characteristically we do not even consult them." And: "Nuclear weapons were invented in 1945. It took until 1983 before the global consequences of thermonuclear war were understood." I will close with one of the most surprising parts of the book, when Carl analyzes a phenomena I've always felt but couldn't quite put my finger on. Unfortunately, it looks like nothing much has changed with the passage of time:

"We are sometimes told that this or that invention would of course not be misused. No sane person would be so reckless. This is the 'only a madman' argument. Whenever I hear it (and it's often trotted out in such debates), I remind myself that madmen really do exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations. This is the century of Hitler and Stalin, tyrants who posed the gravest dangers not just to the rest of the human family, but to their own people as well. In the winter and spring of 1945, Hitler ordered Germany to be destroyed - even 'what the people need for elementary survival' - because the surviving Germans had 'betrayed' him, and at any rate were 'inferior' to those who had already died. If Hitler had nuclear weapons, the threat of a counterstrike by Allied nuclear weapons, had there been any, is unlikely to have dissuaded him. It might have encouraged him."

5. Deep Utopia (P), by Nick Bostrom

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208707460-deep-utopia

    The most important philosopher of our time, who wrote a terrifying book about the implications of advanced AI, pens a book about what we will do with all our time in utopia when AI solves every problem ever. It's a baffling change of pace, but quite needed and refreshing. To summarize, Bostrom asks "at technological maturity, is there anything that cannot be done better by machine?" The answer, is basically no. Nick says "For it is quite conceivable that, at technological maturity, you would in fact be slightly harming your child whenever you indulged in some DIY parenting." Even moral status and cognition, at some point, may not be exclusively biological traits. What then? He defines a digital mind as: "A mind implemented on a computer. Could for example be an upload of a human or animal mind, or an AI of a design and sophistication that makes it a moral patient, i.e. one whose welfare or interests matter for their own sake." I've spent more time thinking about digital minds than almost anyone alive, and yet I found this insight entirely novel:

"If we imagine - as I tend to do - a future that is mostly populated by digital minds, then the convertibility of wealth into well-being becomes even clearer. Digital minds, be they AIs or uploads, need computation. More computation means longer life, faster thinking, and potentially deeper and more expansive conscious experiences. More computation also means more copies, digital children, and offshoots of all kinds, should such be desired."

    I had no idea Nick was funny. In fact, he's hilarious. The book mentions DJs dropping "bangers" at nightclubs, has literal illustrations of memes, and quotes like: "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." My favorite quote was this: "This is especially clear if we entertain the radical possibility that we are not in a simulation." Nick also takes aim at sports fanatics, and golf: "Well, it is actually unclear why people play golf. The real reason might be to have fun - and if so, then, of course, utopia would offer the more efficient option of wireheading as a means of obtaining pleasure." He illustrates the weirdness of human wiring further here:

"More people jump out of their seats when their soccer team scores a goal than when an international agency publishes a report saying that a hundred thousand fewer children died form preventable diseases this year than last. (We take this to be completely normal, but I wonder, if we could see ourselves through the eyes of angels, whether we would not recognize in this pattern of excitement and indifference something quite perverse - the warped sentiments of a moral degenerate? Is it not, implicitly, a sort of emotional middle finger to the suffering and desperation of other sentient beings?)"

    This book is genuinely novel. It explores not post-scarcity worlds (which have been done in fiction), but rather post-instrumental worlds. "Post-instrumental utopia: No instrumental need for any human effort. Implies post-work but goes beyond in also assuming no instrumental need for any non-economic work either - no need to exercise to keep fit, for example, no need to study to learn,; no need to actively evaluate and select in order to obtain the kinds of food, shelter, music, and clothing that you prefer. This is a far more radical conception than the preceding three types of utopia, and has been much less explored." 

    Nick also discusses the meaning of life at length, although he mostly admits ignorance: "Journalists often ask me if I can share some life advice for young people. I'm flattered to be asked, but this really seems to me like asking somebody who is still playing his first-ever game of chess to give advice on chess strategy." I found it interesting to contemplate Nick's linguistic choices and deep exploration of words like "desire." When contemplating meaning, should we care about what we desire, or what we should desire? Nick claims that there is a spectrum from "What I actually right now consciously desire" to "What I would desire if I had the character that I wish I had" to "What I would desire if my desires perfectly tracked objective truths about what is impersonally 'best for the world'." Which should we care about? Should we only care about realized utility? Or should what actually happens (even if not consciously realized by anyone) matter? Example: "Well, for example, I would not want my wife to have an affair with her tennis instructor. Even if I would never find out about it. I don't want my life to be based on a big illusion."

    It's hard to review this book. There are so many ideas and insights flying around that it's hard to keep track of them all. Nick's narrative choices, reminiscent of Godel, Escher, Bach are interesting, but largely ineffective. The ending falls flat on a confusing narrative note. There is a extremely long story about a room heater turned conscious, which largely misses the mark except for the closing statement: "Is ThermoRex's life better or worse than that of the median human being who has lived on Earth so far?" But the book is full of life. Nick randomly bursts out in existential terror randomly during his narration (which I loved), and he doesn't stop his philosophical musings on the human condition: "I wondered why I had been made with a soul that had the capacity to wonder but not the capacity to find out; why I could see so much that was wrong while seemingly being unable to do anything about it." If I had to guess, I'd guess that Nick wrote this book more as an excuse to think through a ton of interesting ideas. His plan wasn't: think really hard, form concrete world-changing ideas, and then meticulously think through how to convey this to the public. His plan was: think really hard, and write a book as a companion to this process in order to have a planned start and finish line. 

    Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This book will fall completely flat for most people for a variety of reasons, but to me it felt like reading the inner monologue of someone way smarter than me, who is thinking through bigger ideas than I've ever had the guts to tackle. Also, I am persuaded by almost everything Nick says, and I'm not quite sure what this means. But it's like I have been exposed to a radical, likely true, conceptualization of the world that is missed by almost everyone else. I'll end with this quote, and idea that I've been dying to verbalize in such a concise way. An idea that I hope is broader conveyed as we approach the sort of futures Nick discusses.

"I am inclined to say tough luck to the tragedy-lover. Or rather: feel free to get your fix from fantasy, or from history - only, please, do not insist on cooking your gruesome entertainment in a cauldron of interminable calamity and never-ending bad news. It is true that good books and films have been inspired by wars and atrocities. It would have been better if these wars and atrocities had not occurred and we had not had these books and films. The same applies at the personal scale. People coping with the loss of a child, dementia, abject poverty, cancer, depression, severe abuse: I submit it would be worth giving up a lot of good stories to get rid of those harms. If that makes our lives less meaningful, so be it."

6. Deep (P), by James Nestor

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18222705-deep

    A book about a bunch of topics, namely freediving, the deep ocean, and marine life. Freediving is a crazy sport. It's a simple concept, you attach yourself to a weighted sled, which shoots you straight down hundreds of feet into the a body of water. You black out. Then, an air balloon fills up and propels you back up to the top of the water, where you are resuscitated. You likely die. If you go far down and back up, you consider this a great accomplishment. 

    It's hard to read these freediving sections, because everyone is just blacking out and dying all the time. The parts of the book about the deep ocean are interesting, but a bit tiresome. And the parts about marine life are a little bit cooky. James says things like "Human language is analogue; sperm whale language may be digital." Most of the book is forgettable, but one unforgettable story is that of a researcher named Lilly, who encouraged a research assistant to become sexually explicit with a dolphin. This "research" lasted a while and got pretty weird, and needless to say "Lilly basically ruined the field for the next thirty years." My biggest problem with the book is that much of the narration is a bit unreliable/unbelievable, and certainly biased against "crude" humans and towards "advanced" aquatic life, which is what you'd expect from someone who writes a book about the ocean. Not quite my type of book, but maybe I don't care enough about the ocean.

7. The Three-Body Problem (A), by Cixin Liu

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518872-the-three-body-problem

    You know, I really thought I'd love this one. It was fine, decent even, but nothing particularly special. Some of the sci-fi aspects are a bit too weird/ambitious, and I don't think the characters or writing quality stands out enough from other books. The concept largely carries this one to being worth the read.

8. If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (P), by Eleizer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228646231-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies

  I've been waiting in anticipation of this book for quite a while. In my mind, and no one else's, I see IABIED as a direct competitor to my book earlier this year, Mind Crime, which deals with very similar subject matter. In fact, I spent quite a bit of advertising dollars linking my work to the IABIED pre-order Amazon page, money now forever gone into the ether with no certainty of impact. In some sense, I now feel that the torch has been passed, and I am unlikely to spend any more on ads (at least until the MIRI-led marketing machine fizzles out, or until we see more concrete signs of AGI's arrival).

    The clearest distinction between books is that this book is way more accessible than mine. Eleizer has spent 20+ years thinking about this topic and refining his arguments, although I would argue his worldview hasn't changed much. His argument is fantastically simple: ASI is going to kill everyone. There is no complex theory to be discussed; some future AI model with "go hard" and this will result in the death of everyone one Earth. For the layperson, this is clearly the better book to read. It's also likely the better option for a trailblazing, likely net positive emergence of AI-related concern in the public sphere. This book is truly an accomplishment, and I couldn't be happier that it has a chance to run its course. Despite its flaws, I'm excited by that prospect that this will get more people thinking about ASI alignment, the greatest issue to have ever faced the human race.

    Given that I've written an extremely niche, well researched, and complex book about the moral implications of artificial superintelligence, I am not the target audience here. The clearest example via this quote: "In other words, o1 went hard. It behaved as if it wanted to succeed." Whereas Mind Crime skipped over the info-hazard flags and went straight to discussing how ASIs could blackmail their way into power, Eleizer sticks with: "Paying people is a classic way of convincing them to do something." I have a chapter dedicated to the interconnected complexity of potential AI sentience and ASI takeover, and Eleizer mentions that an unaligned ASI named "Sable" may find it useful to promote "the idea of AI sentience and AI rights." Interestingly, I wonder if Sable will quote me? There isn't much insight into how the world might change here, Eleizer simply states: "If a horse starts costing more to feed than it can produce in labor, the horse is sent off to the glue factory." There are understandable trade-offs being made here in terms of messaging, and honestly I'm glad that the book is so different and "dumbed-down." It means that both I should no longer care about a broad audience, and also I didn't waste two years of my life writing a book that was replaced by a more popular, exact replica.

    I disagree pretty strongly with a lot of the book. In some sense, many of my ideas are a direct response to thinking through many of the points raised here by the MIRI team. For example, I believe overindexing on extinction is wrong, and I'm not a fan of how this is handled in this book. It used to be overnight nanobots, but now dyson swarms, which blot out the sun, are an option for humanity's eventual demise. How long does this extend the timeline? How long does it take to build a dyson sphere? If it takes hundreds of years for humanity to die out because all sunlight is blocked by AI-built satellites, is that really what "extinction" means? I guess so, but some of this rhetoric seems like desperate stretching of "foom" => "doom" scenarios. 

    Also, Eleizer and Nate state that: "We consider interpretability researchers to be heroes." Thanks! But also that "learning to read some of an AI's mind is not a plan for aligning it, any more than learning what's going on inside atoms is a plan for making a nuclear reactor that doesn't melt down." This feels like a complete false equivalence. Sure, it may be true that interpretability research never gets good enough to be a reliable lie detector. But if it does, would this not make the alignment problem immensely easier?

    There are some really interesting points in this book. This specifically: "Hinton has said that he actually thinks that it's more than 50 percent likely that AI will kill us, but he usually avoids saying this 'because there's other people who think it's less.'" Also, the ending quote resonated with me a hell of a lot: "May we be wrong, and shamed for how incredibly wrong we were, and fade into irrelevance and be forgotten except as an example of how not to think, and may humanity live happily ever after." Additionally, I think their whole framing of just-literally-say-what-you-believe is super helpful and inspiring. A lot of AI safety people seem to be 4D-chess-ing themselves into irrelevance. Here is Eleizer's comment: "We've watched this sort of thing play out for a while, with people not stating the real reasons for their proposals or why they think they have to be passed so urgently. And we've watched perfectly reasonable lawmakers smell something rotten and throw the whole package out." Why does no one think about ASI extinction risk? Maybe because everyone who does is too afraid to say it out loud, and thus no one says anything. They're correct here, it's time to change.

    The key policy proposal in this book will be widely disregarded/hated:"So the safest bet would be to set the threshold low - say, at the level of eight of the most advanced GPUs from 2024 - and say that it is illegal to have nine GPUs that powerful in your garage, unmonitored by the international authority." Basically, we need to ban all AI research, lock up the GPUs, and form a world government that ensure no ASI is ever built. People will say it's unrealistic, but honestly, if you agree with Eleizer's priors there's just simply no other option. I'm not quite there yet, but there's a non-negligible chance that he's just correct about this problem and this is clearly the only solution. 

    Now, I'm going to end on sort of a strange criticism. Eleizer and Nate, in the final page, drop in the C.S. Lewis quote: "If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs." Their message ends on, what I have to assume, is some sort of attempt at optimism, where you're supposed to read this book and then go back to living life before it all ends for everyone? They state: "And once you have done all you can do? Live life well." I understand that most people won't have an impact on the outcome of ASI development. But this is sort of a "walk-it-back" kind of way to end such an important book. I get why they felt they had to do it, but it felt weak-willed and cowardly in an otherwise assertive book. Sure maybe don't get too crazy with it, but it seems obvious that the logical conclusion to agreeing with this book should be less "play tennis" and more "fight until the very end." Just a style preference, but I'd rather be encouraged to fight.

9. Deep Learning (P), by Ian Goodfellow

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24072897-deep-learning

    Clearly the most comprehensive, most helpful, and most rewarding ML book I've ever read. I read the first 200 pages a few years ago, and then recently in the span of a few weeks relentlessly pushed onwards to the 800 page finish line. It's funny finishing a technical book like this, as I feel I finally have a competent mental model of the subject matter. Without knowing the breath of the deep learning space, it's pretty impossible me to conceptualize the depth. Boltzmann machines (and energy models in general) still confuse me, but essentially all of the other DL lingo is now etched into my brain. That's what is great about finishing an 800 page book, there's no escaping a staggering familiarity with the topic at hand. This is probably the most important step I'll take in clearing the hurdle towards better technical understanding of AI, and I'm glad to have this behind me as the foundation.

10. The Dark Forest (A), by Cixin Liu

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168817-the-dark-forest

    Again, a mix of good and bad. I like the storyline a lot, and it is true, hardcore sci-fi (which I'm a big fan of). Similar to the first book, there's a lot of early build up, with a semi-climax where a piece of incredibly cool and deadly technology takes the stage. It really does drive home the point that technological disparity amounts to genocide. However, a lot of the writing decisions are a bit bizarre. I don't think it's a cultural thing; the plot line/constant references to characters with "imaginary" lovers was pretty bizarre and concerning. I wasn't quite sure what I was reading at points, it was so weird and immersion breaking. Thankfully I chose not to put the book down, and it got back to sci-fi. Well, mostly. The annoying, repetitive patterns of humanity (changing public opinion at the drop of a hat, always predictably and in the most frustrating/unrealistic way possible) and the strange actions of the characters (no one ever says anything useful or competent) was frustrating as well. If 40% of the book (mostly that stuff) was cut, this would have been a really good book. Unfortunately it was just ok.

Fourth 10 Books I Read in 2025

 Reading Period: July 14 - August 11

1. Linear Algebra Done Right (P), by Sheldon Axler

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/309768.Linear_Algebra_Done_Right

    This was a personal goal of mine to finish. I made it through the first 40 pages twice, at different points in different years of my life, but always got stuck. This time, I made an accountability bet to read the book start to finish within a two week time frame. It was not easy! I went through the book page by page with Claude, taking extensive notes and really trying to understand this field conceptually. Sheldon is a good writer, and the concepts and the way in which the material is taught is excellent. Leaving determinants to the end may or may not have been a good choice (this was my only exposure to the material), but the progression felt very natural and intuitive. At long last I understand what an eigenvalue is and how it relates to every other concept in linear algebra, and as a result am slowly chipping away at my inferiority complex with coworkers (who are all AI researchers who were PhDs in CS). I have a lot more work to do here, and to start I plan to review my notes extensively and continue to deepen my conceptual understanding. But overall this was quite a great introduction to a very dry topic.

2. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (A), by Thomas Kuhn

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61539.The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

    Honestly, it was fine. I had pretty high expectations, but the core claims of the book are pretty simple. It's interesting to think of how science actually progresses (crisis, new paradigm, etc.), but the most interesting material simply doesn't take up many pages. The most important takeaway is that scientific process is way messier than commonly thought and often comes from unexpected (or disliked) areas. I try not to critique books for being too long, but I think Thomas could have spiced it up a little bit.

3. The Business of Venture Capital (A), by Mahendra Ramsinghani

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11366506-the-business-of-venture-capital

    I thought this was ok. As someone pretty familiar with the VC ecosystem, there wasn't anything extremely surprising in this. My biggest takeaway was that VCs are basically portfolio managers (just like anyone else in finance), who have investors to answer to. Their business isn't that different than any other fund manager, who has to go out and raise money and explain their eventual returns (just this time to the LPs). It's easy to think of VCs as the "investors" in the situation if you work at a startup, but in reality they are sort of just the middle-man to the end LPs. Most of their job is actually managing this LP/fundraising relationship, and at the end of the day what they care about is making the LPs happy.

    Weirdly, this book feels like it underwent revisions specifically to incorporate DEI concepts after the fact. I don't mean this as a bad thing, but it's a bit jarring how frequently such concepts are thrown in to make a point. During the book's initial revisions, it's possible someone pointed out the lack of discussion of DEI concepts, and then a future edition was revised into a version that made such arguments explicit. It's pretty ham-fisted and honestly not well argued, sort of reads as unnecessary filler. Outside of this, the book is pretty concise and to the point. It's just not technical enough to be super informative (like Venture Deals) and not engaging/story-driven enough to be a thrilling read (like The Power Law).

4. Northanger Abbey (A), by Jane Austen

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50398.Northanger_Abbey

    My first Austen novel. It wasn't that great, mostly because I didn't like any of the characters. Also, it ended very abruptly. Without spoiling anything, there's a ton of conflict towards the end, and everything in resolved in a few paragraphs in the final chapter. Not very impressed with the writing, but I've been told it's not her best book.

5. 1984 (A), by George Orwell

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5470.1984

    "Oh my God, you haven't read 1984? You'd love it!" This is the pair of sentences I've been assaulted with for the past 10+ years, constantly by everyone I know who finds out I haven't read the book. I've been told my own writing is "Orwellian," and it's true that there is nothing I love more in this world than a devastatingly depressing story. Basically, it is assumed that because I love dystopian political narratives, the only outcome of my reading this would be complete and utter reverence.

    They were correct. This book is phenomenal, and the overlap with my interests and ideas could not be higher. I loved every moment, and can't stop thinking about the book. Sure, in some sense it wasn't that well written (I told a friend it felt like he rushed the writing), but man, what a classic. Totally up my alley, and one that I'll probably re-read later in life.

6. Niels Lyhne (P), by Jens Peter Jacobsen

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/456977.Niels_Lyhne

    This had potential to be the best book ever written. I was in shock for the first thirty or so pages, at how incredibly well written and poetic the book was. However, this awe faded during the middle section of the book, and it took me a couple years of on-and-off reading a handful of pages at a time to make it to the last section. This last section was amazing, and the conclusion was among the best of any I've read. The ending was a sort of philosophical destruction of the human predicament, but one that is rarely executed so effectively. I wouldn't argue too hard with anyone who stated that this was the greatest work of fiction out there, although given my difficulty in getting through it, I am not able make this claim on my own.

    There are simply too many quotes I highlighted to put in this review. It's a magnificent work of fiction, and as such I'm going to detour from my usual style and just list a bunch of quotes that deeply resonated with me.

Quotes

"She dreamed a thousand dreams of those sunlit regions and was consumed with longing for this other and richer self, forgetting—what is so easily forgotten—that even the fairest dreams and the deepest longings do not add an inch to the stature of the human soul."

"Life had exactly the value that dreams gave it and no more"

 

"If the monk was lonely with the generation that lived among the groves he knew, how much more lonely was the man whose contemporaries had not yet been born."

"There isn't a single obstacle that can be dreamed out of the world, and in the end we lie there crying at the edge of the chasm, which hasn't changed and is just where it always was. But we have changed, for we have let our dreams goad all our thoughts and spur all our longings to the very highest tension. The chasm is no narrower, and everything in us cries out with longing to reach the other side, but no, always no, never anything else. If we had only kept a watch on ourselves in time! But now it is too late, now we are unhappy."

"For the first time his mind grasped the fact that when life has sentenced you to suffer, the sentence is neither a fancy nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured, and there is no marvellous rescue at the last moment, no awakening as from a bad dream."

"Feverishly he turned to his work to assume himself that he had lost nothing else besides happiness."

"He lifted his clenched hands threateningly to heaven, he caught up his child in a mad impulse of flight, and then he threw himself down on the floor on his knees, praying to the Lord Who is in heaven, Who keeps the earth in fear through trials and chastisements, Who sends want and sickness, suffering and death, Who demands that every knee shall bend to Him in trembling, from Whom no flight is possible—either at the uttermost ends of the ocean or in the depths of the earth—He, the God Who, if it pleases Him, will tread the one you love best under His foot, torture him back into the dust from which He himself created him. With such thoughts, Niels Lyhne sent prayers up to the God; he threw himself down in utter abandonment before the heavenly throne, confessing that His was the power and His alone. Still the child suffered. Toward morning, when the old family physician drove in through the gate, Niels was alone."

7. The Fifth Season (A), by N. K. Jemisin

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852-the-fifth-season

    Good, but didn't break any barriers for me. I wouldn't say any particular part of the book was exceptional, and the theme/worldbuilding/characters aren't very unique either. Sanderson may have just ruined the fantasy genre for me.

8. Courage Under Fire (P), by James B. Stockdale

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196158.Courage_Under_Fire

    Amazing, especially since it's so concise. James could have dragged this out to 350 pages and it would have still been a great book, but I'm glad he settled with this. James's experience as a POW was haunting; he did an incredible job illustrating how horrific his experience was. The links between Stoicism (a philosophy that I've verbalized plenty of issues with) and incarceration are fascinating. James argues that long-term isolation is worse than torture, and this is coming from someone who attempted suicide to avoid torture. His reflections pack a hell of a punch: "the thing that brings down a man is not pain but shame." Also, it was interesting to contrast this book and King Rat, as this nonfiction depiction paints a picture of POW's as far more brotherly and united than those in Clavell's novel. Certainly worth the read, and I'll have to put this on a list somewhere.

9. Civil Disobedience (P), by Henry David Thoreau

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18626866-civil-disobedience

    Hell yeah, let's burn something. 

    Incredible pamphlet, one that is sure to have an impact on me. Henry's basic take is that "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." He diagnoses the state of American affairs as follows: "There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing." In a society with rampant slavery and even more abundant indifference, the jail cell is "The only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor."

    Henry's argument is intuitive, and certainly directionally correct. This book is revolutionary motivation, one that cuts through the public apathy towards legitimate moral horrors. I don't know much about the US war with Mexico during that time (which Henry is adamantly against), but I certainly agree with Henry's sentiment regarding slavery. He states that if participating in civil society legally requires: "you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine." To allow the continuation of slavery, and do nothing, is to act with severe personal dishonesty. It is "impossible for a man to live honestly and at the same time comfortably in outward respects." Living a moral life requires sacrifice, or at least a great risk of it. This is all true, and a reminder that in a world full of suffering and injustice, we are probably not doing enough. 

    Another important addition to this discourse is Henry's belief that the right to vote is not sufficient, or even worth much in general. "Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote." Essentially, the US constitution gives individuals a rare set of rights unheard of in human history. The right to protest, to free speech, to free press. Would it not be a fundamental disservice to ignore these mechanisms, and simply believe one's civic duty is fulfilled if they simply cast their ballot every few years? In an unjust society, Henry states that you should "Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence."

    Still, Henry takes this further and states: "As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to." I certainly think that Henry's anti-law position ("Law never made a man a whit more just") doesn't fit modern society quite as well, but I certainly understand the sentiment given his time of publishing. The entire book is useful and motivating, and I strongly believe the core concepts here are still very important for the modern world. A life of idleness and comfort in a society that accepts regular, unjust moral horror is an life lived in contradiction with moral values. Additionally, one must work far outside the ballot box if one is to correct this contradiction (although in 99% of circumstances, I would argue peacefully). One last thought from Henry was: "Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man." As a staunch defender of democracy, this idea of a next-step political framework that better protects individuals is interesting, and something I have not thought much about. I plan to.

10. Bartleby, The Scrivener (P), by Herman Melville

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114230.Bartleby_the_Scrivener

    Short, sweet, and memorable. I didn't really understand the end at first, and I didn't find the conclusion as deep as it was probably intended to be, but I felt engaged the entire time. Worth the quick read.

Third 10 Books I Read in 2025

 Reading Period: May 03 - July 14

1. Empire of the Summer Moon (A), by S. C. Gwynne

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7648269-empire-of-the-summer-moon

    Truly incredible work of non-fiction. The first half is some of the most interesting and engaging material I've come across. The Comanches are legitimately terrifying. Truly a no-holds-barred, honest take on the "Cowboy vs. Indian" dynamic in the early West, one that is sure to upset some readers who prefer to turn a blind eye to reality. S. C. does not omit the white settlers from criticism, the second half of the book turns the "unfiltered, horrific-but-engaging reality" lens toward them. There's disturbing, upsetting content across the board. This book made me feel lucky to be alive during modern times, and truly question if it was worth being alive in the 1800's. Suffering, and life itself, simply felt cheaper back then. Maybe I've treated the techno-optimists too harshly? Probably not, but regardless this is one of the better non-fiction books I've read. The second half is less compelling (honestly, a bit of a slog), but might appeal to readers who care more about characterization.

2. The Rebel (A), by Albert Camus

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11990.The_Rebel

    Albert thoroughly impressed me here. I've always sort of discounted the guy, but wow. What I find most interesting about this book is it's essentially Albert reacting to "current" events and the ideas of his direct contemporaries. He will note that Andre Breton said: "The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly." Then, Albert will seriously ponder how credible the underlying ideas of this statement are, and deeply discuss how this relates to his ideas (absurdism, etc.). He also reacts to Communism, rebellion, and atheism in thoroughly novel ways. How true is the phrase: "either police rule, or insanity"? How can one rebel in a meaningless universe? Albert is sort of the anti-Cioran for me, where I find his overall outlook/ideas less interesting, but his commentary more engaging and well-written. Certainly worth the read.

3. The Man Who Planted Trees (A), by Jean Giono

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/757438.The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees

    Pretty solid, short audiobook. I'd recommend this to anyone, honestly. I have no idea how Jean could have made this any better, which is becoming exceedingly rare.

4. The Ethics of Ambiguity (P), by Simone de Beauvior

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21119.The_Ethics_of_Ambiguity

    Simone crafts something very interesting: a response to existentialism focused on "ambiguity." She states that "to declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won." In some sense, this is an elaborate framework about freedom and responsibility that, like absurdism, falls to the "who says?" argument posed by both nihilists and the religious. In my opinion, Simone is essentially making the argument that "the meaning of life is to give life meaning," which as I've stated before is a circular and useless argument. She states "It is up to man to make it important to be a man, and he alone can feel his success or failure." Still, like with Camus, you have to appreciate someone arguing against nihilism (a philosophically impossible task), same as you have to respect the dedication of someone fighting a hurricane with a sword. 

    Simone states "Which action is good? Which is bad? To ask such a question is also to fall into naive abstraction. We don't ask the physicist, 'Which hypotheses are true?' Nor the artist, 'By what procedures does one produce a work whose beauty is guaranteed?' Ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and art. One can merely propose methods." However, this is a stupid argument. The reason science works is it is testable, and we can iterate using the scientific method. We can prove that two plus two equals four, and use mathematics to model the orbit of a planet. In ethics, there is no ability to "ground" any such hypothesis, or any way to truly falsify any claim. Art and beauty are subjective, although one could argue there are certain things humans in general find beautiful. But does that mean beauty of such a sort is objective? Or is it merely subjective with a current social consensus? Is ethical consideration any different? We can test scientific hypothesis, but we can't test moral ones. We can appreciate beauty, but also realize it is in the eye of the beholder. If this is true for ethics, the morality of killing an innocent person is just a matter of taste.

    Still, as with any work of philosophy, the book has some very thought-provoking moments. Simone states about humans and technological progress: "The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces. Though they are masters of the atomic bomb, yet it is created to destroy them." She also has very interesting comments on freedom, such as: "To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision." There is also some compelling discussion on comparing absolute evils (lynching, etc.) to larger-scale oppression (a government suppressing dissent), and the idea that some egregious moral harms are worse than those perpetuated incorrectly for the greater good, which is another phrasing of the repugnant conclusion. Overall, I think this book is altogether very good and worth the read, even if the conclusions it draws aren't defensible. I don't want to discredit Simone for trying, especially since the commentary unrelated to the main thesis is interesting.

5. Wind and Truth (P), by Brandon Sanderson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203578847-wind-and-truth

    I've always argued against those who claim that Brandon Sanderson is sort of the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" version of fantasy. I was a staunch lover of the original three arcs of the MCU, so enamored with the film series leading up to Infinity War, and through End Game, that I found critics of the series spiteful and condescending. However, after the disastrous run of Marvel movies since this initial stopping point, it is easier to claim that the critics, all along, had a bit of a point. Certainly, the addition of low-quality, formulaic content does nothing except tarnish some of the old films, and disengage my interest from consuming future content. That being said, I loved Wind and Truth. I would defend the book's merits against what seems to be fairly widespread criticism, even now. However, I will not make the same mistake again: there are clearly cracks forming. The entire Kaladin storyline was underwhelming, and certainly corny enough to ruin my immersion at multiple points. Frankly, the only storyline that was of any interest to me was Adolin's, which was a beacon of light in an otherwise underwhelming set of character arcs.

    Brandon also took some unfortunate notes from the MCU's handbook, as he tired tying in current events and "modern-day teenager-speak" into an already long 1,300+ page novel. This includes some ham-fisted political takes (including disastrous line from Kaladin -"No, I am his therapist") that could have been way more effective and subtle. There's also a throwaway story about accepting transgender individuals, and a gay romance that I don't believe was foreshadowed. I honestly do not care about these things being added, especially since it may be Brandon's way of pushing away from his Mormon background and seriously trying to advocate for a better and more empathetic America, but it is still strange. I can almost picture a line of female characters forming at the final battle and saying something like "don't worry guys, us girls can handle this." I don't believe that this is Brandon's Endgame (great pun), but the fact that I can imagine it scares me. He's crafted extremely compelling female characters, courageous gay characters, and through his storylines he's displayed important lessons about mental health and friendship. In becoming more and more explicit, he takes away from his intended messaging and creates a worse product.

    Now, this book is still incredible. Why? Because of how impressive the scope is. The task Brandon has set out for himself is so impressive, so audacious, that you have to simply stare in awe. Whatever you could criticize about a character's storyline or a specific chapter, the overall narrative is something no one else is even attempting to do right now. Sure, I really hated some of the decisions he made at the end (the Gav storyline especially), but the sheer weight of the end of this five book arc still hits like a sledgehammer. This book was not really a conclusion, unfortunately, and it will be criticized for being mostly build-up fodder to the next five books. But the journey has been worth it so far, and I cannot wait for the series to continue. The Cosmere, at long last, is now in play.

6. Breakfast with Seneca (A), by David Fideler

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56769533-breakfast-with-seneca

    Unfortunately, this is just not that good of a book. Stoicism is interesting, but there are very obvious flaws with the philosophy and it should not be taken as a religion. Seneca is not a godly/religious figure. David, unfortunately, treats him as such. I'd rather read a book that engages in any amount of criticism, and this is book has none (except for critics of Seneca/Stoicism). There are better ways to learn about Stoicism, I see this only appealing to very unsophisticated thinkers who are sure to be misled by David's confidence.

7. Slow Productivity (A), by Cal Newport

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197773418-slow-productivity

    I like Cal, but I don't think he has anything left to say. There was some variety between So Good They Can't Ignore You, Deep Work, and Digital Minimalism. This is basically a less compelling version of Deep Work, and honestly I wouldn't say this was worth the read. Still, I'd highly recommend So Good They Can't Ignore You (it's fine to skip the rest).

8. The Count of Monte Cristo (A), by Alexandre Dumas

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7126.The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo

    Incredible. Without hesitation I moved this to my top 10 books of all-time. It's insane that this was written in 1846, given that it's better than almost all other fiction I've read. Now, I wasn't totally surprised at how good the book was; most of my most respected recommenders cite the book as their favorite. I knew that I would like it. However, I did not know the level of ferocity with which I would be compelled to finish. The book drags a little bit in the middle (when the Count is in Rome), so I put the book down for about six months. Once I picked it back up, I finished the rest in a day. In some sense this was both an exhausting read and worth every minute. A true "classic," in every sense of the word.

9. Self Comes to Mind (A), by António Damásio

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7766914-self-comes-to-mind

    Fascinating book. I've been reading a ton of philosophy lately that is about consciousness, but this bridges the gap to actual neuroscience research. Without grounding to actual scientific consensus (which Antonio does well), it's easy to get lost in abstract discussions and thought experiments. Antonio sets out to explain conscious experience through discussing actual mechanisms in the brain. It's an ambitious book, and I think he could do a better job explaining his conclusions and "sign-posting" where he is going with some arguments. A lot of work is placed on the reader to figure out what the key takeaways of Antonio's discussion is. That being said, very well worth the read, especially if you have more of a neuroscience background (it's pretty technical).

10. Machine Learning Yearning (P), by Andrew Ng

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30741739-machine-learning-yearning

    A book with helpful tips for running ML experiments and processes. Nothing special, but overall fairly useful. I found the descriptions of bias and variance, and how to handle them, pretty useful conceptually. In the age of AI I'm not sure there's anything here Claude couldn't do better, but this was still a better book than I expected.

Second 10 Books I Read in 2025

Reading Period: March 23 - May 03

1. History and Utopia (P), by Emil Cioran

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/455488.History_and_Utopia

    In some sense, I have probably exhausted Cioran's work. I find him compelling and brilliant, but there is something about his writing style (and the translation) that makes it difficult to engage with additional material of his. It seems that Cioran's overall life philosophy is extremely compelling (and hilarious), but he lacks a diverse array of new ideas that makes his broader work seem a bit saturated.

2. The Conscious Mind (A), by David Chalmers

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144960.The_Conscious_Mind

    Extremely compelling and important book. Pure, unfiltered philosophy. The kind that risks boredom, but upon reflection exposes brilliance. It's interesting to me that there aren't more writers solely focused on the hard problem of consciousness. It seems to me the most important problem imaginable, and the most interesting. David has certainly been very influential in my own writing/thinking, and I'm shocked that this is the first book of his I've read. Looking forward to diving deeper into his ideas moving forward.

3. Elantris (A), by Brandon Sanderson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68427.Elantris

    I could definitely tell that this was Brandon's first book. Some of the writing is sloppy, and a lot of the dialogue is corny (to a level that runs the immersion). That being said, the storyline and the world-building is incredible, and there's something particularly endearing about reading Brandon's first book. I sort of got a better sense of how far he's come as a writer, and where he's unlikely to improve.

4. The Hope of Elantris (A), by Brandon Sanderson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10852065-the-hope-of-elantris

    There were a few loose ends from Elantris that needed to be tied up (the weapon cart, etc.). That being said, that's probably just something that could have been fixed during editing, and I don't think this novella is that great as a stand-alone.

5. Mortality (A), by Christopher Hitchens

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13529055-mortality

    Pretty depressing. During my initial phase of questioning religion, Christopher was somewhat influential on me. I found him more mean-spirited and less convincing than the other "four horseman of the non-apocalypse," but certainly more entertaining. Reading this narrative about the end of his life was, quite simply, sad. He still maintains his wit and humor, and the last-minute jabs at religion were funny. But despite all of the failings of organized religion, at least the devout have the ability to pass into nothingness with a smile.

6. The Last Messiah (P), by Peter Wessel Zapffe

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22060860-the-last-messiah

    Incredible, 10/10. Such a short, impactful read. For my own reference, as I'm sure I'll re-read these sections whenever I'm in the mood for some existential terror, here is the first chapter:

"One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself. He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind. Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive. That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole."

    And here is the last:

"If we continue these considerations to the bitter end, then the conclusion is not in doubt. As long as humankind recklessly proceeds in the fateful delusion of being biologically fated for triumph, nothing essential will change. As its numbers mount and the spiritual atmosphere thickens, the techniques of protection must assume an increasingly brutal character. And humans will persist in dreaming of salvation and affirmation and a new Messiah. Yet when many saviours have been nailed to trees and stoned on the city squares, then the last Messiah shall come. Then will appear the man who, as the first of all, has dared strip his soul naked and submit it alive to the outmost thought of the lineage, the very idea of doom. A man who has fathomed life and its cosmic ground, and whose pain is the Earth’s collective pain. With what furious screams shall not mobs of all nations cry out for his thousandfold death, when like a cloth his voice encloses the globe, and the strange message has resounded for the first and last time:   

– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.

– The sign of doom is written on your brows 

– How long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?

– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.

– Know yourselves

– Be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.

And when he has spoken, they will pour themselves over him, led by the pacifier makers and the midwives, and bury him in their fingernails. He is the last Messiah. As son from father, he stems from the archer by the waterhole."

7. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives (P), by David Eagleman

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4948826-sum

    Pretty interesting read, and certainly up my alley. A collection of fictional short stories about the afterlife, such as one where you can only talk to people you interacted with in real life:

"The missing crowds make you lonely. You begin to complain about all the people you could be meeting. But no one listens or sympathizes with you, because this is precisely what you chose when you were alive."

    There are 40 total scenarios, all interesting. The ending of every chapter feels profound, but I wouldn't classify this book as very profound when taken as a whole. Still worth the read.

8. Nausea (A), by Jean-Paul Sartre

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/298275.Nausea

    It took me a couple years to get to finally finishing this book. Some of it is incredible, meaning stop on the sidewalk to rewind sort of incredible. However, taken as a whole I found the book somewhat disappointing, I'm not sure I find Jean-Paul that compelling as a writer (perhaps I had too high of expectations).

9. Better to Never Have Been (A), by David Benatar

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/660518.Better_Never_to_Have_Been

    'My life is amazing, but I recently had a papercut. Thus, I wish I was never born.'

    Negative utilitarianism is very interesting to me. As someone who finds anti-natalism both compelling and hilarious, I honestly think David did a terrible job arguing for it here. I was expecting great things along the lines of a Cioran or Ligotti, but I believe my high-school self could have given more compelling arguments than David. He simply makes assumptions, refuses to back them up (besides implying that they are "obviously true"), and then he makes a conclusion. It's a horrible way to craft a narrative, and makes for an extremely underwhelming book. David states that a life of steadily declining achievement is "worse" than the opposite, as the trajectory of a life can make it better or worse than another, even if the "utils" are the same. Why? If you have a horrible 10 years, and amazing 10 years after, or the opposite, but the total level of pleasure/utils/well-being is equal, why is one better than the other? Because David simply states that believing anything else is silly? He makes these sort of unfounded claims over and over again.

    

    Some say it's worse to kill a fetus than a 20 year old, since a fetus has a longer life remaining to be lived. David says that we can tell that this logic is obviously wrong, since most of us believe it is worse to kill a 20 year old. What? Having your "philosopher hat" on for even a moment makes this book unbearable. David claims that there is a big harm in existing, but killing yourself should never be done. Why? If good and bad are evenly distributed, but bad is 10x less "good" than good because David says so, both living and existing seem pretty bad. Why not kill yourself, philosophically speaking?

    

    Nevertheless, I do think negative utilitarianism does pose some actual important points. It's difficult to think about the repugnant conclusion or population ethics if you are a util-maxxing utilitarianism, and people like David rightly point out how many utilitarian beliefs are illogical. There are just simply more impressive authors out there to hear this sort of criticism from.

10. Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (A), by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12075.Tractatus_Logico_Philosophicus

    Honestly, I barely comprehended most of this. Without a final LLM summary, I would have missed a lot of the important ideas conveyed.

First 10 Books I Read in 2025

 Reading Period: January 01 - March 23

1. The Holloway Guide to Equity Compensation (P), by Joshua Levy

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48753169-the-holloway-guide-to-equity-compensation

    Simple book, very comprehensive overview of startup equity. I've been increasingly applying my financial expertise to the world of startups, and this was certainly a useful resource.

2. The Moral Circle (A), by Jeff Sebo

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213395476-the-moral-circle

    Jeff and I have a different set of arguments regarding digital minds. His are inherently probabilistic. If there is only a one in 1,000 chance of digital consciousness, isn't the scale big enough that this issue should be one of our top issues? This thinking is fair, and entirely rational, but I tend to avoid it in my own writings. Why? Well, I think it sort of anchors the audience into thinking that digital consciousness is unlikely. In reality, we have no idea, and there don't seem to be obvious reasons that consciousness must be a biological phenomenon. 

    

    Jeff also states that "morality is a marathon, not a sprint." I think this is certainly true, and thus it is unfortunate that we may have so little time before AGI. Which means we have to get moving! One last point on the book's content: Jeff states that how we treat silicon beings during our time in power may shape how they treat us during their time in power. For a few technical reasons I think this is incorrect, and somewhat of an unfortunate anthropomorphization. To expand on this, I mean that AI alignment is either going to work or it won't, and misaligned AI are unlikely to "punish" humans who treated digital minds poorly, any more than they are to "reward" humans who are emphatic towards digital minds. For this to happen would require creating a form of AI that to me seems unlikely, and if we can instill that sort of empathy in AI, have we not likely solved the alignment problem? Still, there may be some interesting ways in which this claim may be correct in a roundabout way. Perhaps focusing so clearly on empathy and treating AI development with the care that would be required to develop conscious beings (instead of calculators) is really the safest path forward for everyone.

   Regardless, Jeff is an inspiration. I met him a few days before reading this book, and I would say that it is quite impressive that Jeff can stand in front of a crowd and talk about such "radical" ideas. His ability to press so far into caring about the "bots" not only keeps me going, it fueled me in the first place.

3. Venture Deals (P), by Brad Feld

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11865558-venture-deals

    Pretty incredible guidebook, filled to the brim with useful content. What matters in a term sheet? Economics and control. What's the deal with early-stage financial models? The only thing to know with certainty is that they will be wrong. Is a bridge loan a bridge to the next round? Or is it a pier that drops into the ocean? These questions, and a lot more, are all answered. The informal language is a massive benefit. For example, Brad states that "if you care about information rights for your shareholders, you are nuts. You should run a transparent organization as much as possible in the twenty-first century. If you can't commit to sending your shareholders a budget and financial statements, you shouldn't take on outside investors." Such clarity of communication is the books biggest strength, especially since the topic in general is so dense. Well worth the read, possibly multiple times if you work in the space.

4. Neural Networks and Deep Learning (P), by Michael Nielsen

 Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24582662-neural-networks-and-deep-learning

    Many instances of something seeming extremely complex, but are actually just explained by simple but powerful set of ideas. Michaels book guides us through all of these simple but powerful ideas. It is interesting to think through perceptron mathematics and gradient descent, but what I found most interesting was observing how my own mental model of neural networks changed during my reading of this book. It is hard to really start visualizing the process of backpropagation, but once you begin to, it becomes pretty strikingly straightforward. Probably the most interesting topic in the book came up late, when Michael discussed sort of the reason scale was so surprising. Occam's razor was at work in deep learning initially, when people were trying to stay small and create the most optimal solution. Turns out, more compute and more data simply make the models better, who knew? Also, the concept of universality is interesting. Basically, no matter what function we want to compute, there is a neural networks that can do the job. I'd recommend this book to anyone with even a slight interest in deep learning.

5. Langchain Crash Course (P), by Greg Lim

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59713693-gpt-3

    Not worth the read. I was interested in learning more about Langchain, but I would have been better served reading five minutes worth of online documentation instead. 

6. GPT-3, by Shubham Kublik

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59713693-gpt-3

    Given how much time I've actually spent with LLMs, this book certainly wasn't worth the read. It was essentially a basic overview of how to use the OpenAI API, circa 2022.

7. Chess Story (P), by Stefan Zweig

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59151.Chess_Story

    Damn, this was shockingly good. Not many authors can cram a moving storyline, compelling characters, and a thought-provoking ending into a book that is less than one hundred pages. Stefan more than succeeded here. The ending battle of wits between Czentovic and Dr. B. displays such raw psychological intensity that it stands with some of the best fiction. Certainly worth the read.

8. The Mom Test (P), by Rob Fitzpatrick

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52283963-the-mom-test

    A fairly short and simple business book. The mom test: ask questions to your customer in a roundabout way that avoids false positive (“oh that’s a nice idea sweetie. I’d certainly buy a cookbook app that you made.”). The book is filled with handy tips, such as: “People know what their problems are, but they don’t know how to solve those problems” and “if they haven’t looked for ways of solving it already, they’re not going to look for (or buy) yours.” Probably only worth reading if you haven’t already read a ton of business books.

9. Bluets (P), by Maggie Nelson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6798263-bluets

    This book was certainty interesting. I was a bit thrown off by the random, sharp sexuality, but I don't believe there was much that was out of place in this book. It was an intriguing, experimental book that I'm sure many would enjoy. That being said, it was not for me. Through no fault of my own, and through no fault of Maggie, I simply didn't connect with this one. The last few sentences of the book are incredible, but I actually think it is worth otherwise skipping altogether. Here is the end:

    "I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world. But now you are talking as if love were a consolation. Simone Weil warned otherwise. 'Love is not consolation,' she wrote. 'It is light.' All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light."

10. Managing Oneself (A), by Peter Drucker

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2477223.Managing_Oneself

    I'd skip this, read something like High Output Management instead.

Last Five Books I Read in 2024

Reading Period: May 24 - December 31

1. Discrete Mathematics and its Applications (P), by Kenneth Rosen

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1800803.Discrete_Mathematics_and_its_Applications

    In preparation for a placement exam, which if I passed I would have tested out of a Discrete Math course at the University of Chicago, I ended up reading a majority of this book. Unfortunately, the exam did not work out and I ended up having to take the course anyway, during which I re-read nine of the thirteen chapters multiple times. This meant that I did hardly any other reading over the summer, and also that I now have a pretty good handle on the topics covered in discrete mathematics. I would categorize this book as tough, but fair. The material is fairly challenging, but it is clearly an excellent introduction to the mathematics that underpin computer science. I would guess that there aren't any "better" books on the subject, but I also think it is clear that there are better ways to learn the subject than through a textbook. 

2. Situational Awareness (P), by Leopold Aschenbrenner

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214290546-situational-awareness

    Probably the most thought-provoking book I have read in quite a few years. Leopold is clearly intelligent, and in general I share his outlook in broad strokes. I think he is too overconfident, as many, many others claim that scaling LLM architecture is not going to result in AGI. Leopold seems to think it isn't even a question. I listed to a podcast recently with Francois Chollet, the creator of Keras, who insists that LLMs struggle to generalize regardless of scaling. Leopold strongly disagrees, without proof, and claims that AGI by 2027 is the most likely scenario. Leopold claims to be in the "inner circle" of AI capability development, and he that he knows everyone of importance in the AI race, or at least is separated by no more than one mutual connection. He sees his previous investing prowess (longing NVIDIA in 2023 and shorting the market before COVID) as proof of his ability to call events, and he leans on his one-year tenure at OpenAI on their superalignment team for insider credibility. Leopold was let go by OpenAI and is now starting his own investment fund, at the ripe age of 22. He is too brash and overconfident in his writing, to a degree that I think harms his greater points. I don't trust someone who worked at an AI lab for a year when draws a straight line on a few data points and tells me that a curve is exponential, and I would guess that readers not ingrained in the same quirky social groups as Leopold won't buy many of his claims either. Personality quirks aside, what Leopold did with this book is extremely impressive.

    First off, I think he legitimately changed my opinion on a few things, especially his points about the importance of avoiding a close AI race between the US and China. Leopold states that "superintelligence is a matter of national security, and the United States must win." Also, he rightfully points out that AI research will be the first main target of automation. Once we get AGI, why waste time with any area of development in the world except AI research, if more AI research will make smarter models that have better judgement? In addition, Leopold find the idea of Silicon Valley CEOs deploying superintelligence as rightfully ridiculous, and has extremely insightful views on the competitive dynamics within geopolitics and how history will likely repeat itself. I find his views as innovative as they are terrifying, but I think he is more or less correct. He is also fearful of AI use by totalitarian regimes, as he states:

"A dictator who wields the power of superintelligence would command concentrated power unlike any we’ve ever seen. In addition to being able to impose their will on other countries, they could enshrine their rule internally. Millions of AI controlled robotic law enforcement agents could police their populace; mass surveillance would be hypercharged; dictator loyal AIs could individually assess every citizen for dissent, with advanced near-perfect lie detection rooting out any disloyalty."

    Leopold is a geopolitical realist, and he has his head firmly grounded in the history of war and competition we have seen play out over humanity's lifespan. I think perhaps the only downside of this book from a utilitarian perspective is that it could "wake up" China to the race dynamics happening, but it is probably more important that the dynamics of the new cold war be realized by those in the US early, even at this risk. What I find strange about this book is that I think Leopold might have crazy foresight. Sure, it could all be brash, youthful arrogance, but some of these ideas make almost too much sense. I am not going declare this book prophecy. But if Leopold is as smart as he thinks he is, he might as well be a prophet. 

3. The Picture of Dorian Gray (P), by Oscar Wilde

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5297.The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

    "To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable." One of the wittiest books I have ever read, and an altogether pleasant read. Lord Henry is certainly the funniest character, who goes on frequent tirades such as the following: "men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed", and "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there." Lord Henry's view on women is what you would classify today as boomer-humor, as in "women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out," and "the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life." Lord Henry believes that only the rich and interesting have social value, as "even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees." 

    Lordy Henry mentors Dorian Gray, a beautiful and empty man who says things like: "I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure." This book, overall, is half witty banter between Lord Henry and others and half Dorian Gray doing bad stuff both because of and in spite of his beauty. This book took me a while to get through despite its short length, but I think it is well worth the read if you like Oscar Wilde.

4. Number the Stars (A), by Lois Lowry

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47281.Number_the_Stars

    A surprisingly good book, especially since it is only 137 pages. The book follows a young girl named Annemarie during the Nazi occupation of Denmark during WWII. Annemarie's family is assisting with the hiding of their Jewish neighbors and their transportation to an unoccupied Sweden, and the entire narrative is thus displayed through a 10-year old girl's perspective. I have a hard time disliking anything WWII related, and this was no exception. I learned a lot, and the subject matter was moving. I'd certainly recommend reading.

5. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (P), by Ursula K LeGuin

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92625.The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas

    Incredibly good short story. It really hits on a very interesting, profound set of moral questions. Everyone should read this, perhaps multiple times. I'd like to hope that I would be the sort of person to walk away from Omelas.