Reading Period: September 25 - December 31
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.
2. Artificial You (A), by Susan Schneider
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44526011-artificial-you
Very good book. Susan is one of the most well-known figures in the realm of AI consciousness, and she has more prestige than nearly anyone in the field. I quoted her multiple times in my own book, and a lot of our arguments are the same. There was a lot of discussion of personhood in this, particularly the idea that if you "upload" yourself to a computer, there's certainly a likelihood that this "upload" is not conscious and you basically just killed yourself. Susan spends a lot of the book arguing that brain uploading may not be the positive immortality it sounds like and that the transhumanist community may be making a critical mistake in thinking so (which in the future could have drastic consequences). Overall very accessible and straightforward read.
3. Inferno, the World at War (A), by Max Hastings
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11256415-inferno
It's easy to forget how horrifying and bleak World War II was, or any war for that matter. It's also easy to forget how short of a time scale these conflicts operate under, and how many millions of people can die in the span of six months. Inferno is a masterclass work by Max, covering almost the entire WWII conflict over a six-year period. It's dark, sad, and informative. I was looking for a high-level, comprehensive history of the conflict, and Max delivered. It's just a bit sad to get to the end, and to realize that all of this actually happened. The wholesale slaughter of civilians, the unspeakable war crimes, and the industrialized genocide of the Jewish people. It happened, all of it. And if that doesn't shake you to your soul, and fill you with deep distress, you're not human.
4. The Edge of Sentience (A), by Johnathan Birch
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215505354-the-edge-of-sentience
The most comprehensive, academically serious work I've come across on one of the most important topics in history. It's hard to overstate how good of a job Johnathan did here, I only wish I had read this cover to cover sooner (although I read many sections previously). My meta-level concern here is that the book is a bit too academic, and the high price will make this pretty much entirely inaccessible to most people. Which is a shame, because a much more condensed version of this could be hugely impactful. Johnathan's ideas will be influential regardless (and he's already a leading voice), but I don't think many people outside of the current sentience community will be motivated to cover-to-cover this easily. But for those of us in this community, I can't imagine a more useful book.
5. High Growth Handbook (A), by Elad Gil
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40536148-high-growth-handbook
This was only ok. I had very high hopes initially, because Elad mentioned the stress of high-growth startups and the idea that the company is basically an entirely new company every six months of intense growth. I figured this would be a no-nonsense technical manual on scaling. There were quite a few insightful comments throughout the book, but overall it fell pretty flat. Each chapter ended with podcast-style interviews of a famous entrepreneur, which was a nice touch but a little too long and unstructured. The rest of the book was actually extremely short, and without these interviews probably could have been summarized in a blog post. Elad is sort of a weird guy, he says things like "I like to laugh and have fun when I am at a company party, I'd recommend you do the same." He's either a poor writer or a bit autistic, but regardless the book's instructions felt a little lizard-person-y at times. Probably not worth the read, but not entirely lacking in substance.
6. Mastering Private Equity (A), by Claudia Zeisberger
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35625079-mastering-private-equity
A really solid technical manual on the PE industry. I learned a lot, but for some reason finished the book wishing it was even more technical and informative. It's a pretty good birds-eye-view of the PE landscape and worth the read, but could have used more analytical grit or interesting case studies.
7. Secrets of Sand Hill Road (A), by Scott Kupor
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42348376-secrets-of-sand-hill-road
Pretty phenomenal book. I'd say likely the best book on the PE/VC industry I've read outside of The Power Law, and exactly the level of deep-dive informative I've been looking for. It's pretty comparable to Venture Deals actually, and I'd highly recommend anyone interested in startups or VC read both books. Scott wrote a pretty killer manual on the entire industry here, and I left the book having reinforced my understanding of tons of important concepts. Honestly, the book make me like a16z quite a bit more, and made me realize how new the VC industry is and how quickly these early stage private markets have risen in prominence. It's all a bit surprising, and certainly cool.
8. Who (A), by Geoff Smart
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4989687-who
Pretty thoroughly disappointing. Sure, potentially the most important thing a company does is hire. However, this book conveys little to no wisdom outside of the most basic common sense. It is full of dumb stories and silly lessons. For example, Geoff tells the reader they should continue to probe their candidates in interviews instead of staying surface-level. The example story is of an interviewee who is very open about slapping his previous boss, which was the reason he was fired. Geoff then mentions that this anecdote shows the importance of digging deep in interviews. If you've had any sort of real-world work experience or have any sort of social awareness, this book is a complete waste of time.
9. The Lean Startup (A), by Eric Ries
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10127019-the-lean-startup
Learn from customer feedback: just ship and iterate! This book has had a pretty substantial impact on the startup ecosystem, and the idea that the only way to find PmF is to try and fail repeatedly until something sticks is certainly compelling. "Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer's problem." The lean startup method hinges on the realization that success at the customer level cannot be theorized in advance. You may think that you know what problems customers are facing and you may think you have a useful product, but until your ideas make contact with reality, you are hopeless. Instead of spending tons of cycles on premature optimization, ship imperfect products early and often and let the scientific method get to work. Pretty compelling idea, but only a decent book (it took me forever to finish). Read half in print and did the other half via audiobook, which may have worsened my experience. Likely still mandatory reading for any entrepreneur.
10. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (P), by Richard Feynman
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5544.Surely_You_re_Joking_Mr_Feynman_
IDK man, he seems pretty unlikeable. Maybe the antics of this book would be more impressive and entertaining to a young science nerd in high school, but with age and empathy, it's a bit hard to understand the praise for this book. Richard never really gained in maturity throughout his life; honestly my take is that his life is a sort of regressive, cautionary tale. He starts life as a prankster at MIT, but again, with age, a lot of the "pranks" seem pretty mean-spirited. Flipping cups upside down that waitresses have to clean up, for example, doesn't come off as amusing to me. He sort of wraps his life up as a professor who is thoroughly obsessed with women, sleeps with students, goes to topless bars six days a week, learns the art of negging in Vegas, and gets into drawing (of nude models, of course). He plays the bongos and goes to Brazil and stuff, but the safe-cracking hobby was really the only interesting extracurricular he had. The real problem is, I didn't really learn anything from this book, and overall thought it was extremely underwhelming intellectually. You would think there would be reflections on the atomic age, or interesting meta-discussions on physics, or moving life-lessons from such a credentialed individual, but you're sort of left with nothing but this weird case-study on Richard's infatuation with the female body. It's pretty jarring and uncomfortable, and there's no "meat" to the story or narrative ingenuity that gives the book substance elsewhere. Why isn't there? There are plenty of good books out there. Plenty of authors who craft compelling memoirs and autobiographies from much less source material (West With the Night, for example). Pretty disappointing for Richard to have lived his life permanently bogged down by primitive drives, and a shame that this was inevitably such a major theme of the book (it is about his life, after all). A good microcosm of this baggage is Richard's drawing (in spirit) of Madame Curie, one of the most prominent, respected female scientists of all time:
"I drew her torso as well, so you could also see her breasts and the shadows they made. I stuck it in with the other drawings in the exhibit and called it "Madame Curie Observing the Radiations from Radium." The message I intended to convey was, nobody thinks of Madame Curie as a woman, as feminine, with beautiful hair, bare breasts, and all that. They only think of the radium part."
It's interesting that Richard, of all people, decides that it is his duty to convey the important message that others don't think enough of Madame Curie's femininity. Does this "message" come from a place of meaningful artistic expression, or juvenile perversion? Does a Noble Prize, and the weight of an impressive career in physics, signify that Richard is qualified to claim the former? While Richard's wife was sick in the hospital, he was disappointed to discover that a tree was blocking his view into the women's dormitory at Los Alamos. It is certainly true that "nobody" reflects on Madame Curie's breasts, and instead focus on her scientific accomplishments, aka the "radium part." Richard, in all his apparent scientific brilliance, never stops to wonder if maybe the world around him has it right. Perhaps it is he who is the one in need of a message. Perhaps it is he, Richard P. Feynman, who thinks about Madame Curie's breasts too much.
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