Third Group of Books I Read in 2026

  Reading Period: April 12 - Present

1.  The Player of Games (A), by Iain M. Banks

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18630.The_Player_of_Games

    Pretty interesting story, was less dark and depressing than Consider Phelbas. I wasn't quite sure what to expect with Iain, since he's so praised, but this was a bit more of an aged, simple story than I was expecting. I think it was pretty good, and worth the read, but it didn't quite knock my socks off. The worldbuilding is quite interesting, but I'm not insanely excited about the next read. 

2.  Expecting Better (A), by Emily Oster

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16158576-expecting-better

    I like the concept a lot (Freakonomics but for pregnancy), and the end of the book was pretty useful/informative. I think the beginning is a bit contrarian/destructive. Basically the tone feels off, like a "I drink red wine when pregnant, because I've done the research and I'm superior" type of energy. I think it's the wrong sort of vibe, people should think more in terms of traditional finance (risk/reward, Sharpe ratios), instead of probabilities. Not sure how to say this, but maybe it's a book husbands should read but wives shouldn't (the data is useful and calming, but pregnant women could easily overindex on Emily's confidence). Basically it's a useful break from tradition (which is often clouded in fear and mystery), but often that tradition contains some wisdom. I also think that when carrying a child, the child cannot consent to any decisions (such as the mother deciding to drink occasionally), and as such there is a duty to do right by your child even at personal cost, especially if it is small (such as not being able to drink while pregnant). The sections on third trimester pregnancy were the most interesting, I'd recommend those regardless of the rest.

3.  The Infinity Machine (P), by Sebastian Mallaby

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241434373-the-infinity-machine

   Demis Hassabis is a True Believer. Perhaps one of the first to recognize the true potential of AGI, and certainly the first to go after building it. He states that "AGI is infinitely bigger than a company or a person or a set of owners. It's bigger than capitalism and national economies." People today worry about UBI or the electricity demands of data centers, but they lack vision. "People aren't thinking ambitiously enough about what a post-AGI world will look like... I don't think money's even going to be relevant. What will money mean in a post-scarcity society? Or corporations. Or the stock market. What do these things mean if we have superabundance." Demis believes that the future is going to be like the Culture series (referenced above!), he states "maybe it's as big as the emergence of the prefrontal cortex in humans." 

    This book chronicles the early history of Demis and his company, DeepMind, and ends with its current trajectory in the AGI race, aka "the most crazy, ferocious corporate battle that we've ever seen." I found this book pretty excellent overall, but the overall storyline was a bit cluttered. The layout is a bit stream-of-consciousness, starting with a cheerful biography of Demis and ending with a chronology of Google's place in the product battle on route to AGI. Sebastian, unfortunately, isn't a great biographer. He's clearly a big fan of Demis, but if I have to read one more pontification about Demis the "Ender Jedi" I'm going to lose my mind. Sebastian doesn't really dive deep into personalities (not his skill set), and he overuses the same metaphors and comparisons ad nauseam. Sure, Demis is quiet and "Jedi-like." Is that it?

    While Sebastian fails as a biographer, he shines as a historian. The story he outlines is fascinating, that of an over-eager English genius setting out to transform science forever. Demis is unfortunately born in Britain - "The Founders Fund team joked that investing in Britain was like investing in Somalia" - and is the first mover in the AGI race. This means he is starved of capital and has to pave the vision from scratch with overseas investors, a really hard task. He sells to Google for $650 million at the end of 2014, so that he can focus on research and not runway. He (and Mustafa) sort of sell their soul insofar as they are unable to negotiate any safety guarantees outside of Google's profit maximization incentives. The lesson here is a bit brutal - "The notion that a well-meaning individual had a seat at the table offered a flimsy scaffolding of reassurance to an alarmed world. But perhaps it was the best comfort available."

    This is stated through a few stories, but because of public and governmental ignorance, and the speed at which AI is developing, traditional corporate controls are unlikely to prove decisive outside of just having the "right" people in the room. "Reid Hoffman had been correct in 2017. It was worth risking his fortune on corporate-governance experiments because governments were unlikely to take action." Demis knew the stakes - "Hassabis would inform candidates that, if they signed on, they should prepare for a climactic endgame when they might have to disappear into a bunker" - but couldn't foresee the messiness execution would require. He doesn't control Google, Larry does. He can get fired. He will play a role in the AGI future insofar as he's been able to amass power within the organization, but he is much less of a decision maker over AGI-gemini than Larry, Elon, or Sam are, given he's working within a huge organization with limited voting stake. Now, I quite like Demis. He seems to have set out on the AGI journey for truly noble reasons (science) and Sebastian gives no inkling of doubt in this regard. Demis thinks Sam is doing this for power, for example, whereas he is content with his Nobel prize and modest living situation. What is most endearing is his frustration, which I share, with other players who don't "get" it. He decided not to entertain Zuckerberg further, once Zuck shared just as much excitement about AI as he did virtual reality, crypto, etc., and I'm sure he feels similarly about a16z and others who lack vision. 

    Demis states that "any pattern that can be generated or found in nature can be efficiently discovered and modeled by a classical learning algorithm." The OpenAI people were really the only others more bullish than him "if you have a very large dataset and a very large neural network, then success is guaranteed" said Ilya. Ilya also believed that "RL amounted to 'an endless hill of suffering'", whereas DeepMind spun their wheels for years. Sebastian is great at explaining concepts, and he chronicles the RL vs deep learning debate and historical context very well. He states that "the essence of intelligence is the ability to respond flexibly to complex situations," and it is clear that both RL and deep learning will play large roles in AI's future. OpenAI's history is peripherally discussed, the most interesting quote was "Pushing back against Musk's obsession with the race against Google and DeepMind, Brockman added, 'It doesn't matter who wins if everyone dies.'" There's clearly some traditional Eleizer hesitation among the creators of the most important research:

    "I am in the camp that is hopeless," Hinton informed Bostrom. "In that you think it will not be a cause for good?" Bostrom inquired. "I think political systems will use it to terrorize people," Hinton answered. "Then why are you doing the research?" Bostrom asked. "I could give you the usual arguments," Hinton replied. "But the truth is that the prospect of discovery is too sweet."

    Science is amazing, and I agree with Demis that scientific discovery is really the only place where AI is unambiguously good. I also agree with Sebastian that "to understand biology, you needed more than biological intelligence." Neural networks are messy and complex, which poses an apt challenge: "And of course that's quite troubling for science, because science is about reducing things to their essentials. You have complexity, and then you break it down to understand it; You look at the components. But the problem is, what if the phenomenon you're interested in only exists when you put the components together? That poses a bit of a challenge to the normal scientific method." As someone who is working to use AI to advance scientific discovery in biology, the relevant discussion in the book was quite fascinating.

    Given how steeped into the book's content I've been for the past five years, I probably got less out of this book than others will. But it's probably a must-read, and the flawed organization and delivery shouldn't dissuade someone from reading. Sebastian is probably the best non-fiction business writer on the planet, and certainly my favorite, and this will be one of the most important stories in world history. Any details shouldn't be missed.

4.  Reasons and Persons (P), by Derek Parfit

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/327051.Reasons_and_Persons

    This will probably change my worldview quite substantially, or at least reinforce a lot of the ideas that have been swirling around in my head (likely as a result of reading material heavily influenced by this). I really enjoyed the book, and found Derek's focused analysis very compelling. It starts off with a random-seeming set of arguments against self-interest theory, and other philosophical groundwork. 

    Derek argues that even if there is a true north star goal for morality (or really anything), often best achieving that goal may be believing something else (or using something else as a north star). For example: "Hedonists have long known that happiness, when aimed at, is harder to achieve. If my strongest desire is that I be happy, I may be less happy than I would be if I had other desires that were stronger. Thus I might be happier if my strongest desire was that someone else be happy." Derek also shows that sometimes it can be rational to become irrational. If a robber puts you in a bind, depending on the correct assumption that you are a rational actor, you can actually reduce the likelihood of getting killed by becoming completely and totally irrational. 

    Note that morality, in a sense, especially utilitarianism, is in some sense built off of ideal deliberation. If you could think clearly, weren't distracted, and knew all the relevant facts, you could do not only what you think you want, but what you'd want to do if you did this ideal deliberation. Moral reasoning requires rationality, and thus intelligence and forecasting. This is a pretty big deal, because better prediction on long term effects of actions (which could require simulations or higher brain power), and thus AI or accelerated technology, could be massively important for moral reasoning. Maybe we have a moral duty to accelerate technology so that we can actually make headway on such moral decisions (versus flying blind).

    A lot of the time, common sense morality and consequentialist thought aims at similar targets and has similar steps along the way (individual rights, etc.). I point this out in my book, but Derek mentions that "we might find that, in Mill's words, our opponents were 'climbing the hill on the other side.'" I'd like to make a quick point here - and that is that I'm beginning to believe that qualia is the only thing that matters. Utilitarianism, of the one life = one life variety, is a bit crude. The number of positive experiences, and the quality of those experiences, could be what matters. Not every life is equal, as some lives lead to better long-term qualia maximization. Even if we go off of some objective list, or other theory, it's a max and min function at the end of the day. There are a lot of interesting thoughts about uncertainty here (and how we should act under such extreme uncertainty), but my main takeaway is that the psychological connectivity of experiences (instead of persons) matter mainly as this sort of individual rights route as a way to climb the hill on the other side. The rudimentary "all lives are equal" is thus the same, as its reasonable to expect qualia/consciousness doesn't differ between humans (or at least there's no way to know right now). Thus consciousness is the only thing that matters, morally, and the duration and flavor of such consciousness (pleasure or some higher-order art or discovery played out in the real world) constitutes moral theory, alone. Maybe the experience machine is the end-all-be all, as long as it's output is maximized and someone ensures it continues functioning. Thus, acquiring computational resources that can output positive qualia (or doing things in the world to result in positive qualia) could be a moral imperative as well. Intentional growth, it seems, may be a moral imperative across all of these axes.

    Anyway, the book moves on to the more interesting discussion of personhood. First, Derek argues that there is no such thing as a "person," if you really think about it. There are plenty of interesting thought experiments here, but basically he outlines the Reductionist view, that "the existence of a person to involve nothing more than the occurrence of interrelated mental and physical events." Note some definitions: "Psychological connectedness is the holding of particular direct psychological connections. Psychological continuity is the holding of overlapping chains of strong connectedness."

    In Star Trek, does teleportation kill you? Derek states that "Teletransportation is about as good as ordinary survival... ordinary survival is about as bad as being destroyed and replicated." I'm not going to rehash all the arguments, you should just read the book, but they are pretty convincing. The implications are what I will focus on: "On the Reductionist View, it is more plausible to reject distributive principles. It is more plausible to focus, not on persons, but on experiences, and to claim that what matters morally is the nature of these experiences. On the impersonal Utilitarian Principle, the question who has an experience is as irrelevant as the question when the experience is had."

    Should we be impartial morally, across not just space but also time? Yes. Is past suffering bad? Yes. Is smoking cigarettes, or trying Heroin, morally wrong because it is an injustice to your future self? Yes. Derek claims that "We could make similar claims about our future selves. If we now care little about ourselves in the future, our future selves are like future generations. We can affect them for the worse, and, because they do not now exist, they cannot defend themselves. Like future generations, future selves have no vote, so their interests need to be specially protected." He also states that "We should claim that great imprudence is morally wrong. We ought not to do to our future selves what it would be wrong to do to other people." Note that "This reduces the claims of personal autonomy. We no longer have the right to do whatever we like, when we affect only ourselves. It is wrong to impose upon ourselves, for no good reason, great harm." Sound scary and totalitarian? Maybe. But maybe rights are just an important way to climb this hill, but sticking so fast to them may be a misjudgment for the long term.

    Derek states that it is hard to internalize, and thus believe, the Reductionist view. Derek half-jokes that Descartes "should not have claimed, I think, therefore I am. Though this is true, it is misleading. Descartes could have claimed instead, 'it is thought: thinking is going on.' Or he could have claimed, 'this is a thought, therefore at least one thought is being thought.'" I find it pretty confusing to reorient my mind around this discussion of personhood, but it seems compelling logically. Also, "When we cease to believe that persons are separately existing entities, the Utilitarian view becomes more plausible," so perhaps I am primed by my beliefs already. Plus, the Buddha did it! Derek states that upon changing his outlook, "other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others."

    Population ethics makes my head hurt, but Derek closes with them. This closing is full of thought experiments and the now-famous Repugnant Conclusion. I really like Derek's rigor here. He'll lead you along a path that seems plausible (perhaps average quality is what matters), and then shatter it before your eyes (Hell 1: ten people suffer torture for 50 years; Hell 2: ten million people suffer torture for 49 years). The non-identity problem, and other issues Derek raises, are brilliantly handled. The book ends this section with more questions than answers. Sure, you could bite the bullet on the repugnant conclusion, but it does feel so intuitively wrong. But I'd have said the same for the Reductionist view before reading this book, so it's hard to be confident of anything. Overall, I can see why this book had such a far-reaching impact. It's one of the most original works of philosophy I've read, and I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for decades to come.

5.  Investment Banking (A), by Joshua Rosenbaum

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6455493-investment-banking

    Solid textbook. If you've already been through some sort of rigorous valuation training, the first half (on comps, precedent transactions, and the DCF) is pretty unnecessary. I read the book mainly for the last two sections - mergers and IPOs, and it was pretty informative. Dry and matter-of-fact, but I feel like I have a broader understanding of the field now. Also, I really want a deal toy.

6. Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction (P), by Timothy Gowers

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74645.Mathematics

    Very short and simple walkthrough to the field of mathematics. Not quite sure who this book would be for, as it would be too technical for the layperson (and too unhelpful) and too basic for those with strong math backgrounds. It's a subject I haven't though a lot about recently, so I found it interesting.

7. Foundation (A), by Isaac Asimov

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29579.Foundation

    Pretty interesting! Hari Seldon the legend. I sort of wonder how interesting the book arc will be here, given how much of it is focused on predictions/forecasts coming true. The stories were a bit hard to follow because they jumped around a bit, but I got the gist. I'm not really big on old school sci-fi compared to cutting edge new technology type-stuff. Or at least I don't feel particularly motivated to finish the series. Although glad I read this.

8. The Last Wish (A), by Andrzej Sapkowski

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40603587-the-last-wish

    The Witcher! To be honest, I had no idea that the video game series was based on a book series. And I totally thought that the TV series was based on the video game. A collection of short stories about Geralt, really liked it. At the very least I have a great idea of what every book in the series is likely to be like, so if I'm ever in that specific mood I'm sure I'll be entertained. Wish it was a long narrative instead of short stories, that's the main downside here.

Second 10 Books I Read in 2026

 Reading Period: January 31 - April 12

1.  Thinking in Systems (A), by Donella Meadows

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems

    Systems thinking is really interesting. However, I don't think this book was very good, and I wouldn't recommend it to others. The core ideas are cool and could have been summarized in a chapter. Everything else is sort of speculation or anecdotal evidence that fell flimsy and unhelpful. There are ways in which this could have been a mind-blowing book, but instead it fell very flat and was tough to get through.

2.  The Second World War (A), by Antony Beevor

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13528287-the-second-world-war

    Phenomenal book. Overall one of the darkest, most depressing books I've ever read, but only because WWII was so terrifyingly horrific. 60-90 million dead, mostly civilians. There is no way to hide from the reality of this war and the fact that human history has been continuously plagued by such death and destruction. It's sobering to read such a well written historical account, but it sort of puts a strain on my recent liking of history books. This is certainly going to make the list of top 10 nonfiction books I've read, but its also left me with a source of deep sadness at the victims of prior atrocities and the dark terror or violence. It's hard to see humanity in the same, bright light. But maybe that is exactly the lesson that is most important to learn.

3.  Steve Jobs (A), by Walter Isaacson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11084145-steve-jobs

    Pretty horrible person this Steve Jobs guy was. Terrible father, atrocious boss, and overall asshat who has few redeeming qualities. I don't think the book was that great, but partially because Steve's life isn't particularly interesting (outside of Apple), and partially because Walter doesn't have any insightful takeaways (the "closed" Apple vs "open" Microsoft is repeated ad nauseam). There was really only one quote that stuck with me: when Steve was recruiting a lead Pepsi executive, he dropped this banger quote - "do you want to sell sugar water, or do you want to change the world?" I don't think I learned that much about life or business here, and I found it hard to read a dramatic and vaguely positive take on someone I found so insanely dislikable. Overall felt like a waste of my time, and I only pray that I lay on my death bed with a completely different legacy, even if it a billion times shorter lasting.

4.  Solaris (A), by Stanislaw Lem

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95558.Solaris

    Pretty interesting book. A little hard to follow at times and I'm not sure I really "got" it, but a fascinating look at alien life that is truly "alien." I also liked the theme that humans may just literally not be equipped intellectually to understand some things, despite our hubris. 

5.  The Courage to Be (A), by Paul Till

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175141.The_Courage_to_Be

    Did not realize that this was a series of religious lectures, or at the very least that religion would be a focal point of the book. I still found it very interesting, and honestly the title "the courage to be" is amazing. Sure, the book is about existentialism, and the core idea is that "courage" is what is necessary in the face of existential terror, anxiety, and the maladies of the modern godless world. This seems like an apt observation, and exactly what the word courage is to mean. Instead of Simone de Beauvior's "ambiguity" angle, this response to existentialism seems more concrete. Courage in the faith of death seems like the purest form of the ideal. However, in my estimation, courage in the face of a meaningless existence, where death is but a permanent end to an already anxiety ridden life with no answers, is true perseverance. Only Sisyphus has courage, no one else does.

6.  Finite and Infinite Games (A), by James P. Carse

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16117440-finite-and-infinite-games

    Not quite sure what to think. Possibly a worthwhile book because of the core idea, but it could have been 20 pages. I enjoyed the writing style, full of quotes like "moments once reached cannot be reached again" and "your parents may have wanted a child, but they could not have wanted you." Perhaps it's all intellectual snobbery, but the enjoyable kind. Overall it wasn't the greatest book ever but I understand why it's so well known.

7.  Consider Phelbas (A), by Iain Banks

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8935689-consider-phlebas

    I wasn't a great listener here, and probably could have been more diligent trying to understand the world-building initially. It was an interesting book, but because I knew it was supposed to be Iain's weakest of the series, I was more interested in just getting through it. It was more violent and heartbreaking than I was expecting, and I think I'll really enjoy the rest of the series. I like how bleak the outlook was, and the overall themes were exactly up my alley. Really looking forward to The Player of Games!

8.  Red Rising (A), by Pierce Brown

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15839976-red-rising

    I initially thought this book was YA for some reason, but it is for sure not. It's a darker, more violent descendent of the "Hunger Games"-eque dystopians of the early 2000's, and it's certainly an enjoyable read. The main character, Darrow, is on the classic warpath against a vast interstellar society where he and the other lower class "reds" are treated unjustly. A typical tale that doesn't break to many molds, but the execution is certainly interesting. Worth the read.

9.  Golden Son (A), by Pierce Brown

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15839976-red-rising

    Pretty similar quality to the first book, but a bit larger scale. Overall I found it enjoyable, but I think it misses the mark in some areas and is quite a bit trope-y. There was never a moment where my expectations were truly subverted, and there's quite a bit of plot armor. Unless Pierce kills off the main character at the start of the next book, I don't think he'll be able to put my expectations in this regard back into balance. Likely going to stop the series here for now.

10.  Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy (A), by Roger Harms

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/388126.Mayo_Clinic_Guide_to_a_Healthy_Pregnancy

    A comprehensive guide to all things pregnancy, and a very good one at that. Basically exactly what I was looking for, and I feel much more well equipped as a result of reading this. Reading books is interesting because I think if you don't read books like this, there are large gaps in your knowledge and it's easy to over-index on anecdotes or feel ignorant. You also have to self-drive your research. The great thing about books like this is that afterwards you actually understand the topic at a high level and know exactly where you'd want to press further. Great guide, would recommend for anyone expecting.

First 10 Books I Read in 2026

 Reading Period: January 01 - January 31

1. The Hedonistic Imperative (P), by David Pearce

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18042414-the-hedonistic-imperative

    Fascinating book. Full of incredibly interesting, controversial ideas that make you question your entire worldview. Do we need to suffer? Or can our existence instead be made, through drugs, nanobots, and genetic engineering, to instead be one of competing "gradients of bliss?" 

    Let's say that our current experience runs between -10 and 10, with , -10 being immense suffering, 0 being neutral feelings/happiness/utility, and 10 being immense happiness. If we could change the scale to instead be between 6 and 10, deleting from existence anything below a 6, would that not be the single biggest net positive decision in history? Many moral frameworks would argue we have an imperative to do so. Is our current menu of pleasure and pain a philosophical certainty, or a soon-to-be-relic of a horrifyingly immoral evolutionary past? 

    

    David states that "The 'hedonic treadmill' ensures that very few of us can be very happy for very long. An interplay of cruelly effective negative feedback mechanisms is at work in the central nervous system. Feedback inhibition ensures that a majority of people would be periodically bored, depressed or angst-ridden in a recreated Garden of Eden." If you think about it, there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why would couldn't engineer away chronic pain from an individual's experience. With sufficient technology, it's pretty conceivable that we could engineer away all pain entirely. David thinks we are morally required to, and that we eventually will. He's not afraid to pull punches, and he follows his own claims to their logical conclusion. This is the type of intellectual courage I respect! Even if it leads to statements that are sure to cater controversy, such as the following: "Future parents who decide, whether in deference to God or Nature, to decline gene-therapy for a child they know will likely grow up depressive, for example, may be open to accusations of child-abuse. Responsible parents, on the other hand, will want to get their kids the best happiness money can buy." 

    David argues that the predator-prey relationship in the wild is pretty messed up, and once we're able to, we probably shouldn't have lions hunting down and terrifying gazelle. We're predisposed to see nature as beautiful and meaningful, and while we'd rescue a drowning squirrel, we certainly wouldn't prevent one from being eaten by a coyote (circle of life, and all). Is this coherent? Negative utilitarians like David see nature as a suffering-filled-horror-show, and they're not entirely wrong. Also, there's a clear issue with our gut reactions, as we've been pre-disposed with evolutionary programming and desires. Are David's ideas really crazy? Or maybe, we can't trust ourselves to be objective here. David claims: "Is one's potential unease, if not revulsion, at the prospect of paradise-on-earth an incidental cultural by-product of natural selection? Or has selection pressure ensured that one is genetically predisposed to be biased against the idea of enduring bliss in the first instance?"

    Quick criticism - I don't think David understands correlation/causation, or he recklessly disregards common understanding in a way that is extremely disappointing. An easy claim to make is that we'll just turn into wire-headed drug addicts, mice that keep smashing the "cocaine" button. Why do anything productive if we're just blissfully happy? Maybe we wouldn't reproduce, or we become content with our overlords, or we stop being productive. All pretty stunningly obvious ideas. David has an extremely weak response: "The argument that our descendants might become functional wireheads, too happy to reproduce, isn't compelling either. Happy people tend to want more sex, not less." He also states: "It's depressives who are prone to procrastinate; by contrast, happy people are typically decisive, extremely happy people more so." And finally: "Given the correlation between depressed mood and low social status, the project of radically enriching the mood and motivation of the bulk of the population will probably leave people much less, not more, vulnerable to exploitation by a power-elite."

    One obvious logical implication of David's thinking is that we have a moral imperative to change the hedonistic scale of not just to our species, but of every life form and alien species. We need to rewire the brain chemistry of every gazelle, and every life form on distant planets (Pluribus much?). David, however, chooses this moment to step out. "If multi-cellular evolution occurs, such alien life-forms will quite plausibly run on the same pleasure-pain axis as we do. Of course, this is all hugely speculative. And if trying to save the wold is ambitious, then trying to save the universe smacks of hubris; so this avenue won't be pursued further here." I was a bit disappointed in this, given how willing he is to meet controversy head-on until this point. Perhaps interstellar colonialism is a bridge to far.  

    When it comes to meaningful political decisions, I don't think we should let negative utilitarians make any decisions. It's easy to claim that "no amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz." However, this philosophical outlook generally leads to the conclusion that we should pave the rainforests and stop reproducing. Although I guess in this case, instead of paving the rainforests you forcefully alter the brain chemistry of every entity in the rainforest. It might be the correct outlook, but given the weight of our uncertainty, and the fact that these people are generally moral non-realists, I've never embraced many actionable-insights that come out of this worldview. However, I think it can point us in new, novel, and actionably correct directions. 

Quotes:

"The present dimensions of the human mind and its affective capabilities are limited by the size of the female birth canal."

"It is chastening to reflect that a seemingly minor molecular variation in neuro-protein generates types of experience as disparate as sight and sound. Heaven knows what further incommensurable modes of what-it's-like-ness ("qualia") will be disclosed when much more far-reaching changes in the architecure of excitable cells are engineered."

2. The Birth of Tragedy (P), by Friedrich Nietzsche

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2823.The_Birth_of_Tragedy

    I've tried so many times to read Friedrich's writing, and I never enjoy it. This probably wasn't the best one to finally get through because I don't find the subject matter compelling, but I trudged through nonetheless. Probably won't read another.

3. Amok (P), by Stefan Zweig

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33297733-amok-ko-ucusu

    Simply stunning work of tragedy. I had no idea where the story would end up, and totally forgot what it felt like to read a devastating and anxiety-filled work of fiction. "The one human right one has left is to die as one wishes, and keep well away from any stranger's help." A certified classic.

4. Death's End (A), by Cixin Liu

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25451264-death-s-end

    Certainly the best book of the series. Still some flaws, but much less apparent flaws than the previous two books and an overall incredible sequence of plot developments. Still, the characters are so insanely unlikeable and the decisions they make so incompetent, it's a bit difficult to parse if Cixin has any sort of character development skills at all. It's also hard to tell if he's proving a point, or if the point of his books are simply to have humans make incredibly stupid decisions that have terribly disastrous outcomes. Also, a lot of his writing is basically completely unrealistic and full of plot holes (that when plugged, make things even more confusing). That all being said, the sci-fi is fun! The micro-level storylines are somewhat poorly done and not interesting, but the macro-level story is fascinating and thought-provoking. The futuristic, physics-based technology is something I've only come across in Cixin's work, and this is definitely one of the coolest stories I've read from a futuristic perspective. Recommend the series altogether, but you have to be willing to trudge through some imperfections. 

5. What You Do is Who You Are (A), by Ben Horowitz

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44063692-what-you-do-is-who-you-are

    Thoroughly disappointing. Ben's last book (The Hard Thing About Hard Things) was really good, and this was an utter letdown. One of those books that make the last book worse, because it makes you question the judgement and originality of the author. The hip hop quotes at the start of each chapter make no sense (and make Ben seem cringe and out of touch). Ben has no talent for history, and opens himself up too easily to satire. Sure, as a business leader you set the culture through your actions. But endless pages that tie together Ghengis Khan and corporate diversity (or whatever other business concept) was utterly weird. Might as well write a book about what Hitler's rise to power says about leadership in the board room. It's just a strange miscalibration of concepts that even if there's a small nugget of truth, the comparison is never justified. There are so many better and more apt ways to convey the underlying concepts, that the entire book feels lazy and unhelpful.

6. Elon Musk (A), by Walter Isaacson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122765395-elon-musk

    Very compelling biography. It is interesting to note that I actually didn't learn that many new and novel things, perhaps because Elon has been such a force of cultural debate and intrigue for my entire life. There is little stated about Elon's early life, but I almost wonder, given how horrible it seems (and how toxic his father is), how the hell Elon turned out so well adjusted. He has quite the psychological profile, to be clear, but he was raised in such a hellscape its a wonder he isn't worse. Also, I have to mention that his story and his mission is incredibly inspiring. Regardless of his actions or his mentality, and the fact that he is truly terrifying to work for, the amount Elon has been able to accomplish is astounding. I wonder if having such a longtermist worldview, and having civilizational-level ambitions, almost guarantees success. All the greatest pioneers of the AI age have this in common (aside from Zuckerberg). I share the same worldview, and after reading this book it's hard not to feel like I lack work ethic.

7. The Nvidia Way (A), by Tae Kim

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218319936-the-nvidia-way

    The history of Nvidia, and by proxy a biography of Jensen Huang. It is really interesting to see how close the company came to failure at so many points, and how a few decisions swung the balance of history. Also, the company is insanely lucky. They had no way of knowing that making GPUs for gaming would later supercharge the AI revolution and transform the world economy. Tae argues that the main differentiator for Nvidia is the culture, and also by proxy Jensen Huang. Another book that makes me want to work on weekends even more than I already do (which is substantial). This book is a little more surface level than I would have preferred, but still definitely worth the read.

8. The Battle for Your Brain (A), by Nita Farahany

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60784561-the-battle-for-your-brain

    Started strong, but then pulled back sharply in quality. Perhaps this was a marketing issue, but I was really interested to read a book more similar to Susan Schneider's Artificial You. This book also discussed transhumanism and futuristic concepts, but Nita lacks the philosophical rigor to create truly compelling takes on the issues she explores. Much of the discussion is fairly shallow and boring, and could have been written by any New York Times writer. For an issue so massive in importance, this book barely scratches the surface, and thus does not scratch the itch.

9. Amp It Up (A), by Frank Slootman

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59383944-amp-it-up

    Pretty motivating book. Frank insists that a hardcore, hard-driving work culture is the key to winning, and you have to lead by example. Expect a lot from people, and thus demand a lot, and you will succeed. Frank randomly throws in anti-woke and anti-PC thoughts which was funny. I think he's probably right about a lot of things (hard to argue with someone who listed three companies) but that sort of stresses me out.

10. The Lottery (A), by Shirley Jackson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6219656-the-lottery

    Really short story, but figure I'll add to the list regardless. Hard to write anything spoiler free, but worth the read.