In 2024 I once again read too much. I read way too many books, which I really don’t recommend, and I read lots of internet slop. I read a few really interesting things, some are listed here.
Note that these are things I read in 2024, not necessarily published in 2024 (though there’s a lot of overlap).
Books
The Realness of Things Past: Ancient Greece and Ontological History - Greg Anderson
Best book I read this year. Anderson introduces Ontological History as a paradigm for understanding historical people on their own terms. He demonstrates why this is crucial and how this can be approximated through a re-examination of ancient Greece. For example, we are mistaken to understand the ancient Greeks’ relationship with their gods as a religious belief system similar to those in existence today. Rather, we should accept them as having lived in a world co-inhabited by gods, who played central roles in their day-to-day lives. Easy to notice when you realise that these ancient people, having only just discovered surplus economics fueled by agriculture and trade, spent the vast majority of their wealth on treating their gods, not on improving their material living standards. Important, in my opinion, not just out of interest in ancient history, but also as one more nail in the coffin of the flavour of cultural and psychological studies obsessed with documenting universal commonalities of human behaviour at the expense of human variety. We don’t really know what other people think, not in the past, not in distant countries, and not even here and now.The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes - Donald D. Hoffman
Popular science for the eternal teenager. Hoffman starts with the claim - not that controversial - that our senses do not afford us a direct perception of reality, but simply whatever evolution discovered to be most adaptive for our survival. We therefore have no idea what reality is really like. And that’s just the beginning, it gets ever weirder from there.Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe - Hugo Mercier
Simple, fun read. Reassuring too. Misinformation and media manipulation are much less of a concern than you may have been led to believe. Research in psychology and the social sciences (always suspect) indicates that most people, regardless of general intelligence, education, or other factors, are just not that gullible.Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life - Henry Oliver
Beautifully written. Henry Oliver investigates the idea of late blooming through biographical snippets of late bloomers. A lot better than it sounds.Hypermedia Systems - Carson Gross
Review of the evolving concept of hypermedia systems and an introduction to HTMX, which updates web programming with modern hypermedia capabilities.On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything - Nate Silver
Nate Silver divides people to River and Village. He’s from the River (contrarian, analytical, calculated risk-taker) and he explains what it means by documenting fellow riverians. Fun.Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery - Scott H. Young
Everything you ever wanted to know about learning and improving your skills, from Scott Young, the expert on self-directed learning. Dense in useful information and very well researched.The Art of Randomness: Randomized Algorithms in the Real World - Ronald T. Kneusel
Fun things you can do with your computer’s random number generator.Sonic Life: A Memoir - Thurston Moore
Thurston Moore’s autobiography is mostly about music, which is more than can be said about most rock biographies.Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World - Nick Bostrom
Bostrom is back. This time AI isn’t going to destroy the world but instead turn it into paradise. Thought-provoking and annoying in equal measures.
Other Texts
Paths to AI-Dominated Futures
It is looking increasingly likely that our near future will be dominated by incredibly powerful AI. These three texts attempt to prepare us, each with a slightly different perspective. Aschenbrenner is hysterical and paranoid, but also detailed and explicit. Amodei is cautiously optimistic and trying hard to maintain a posture of humility. Ramana and Wang advise us to curb our enthusiasm, it’s … complicated.
Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead - Leopold Aschenbrenner
Machines of Loving Grace: How AI Could Transform the World for the Better - Dario Amodei
AI Engineering
Down here on planet earth we already have some AI, but figuring out how to use it to build useful systems is an evolving field of practice. A lot of new advice emerges every week. Much of it is contradictory or even non-sensical. Here are some resources I found insightful.
Knowledge
There’s a lot of information out there on how to know stuff. Quality varies. Here are a few bits I learnt from this year.
A Gentle Introduction to Risk Frameworks Beyond Forecasting - Nuño Sempere & Nathaniel Cooke
Notes on the persistence of the four largest ancient religions - Michael Nielsen
Portrait of a park: Zürich’s groundbreaking vertical garden, MFO-Park - Helen Barrett
19 Things Videographers Can Learn From Aviation Accidents - Steffi Hetjens
Advice
Useful advice from random people on the internet. Yeah, right…