Et cetera

Books §

Math & Computer Science §

• [T] Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Bishop): a good intro to ML that was written before Deep Learning became big.
• [T] Deep Learning (Goodfellow et al.)
• [T] Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective (Murphy): the “bible” of machine learning. I did not (yet) read all of it.
• [T] Outlier Analysis (Aggarwal)
• [T] Linear Algebra and Optimization for Machine Learning (Aggarwal)
• [T] Mathematics for Machine Learning (Deisenroth): a good introduction to linear algebra, multivariate calculus, probability theory and continuous optimization.
• [P] Algorithms to Live By (Christian): How to apply results from computer science to everyday life.

Artificial Intelligence §

• [T] Artificial Intelligence – A Modern Approach (Russell/Norvig)
• [P] Human Compatible (Russell)
• [S] Superintelligence (Bostrom)
• [P] The Alignment Problem (Christian)

Statistics §

• [P] Calling Bullshit – The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World (Bergstrom): A book about statistical literacy
• [P] The Book of Why (Pearl): on causal inference

Physics §

• [P] A Brief History of Time (Hawking)
• [P] Lost in Math (Hossenfelder)
• [P] Existential Physics (Hossenfelder)

Biology §

• [P] The Selfish Gene (Dawkins): Argues that natural selection should be understood on the level of genes instead of individuals or populations
• [P] The Gene – An Intimate History (Mukherjee): About the history of (what became) genetics, as well an outlook on possible future developments
• [P] The Emperor of All Maladies (Mukherjee): A history of cancer
• [P] Why We Sleep (Walker)

Philosophy §

• [F] Thus Spoke Zarathustra – A Book for All and None (Nietzsche): This book is a piece of art
• [H] On the Genealogy of Morality – A Polemic (Nietzsche): A speculative theory of how contemporary ethics developed historically
• [H] Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche)
• [H] The Republic (Plato)
• [S] Our Mathematical Universe (Tegmark): Argues that our universe is fundamentally math. And this is not a metaphor.
• [F] Bhagavad Gita (German Reclam Version)
• [F] Siddhartha (Hesse)
  
• [H] Parerga and Paralipomena (Schopenhauer)
• [H] The Art of Being Right (Schopenhauer): In debates, people often employ rhetorical devices, such as Ad hominem arguments. This book aims to enumerate these strategies. If you like to debate, and think back, you will probably recall many instances of people (including yourself) using these sorts of arguments. Also, the book is probably sarcasm.
• The Incerto (Taleb)
  • [P] Fooled by Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Taleb)
  • [P] The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Taleb): History is dominated by rare, high impact, unexpected events
  • [P] Antifragile – Things that Gain from Disorder (Taleb)

Epistemeology §

• [S] Against Method (Feyerabend): The case for epistemological anarchism – the view that, in science, anything goes. As an example, he uses Galileo, whose heliocentric model was based on irreproducible methods (telescopes) and whose predictions conflicted with observation and established theories of physics (Aristotelian Physics). The book should not be taken at face value but rather as an interesting argument.
• [H] The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn): The scientific enterprise is often viewed as progressing somewhat incrementally, e.g, with every publication. In his Structure, Kuhn argues that most science is “puzzle solving” within a contemporary paradigm (e.g, Newtonian Physics), until too many anomalies (i.e., inconsistencies of observations with the current theory) arise and a new paradigm emerges.
• [H] Conjectures and Refutation (Popper): The view that, in science, we can not really prove hypotheses, we can only try to refute them. Evidence can only corroborate hypotheses.
• [P] Superforecasting – The Art and Science of Prediction (Gardner)

Politics §

• [H] The Prince (Machiavelli)
• [P] Nudge – Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler): The case for Libertarian paternalism, the belief that you should “nudge” people into making decision for their own good while preserving their freedom of choice
• [H] The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol. 1 (Popper): basically a critique of Plato?
• [P] Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Lanier): The business case of social media is offering manipulation of users behavior to paying customers
• [P] 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Harari)

Economics §

• [P] A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Malkiel): The case for the Efficient-Market Hypothesis
• [P] Bullshit Jobs (Graeber)
• [P] The Big Short (Lewis): a description of the events leading to the 2008 financial crisis
• [S] Inadequate Equilibria: Where and how Civilizations get Stuck (Yudkowsky)

Psychology §

• [P] Thinking Fast and Slow (Kahneman): on Dual Process Theory and limitations of human rationality
• [P] The Elephant in the Brain (Simler): Why we really do thing, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.
• [P] Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion (Cialdini): Current AI systems can often be “persuaded” to do things that go against their training. Does human psychology have similar exploits? This book examines how to make people say “yes.”
• [P] The Scout Mindset (Galef)

History §

• [P] Sapiens (Harari)
• [P] Homo Deus (Harari)
• [P] Nexus (Harari): A perspective of human societies as information networks
• [P] Chip War (Miller): A history of computing substrate

Futurism §

• [S] Life 3.0 (Tegmark)
• [S] The Singularity is Near (Kurzweil)

Education §

• [S] The Case Against Education (Caplan): Argues that the economic value of education does not stem from any job-relevant skills learned, but rather, that completing a degree acts as a strong signal of certain character-traits which are desirable for for potential employers: intelligence, contentiousness and conformity.
  • Contra Caplan on Education (Ngo)

Self Improvement §

• [P] Atomic Habits (Clear)
• [P] Getting Things Done (Allen)
• [P] The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey)
  
• [S] Outlive – The Science and Art of Longevity (Attia): argues in favor of “Medicine 3.0” which, contrary to contemporary medicine, focusses on minimizing risk on the basis of available empirical data (in the absence of RCT, which are difficult to conduct for assessing the effects of interventions on human lifespan).

Biographies §

• [B] Permanent Record (Snowden)
• [B] Steve Jobs (Isaacson)
• [B] Elon Musk (Vance)

Fiction §

• [F] Crime and Punishment (Dostojewski)

• [F] Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Yudkowsky): A 2000 pages Harry Potter fan fiction.

  • There is also a very good audiobook.

• [F] Animal Farm (Orwell)

• [F] 1984 (Orwell)

• [F] Fahrenheit 451 (Bradburry)

• [F] Brave New World (Huxley)

• [F] Blindsight (Watts): A hard scifi-novel with aliens and “vampires”. This might sound strange, but it works. From my understanding, the core topic is the difference between intelligence and consciousness.

• [F] Echopraxia (Watts): The successor of Blindsight, which in addition to the “vampires” and aliens features zombies. While the core topic is free will, it also speculates about which paradigm might supersede contemporary empirical science.
  

• [F] Requiem for a Dream (Selby): I also really enjoyed the movie.

• [F] The Swarm (Schaetzig)

• [F] Atlas Shrugged (Rand): a contentious book that argues in favor of individualism and radical free market capitalism. It could have been 600 pages shorter.

• [F] The Grand Grimoire (?)

Essays, Blogs, etc §

Some of the blogs that I read frequently:

• Slatestar Codex, Astral Codex Ten (ACX): The author, Scott Alexander, is a psychiatrist and writes pretty amazing posts about various topics. Some accuse him of leaving his area of expertise too often. Judge for yourself.
  • Meditations on Moloch: Why we can’t have nice things.
  • The Toxoplasma of Rage: Why controversial memes spread further.
  • In Defense of the Amyloid Hypothesis: The prevalent hypothesis that dementia is caused by an accumulation of amyloid-$\beta$ in the brain has been severely criticized in recent years due to cases of fraud and underwhelming results of drugs targeting amyloid-$\beta$ in clinical trials. This post describes the current evidence in favor of the hypothesis. While not written by Scott Alexander, it is still an interesting read.
• Gwern: An American freelance writer & researcher
  • The Algernon Argument: Why increasing human intelligence is difficult.
• Meltingasphalt: A blog about evolutionary psychology. Even though I am somewhat skeptical about the validity of evolutionary psychology, I think it is an interesting perspective. The author also wrote The Elephant in the Brain which covers much of the blogs content.
  • Ecological Thinking: systems have niches, and it is more helpful to think about behavior in terms of properties of a system instead of behavior of actors (Systems Thinking)
• Less Wrong: A website that aims to improve decision making, where anyone can submit posts
  • The Rise of Parasitic AI
  • The Goddess of Everything Else: A post by Scott Alexander that I personally enjoyed, there is also a pretty good youtube animation available here
• near.blog
  • Personality Basins: a mathematical model of personality
• Desmolysium: A blog about biological self-optimization. The anonymous author resorts to arguably extreme measures to optimize aspects of his physiological and psychological well-being. Think of any prescription drug/hormone that might improve health or performance – Desmolysium probably has a first-hand experience report on it.
  • The World’s Most Expensive Eating Disorder: A critique of Bryan Johnson
  • An Unconventional Introduction to Hormones

Software §

Command Line §

You can find my dotfiles in this repo.

• Shell: zsh, a nice shell with lots of available plugins
• Text editor: NeoVim

Desktop §

• OS: Arch Linux¹, a highly configurable Linux distribution
• Desktop Environment:
  • XFCE, a fast and lightweight desktop environment
  • i3 gaps, a tiling window manager. I mainly use this on notebooks, as tiling window managers make good use of the limited space
• Terminal: Alacritty, a terminal emulator with GPU acceleration
• Browser: Firefox
• IDE: IntelliJ/PyCharm, VSCode
• Password Manager: KeePassXC with a YubiKey
• Video Editing: Kdenlive
• Image Editing: GIMP
• Anki: Flashcards for learning facts
• Obsidian: Note taking

Self-hosted §

I like self-hosting web services. You can find an in depth description of my infrastructure in this post. The following is a collection of the software which I found most useful over the last few years:

• Proxmox: A hypervisor that allows you to easily deploy virtual machines and LXC containers
• Wallabag: Saving articles for later reading
• FreshRSS: A web-based RSS reader
• Home Assistant: A framework for home-automation
• OpenWebUI: A frontend for LLMs which I use in combination with ollama to run local LLMs. Ollama can also be integrated with Home Assistant to answer queries and execute commands on your smart home.
• GitLab: A very feature-rich git. Requires a lot of RAM, but for me, it is worth it.