README

I require narrative elasticity to live, so in lieu of a story, here is a list of things that I want to be associated with and/or have been influenced by. Not in order of importance!

Progress

Progress is the result of a supportive context (hence politics, economics) for great science and its applications, so we’ll bundle in a few things.

Growing up in Shanghai (until college).
List of Books: Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism. Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation. Daniel Yergin, The Prize.
Samantha Power, Chasing the Flame. Sérgio Vieira de Mello was a Brazilian/UN diplomat with a long (but not long enough) career contending with evil and suffering in basically every failed state and warzone in the late 20th century. He was the first official to speak to Khmer Rouge; in the Balkans talking to the Serbs, the Albanians, and the Americans; he was in Sergio post-genocide figuring out how to be humanitarian without fueling war; he was in East Timor setting up the pseudo-interim-government…(Apparently someone joked that his autobiography ought to be titled “My Friends, the War Criminals.”) Despite the standard impossibilities of international politics and violent local grievances, it has filled me with hope that a single competent person can do so much, and that there are people who found a way to hold both idealism and pragmatism in one life. He died in the suicide bombing of Canal Hotel in Baghdad, on August 19, 2003.
Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in His Own Words.
Michael Nielsen’s Augmenting Long-term Memory. Spaced repetition flash cards might not seem so related to “progress,” but as gwern says, “It’s a testament to the Enlightenment ideal of improving humanity through reason and overcoming our human flaws…it’s really nice to just have a small example like this in one’s daily life, an example not yet so prosaic and boring as the lightbulb.”
I have really enjoyed reading semi-technical or not-technical-and-pure-philosophical work from Simon Willison, Michael Nielsen, Paul Graham, Ben Thompson, and Emmett Shear. Andrej’s Twitter and recent appearance on Dwarkesh are wonderful.

Beingness

Bhagavad Gita. Easwaran’s introduction is quite clear as well. I also found Siddhartha (from Hermann Hesse) and the Dhammapada (also Easwaran) thought-enriching in complementary ways.
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.
Rob Burbea. Nick Cammarata. Shinzen Young.
Visakan Veerasamy is an Internet writer. I found him on Twitter. I think he’s been right about everything (another Internet person I think this of is Bryan Johnson lol). For example, focus your time and energy on the things you want to see more of!

Math

Pure math helped me realize that, before my first proofs class, I had a malformed understanding of “understanding” and hadn’t really learned anything ever. Understanding is unmistakable when it occurs - you feel the undeniable truth, and the new way of seeing forever transforms you.

A Mathematician’s Lament from Paul Lockhart on the terrible way math is usually taught.
Andrew Neitzke’s class notes for Real Analysis.
June Huh is a fun one, although I wish Twitter hadn’t meme-ed it so much.

Literature

A List of Books: Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory and Lolita. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, This Is Water (video here), and “Roger Federer as a Religious Experience”. Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. OSC’s Xenocide. Asimov’s Prelude to Foundation. Frank O’Hara’s Mayakovsky.
A Book: Gabriel García Márquez’ A Hundred Years of Solitude. After this, I was so astonished that I also went on to Pedro Páramo from Juan Rulfo, for which Gabo said, “That night I couldn’t sleep until I had read it twice…I could recite the entire book front to back and vice versa without a single appreciable error, I could tell you on which page of my edition each scene could be found.” Perhaps I am too generationally and culturally removed: A Hundred Years of Solitude is indisputably more wonderful to me.

Art

Sound: Radiohead’s album In Rainbows. Chick Corea’s Spain. Blonde Redhead. Massive Attack. Jon Hopkins. Fleetwood Mac. M83. Grimes. Ulrich Schnauss. Sigur Rós. The Smile (Radiohead v2). Ryuichi Sakamoto. The Japanese House. Hikaru Utada. Slowdive. Ling tosite sigure. The War On Drugs. Parannoul. Ichiko Aoba.
Sight: Rothko. Lee Krasner. Kandinsky. Monet. Miró. Gizem Vural. Isabel Quintanilla. Picasso. 朱耷. 王履.