Here’s an updating list of things I’d like to learn.

History

  • Africa
    • Patrick Collison considers Jason Stearns’ Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa “particularly great”, and Michela Wrong’s In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo, Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa, and Eugene Rogan’s The Arabs “substantially above average”.
    • John Iliffe’s Africans seems like a good, short overview. Martin Meredith’s The Fate of Africa seems like a good (if long) post-independence history. Paul Kenyon’s Dictatorland looks like an interesting read.
  • China
    • Sulmaan Wasif Khan’s The Struggle for Taiwan, according to Tyler Cowen, “for most people, especially younger people, it is a very good introduction to the longer history”.
    • Patrick Collison’s bookshelf has some China books he considers “particularly great”: Evan Osnos’ Age of Ambition, and Philip Pan’s Out of Mao’s Shadow. He considers Peter Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Simon Winchester’s Pacific, and James Fallow’s China Airborne “substantially above average”.
    • Basil Halperin considers Yasheng Huang’s The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline “probably the best big think book on China I’ve read + great ‘applied political economy theory’”.
    • I could read How Asia Works, but I’ve read enough book reviews that it’d probably not be the best use of my time.
  • Russia
    • First Person seems important to read to understand Putin.
  • Europe
    • Tony Judt’s Postwar seems worth reading on its own terms.
    • An especially big gap in my knowledge is Germany. I should read Peter Watson’s The German Genius, William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and Ian Kershaw’s Hitler biographies.
    • Byrne Hobart considers Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France to “have had an influence on [his] worldview”.
    • Check out Roderick Beaton’s Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation.
  • World War II
    • A big survey book, like Max Hastings’ Inferno, would be fun.
  • The Years of Lyndon Johnson
    • I read the first chapter of The Passage of Power and was blown away. The reason I need to read this is not that LBJ is so important; it’s that Caro wrote a work of literature.
  • Energy
    • All seem worth reading: Daniel Yergin’s The Quest and The Prize, Richard Rhodes’ Energy, and Vaclav Smil’s numerous books.
  • India
    • I understand Indian history well, but a short survey history would be useful.
  • Art and architecture
    • I know embarrassingly little about the history of art and architecture. EH Gombrich seems worth checking out.
  • Music
    • Ted Gioia has a good Substack and has written some music history books — should check them out.
  • Film
    • I know much more about film than either art or music. Still, a survey history would be worth reading (and synthesizing into a post). Books and documentaries on specific landmark films would also be great, but less useful: Hearts of Darkness on Apocalypse Now, for example.

Economics

  • Corporate finance
    • A standard textbook should be fine.
  • Finance math
    • I’ve heard good things about Stephen Blyth’s Introduction to Quantitative Finance.
    • Hull is the standard textbook, of course.
  • Causal inference
    • Scott Cunningham’s Causal Inference: The Mixtape looks good. Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why seems too wordy from the excerpts I have read.
    • Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke’s Mastering ‘Metrics looks like a breezy read.
  • Microeconomic theory
    • I need to check out MWG.
    • In general, I am interested in applying economic theory to AI forecasting. To this end, being exposed to the practice of economic modeling is more useful than the economic models themselves.
  • Economic growth theory
    • Basil Halperin’s reading list covers both growth theory and monetary economics.
    • Basil Halperin recommends Dietz Vollrath’s blog posts: they “have to be the best out there on growth econ – strong rec on the full archive”.
    • Joel Mokyr’s books seem enjoyable and quick to read.
  • Macroeconomics
    • A standard textbook supplemented with Tim Harford and Naked Money should be fine.
  • Game theory
    • Open Yale Courses’ lecture series seems good.
    • Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff’s The Art of Strategy is fun (if verbose) light reading.
    • Wentworth recommends Games and Information by Eric Rasmussen and Schelling’s Strategy of Conflict.
  • Decision theory

Math

  • Nonlinear dynamics and chaos
    • Steven Strogatz’s book is canonical.
  • ODEs
  • Information theory
  • Real analysis
    • Understanding Analysis by Abbott looks great. I like my math textbooks verbose (and my popular nonfiction terse).
  • Probability
    • Yudkowsky and Wentworth are horny for Jaynes.
    • 3Blue1Brown recommends The Art Of Probability by Richard Hamming.
    • Joe Blitzstein’s lectures and his book co-written with Jessica Hwang are exceptional.
    • It seems important to complement probability theory with applied probability: quant-y trading games and problems from quant prep books like the Green Book (the epithet by which Xinfeng Zhou’s A Practical Guide To Quantitative Finance Interviews is generally known), and Agustin Lebron’s The Laws of Trading.
    • Probabilistic programming. Squiggle?
  • Complex analysis
  • Fourier analysis
    • 3Blue1Brown recommends Elias Stein & Rami Shakarchi’s textbook.
  • Category theory
    • Eugenia Cheng’s The Joy of Abstraction seems like a good first pass at this topic.
  • Abstract algebra
  • Convex optimization
    • Wentworth recommends Stephen Boyd’s lectures. Indeed, Boyd seems like the obvious person to learn convex optimization from here.
  • Theory of computation
    • Michael Sipser’s lectures and book are canonical.
  • Linear algebra
    • Even after taking an abstract linear algebra course, I don’t think I understand linear algebra really well. I think it’ll help to go carefully through Sheldon Axler and Gilbert Strang, while referring to Donald Lay and Stephen Boyd’s Linear Dynamical Systems lectures from time to time.
  • Other books
    • Proofs from the Book
    • Proofs and Refutations by Lakatos
    • How to Solve It by Polya
    • The Art and Craft of Problem Solving
    • I Want to Be A Mathematician by Halmos
    • A Mathematician’s Apology by Hardy

Physics

  • Quantum
    • Wentworth says: “If you have an itching desire to know how it works, I strongly recommend The Quantum Challenge as a starting point. That book covers the conceptually-“weird” parts much better than most courses.”
    • Scott Aaronson’s Quantum Computing Since Democritus, and Michael Nielsen’s textbook Quantum Computation and Quantum Information and his essay Quantum Country seem worthwhile.
  • Classical mechanics
    • Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics looks cool.
    • Wentworth recommends Leonard Susskind’s lectures. His Theoretical Minimum should be a good complementary book.
    • John R Taylor’s Classical Mechanics seems canonical.
  • Stat mech
    • 3Blue1Brown recommends Schroeder’s An Introduction to Thermal Physics.

Biology

  • Systems biology
    • Everything written/said by Uri Alon.
  • Bionumbers
    • Wentworth recommends Cell Biology by the Numbers.
  • Synthetic biology
    • After AI, the other great scientific revolution of our time. MIT has an edX course that Wentworth recommends. This Nature Reviews article and this Nature Methods issue devoted to synbio look good. Then there’s Baldwin et al’s Synthetic Biology: A Primer. But honestly, the way to learn synbio may be to deeply understand its milestone achievements chronologically.
  • Neuroscience
    • A standard textbook, paired with Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, should be fine.
  • Biology methods
    • I am thinking of two lines of attack here: coming up with entirely new methods of discovery (such as optogenetics), and making existing processes dramatically faster/easier (like smaller beads and higher pressures for chromatography), or less dependent on tacit knowledge.
    • A lot of biology progress is downstream of innovation in methods. A lot of money may also be downstream of methods. See the essay “There aren’t enough smart people in biology doing something boring”.
    • It’d be useful to get experience doing hands-on wet lab work. How? I’m not sure. Taking a biology class with a lab component sounds royally inefficient. The best way to do this is to apprentice in a wet lab (probably while getting paid peanuts).

CS

  • Systems programming
    • Nand2Tetris
    • Networking
    • Operating systems
      • Teach Yourself CS (and everyone else) recommends Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces
    • CUDA
    • Performance engineering
      • MIT OCW’s 2018 course seems to have fun lectures (and Charles Leiserson taught it).
  • Cybersecurity
    • A TA in my intro to CS systems class recommended pwn.college. Should supplement with CTF competitions.
  • Distributed systems
    • The canonical read is Martin Kleppmann’s Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
  • PL theory
    • I find the design of domain-specific languages especially interesting. Languages (or software generally) catering to niches like bioinformatics could speed up science and technological development. In 2019, the Long-Term Future Fund (implicitly) estimated the value of Roam Research to the EA/longtermist community as at least $20,000.

Literature

  • English poetry
    • I don’t think I “get” poetry. Henry Oliver’s syllabus should be worth checking out.
  • Fiction
    • Again, Henry Oliver’s syllabus on great English literature.
    • George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain seems really good.
    • Benjamin McEvoy makes excellent videos.
    • James Wood’s How Fiction Works seems interesting.

Philosophy

  • Libertarianism
    • Michael Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority, David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, and Ayn Rand’s fiction and Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia (mainly for intellectual history).
  • Parfit
    • On What Matters and Reasons and Persons
  • Infinite ethics
    • Someday I will get around to reading Joe Carlsmith’s blog posts.