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.

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.

Sixth 10 Books I Read in 2025

Reading Period: September 25 - December 31

1. Reinforcement Learning (P), by Richard Sutton

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/739791.Reinforcement_Learning

    According to Goodreads, this is my 500th book. Wow. Also, over the last few months I finally made it through a series of technical ML books (Linear Algebra Done Right, Deep Learning, and Reinforcement Learning), of which I had been wanting to finish for years. For maybe a moment, I should probably reflect on the fact, and celebrate, that I have turned into quite the literature power user. In some sense it seems fitting to end the first 500 on this book, as now all of my reading goals to date are basically accomplished. 

    Five and a half years years ago, I wrote down a list of life goals: 100 mile ultramarathon, watch 1,000 movies, read 500 books, publish a book, get married, have kids. Now only the last two are outstanding, and as I am engaged, it seems those are not far off either. Reading has transformed me as an individual, and I consider it central to my identity and my success. Fiction has expanded my horizons and worldview, and while I've learned a bit from school and work, I've learned far more from the world of nonfiction. In some sense the CFA curriculum, where I was forced to read finance textbook after finance textbook, is a greater contributor to my current reading ability (I can literally just crush a book like Reinforcement Learning in a week). But regardless, this muscle is still extraordinary to me.

    Now, onto the book. It's is fairly old (originally published in 1998), but Richard is a legend. There are likely two "buckets" of AI that are going to transform the world forever, deep learning and reinforcement learning. In my opinion, advancements in reinforcement learning are way more powerful, scary, and transformative. Even with modern neural nets, it took RLHF to spark broad usefulness. As we undertake the age of autonomous agents interacting with their environment, the sheer "bitter lesson" could soon be that humans can't compete. Overall, this was a great intro into the state of the RL world 27 years ago. It's worth the overview, although given all the advances since it's probably nearing the end of its comparative advantage. Still worth the read now, and maybe for the next couple years.

2. Artificial You (A), by Susan Schneider

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44526011-artificial-you

    Very good book. Susan is one of the most well-known figures in the realm of AI consciousness, and she has more prestige than nearly anyone in the field. I quoted her multiple times in my own book, and a lot of our arguments are the same. There was a lot of discussion of personhood in this, particularly the idea that if you "upload" yourself to a computer, there's certainly a likelihood that this "upload" is not conscious and you basically just killed yourself. Susan spends a lot of the book arguing that brain uploading may not be the positive immortality it sounds like and that the transhumanist community may be making a critical mistake in thinking so (which in the future could have drastic consequences). Overall very accessible and straightforward read. 

3. Inferno, the World at War (A), by Max Hastings

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11256415-inferno

    It's easy to forget how horrifying and bleak World War II was, or any war for that matter. It's also easy to forget how short of a time scale these conflicts operate under, and how many millions of people can die in the span of six months. Inferno is a masterclass work by Max, covering almost the entire WWII conflict over a six-year period. It's dark, sad, and informative. I was looking for a high-level, comprehensive history of the conflict, and Max delivered. It's just a bit sad to get to the end, and to realize that all of this actually happened. The wholesale slaughter of civilians, the unspeakable war crimes, and the industrialized genocide of the Jewish people. It happened, all of it. And if that doesn't shake you to your soul, and fill you with deep distress, you're not human.

4. The Edge of Sentience (A), by Johnathan Birch

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215505354-the-edge-of-sentience

    The most comprehensive, academically serious work I've come across on one of the most important topics in history. It's hard to overstate how good of a job Johnathan did here, I only wish I had read this cover to cover sooner (although I read many sections previously). My meta-level concern here is that the book is a bit too academic, and the high price will make this pretty much entirely inaccessible to most people. Which is a shame, because a much more condensed version of this could be hugely impactful. Johnathan's ideas will be influential regardless (and he's already a leading voice), but I don't think many people outside of the current sentience community will be motivated to cover-to-cover this easily. But for those of us in this community, I can't imagine a more useful book.

5. High Growth Handbook (A), by Elad Gil

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40536148-high-growth-handbook

    This was only ok. I had very high hopes initially, because Elad mentioned the stress of high-growth startups and the idea that the company is basically an entirely new company every six months of intense growth. I figured this would be a no-nonsense technical manual on scaling. There were quite a few insightful comments throughout the book, but overall it fell pretty flat. Each chapter ended with podcast-style interviews of a famous entrepreneur, which was a nice touch but a little too long and unstructured. The rest of the book was actually extremely short, and without these interviews probably could have been summarized in a blog post. Elad is sort of a weird guy, he says things like "I like to laugh and have fun when I am at a company party, I'd recommend you do the same." He's either a poor writer or a bit autistic, but regardless the book's instructions felt a little lizard-person-y at times. Probably not worth the read, but not entirely lacking in substance.

6. Mastering Private Equity (A), by Claudia Zeisberger

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35625079-mastering-private-equity

    A really solid technical manual on the PE industry. I learned a lot, but for some reason finished the book wishing it was even more technical and informative. It's a pretty good birds-eye-view of the PE landscape and worth the read, but could have used more analytical grit or interesting case studies.

7. Secrets of Sand Hill Road (A), by Scott Kupor

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42348376-secrets-of-sand-hill-road

    Pretty phenomenal book. I'd say likely the best book on the PE/VC industry I've read outside of The Power Law, and exactly the level of deep-dive informative I've been looking for. It's pretty comparable to Venture Deals actually, and I'd highly recommend anyone interested in startups or VC read both books. Scott wrote a pretty killer manual on the entire industry here, and I left the book having reinforced my understanding of tons of important concepts. Honestly, the book make me like a16z quite a bit more, and made me realize how new the VC industry is and how quickly these early stage private markets have risen in prominence. It's all a bit surprising, and certainly cool.

8. Who (A), by Geoff Smart

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4989687-who

    Pretty thoroughly disappointing. Sure, potentially the most important thing a company does is hire. However, this book conveys little to no wisdom outside of the most basic common sense. It is full of dumb stories and silly lessons. For example, Geoff tells the reader they should continue to probe their candidates in interviews instead of staying surface-level. The example story is of an interviewee who is very open about slapping his previous boss, which was the reason he was fired. Geoff then mentions that this anecdote shows the importance of digging deep in interviews. If you've had any sort of real-world work experience or have any sort of social awareness, this book is a complete waste of time.

9. The Lean Startup (A), by Eric Ries

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10127019-the-lean-startup

    Learn from customer feedback: just ship and iterate! This book has had a pretty substantial impact on the startup ecosystem, and the idea that the only way to find PmF is to try and fail repeatedly until something sticks is certainly compelling. "Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer's problem." The lean startup method hinges on the realization that success at the customer level cannot be theorized in advance. You may think that you know what problems customers are facing and you may think you have a useful product, but until your ideas make contact with reality, you are hopeless. Instead of spending tons of cycles on premature optimization, ship imperfect products early and often and let the scientific method get to work. Pretty compelling idea, but only a decent book (it took me forever to finish). Read half in print and did the other half via audiobook, which may have worsened my experience. Likely still mandatory reading for any entrepreneur.

10. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (P), by Richard Feynman

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5544.Surely_You_re_Joking_Mr_Feynman_

    IDK man, he seems pretty unlikeable. Maybe the antics of this book would be more impressive and entertaining to a young science nerd in high school, but with age and empathy, it's a bit hard to understand the praise for this book. Richard never really gained in maturity throughout his life; honestly my take is that his life is a sort of regressive, cautionary tale. He starts life as a prankster at MIT, but again, with age, a lot of the "pranks" seem pretty mean-spirited. Flipping cups upside down that waitresses have to clean up, for example, doesn't come off as amusing to me. He sort of wraps his life up as a professor who is thoroughly obsessed with women, sleeps with students, goes to topless bars six days a week, learns the art of negging in Vegas, and gets into drawing (of nude models, of course). He plays the bongos and goes to Brazil and stuff, but the safe-cracking hobby was really the only interesting extracurricular he had. The real problem is, I didn't really learn anything from this book, and overall thought it was extremely underwhelming intellectually. You would think there would be reflections on the atomic age, or interesting meta-discussions on physics, or moving life-lessons from such a credentialed individual, but you're sort of left with nothing but this weird case-study on Richard's infatuation with the female body. It's pretty jarring and uncomfortable, and there's no "meat" to the story or narrative ingenuity that gives the book substance elsewhere. Why isn't there? There are plenty of good books out there. Plenty of authors who craft compelling memoirs and autobiographies from much less source material (West With the Night, for example). Pretty disappointing for Richard to have lived his life permanently bogged down by primitive drives, and a shame that this was inevitably such a major theme of the book (it is about his life, after all). A good microcosm of this baggage is Richard's drawing (in spirit) of Madame Curie, one of the most prominent, respected female scientists of all time:

"I drew her torso as well, so you could also see her breasts and the shadows they made. I stuck it in with the other drawings in the exhibit and called it "Madame Curie Observing the Radiations from Radium." The message I intended to convey was, nobody thinks of Madame Curie as a woman, as feminine, with beautiful hair, bare breasts, and all that. They only think of the radium part."

    It's interesting that Richard, of all people, decides that it is his duty to convey the important message that others don't think enough of Madame Curie's femininity. Does this "message" come from a place of meaningful artistic expression, or juvenile perversion? Does a Noble Prize, and the weight of an impressive career in physics, signify that Richard is qualified to claim the former? While Richard's wife was sick in the hospital, he was disappointed to discover that a tree was blocking his view into the women's dormitory at Los Alamos. It is certainly true that "nobody" reflects on Madame Curie's breasts, and instead focus on her scientific accomplishments, aka the "radium part." Richard, in all his apparent scientific brilliance, never stops to wonder if maybe the world around him has it right. Perhaps it is he who is the one in need of a message. Perhaps it is he, Richard P. Feynman, who thinks about Madame Curie's breasts too much.

Fifth 10 Books I Read in 2025

 Reading Period: August 11 - September 25

1. How the Word is Passed (A), by Clint Smith

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55643287-how-the-word-is-passed

    Very emotionally resonant book, I could hear Clint's passion in every sentence. I liked Between The World and Me a lot better, a book with similar themes, but this one still packed quite the punch. This book is certainly very good. But it is first worth mentioning that it sustains an extremely high Goodreads rating, and with any book of this topic it's hard to know if this means anything. My worry with picking up a book like this is that I get hit with a book of little intellectual value that maintains high ratings due to audience capture or political signposting. The books of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, for example, have been said to maintain their status not by their inherit merit but by their signaling. As another example, you can imagine not many moderates/leftists reads far-right literature, so reviews of far-right books will be heavily skewed/praiseworthy.

    There were a few moments when the book clearly leans into modern political rhetoric, such as this statement: "Which meant he needed significant republican support. These were people who had built careers on political ideas that were harmful to black people." Both "build careers on" and "ideas" here, in particular, strike me as interesting. It is not surprising that Clint thinks modern republicans are bad (pro-policing, anti-DEI, economic status-quo), but Clint claims the "ideas" are harmful. People like Thomas Sowell would disagree, and there is enough nuance here that if not uncharitable, the claim is at the very least rhetorically ineffective. Clint also states that "I asked him if there would ever be an America in which White Americans were not actively working to keep themselves positioned atop the nations racial hierarchy." I am not certain what "actively working" means here, and it seems to convey that Clint sees modern racial issues as explicit oppression (rather than simply passive "working", like being against DEI). This is a totally fine statement for him to make; I include it because once I read it, I understood the book a lot better. The history of slavery has shaped Clint's view of the world, and the book is in a sense grappling with stories that explain to the reader how this legacy survives in the modern era (which is not far removed). Clint also states something along the lines of "did people come together in 1776 and make some pretty radical ideas, yeah", but actually this form of government is not novel and we cannot forgive the sins of the slave-owning founding fathers etc. I think he underrates the concept of individual liberty here, and how the US sparked a surge of democracy and revolution for the oppressed around the world, even if we concede the words here were written by imperfect and perhaps entirely immoral people. 

    Also, it's distressing to hear the rhetoric of groups like the "Sons of the confederacy" in this book, but one can argue that these people are bottom-of-the-barrel stupid and don't represent any significant slice of the American populace. A better tell for widespread racism is the fact that some crazy high number of white Americans (maybe around ~10%) wouldn't want their child dating someone of a different race. Now some of this may not be as racist as it seems (a Polish grandmother for example wanting to continue the Polish bloodline and not approving a marriage to an Irish-Catholic), but there's certainly a hell of a lot of racism. Clint sees the removal of statues of historical figures with Confederacy/slaveholding ties as important, and is distressed that there is resistance to this. I'd argue most people don't care and many just see it hard to draw the line (and removing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues would seem strange). I'm personally fine with removing Confederate statues, but I don't see it as a very important milestone in the greater fight against injustice, there are many other battles on this front I'd rather be fought. And this is coming from someone who is only lightly opposed to Sherman's March Part II, where us northerners take another victory lap and go through and burn the South once again.

    The central error that I believe Clint makes is over-extrapolating historical injustice to political issues he currently cares about. In a society where virtually everybody dramatically and horrifically under-extrapolates this injustice, this is far from a sin. But I actually think it hurts his message quite considerably. In some ways we devalue the horrors of slavery when we equate them to modern criminal justice reform. It's not uncommon to compare the plight of slavery with those on death row, but it should be. I have lawyer friends who have spent countless hours pro-bono in Texas seeking to get innocent people off of death row, and its obvious that a lot of public uproar from these cases tends to be regarding those wrongly convinced. But Clint ignores this aspect, and draws many parallels between guilty criminals and slaves. Clint quotes a prisoner who states he believes he's "going through the very same thing folks fought and died for."  Clint also details the gruesome death-penalty-deaths of a variety of individuals, and points out how quickly the jury deliberated on some of these cases as a point to continued current racism. But it's hard to avoid confronting the conservative talking point here. Which is this: guilty people on death row are not slaves, they are there because they murdered innocent women and children; drawing this parallel is unhelpful. I am not making this claim, but Clint makes no effort to counteract this obvious argument. Many of the death row case examples he gives don't survive this "Fox News" style layup: I looked up the most egregious case Clint highlights, and it was for a man who murdered his kids. Now, the current US prison system will certainly be looked upon with horror in future generations. In addition to racial injustice, the mere conditions in which an average prisoner has to endure (even if guilty) are horrific and distressing. In some sense this book is right up my political-viewpoint alley, but I think Clint stretches too much here in order to make a point. 

    This all being said, the book shines when discussing with unflinching honestly how horrific the institutionalized system of slavery was. And this discussion is so well written and well argued that I'd argue that this book should be required reading in every high school. Clint does a phenomenal job with his historical analysis that its hard not to feel a whiplash of emotions with every page. He states that slavery wasn't simply a dehumanization, it depended on human sentience. It required a subject that could be terrorized, and essentially oppressed and tortured into submission. This wouldn't work with a machine, the slaveholders needed the power dynamic of crushing a human soul in order to maintain such a horrific hellscape of immorality decade after decade. The sheer evil apparent in this system is so baffling, so unbelievably inexcusable, it makes me want to renounce my "humanity," whatever that is.

2. Letter from the Birmingham Jail (P), by Martin Luther King Jr.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203899.Letter_from_the_Birmingham_Jail

    "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is Freedom."

    MLK is certainly an incredible writer. Well reasoned, convincing, and inspiring. He states that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere" and "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Similar to Civil Disobedience, MLK states that "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law." He also states that the police officers cracking down on "illegal" protests are using "moral means to preserve immoral ends." What is more immoral, to peacefully protest segregation in the streets, or to arrest and break up these protests in order to uphold a wildly evil and immoral system of institutionalized racism?

    I found MLK's religious rhetoric convincing, and resonated with a fairly long criticism he leveled against the church:

"There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought and end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are."

3. Sixth of the Dusk (P), by Brandon Sanderson

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23397921-sixth-of-the-dusk

    Quite the change of pace. Another great novella from Sanderson, not much else to say.

4. Pale Blue Dot (P), by Carl Sagan

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61663.Pale_Blue_Dot

    It took me a while to finish, but overall I really enjoyed the book. The first chapter is one of the best chapters of non-fiction I've ever read. Carl makes the claim that: "On the scale of worlds - to say nothing of stars and galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal." He also states that: "If I had to guess - especially considering our long sequence of failed chauvinisms - I would guess that the Universe is filled with beings far more intelligent, far more advanced than we are." I also really liked his insistence on space exploration, and what it means for humanity: "We lack consensus about our place in the Universe. There is no generally agreed upon long-term vision of the goal of our species - other than, perhaps, simple survival." It's hard to not want to reach for the stars after reading: "Their eventual choice, as ours, is spaceflight or extinction."

    However, the book gets lost a bit in hard science. This is fine, but the material is fairly old so there is just better content out there at this point (A Short History of Nearly Everything comes to mind). Still, I found Carl's discussion of nuclear war fascinating. It's always interesting to read the perspective of an expert in one field who is writing a novel comment on the current events of the time. Carl states: "Not only do we often ignore the warnings of the oracles; characteristically we do not even consult them." And: "Nuclear weapons were invented in 1945. It took until 1983 before the global consequences of thermonuclear war were understood." I will close with one of the most surprising parts of the book, when Carl analyzes a phenomena I've always felt but couldn't quite put my finger on. Unfortunately, it looks like nothing much has changed with the passage of time:

"We are sometimes told that this or that invention would of course not be misused. No sane person would be so reckless. This is the 'only a madman' argument. Whenever I hear it (and it's often trotted out in such debates), I remind myself that madmen really do exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations. This is the century of Hitler and Stalin, tyrants who posed the gravest dangers not just to the rest of the human family, but to their own people as well. In the winter and spring of 1945, Hitler ordered Germany to be destroyed - even 'what the people need for elementary survival' - because the surviving Germans had 'betrayed' him, and at any rate were 'inferior' to those who had already died. If Hitler had nuclear weapons, the threat of a counterstrike by Allied nuclear weapons, had there been any, is unlikely to have dissuaded him. It might have encouraged him."

5. Deep Utopia (P), by Nick Bostrom

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208707460-deep-utopia

    The most important philosopher of our time, who wrote a terrifying book about the implications of advanced AI, pens a book about what we will do with all our time in utopia when AI solves every problem ever. It's a baffling change of pace, but quite needed and refreshing. To summarize, Bostrom asks "at technological maturity, is there anything that cannot be done better by machine?" The answer, is basically no. Nick says "For it is quite conceivable that, at technological maturity, you would in fact be slightly harming your child whenever you indulged in some DIY parenting." Even moral status and cognition, at some point, may not be exclusively biological traits. What then? He defines a digital mind as: "A mind implemented on a computer. Could for example be an upload of a human or animal mind, or an AI of a design and sophistication that makes it a moral patient, i.e. one whose welfare or interests matter for their own sake." I've spent more time thinking about digital minds than almost anyone alive, and yet I found this insight entirely novel:

"If we imagine - as I tend to do - a future that is mostly populated by digital minds, then the convertibility of wealth into well-being becomes even clearer. Digital minds, be they AIs or uploads, need computation. More computation means longer life, faster thinking, and potentially deeper and more expansive conscious experiences. More computation also means more copies, digital children, and offshoots of all kinds, should such be desired."

    I had no idea Nick was funny. In fact, he's hilarious. The book mentions DJs dropping "bangers" at nightclubs, has literal illustrations of memes, and quotes like: "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." My favorite quote was this: "This is especially clear if we entertain the radical possibility that we are not in a simulation." Nick also takes aim at sports fanatics, and golf: "Well, it is actually unclear why people play golf. The real reason might be to have fun - and if so, then, of course, utopia would offer the more efficient option of wireheading as a means of obtaining pleasure." He illustrates the weirdness of human wiring further here:

"More people jump out of their seats when their soccer team scores a goal than when an international agency publishes a report saying that a hundred thousand fewer children died form preventable diseases this year than last. (We take this to be completely normal, but I wonder, if we could see ourselves through the eyes of angels, whether we would not recognize in this pattern of excitement and indifference something quite perverse - the warped sentiments of a moral degenerate? Is it not, implicitly, a sort of emotional middle finger to the suffering and desperation of other sentient beings?)"

    This book is genuinely novel. It explores not post-scarcity worlds (which have been done in fiction), but rather post-instrumental worlds. "Post-instrumental utopia: No instrumental need for any human effort. Implies post-work but goes beyond in also assuming no instrumental need for any non-economic work either - no need to exercise to keep fit, for example, no need to study to learn,; no need to actively evaluate and select in order to obtain the kinds of food, shelter, music, and clothing that you prefer. This is a far more radical conception than the preceding three types of utopia, and has been much less explored." 

    Nick also discusses the meaning of life at length, although he mostly admits ignorance: "Journalists often ask me if I can share some life advice for young people. I'm flattered to be asked, but this really seems to me like asking somebody who is still playing his first-ever game of chess to give advice on chess strategy." I found it interesting to contemplate Nick's linguistic choices and deep exploration of words like "desire." When contemplating meaning, should we care about what we desire, or what we should desire? Nick claims that there is a spectrum from "What I actually right now consciously desire" to "What I would desire if I had the character that I wish I had" to "What I would desire if my desires perfectly tracked objective truths about what is impersonally 'best for the world'." Which should we care about? Should we only care about realized utility? Or should what actually happens (even if not consciously realized by anyone) matter? Example: "Well, for example, I would not want my wife to have an affair with her tennis instructor. Even if I would never find out about it. I don't want my life to be based on a big illusion."

    It's hard to review this book. There are so many ideas and insights flying around that it's hard to keep track of them all. Nick's narrative choices, reminiscent of Godel, Escher, Bach are interesting, but largely ineffective. The ending falls flat on a confusing narrative note. There is a extremely long story about a room heater turned conscious, which largely misses the mark except for the closing statement: "Is ThermoRex's life better or worse than that of the median human being who has lived on Earth so far?" But the book is full of life. Nick randomly bursts out in existential terror randomly during his narration (which I loved), and he doesn't stop his philosophical musings on the human condition: "I wondered why I had been made with a soul that had the capacity to wonder but not the capacity to find out; why I could see so much that was wrong while seemingly being unable to do anything about it." If I had to guess, I'd guess that Nick wrote this book more as an excuse to think through a ton of interesting ideas. His plan wasn't: think really hard, form concrete world-changing ideas, and then meticulously think through how to convey this to the public. His plan was: think really hard, and write a book as a companion to this process in order to have a planned start and finish line. 

    Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This book will fall completely flat for most people for a variety of reasons, but to me it felt like reading the inner monologue of someone way smarter than me, who is thinking through bigger ideas than I've ever had the guts to tackle. Also, I am persuaded by almost everything Nick says, and I'm not quite sure what this means. But it's like I have been exposed to a radical, likely true, conceptualization of the world that is missed by almost everyone else. I'll end with this quote, and idea that I've been dying to verbalize in such a concise way. An idea that I hope is broader conveyed as we approach the sort of futures Nick discusses.

"I am inclined to say tough luck to the tragedy-lover. Or rather: feel free to get your fix from fantasy, or from history - only, please, do not insist on cooking your gruesome entertainment in a cauldron of interminable calamity and never-ending bad news. It is true that good books and films have been inspired by wars and atrocities. It would have been better if these wars and atrocities had not occurred and we had not had these books and films. The same applies at the personal scale. People coping with the loss of a child, dementia, abject poverty, cancer, depression, severe abuse: I submit it would be worth giving up a lot of good stories to get rid of those harms. If that makes our lives less meaningful, so be it."

6. Deep (P), by James Nestor

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18222705-deep

    A book about a bunch of topics, namely freediving, the deep ocean, and marine life. Freediving is a crazy sport. It's a simple concept, you attach yourself to a weighted sled, which shoots you straight down hundreds of feet into the a body of water. You black out. Then, an air balloon fills up and propels you back up to the top of the water, where you are resuscitated. You likely die. If you go far down and back up, you consider this a great accomplishment. 

    It's hard to read these freediving sections, because everyone is just blacking out and dying all the time. The parts of the book about the deep ocean are interesting, but a bit tiresome. And the parts about marine life are a little bit cooky. James says things like "Human language is analogue; sperm whale language may be digital." Most of the book is forgettable, but one unforgettable story is that of a researcher named Lilly, who encouraged a research assistant to become sexually explicit with a dolphin. This "research" lasted a while and got pretty weird, and needless to say "Lilly basically ruined the field for the next thirty years." My biggest problem with the book is that much of the narration is a bit unreliable/unbelievable, and certainly biased against "crude" humans and towards "advanced" aquatic life, which is what you'd expect from someone who writes a book about the ocean. Not quite my type of book, but maybe I don't care enough about the ocean.

7. The Three-Body Problem (A), by Cixin Liu

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518872-the-three-body-problem

    You know, I really thought I'd love this one. It was fine, decent even, but nothing particularly special. Some of the sci-fi aspects are a bit too weird/ambitious, and I don't think the characters or writing quality stands out enough from other books. The concept largely carries this one to being worth the read.

8. If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (P), by Eleizer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228646231-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies

  I've been waiting in anticipation of this book for quite a while. In my mind, and no one else's, I see IABIED as a direct competitor to my book earlier this year, Mind Crime, which deals with very similar subject matter. In fact, I spent quite a bit of advertising dollars linking my work to the IABIED pre-order Amazon page, money now forever gone into the ether with no certainty of impact. In some sense, I now feel that the torch has been passed, and I am unlikely to spend any more on ads (at least until the MIRI-led marketing machine fizzles out, or until we see more concrete signs of AGI's arrival).

    The clearest distinction between books is that this book is way more accessible than mine. Eleizer has spent 20+ years thinking about this topic and refining his arguments, although I would argue his worldview hasn't changed much. His argument is fantastically simple: ASI is going to kill everyone. There is no complex theory to be discussed; some future AI model with "go hard" and this will result in the death of everyone one Earth. For the layperson, this is clearly the better book to read. It's also likely the better option for a trailblazing, likely net positive emergence of AI-related concern in the public sphere. This book is truly an accomplishment, and I couldn't be happier that it has a chance to run its course. Despite its flaws, I'm excited by that prospect that this will get more people thinking about ASI alignment, the greatest issue to have ever faced the human race.

    Given that I've written an extremely niche, well researched, and complex book about the moral implications of artificial superintelligence, I am not the target audience here. The clearest example via this quote: "In other words, o1 went hard. It behaved as if it wanted to succeed." Whereas Mind Crime skipped over the info-hazard flags and went straight to discussing how ASIs could blackmail their way into power, Eleizer sticks with: "Paying people is a classic way of convincing them to do something." I have a chapter dedicated to the interconnected complexity of potential AI sentience and ASI takeover, and Eleizer mentions that an unaligned ASI named "Sable" may find it useful to promote "the idea of AI sentience and AI rights." Interestingly, I wonder if Sable will quote me? There isn't much insight into how the world might change here, Eleizer simply states: "If a horse starts costing more to feed than it can produce in labor, the horse is sent off to the glue factory." There are understandable trade-offs being made here in terms of messaging, and honestly I'm glad that the book is so different and "dumbed-down." It means that both I should no longer care about a broad audience, and also I didn't waste two years of my life writing a book that was replaced by a more popular, exact replica.

    I disagree pretty strongly with a lot of the book. In some sense, many of my ideas are a direct response to thinking through many of the points raised here by the MIRI team. For example, I believe overindexing on extinction is wrong, and I'm not a fan of how this is handled in this book. It used to be overnight nanobots, but now dyson swarms, which blot out the sun, are an option for humanity's eventual demise. How long does this extend the timeline? How long does it take to build a dyson sphere? If it takes hundreds of years for humanity to die out because all sunlight is blocked by AI-built satellites, is that really what "extinction" means? I guess so, but some of this rhetoric seems like desperate stretching of "foom" => "doom" scenarios. 

    Also, Eleizer and Nate state that: "We consider interpretability researchers to be heroes." Thanks! But also that "learning to read some of an AI's mind is not a plan for aligning it, any more than learning what's going on inside atoms is a plan for making a nuclear reactor that doesn't melt down." This feels like a complete false equivalence. Sure, it may be true that interpretability research never gets good enough to be a reliable lie detector. But if it does, would this not make the alignment problem immensely easier?

    There are some really interesting points in this book. This specifically: "Hinton has said that he actually thinks that it's more than 50 percent likely that AI will kill us, but he usually avoids saying this 'because there's other people who think it's less.'" Also, the ending quote resonated with me a hell of a lot: "May we be wrong, and shamed for how incredibly wrong we were, and fade into irrelevance and be forgotten except as an example of how not to think, and may humanity live happily ever after." Additionally, I think their whole framing of just-literally-say-what-you-believe is super helpful and inspiring. A lot of AI safety people seem to be 4D-chess-ing themselves into irrelevance. Here is Eleizer's comment: "We've watched this sort of thing play out for a while, with people not stating the real reasons for their proposals or why they think they have to be passed so urgently. And we've watched perfectly reasonable lawmakers smell something rotten and throw the whole package out." Why does no one think about ASI extinction risk? Maybe because everyone who does is too afraid to say it out loud, and thus no one says anything. They're correct here, it's time to change.

    The key policy proposal in this book will be widely disregarded/hated:"So the safest bet would be to set the threshold low - say, at the level of eight of the most advanced GPUs from 2024 - and say that it is illegal to have nine GPUs that powerful in your garage, unmonitored by the international authority." Basically, we need to ban all AI research, lock up the GPUs, and form a world government that ensure no ASI is ever built. People will say it's unrealistic, but honestly, if you agree with Eleizer's priors there's just simply no other option. I'm not quite there yet, but there's a non-negligible chance that he's just correct about this problem and this is clearly the only solution. 

    Now, I'm going to end on sort of a strange criticism. Eleizer and Nate, in the final page, drop in the C.S. Lewis quote: "If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs." Their message ends on, what I have to assume, is some sort of attempt at optimism, where you're supposed to read this book and then go back to living life before it all ends for everyone? They state: "And once you have done all you can do? Live life well." I understand that most people won't have an impact on the outcome of ASI development. But this is sort of a "walk-it-back" kind of way to end such an important book. I get why they felt they had to do it, but it felt weak-willed and cowardly in an otherwise assertive book. Sure maybe don't get too crazy with it, but it seems obvious that the logical conclusion to agreeing with this book should be less "play tennis" and more "fight until the very end." Just a style preference, but I'd rather be encouraged to fight.

9. Deep Learning (P), by Ian Goodfellow

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24072897-deep-learning

    Clearly the most comprehensive, most helpful, and most rewarding ML book I've ever read. I read the first 200 pages a few years ago, and then recently in the span of a few weeks relentlessly pushed onwards to the 800 page finish line. It's funny finishing a technical book like this, as I feel I finally have a competent mental model of the subject matter. Without knowing the breath of the deep learning space, it's pretty impossible me to conceptualize the depth. Boltzmann machines (and energy models in general) still confuse me, but essentially all of the other DL lingo is now etched into my brain. That's what is great about finishing an 800 page book, there's no escaping a staggering familiarity with the topic at hand. This is probably the most important step I'll take in clearing the hurdle towards better technical understanding of AI, and I'm glad to have this behind me as the foundation.

10. The Dark Forest (A), by Cixin Liu

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168817-the-dark-forest

    Again, a mix of good and bad. I like the storyline a lot, and it is true, hardcore sci-fi (which I'm a big fan of). Similar to the first book, there's a lot of early build up, with a semi-climax where a piece of incredibly cool and deadly technology takes the stage. It really does drive home the point that technological disparity amounts to genocide. However, a lot of the writing decisions are a bit bizarre. I don't think it's a cultural thing; the plot line/constant references to characters with "imaginary" lovers was pretty bizarre and concerning. I wasn't quite sure what I was reading at points, it was so weird and immersion breaking. Thankfully I chose not to put the book down, and it got back to sci-fi. Well, mostly. The annoying, repetitive patterns of humanity (changing public opinion at the drop of a hat, always predictably and in the most frustrating/unrealistic way possible) and the strange actions of the characters (no one ever says anything useful or competent) was frustrating as well. If 40% of the book (mostly that stuff) was cut, this would have been a really good book. Unfortunately it was just ok.

Fourth 10 Books I Read in 2025

 Reading Period: July 14 - August 11

1. Linear Algebra Done Right (P), by Sheldon Axler

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/309768.Linear_Algebra_Done_Right

    This was a personal goal of mine to finish. I made it through the first 40 pages twice, at different points in different years of my life, but always got stuck. This time, I made an accountability bet to read the book start to finish within a two week time frame. It was not easy! I went through the book page by page with Claude, taking extensive notes and really trying to understand this field conceptually. Sheldon is a good writer, and the concepts and the way in which the material is taught is excellent. Leaving determinants to the end may or may not have been a good choice (this was my only exposure to the material), but the progression felt very natural and intuitive. At long last I understand what an eigenvalue is and how it relates to every other concept in linear algebra, and as a result am slowly chipping away at my inferiority complex with coworkers (who are all AI researchers who were PhDs in CS). I have a lot more work to do here, and to start I plan to review my notes extensively and continue to deepen my conceptual understanding. But overall this was quite a great introduction to a very dry topic.

2. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (A), by Thomas Kuhn

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61539.The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

    Honestly, it was fine. I had pretty high expectations, but the core claims of the book are pretty simple. It's interesting to think of how science actually progresses (crisis, new paradigm, etc.), but the most interesting material simply doesn't take up many pages. The most important takeaway is that scientific process is way messier than commonly thought and often comes from unexpected (or disliked) areas. I try not to critique books for being too long, but I think Thomas could have spiced it up a little bit.

3. The Business of Venture Capital (A), by Mahendra Ramsinghani

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11366506-the-business-of-venture-capital

    I thought this was ok. As someone pretty familiar with the VC ecosystem, there wasn't anything extremely surprising in this. My biggest takeaway was that VCs are basically portfolio managers (just like anyone else in finance), who have investors to answer to. Their business isn't that different than any other fund manager, who has to go out and raise money and explain their eventual returns (just this time to the LPs). It's easy to think of VCs as the "investors" in the situation if you work at a startup, but in reality they are sort of just the middle-man to the end LPs. Most of their job is actually managing this LP/fundraising relationship, and at the end of the day what they care about is making the LPs happy.

    Weirdly, this book feels like it underwent revisions specifically to incorporate DEI concepts after the fact. I don't mean this as a bad thing, but it's a bit jarring how frequently such concepts are thrown in to make a point. During the book's initial revisions, it's possible someone pointed out the lack of discussion of DEI concepts, and then a future edition was revised into a version that made such arguments explicit. It's pretty ham-fisted and honestly not well argued, sort of reads as unnecessary filler. Outside of this, the book is pretty concise and to the point. It's just not technical enough to be super informative (like Venture Deals) and not engaging/story-driven enough to be a thrilling read (like The Power Law).

4. Northanger Abbey (A), by Jane Austen

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50398.Northanger_Abbey

    My first Austen novel. It wasn't that great, mostly because I didn't like any of the characters. Also, it ended very abruptly. Without spoiling anything, there's a ton of conflict towards the end, and everything in resolved in a few paragraphs in the final chapter. Not very impressed with the writing, but I've been told it's not her best book.

5. 1984 (A), by George Orwell

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5470.1984

    "Oh my God, you haven't read 1984? You'd love it!" This is the pair of sentences I've been assaulted with for the past 10+ years, constantly by everyone I know who finds out I haven't read the book. I've been told my own writing is "Orwellian," and it's true that there is nothing I love more in this world than a devastatingly depressing story. Basically, it is assumed that because I love dystopian political narratives, the only outcome of my reading this would be complete and utter reverence.

    They were correct. This book is phenomenal, and the overlap with my interests and ideas could not be higher. I loved every moment, and can't stop thinking about the book. Sure, in some sense it wasn't that well written (I told a friend it felt like he rushed the writing), but man, what a classic. Totally up my alley, and one that I'll probably re-read later in life.

6. Niels Lyhne (P), by Jens Peter Jacobsen

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/456977.Niels_Lyhne

    This had potential to be the best book ever written. I was in shock for the first thirty or so pages, at how incredibly well written and poetic the book was. However, this awe faded during the middle section of the book, and it took me a couple years of on-and-off reading a handful of pages at a time to make it to the last section. This last section was amazing, and the conclusion was among the best of any I've read. The ending was a sort of philosophical destruction of the human predicament, but one that is rarely executed so effectively. I wouldn't argue too hard with anyone who stated that this was the greatest work of fiction out there, although given my difficulty in getting through it, I am not able make this claim on my own.

    There are simply too many quotes I highlighted to put in this review. It's a magnificent work of fiction, and as such I'm going to detour from my usual style and just list a bunch of quotes that deeply resonated with me.

Quotes

"She dreamed a thousand dreams of those sunlit regions and was consumed with longing for this other and richer self, forgetting—what is so easily forgotten—that even the fairest dreams and the deepest longings do not add an inch to the stature of the human soul."

"Life had exactly the value that dreams gave it and no more"

 

"If the monk was lonely with the generation that lived among the groves he knew, how much more lonely was the man whose contemporaries had not yet been born."

"There isn't a single obstacle that can be dreamed out of the world, and in the end we lie there crying at the edge of the chasm, which hasn't changed and is just where it always was. But we have changed, for we have let our dreams goad all our thoughts and spur all our longings to the very highest tension. The chasm is no narrower, and everything in us cries out with longing to reach the other side, but no, always no, never anything else. If we had only kept a watch on ourselves in time! But now it is too late, now we are unhappy."

"For the first time his mind grasped the fact that when life has sentenced you to suffer, the sentence is neither a fancy nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured, and there is no marvellous rescue at the last moment, no awakening as from a bad dream."

"Feverishly he turned to his work to assume himself that he had lost nothing else besides happiness."

"He lifted his clenched hands threateningly to heaven, he caught up his child in a mad impulse of flight, and then he threw himself down on the floor on his knees, praying to the Lord Who is in heaven, Who keeps the earth in fear through trials and chastisements, Who sends want and sickness, suffering and death, Who demands that every knee shall bend to Him in trembling, from Whom no flight is possible—either at the uttermost ends of the ocean or in the depths of the earth—He, the God Who, if it pleases Him, will tread the one you love best under His foot, torture him back into the dust from which He himself created him. With such thoughts, Niels Lyhne sent prayers up to the God; he threw himself down in utter abandonment before the heavenly throne, confessing that His was the power and His alone. Still the child suffered. Toward morning, when the old family physician drove in through the gate, Niels was alone."

7. The Fifth Season (A), by N. K. Jemisin

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852-the-fifth-season

    Good, but didn't break any barriers for me. I wouldn't say any particular part of the book was exceptional, and the theme/worldbuilding/characters aren't very unique either. Sanderson may have just ruined the fantasy genre for me.

8. Courage Under Fire (P), by James B. Stockdale

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196158.Courage_Under_Fire

    Amazing, especially since it's so concise. James could have dragged this out to 350 pages and it would have still been a great book, but I'm glad he settled with this. James's experience as a POW was haunting; he did an incredible job illustrating how horrific his experience was. The links between Stoicism (a philosophy that I've verbalized plenty of issues with) and incarceration are fascinating. James argues that long-term isolation is worse than torture, and this is coming from someone who attempted suicide to avoid torture. His reflections pack a hell of a punch: "the thing that brings down a man is not pain but shame." Also, it was interesting to contrast this book and King Rat, as this nonfiction depiction paints a picture of POW's as far more brotherly and united than those in Clavell's novel. Certainly worth the read, and I'll have to put this on a list somewhere.

9. Civil Disobedience (P), by Henry David Thoreau

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18626866-civil-disobedience

    Hell yeah, let's burn something. 

    Incredible pamphlet, one that is sure to have an impact on me. Henry's basic take is that "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." He diagnoses the state of American affairs as follows: "There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing." In a society with rampant slavery and even more abundant indifference, the jail cell is "The only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor."

    Henry's argument is intuitive, and certainly directionally correct. This book is revolutionary motivation, one that cuts through the public apathy towards legitimate moral horrors. I don't know much about the US war with Mexico during that time (which Henry is adamantly against), but I certainly agree with Henry's sentiment regarding slavery. He states that if participating in civil society legally requires: "you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine." To allow the continuation of slavery, and do nothing, is to act with severe personal dishonesty. It is "impossible for a man to live honestly and at the same time comfortably in outward respects." Living a moral life requires sacrifice, or at least a great risk of it. This is all true, and a reminder that in a world full of suffering and injustice, we are probably not doing enough. 

    Another important addition to this discourse is Henry's belief that the right to vote is not sufficient, or even worth much in general. "Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote." Essentially, the US constitution gives individuals a rare set of rights unheard of in human history. The right to protest, to free speech, to free press. Would it not be a fundamental disservice to ignore these mechanisms, and simply believe one's civic duty is fulfilled if they simply cast their ballot every few years? In an unjust society, Henry states that you should "Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence."

    Still, Henry takes this further and states: "As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to." I certainly think that Henry's anti-law position ("Law never made a man a whit more just") doesn't fit modern society quite as well, but I certainly understand the sentiment given his time of publishing. The entire book is useful and motivating, and I strongly believe the core concepts here are still very important for the modern world. A life of idleness and comfort in a society that accepts regular, unjust moral horror is an life lived in contradiction with moral values. Additionally, one must work far outside the ballot box if one is to correct this contradiction (although in 99% of circumstances, I would argue peacefully). One last thought from Henry was: "Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man." As a staunch defender of democracy, this idea of a next-step political framework that better protects individuals is interesting, and something I have not thought much about. I plan to.

10. Bartleby, The Scrivener (P), by Herman Melville

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114230.Bartleby_the_Scrivener

    Short, sweet, and memorable. I didn't really understand the end at first, and I didn't find the conclusion as deep as it was probably intended to be, but I felt engaged the entire time. Worth the quick read.