Reading List
A running log of what I have been reading, with short notes. Also, here's my Google Sheet of paper summaries. I try to add one summary a day.
The Psychology of Money
I liked how this is readable in standalone chapters for the most part. It has some insightful lessons about patience, contentment, gratitude, etc. I would definitely recommend.
Sofie's World
Reading... I like it so far!
Bayesian Statistics the basics
The first half was good I thought. My issues with the book come from an overfocus on the software and examples which---to me--- give insufficient intuition to how it works. For a general audience, it's find and I feel more confident in my general navigation of Bayesian statistics and statistical philosophy now. I wish the last two chapters were more focused on mathematics and less on how to use it.
Zen Mind, Beginners Mind
I liked this a lot more than "The Way of Zen". It was somewhat more instructional while remaining grounded in experience. I actually think both books are significant and complement each other nicely.
107 Days
Nice plane read. I enjoyed VP Harris's/ghost writer's voice and pacing a lot
The Way of Zen
Alan Watts is known for bringing Zen to the west more or less. He is upfront about not writing to teach Zen but does a nice job contextualizing the practice in both spirituality and history.
Empire of AI
This was a good piece of investigative journalism. I thought Hao had a very balanced take on interpreting the dynamics between Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, etc. I especially appreciated her attention to the explotive nature of data labeling via Outlier and Scale AI initiatives as well as the deterimental environmental impacts of data center construction. She did a nice job capturing the personalities of those involved and describing the breakthrough moments that lead to the LLM race.
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches
As a novice to both game theory and deep RL, I found this book approachable with well written algorithmic intuition and examples to follow. I liked the pseudocode examples a lot and feel confident in my elementary understanding of equillibrium and how game-systems work
The Secret Life of Programs: Understad Computers -- Craft Better Code
The scope of this book was vast. It starts with elementary electrical chemistry and physics and extends into machine learning while visiting computer architecture, compilers and PLs, web development and the DOM among other topics. It gives a decent intuition of how these things work which was fun to read.
Steve Jobs
Isaacson is a great writer. Steve was crazy which made this a fun biography
Avatar: The Last Airbender and Philsophy: Wisdom from Aang to Zuko
This was a nice, diverse collection of essays ranging from eastern and indigenous philosphy to economic imperialism and environmental racism. I liked how it was structured from nation to nation which made the book more coherent despite the discontinuity of authors
Meditations
Classic Stoicism. I get the hype but maybe I'm more into eastern stuff
All or Nothing
Yeah all Trump books are basically the same and just make me kinda sad...
Behave
For not being a textbook, I thought Sapolsky did a nice job walking me through the human brain with good primers on chemistry and biology to get me through what I forgot from highschool.
Elon Musk
Yeah he's crazy
Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI
This was sort of my first front-to-back book about machine learning and I thought it was relatively rigorous while staying narrative and engaging. I'm glad this first book got me on the train of reading and self-studying more specific material
Ready Player One
A middle school classic. I always love reading this one.
Determined
An interesting take on determinism from a neuroscience perspective. I'm not an expert but it seems scientifically grounded and thought provoking!