Books
- Gottschall’s The Professor in the Cage
- Mlondinow’s The Upright Thinkers
- Vance, Elon Musk
Learn or Die has some good chapters on Bridgewater, the rest is meh.
I read about half of Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels. The parts I read were good, but I lost interest because the book confirmed for me that we don’t have good evidence about the values of people over most of history, and so even the most well-argued book possible on the subject couldn’t be all that compelling. We have much better evidence for the historical measures used in Morris’ earlier book, The Measure of Civilization.
Consciousness and the Brain has several good chapters, and some chapters that are a bit too excited about the author’s personal favorite theory of consciousness.
The Sixth Extinction was an enjoyable read, but don’t go in expecting any argument.
Favorite tracks or albums discovered this month
- Robert W. Smith, Symphony No. 1 (1996)
- Venetian Snares, “Szerencsétlen” (2005, from Rossz Csillag Alatt Született)
- Derek Charke, Tundra Songs (2007)
- Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld, Never Were the Sky She Was (2015)
Favorite movies discovered this month
- Garland, Ex Machina (2015)
Other
Of course the big news for me this month was that I took a new job at GiveWell, leaving MIRI in the capable hands of Nate Soares.
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