2022, a Journey Through Words and Ideas
In 2022, I made a commitment to read at least one book each week. It was a challenging but rewarding journey, and I am excited to share some of the insights, lessons, and fun facts I learned along the way.
My top 6 reads of 2022:
- The beginning of infinity - David Deutsch
- Thus spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche
- The order of time - Carlo Rovelli
- South - Ernst Shackleton
- The power of now - Eckhart Tolle
- The righteous mind - Jonathan Haidt
Some insights along the way:
- The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer — Mukherjee Siddharta
After the successful apollo mission, society thought that we could perform moonshot progress on all types of problems. A large case was made to fight cancer and large sums of funding were unlocked. However, this money did not come with first-principal thinking. It was like pouring money into landing on the moon, but not even knowing Newton’s laws of motion..
2. The Sovereign Individual — James Dale Davidson
Violence is at the bottom of the domino effect that dictates the type of society we have. The post-industrial age Nation states are increasingly losing their grip in rendering their core services as the information age decentralized both the economy and defense of digital identity and property. Enter the transition from Nation state model to the sovereignty of the individual.
Balaji in his book “The Network State” largely agrees with the content of “The Sovereign Individual”, except on 3 key points.
(i) Increased centralized nation-state power over violence as a result of AI and robots vs what James Dale Davidson predicted in the 90s
(ii) Community vs individual. Not just the unbundling of nation-state institutions, but the need to build better ones
(iii) The individual sovereign (Xi Jinping)
3. The Power Law — Sebastian Mallaby
Unsurprisingly, VC is dominated by a power law. All the returns come from a few outliers, and everyone is chasing them. VC changed a lot from hands-on, and high (30%) VC stakes, to competitive, more hands-off approaches and lower stakes.
VC and access to entrepreneurship both societally as an idea and in reality to build, are relatively young phenomena. This poises well for being on the track to David Deutsch’s “Beginning of Infinity”
4. History of Western Philosophy — Bertrand Russel
Politics and philosophy go hand in hand, shaping each other. It is important to understand that Bertrand was writing this masterpiece through the lens of witnessing the World Wars and trying to avoid a potential WW III. In impressive fashion, he bashed many of the great philosophers with logic. Thereby showing that we cannot imagine what the truth is and hence should be extremely careful to fanatically believe philosophies and political ideologies that come out of them. Fun fact, Ludwig Wittgenstein was his disciple and continued this work on logic (Bringing language and philosophy closer to the expressiveness of math)
5. Quantum Electro Dynamics — Richard Feynman
QED is one of the experimentally most battle-tested physics theories. At scale, a lot of the “weird” quantum behavior cancels out, but still follows the same rules.
Fun fact: Atoms with few protons/electrons near each other = Insulator. If many proton/ electrons and far from each other (less attraction pull), then those electrons are easier washed away -> Conductors
6. Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Friedrich Nietzsche
Die dreifache metamorphosis zum Übermensch (unlucky English translation. should be Over-human, not Super-human..)
(i) Camel (Load bearing, all the decades of societal values weighing you down)
(ii) Lion (Courage to jump away and create your own values)
(iii) Child (Innocence, forgetfulness, playfulness. The child is able to create completely new values for itself without being influenced by the large corpus of past value systems)
Takeaways: Be guided by the will to power, take agency, and don’t be too trapped sleepwalking under a veil of ignorance
7. Everything is Fucked: A book about hope — Mark Manson
Starts by Nihistically staring into the Abyss. However, turns the despair into a positive worldview and action plan by weaving in Nietzsche and Kant.
We have both a Thinking and Feeling brain. Thinking being your x-axis (Logical connections) and Feeling your Y-axis (Based on your own value hierarchy). In the fashion of David Hume (Reason is the slave of human passions), while we think our thinking brain is mostly behind the steering wheel, the opposite is true.
8. Stillness Speaks — Eckhart Tolle
Similar to “Everything is fucked” Kant and Nietzsche’s ideas run strong throughout this book.
To become more present we have to strip off our thick ego layer. This layer also functions like a lens of colored glass that morphs everything we see in a concept of good vs evil. A concept we need to step beyond..
Similar to Kant’s Categorical Imperative, it is key to interact with people as an end itself, and not a means to an end..
9. After the End of History — Francis Fukuyama
Francis claims that Liberal Democracy is the OG and final political model. However, it is very difficult to pull values and political models across different countries and cultures
10. Sevensens — Neal Stephenson
If the moon explodes, it will create rings like Saturn around the earth. However, before it comes to that we’ll experience 5,000y of heavy comet showers that will completely toast the earth. Will we be able to save the human genome? And if, what approach will be successful? Space, Earth, Water,..?
11. MBS: The rise of power of Mohammed Bin Salman
25–5. MBS’s father was the 25th in line for the Throne, and MBS was the 5th son in his family.. He is not just a rich crown prince destined to inherit the throne. He hustled all the way up!
12. Helgoland: Making sense of the quantum revolution — Carlo Rovelli
Helgoland, is a small island off the coast of Germany. Responsible for creating a ripple in the fabric of how we view the world after Werner Heisenberg discovered quantum physics there. As well as the actual ripple stemming from the biggest non-nuclear explosion past WW2 of the remaining Nazi ammunition.
13. Putin’s People — Catherine Belton
Just removing Putin won’t do the job. You need a proper internal coup to rip and replace the siloviki and its tentacles
14. The Machine Stops — E.M. Forster
Where we rely on machines and tech, we build atrophy and dependence. Rather than outsourcing, we should be merging.
15. The Network State — Balaji Srinivasan
Battle of the Leviathans. Religion vs State vs Network. Cryptographic principles are needed to run the Network Leviathan.
The future will be one of the Decentralized West vs Centralized East.
Feels like an updated version of the “Sovereign individual”
16. When Breath Becomes Air — Paul Kalanithi
Be more present and don’t take your loved ones for granted
17. Spin Dictators — Guriev Sergei
Violent dictatorship practices changed to “spinning” the narrative and not using public violence. As in Orwell’s 1984, he who controls the present controls the past.
Many of the same effects as in Stephen Pinker’s “The better angels of our nature”.
18. Seven brief lessons on Physics — Carlo Rovelli
Similar to Spinoza, we are all one, just wearing different filtered glasses that abstract our observations of the universe. But at the core, all views are interwoven. Reminds me a lot of the Physics project by Stephen Wolfram.
19. Ayurveda and the mind — David Frawley
Similar to the Fovea in our eye, our inner attention has a singular focus which we interpret as a self/ego.
20. The Fall — Albert Camus
Freedom = responsibility. We all paradoxically want the former without the latter.
21. Enders Game — Scott Orson
All our conflict comes from looking at the same problem through different lenses. To dominate, you need to fully understand your opponent, but by doing so you’ll have an incredible amount of empathy for them which makes it near impossible to pull the trigger willingly.
23. The innovators — Walter Isaacson
Transistors replaced neon tubes. The internet came about through the collaboration of the Military, universities, and private companies at the helm of Vannevar Bush. The decentralized nature of internet package routing might have its origin in building a robust communication system that doesn’t go down in a targeted nuclear attack.
24. The 48 laws of power — Robert Greene
The opposite of Kant’s moral compass, but very aligned with Machiavelli. Not a fan.
25. The War on the West — Douglas Murray
We are all the same biological human & our view and principles are a product of their time. Live & Let Live! The West’s postmodern pendulum has swung too far.
26. Why has nobody told me this before? — Julie Smith
Lean in to things that make you anxious. By avoiding it, the problem becomes worse because you give confirmation to that brain state. Whatever you do a lot of becomes your comfort zone. I.e. Seek discomfort!
27. The (Mis) Behaviour of Markets — Benoit Mandelbrot
The world is much more Factorial than Gaussian. Pretty aligned with Nassim Taleb
28. Future Babble — Dan Gardner
The vast majority of predictions by experts are wrong. The more knowledgeable the expert, the more degrees of freedom his left brain hemisphere has to build a convincingly sounding story
29. Carl Jung's Biography
Everything that is bright throws a large unconscious shadow.
Usually, that shadow is cast on yourself, but Egos that are too dominant can deflect it onto others. This even happens at a group level. e.g. Nazi vs Jews
30. The infinite Mache — Camila Russo
Ethereum had 8 co-founders, including Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson and Polkadot’s Gavin Wood
31. The righteous mind —Jonathan Haidt
Homo Duplex: We are 90% selfish monkey (Will to power), 10% bee (Hive mind)
32. Algorithms to live by — Brian Christian
37% rule, if you have to make an optimal decision and can’t use brute force (e.g. going through all available listings when buying a house). Look at 37% of options without making a decision. After those 37% chose the first option that beats all the previous ones! e.g. if you can only look at 10 house listings, look at the first 4 without making a decision, and take the first house that is better than all the ones you have seen already.
33. The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle
Shine light, don’t fight. Best way to combat negativity in the mind or elsewhere is to bring it out into the light. Sunlight destroys most bacteria..
34. The Beginning of Infinity — David Deutsch
Process over Goal. This way you’re playing the game of infinity. David takes a different stance than Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel. It is not so much the natural Anna Karenina principle, but rather the dynamism of a society that welcomes creativity and idea generation that leads to sustained human progress.
35. 1984 — George Orwell
A Government that controls the present, controls the past.
War = Peace
Freedom = Slavery
Ignorance = Strength
36. Projections — Karl Deisseroth
Psychological problems are in the end still physical “diseases” within our brains. Don’t judge people too hard, understanding alone is often not enough to overcome what seems logical to the normal healthy person. -> Have patience
37. QAnon and On — Van Badham
Extreme Cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t matter how crazy and provable wrong a conspiracy is. Believers will weave a path back to “their” worldview. As they feel superior in their worldview, they are taking the moral high ground which makes it close to impossible to talk sense. They see us as crazy as we see them.
QAnon is an example of a decentralized cult that moves through the web centipede.
38. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding — David Hume
Reason is the salve of human passions, and not the dominant force like Plato thought. The reasoning is actually made after the initial feeling is felt. Another appearance of cognitive dissonance.. We are incredibly good of convincing not just others, but ourselves of “consistent” narratives based on what we feel. The problem is, we convince ourselves that the narrative comes first, not the feelings..
39. The Metaphysics of Morals — Immanuel Kant
On the look for the Moral Axioms in the world (Categorical imperatives). See people as people, see them as an end, not as means to an end!
40. Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
Don’t judge people for who they are or their actions, but try to understand them as there is mostly a logical way that you can empathize with.
Surround yourself with experts and don’t feed your ego. That way you can stay open to learning
41. Blackout — Marc Elsberg
If we lose power, the world will turn to shit quicker than we think.. days.. Our society is much more fragile than we are used to believe.
42. The better Angels of our nature — Steven Pinker
The title is taken from the ending of Abraham Lincoln’s first presidential speech. We are inherently violent, but our reason, empathy,.. can guide us away from that violent nature.
Aligned with the core idea of Thomas Hobbes where a Leviathan can bring about order and reduce violence
Violence is steadily on the decrease (proven by tons of statistical studies)
43. Civilizations and its discontents — Sigmund Freud
Happiness is only an episodic phenomenon. It comes more from a state of contrast, rather than the prolonged feeling which will turn into mild contentment (Hence the value of gratitude, by comparing to worse outcomes)
Society at large is coping with the discontent and absurdity of life in many different ways, but at the core, they all try to distract from reality. Buddhism by ignoring innate feelings through mindfulness. Drugs and intoxicants, do the same in an unhealthier way. Religion tries to give more meaning to feelings of discontent. Some people just become hermits and don’t interact with the world or create their own illusion/delusion of it.
44. On Genealogy of Morals — Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche is clearly not a fan of how Judea-Christianity conquered the western mindset. It is one where guilt is at the core of organizing bigger societies without the need of “violent physical enforcements” but personal psychological torture. Tyranny of the weak over the strong.
45. Guns, Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond
The benefit of Europe & Asia vs the Americas is the horizontal vs vertical layout. It is easier for crops to migrate horizontally (across the same climates) vs vertically (across many different types of climates).
Anna Karenina principle is core to this thinking. It is more about avoiding all different pitfalls rather than getting “the one thing” right.
Fun fact: Horses were the OG war machine till tanks came about (not existing in the Americas till Cortez & Pizarro)
46. Black Swan — Nassim Taleb
Mediocristan vs Extremistan
The platonic fold is where the black swans lurk.
47. Fooled by Randomness — Nassim Taleb
Stories are powerful, but blind to randomness.
Luck (i.e. Randomness) is everywhere. Be careful not to have luck feed your Ego or beat yourself down by bad luck (Randomness), but do protect against potential Black Swan events.
48. The Republic — Plato
Educate kids first about the different pulls and urges of life before letting them jump into it. However, it is important that after the learning they do jump into life and grow from the experience.
49. Value(s) Building a better world for all — Mark Carney
Need to align human values with financial value. Have a way to account for negative and positive externalities to re-align the capitalist optimization machine
50. Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters — Matt Ridley
The human genome contains only about 20,000 genes, which is not that much compared to other organisms. For example, the fruit fly has about 14,000 genes, and the roundworm has about 19,000. This may seem surprising, given that humans are much more complex and sophisticated than these other organisms. However, it is thought that the complexity of an organism is not necessarily determined by the number of genes it has, but rather by the way in which those genes are expressed and the interactions between them. In other words, it is not the quantity of genes that matters, but the quality
51. The order of Time — Carlo Rovelli
As per the second law of thermodynamics, Entropy can only increase. And this increase of entropy is what we experience as the passing of time. However, entropy simply is the number of states we can’t comprehend. It is like shuffling a deck of cards, if all red and blacks are grouped we would assume low entropy/high order/ However if you think of it, every combination has a unique order to it. it just seems disordered through our biased lenses of what order is.. Time is not fundamental to the universe
52. Solaris — Stanislaw Lem
Intelligence is computation, and it can come in many different forms
53. Sun & Steel — Yukio Mishima
Body & Words: 2 Independent sources to assess beauty
54. The hard thing about hard things — Ben Horowitz
Embrace the struggle. Being a founder/CEO is hard and you can only really learn it on the job. Don’t waste too much time complaining about lemons you have been given, but take responsibility for how to deal with it and crack on
55. Working in public — Badia Eghbal
- Opensource is less distributed amongst contributors than we think (Many projects have very big elephant scores)
- Creation is driven by intrinsic motivation to build (Not maintain)
- The problem is maintenance. Code doesn’t die & the more popular it becomes the more the original creators are troubled to keep up with the pull requests etc.
- Platforms today focus on enabling distribution, but they should also focus on easing the maintenance of work
56 Recursion — Blake Crouch
Time is not linear, and in general not what we think it is.
57. Reality is not what it seems — Carlo Rovelli
A bummer that all of Democritus’s work was lost. The progress we would have made if he had the fame and attention Plato and Aristotle ended up getting..
58. The old man and the sea — Ernest Hemingway
The struggles/ tugs of life when becoming older and frail. I will likely relate more to it after I have put some more years under my own belt.
59. This is how they tell me the world ends — Nicole Perlroth
If cybersecurity would be a soccer game, the score after 90 minutes wouldn’t be in the range of 1–2 but more like 42,000 vs 45,000! The Defence is no match for the offense.
60. South — Ernest Shackleton
True leadership in rough times will keep the morale of the people up, even if it sometimes means irrational actions. never underestimate the power of morale and positive drive!
61. Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
Possibility for single cells to operate on a cosmic level, consuming energy of stars simply through evolution
Might have spread simple building blocks for life across the universe (mRNA?)
62. Three body problem— Cixin Liu
Video games are a great way to empathize with and get a better understanding of other life forms or even people of different cultures
63. The Dark Forest — Cixin Liu
Basically a Hobsian trap that could also be an explanation to the Fermi paradox. If you can’t communicate with another powerful entity & there is a small chance they might destroy you -> the rational course of action is to shoot/destroy first → Terrible equilibrium of immediate destruction.
64. Beyond Good and Evil — Friedrich Nietzsche
Lifted my veil of ignorance, what more can I say. Truly life-changing.
65. Principles for dealing with the changing world order — Ray Dalio
5 main influencers of world order:
(i) Evolutionary trend (innovation)
(ii) Debt/capital market/ money cycle
(iii) internal order & disorder
(iv) external order & disorder (Power)
(v) Acts of nature
66. The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho
When you walk your main path of life, don’t get too focussed on the main mission but notice the side paths and perhaps get lost in one of them. Your inner body will tell you when it is time to get back on track. This is when you will find “Omens” (Perhaps because you subconsciously look for them & interpret them that way).
Our life is a flux in and out of different mindsets. Be aware and enjoy life.
67. Wanting: The power of Mimetic Desire — Luke Burgis
Rene Girard has done amazing work on this topic.
Our desires are not original but a mimic of our role models and the environment — all throughout history.
The moment we start too much adopting each other's desires, we actually feel that we’re competing. This is especially true in small teams or families. This can spiral fully out of control, to the extent that the mutual blaming (often lynching) of a “scapegoat” is the only way out. And it does not matter if the scapegoat is actually guilty of the accused. (Elon has to be careful to not put himself in that scapegoat position)
68. Dark Matter — Blake Crouch
Don’t regret paths not taken, but value the one you have now. Especially the close connections with your loved ones.
69. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
Are we moving to a future where we will fully numb ourselves and succumb to entertainment and comfort? Taking the radical view on life’s struggles and stressors as bugs, vs embracing them as features for growth and meaning?
