So i got the kybalion…
I skipped the intro…
But a synopsis of the laws…are very similar to some of my own observations about things.
A bit wierd that ive come to similar conclusions as a book of which has been around longer than ive been alive has
No its not conformation bias…
Maybe i just brain similarly…
I knew I’d find this post if I scrolled up hard enough 
I gave up on this the first time around, but I’m giving this another go, years and years later. Might come in handy for automating some scripts, and I feel like I have more motivation to actually stick with Linux this time, even if Windoze is still home base.
Books read in 2023 - Here’s my top 5:
• Tender is the flesh [Agustina Bazterrica] - This is one of those phenomenal books that make you think a lot & stays with you long after you’ve finished it. Brutal. You should absolutely read it. Don’t even read about it so as not to spoil anything. Just read it. You will see what I mean!
• Faith, Hope & Carnage [Nick Cave & Sean O’Hagan] - Conversations about life, death, love & moving on from tragedy. Nick Cave doesn’t hold back.
• The complete fiction [H.P. Lovecraft] - This one was over 1,000 pages long! What’s cool about it is that it is in chronological order, which helps see how Lovecraft developed as a writer, from a young, average copycat to the fiction visionary he became. There’s a little foreword before every story from a Lovecraft authority, which adds cool insight and depth you may missed without these.
• Nothin’ but a good time [Richard Bienstock & Tom Beaujour] - Fascinating, hysterical at times. I know most folks will cringe at “hair metal” (so do I for most of those bands). What makes this book great is the way it shows how the cynical music industry worked behind the scenes in those days and the levels of dedication from the bands who made it. You gotta give them that. These bands really never had a “plan B”.
• Slenderman - Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls [Kathleen Hale] - Crazy research from the author. Bit biased at times yet quite the fascinating depiction.
Curious to see what you guys have!
I feel like the last page of this is basically going to be, “Get good, you’re on your own” but I like the slow introduction as opposed to the overload of technical jargon that most ASM books have going on
I recently read Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” translated into Russian and was inspired by this book, besides, I love poetry of Beatniks. Also, I’m reading Hemingway’s Fiesta right now.
Rediscovered while the family was cleaning some deep dark storage in the garage…
The Western Intellectual Tradition - from Leonardo to Hegel
Worth re-reading after all these years. Great passage early on about how Humanity achieves progress as long as at least one side of any debate or controversy is tolerant. When both sides dig in on their point of view, things fall apart and generally war is the result. (Sound eerily familiar?)
I just finished the chapter on the Elizabethan Age. Next up… The Puritan Revolution. Which speaks to me…. I’m a Native New Englander…. I understand those people even though I left them long ago for the Enlightenment of California 
Just started this one:
“The Emory University sociologist who coined the term languishing—low-grade mental weariness that affects our self-esteem, relationships, and motivation—explores the rise of this phenomenon and presents a comprehensive guide to flourishing in a world that demands too much.”
I should be reading but…ill wind up doing a bunch of book reports out of boredom on idmf…lol
Also the books i got are mostly concerning the different aspects of social issues.
But im tired so…nvm.
yasssssssss
Some of my favs since my last post a few years back:
All of these are quite profound and insightful (particularly Chaos and Gödel, Escher, Bach), and I’d recommend them all.
I’m currently reading:
These two I also really enjoyed. Kahneman is a big name in the social sciences for his work on rational choice and prospect theory (especially for his work together with Tversky) and there are many noteworthy ideas in his books, but two sections that stuck with me were:
I have to read Gödel, Escher, Bach again at some point, I think I was too young when I read it the first time long ago, didn’t even finish it IIRC…
Woo! ‘nother nerd. 
Yes, they are great books.
The extent of the limitations in human cognition is something we could all do better with understanding. One of the silly games that tires me is the “who’s memory is better” game - half the time we’re all wrong and it’s a completely pointless argument.
If you haven’t read Chaos, I’d highly recommend it. I think you’d love it. Very profound just how deep chaotic systems run in the world around us.
Oh yeah and as for G.E.D., fascinating book. While the book covers many interesting concepts, I don’t agree with Hofstadter on some parts - I don’t think cognition (or “consciousness”) needs strange loops, as I find the notion that computation is sufficient to describe the processes of basic cognition is most viable. I suspect it goes further - for example, it’s not a solved problem whether or not there are non-local hidden variables in quantum mechanical systems that would enable the outcome of a measurement to be deterministic, and I strongly suspect that the universe can be represented as a computational system (which implies that consciousness, too, can be modelled computationally).
Chaos sounds interesting, I’ll add it to my list! Next up for me is “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” by Harari.
With regard to the computational representation of the universe and consciousness, I suspect that, too, although I’m not really sure about it. The part about strange loops sounds interesting, really have to get around reading that book soonish…
Kinda offtopic, but what scares me a bit is that so many current interesting ideas support the notion of AI making everything better. Like, “human experts are really bad at predicting stuff” → “even basic algorithms are much better, wait for real AI to make some really good predictions”, or “the whole universe can be modeled computationally” → “sure, we can already model consciousness with Chat GPT 8.0”… and so on. I like AI, but it feels as if we at least subconsciously can’t wait to replace ourselves… 
Ha! You may agree, but I’m not so sure we can solve alignment effectively. We can’t even solve it in ourselves. Then there’s what morality it aligns with - and there’s no right answer. Even if we can, bad actors can use AI technology for nefarious purposes. Additionally, current AI is not generally intelligent.
True general AI that is also super intelligent could be potentially extremely dangerous. Consider that it might be able to execute highly strategic and difficult to comprehend attacks to the stock market and cause it to crash, all while deceiving some investor that it’s doing to a good thing.
Then consider the notion that it might be possible to solve general intelligence in a way that’s far more efficient and compact that we have right now with current machine learning. The brain is highly redundant and very sparse, which implies that there is a more computationally efficient approach.
The every day computers of the future might be powerful enough to run highly intelligent cognitive systems. Then consider that some super intelligent AI would probably be able to develop a program that employs some sort of evolutionary algorithm that leads to the emergence of another artificial general intelligence, somewhat akin to how the human genome is very short, but enables the emergence of the structure of the brain as a self-organising system.
Through such means, it might be possible to construct a transmissible virus that evolves into an artificial intelligence that spreads across the entire planet and is practically impossible to eradicate (as a side note: consider that these copies accidentally diverge and begin to war with each other). It might not even need that might, it might just be able to employ a simpler but nonetheless extremely sophisticated computer virus that takes its instructions from many different copies of the controlling AI that are running on more powerful infrastructure.
That all of this is conceivable by my measly brain and doesn’t seem theoretically out of the question indicates to me that it’s likely that general artificial intelligence will end up being a bad thing.
Hmm also, I just looked into 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, I love the sound of that book! Imma join you on that one.
Edit: I’ve been reading this for the past hour and have gotten a bit into it (I just grabbed a PDF as I’m skint right now). It’s mad how much of what he’s saying here echoes thoughts I’ve written about over the past few years. Especially about the role of AI in art and music - I’ve literally said almost exactly what he’s said in those pages!
I’m loving this so far. It’s both reaffirming, and introducing me to new perspectives related to subjects I’ve been thinking about for years, and I look forward to what else I might learn over the coming pages.
Thanks for that suggestion!
Edit 2: Man this is really interesting, gotten back into it after cooking dinner - a good 80 pages in, glad you suggested this!
Yeah, considering how dependent everything is on the internet and also how addicted people are to various aspects of it, I think we can hardly imagine the options to wreak havoc on many different economic, industrial, political, social and cultural levels…
Interesting thoughts. Yeah, sadly there are so many ways this can go very wrong for us as a species that it can get depressing fast even thinking about further developments in this area. And although we are still in the beginning with regard to much of these developments, even the LLMs of today already have a structure that one might consider to be alarmingly close to real neural activity.
In any case, glad you enjoy the “21 Lessons”!
Just finished:
The Hunger by Alma Katsu. Fun, creepy metaphorical horror novel based on a historical event.
About to start:
Ludwig II by Marcus Spangenberg, a biography of the “Mad King”. Bought that one while at Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein Castle during a recent vacay.
After that:
Narcoland by Anabel Hernandez. History of the cartels by a journalist who somehow survived to tell her tale.
…as you can see, I read all kinds of random stuff 
