inputs

Some things I’ve read

Books

Goodreads “Read” shelf.

Papers

Articles & Blogs

Scott Alexander

David Graeber & David Wengrow

How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened)

https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/

William Gillis

The Continuing Obfuscation Of Nationalism

http://humaniterations.net/2018/10/18/the-continuing-obfuscation-of-nationalism

When you summon a monster to do a task it is your ethical responsibility to keep it from growing too powerful to be banished.

E. Glen Weyl

Why I Am Not A Capitalist

https://radicalxchange.org/blog/posts/2019-01-14-j73qnz/

Glen Weyl makes the case that neoliberalism, even with social insurance, doesn’t offer a way to deal with increasing returns.

Other Authors

Spaghetti Towers

https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2018/12/21/spaghetti-towers/

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NQgWL7tvAPgN2LTLn/spaghetti-towers#comments

Discovered via LessWrong. Introduces the concept of “Spaghetti Towers”: complex, difficult to refactor systems that are built out of repeated spaghetti tests (see what sticks). Similar to the Lava Layer Anti-Pattern. Colorful pictures.

I liked the comment by MakoYass: “Suddenly very inspired with the idea of a programming language where even the most carelessly constructed spaghetti towers are fairly easy to refactor.”