Here I direct you to some of the best writings or books that I come back to every year.
I hope you find them as insightful as I did.
Currently Learning
- Better frameworks for AI-native Learning.
- Compounding and Applying Knowledge (Mental Models and Engineering Strategies)
- Financial Plumbing
- How our Brain Works
- What is Autonomy and Agency?
- Analyzing and Building Antifragile Systems
Currently Reading
- A History of Religious Ideas by Mircea Eliade
- Genesis by Henry A. Kissinger, Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt
- Shape by Jordan Ellenberg
Writings I cherish
- How to Make Something Great by Ryo Lu
- 지적 호전성 (or Chutzpah) by 최진석 Jin-Seok Choi
- Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions by fs.blog
- Poszar’s writings: his past Writings at Credit Suisse and newly added pieces - Poszar truly thinks in systems
- A (Long) Peek into Reinforcement Learning by Lilian Weng - Haven’t seen a better intro to RL
- Linus’ A Beginner’s Guide to Exploration and Notational Intelligence - His writings elegantly capture layers of truth in life
- How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You) by Tim Urban
- Patrick Collison’s Advice, Sam Altman’s Advice and Paul Graham’s Take on Independent Thinking (and all their other essays)
Books I can’t stop re-reading
Clarity in Life
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Naval Ravikant
- Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder (and the whole Incerto series) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better”
- Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio - Never hurts to have principles to live by.
- The Tao of Seneca by Tim Ferris - Best for long runs
Science / Epistemology / Knowledge Creation
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
- How Not to be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg
- The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
Engineering
- Thinking in Systems: A Primer
- Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher Bishop
- Reinforcement Learning by Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto
- The Laws of Trading by Agustin Lebron — the Jane Street Vet
Economics, Social Science and Progress
- The Price of Time by Edward Chancellor
- Narrative and Numbers by Aswath Damodaran
- World of Oil Derivatives by Greg Newman
- The Future of Money by Eswar Prasad
International Politics and History
- The World for Sale by Javier Blas
- The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin
- Geopolitical Alpha: An Investment Framework for Predicting the Future by Marko Papic
- 해방 후 3년: 건국을 향한 최후의 결전 Three years after liberation: The final battle for the nation by 조한성
Cognitive Science / Human Psyche
- On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done by David Badre
- The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli - Beware of your own biases!
Creating Valuable Systems
- This is Strategy by Seth Godin
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger
Art, Philosophy and Literature
- The Art Spirit by Robert Henri
- Popper Selections by Karl Popper
- What is Power and all other works by Byung-Chul Han
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- 눈길 by 이청준 Cheong-jun Yi
For those who’ve made it this far, I also present to you my life-long collection of bold questions that steer my thinking.