Books I read this year:

• James by Percival Everett: Most of the story is pretty sad but the ending is satisfying.

• The message by Ta-Nehisi Coates: I don’t remember this book being particularly bad but I don’t think I got much out of it.

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: A good read. I’ve unfortunately sat down to write these notes too late to remember my feelings in detail. I felt ambivalent about most characters. I also felt there were some pretty boring sections.

• The autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley: The story got pretty boring after he gets out of prison. I figure he had to be more sensative about how he described his actions and relationships from that point onwards but less of his personality shines through. Overall a good read though.

• The Mind-Body problem and Metaphysics by Ralph Stefan Weir: This is one I’ll have to return to and read more carefully. In addition to becoming more interested in religion again, I’m also more interested in the philosophy of consciousness. I found the argument convincing but dense.

• Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams: I find the book entertaining though I guess I didn’t find the main character very compelling.

• That all shall be saved by David Bently Hart: I agreed with the conclusion but I find the author’s writing pretty hard to read. I felt at some point I was basically just skimming. I’ll need to revisit this.

• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: This is my second time reading it. Enjoyable but I found it less compelling this time around.

• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride: The writing style is a pleasure to read and the way the author describes the Jewish community of the opening character is very vivid. It makes me interested to know more about Jewish American culture.

• A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis: An interesting short read. I’d love to revisit it sometime soon.

• The poppy war by R.F. Kuang: The battle scenes weren’t particularly good. The way it transitions from their education to the war is pretty abrupt. I also can’t see how people would be skeptical of magic when it’s so important to the war. There are also so many characters and they’re pretty poorly characterized.

• Screwtape letters by C.S. Lewis: The format was pretty interesting but it was starting to get pretty stale by the end. In Screwtape Proposes a Toast he’s mostly complaining about politics and just sounds grumpy.

• 15 dogs by André Alexis: An amazing read. The ending was pretty sad though. I think it tried to end on a half-optimistic note but if so, it doesn’t succeed.

• All the sinners bleed by S.A. Cosby: A nice detective story. Good writing and interesting characters. I may check out the authors other books next.

• Christianity: The first 3000 years by Diarmaid MacCulloch: This was a great read. It’s long though. I put over 80 hours either reading or taking notes. It was great for me to study deeply. Jumping straight into theology is often so difficult. Having the historical context makes things more comprehensible.

• Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss: I’m not generally a fan of poetry and this unfortunately wasn’t an exception. I struggled with this one even though there was a poem here and there I really enjoyed.

• Vatican II: A short introduction by Shaun Blanchard and Stephen Bullivant: A nice short intro. I’ve heard many of the documents that came out of the council referenced before but Wikipedia wasn’t very useful for picking up the context behind them.

• The Catechism of the Catholic Church: This was a long read but it was worth it. It actually tends to repetitiveness I think but it’s a good reference resource.

• Why Not Socialism by G. A. Cohen: Easy to digest if not convincing.

• Giovanni’s room by James Baldwin: Really good and very sad. It does a great job of giving you a sense of impending doom.

• Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I found the stories of the women very compelling. The authors charicatures of leftist students was obnoxious.

• A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers: Very corny. Would not recommend.

• Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner: A bit slow at the start but once it settled in I found it very engaging.

• The Vegetarian by Han Kang: My second time reading it. I still don’t know quite what to make of it.

• Animal Liberation by Peter Singer: Very compelling read. I’ve gone vegetarian this year so I was already on board with his argument. I was surprised how bad and useless animal testing is. The chapter on the history of animal rights is really interesting.

• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan: Good but a bit boring in some parts near the middle. I found the ending very unsatisfying.

• Provoked and Enough Already by Scott Horton: Very, very detailed books.

• The Other End of the Leash by Patricia B. McConnell, Decoding Your Dog by the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, Perfect Puppy in 7 Days by Dr. Sophia Yin, The Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson: I’m summarizing these all together because I read them back to back and sometimes at the ame time so the content blended together for me. I found some of the content elucidating but not as much as directly working with dogs. I want to revisit these later.

• The Scammer by Tiffany D. Jackson: I found the ending pretty unsatisfying. I wanted to know what happened to the other students. The twist at the end was pretty interesting though.

• The Stupidity of War by John Mueller: Very compelling.

• The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett: Solid fantasy.

• Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War” by Patrick J. Buchanan: This is my first book on WW2. I found it interesting though not particulary convincing. He only has a few pages near the end on the Holocaust. At most it shows Churchill seriously blundered at various points but there was certainly a point at which entering the war against Hitler was better than surrender.

• Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker: I’m semi-convinced that FDR wanted war with Japan though in hind sight that was clearly the right move.

• A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin: I loved this whole series but the second is definitely my favorite. It saddens me that we won’t ever see and ending for the series.

Movies I watched this year:

I’m throwing this into reading reflection. I’m not sure if I should make this a more general media reflection. This year I will skip reviewing manga. I wish I had written reviews for the Broadway shows I watched back when I still lived in NYC. Like with the later half of the readings for this year I’m writing reviews long after watching so I’m only going to bother with a general summary of my reaction. While the books are ordered on when I read them this will be ordered by best to worst.

• The Secret Agent: My favorite movie of the year. Both funny and engaging and sad.

• Brokeback Mountain: Very good and sad.

• Sentimental Value: I enjoyed.

• Eddington: Funny though I don’t know what to make of the ending. I was surprised to see how negative the reviews were.

• Highest 2 Lowest: Pretty good.

• No Other Choice: Nice.

• Together: Body horror. Nice.

• Superman: Nice and feel-good.

• The Phoenician Scheme: I hate to out myself as so uncultured by I think this was my first Wes Anderson. I liked it visually but I struggled go follow what was going on.

• Rental Family: Interesting setup. I enjoyed.

• 28 Years Later: I never watched the original. I liked it. Not as scary as I worried it would be.

• Hamnet: Not bad but I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

• Wicked: For Good: Not as good as the first half but I felt the same way about the second half of the Broadway show.

• Bugonia: Okay but I didn’t like the ending.

• Jurassic World Rebirth: Okay.

• Avatar Fire and Ash: Mediocre but I wasn’t expecting much going in.

Looking forward to next year:

I had originally hoped to read more Eastern history but I’m going to have to spend a lot more time reading about AI. In fact, I’m going to spend a lot less time reading for simple pleasure which saddens me.

• Anthem by Ayn Rand: Sort of boring.

• Anabolics by William Llewellyn: Helpful info about steroids.

• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson:

• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin: Nice book but not an easy read from what I remember.

• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: Bad book. I don’t get why I’m supposed to like the main characters.

• A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick: Awful, annoying read. Worst thing I’ve read in a long while. The characters are all extremely annoying.

• L’École des Sorciers by J.K. Rowling: It re-read the first Harry Potter book in French. It was a challenge but was as engaging as when I’d first read it in English.

• Short Fiction by H. P. Lovecraft: I got into the habit of reading these before bed. Few of them are particularly scary but most are decent reads. I managed to get through everything of his that I could find online save a few of his longer stories (the Curious Case and the Dream Quest come to mind).

• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro: Not a bad book but the way Klara was treated was just not realistic. People become so attached to dogs and even inanimate objects but a speaking AI who grows up with a child is abandoned? Also, throwing in some confusing world building at the end was an annoying choice.

• She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan: Okay books. Character behave in strange and hurtful ways (especially in the second book) but the prose is tolerable. I have issues with the characterization of Zhu. She goes from a purely ambitious character to having hints of somehow being a liberator character.

• Uncle Vanya by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov: I read this before seeing the play on Broadway. Short, easy read.

• Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones: Howl is annoying but the book isn’t so bad.

• The Koran- A Very Short Introduction by Michael Cook: Interesting read. I don’t play on reading the Koran any time soon though.

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: I read this before going to see the Wiz. I’d never seen any of the movies or plays based on this book and only was familiar with the character and story though its influence on pop culture. Reading it, I realized Howl’s Moving Castle takes a lot from this author.

• The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: I find Wilde’s character over-witty and annoying.

• The Vegetarian by Han Kang: Strange book. I wasn’t as disturbed as my fellow book club members but I wouldn’t recommend it.

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Great book. Wasn’t sure what I was expecting going into this book but I didn’t expect it to be so funny.

• Richard II by William Shakespeare: I’m still working on getting through my remaining history plays.

• The Story of Art: A long read, basically a text book. I’m probably going to have to return to this multiple times to fully digest it but it inspired me to start visiting the Met and the MoMA semi-regularly for a couple months. As it warms up, I’ll hopefully pick this book and habit back up.

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: One of my favorites this year.

• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: Not a bad read but pretty frustrating. This may just be a matter of my taste, but it formed a poor contrast with Jane Eyre. Maybe I just like the straightforward 19th century style of its sequel. I definitely disliked the feeling of confusion I had about the feelings of Antoinette and Rochester.

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: This was such an engaging book I got through it all in one weekend.

• Complete Poems by Emily Brontë: I picked this up because I liked here prose so much. From what I understand, little of her work was published during her lifetime and most of the poems take place in a fictional world that is never fully explained. I struggled with this as I do all poetry and the footnotes were useless. I’m happy I struggled through it though, and there were a few I really liked.

• Shakespeare’s Sonnets: I read the Folger’s edition which mostly provided useful notes. Surprisingly accessible when read with patience.

• The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Robert Fagles): When writing about such great works, I especially feel my own stupidity. With that said, here are my thoughts: The Illiad a bit repetitive and boring. Hector is clearly a better man than Achilles and I was sad when he died. I was surprised how much combatants focused on stripping dead bodies of armor and weapons. In the Odyssey, I was surprised by how hospitable everyone is. The Odyssey is of course, the far more interesting of the two. Both books were a pleasure to read and Fagles deserved great credit.

• The Oresteia by Aeschylus (translated by Robert Fagles): I don’t know why I found this such a struggle to read when I found Fagles’ Theban plays so easy.

• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi: The author builds an interesting world but can’t quite deliver in the story. The latter half of the book devotes a lot of time to an uninteresting romance and the ending didn’t make me interested enough in the sequel.

• The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris: Another unhappy ending. I didn’t really get the behavior of the main character. In the book club, others were making the point that the whole OBG concept is iffy.

• The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Easier to read than I expected. I expected to get a book on Epicurean philosophy but Lucretius is more interested in arguing for naturalism. The metaphysics is hard to follow but I imagine that’s because I’m missing lots of context.

• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams: Not especially good or bad or interesting.

• No Longer Human and The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai: Both are short, sweet, depressing reads. I loved them.

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: The reveal at the end is hilariously absurd. I was literally laughing out loud. This was a good one though.

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: This competes with Wurthering Heights as my favorite read of the year. The characters are interesting, the setting is colorful and interesting, and the main character’s personality really come through.

• Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End by Liu Cixin: I liked each book more than the preceeding. It’s near impossible to get these books from the library since the waiting list is so long but that’s for good reason. I normally hate reading Sci-Fi but these were amazing.

• Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks: I picked this up as a prepared to start taking ASL classes. It’s a short read and I basically skimmed it but it corrected some of my misconceptions about sign language.

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers: The ending is sort of sad and unsatisfying but overall a good read.

• Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: I assumed this book would be more about recent history. An interesting read but I think I’ll have to return to it to fully digest.

• There there by Tommy Orange: I was pretty unhappy with the ending but the way the stories of the characters weave together is interesting.

• One state, two states by Benny Morris: As far as I can tell, a pretty even handed history of a complicated issue.

• Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance: I decided to pick this up after Trump chose him for VP.

• Cafe in Berlin and Ferien in Frankfurt by Andre Klein: These were both simple reads but I found them surprisingly difficult. I thought I’d be able to jump into reading German as easily as I had French after the Michel Thomas course but it’s been quite difficult. I need to invest way more time into it if I want to get any good.

Books I’m still reading:

I ended the year still reading Anna Karenina. I’m also going to continue reading Byzantium as part of my history self-teaching. I also want to finish the French and German language learning picks I made. In particular, I have Andre Klein’s series in mind for German; and the French Harry Potter translations, for French. I may return to Lingua Latina but only if I have the time. I also want to finish the Shakespeare poetry book I got.

Looking forward to next year:

I’m actually going to get through the Catechism this year. I’ll also be reading and reviewing a bunch of manga and light novels. Aside from that, I have no particular intentions aside from reading widely.

Books I read this year:

• On Liberty by J.S. Mill: A liberal classic. On the face of it, nothing Mill advocates is considered radical from our modern point of view. But it’s still and inspiring defense of the value of liberty. Furthermore, you get the sense that

• The Riverside Shakespeare: I’ve read through all the plays and corresponding commentary. At first I struggled but I eventually habituated to the language. I feel a strong sense of satisfaction from having immersed myself in some of the most important texts of the English language. My feeling of accomplishment rivals that of my completion of the Bible.

• The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles (translated by Robert Fagles): I was able to complete all three plays in just a couple weeks. It’s inspired me to possibly read more classical Greek literature. The context around why Croesus’s Thebes must fall to Athens good to know while reading The Knight’s Tale/Two Noble Kinsmen.

• The Illustrated History of the World (Volume 1 & 2) by J.M. Roberts: Both volumes were (relatively) short and sweet.

• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw: Short read. Wasn’t sure what to make of it.

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: My new favorite book.

• SPQR by Mary Beard: Nice introduction to Roman history.

• Europe in the High Middle Ages by William Chester Jordan: Really helpful and good read.

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville: Pretty good read. I was worried by the reviews I came across but there were many funny sections and I found little boring.

• Foster by Claire Keegan: Nice short read.

• Various plays by William Shakespeare: I was hoping to finish but slowed down during the summer. I mostly have the history plays left. I read Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Books I’m still reading:

• Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom: I picked up this book as a companion to my Shakespeare anthology. Sometimes illuminating but often over my head. Bloom has inspired me to read more classics. It says something about my reading comprehension that I can’t exactly state what it means that Shakespeare “invented” the human. I can only finish this once I finish the rest of the plays.

• The Power Broker by Robert Caro: I starting reading this while looking for a history of New York. I got 2/3rds of the way through and haven’t looked at it for half a year.

Other notes

I read Hamlet and Julius Caesar in 2022 before starting with the rest of the plays. The biggest helpers for making myself read more have been making Anki cards on unknown vocab and other knowledge and getting and e-reader. Also joining some book clubs provides a good motivation.

• seed = plant embryo

• fruit = seed container

• nut = hard-shelled fruit

• grain = small, hard seed

• cereal = grain-yielding plant

“A legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae” according to Wikipedia. A pulse is legume seed. Beans, lentils, and peas are all pulses. As far as I can tell there’s no real definition for these.

Unaligned intelligences are either “too dumb” or “too smart”:

• “too dumb” AIs are always unaligned in the sense that they cannot achieve or even represent their users’ goals. Such AIs fail to generalize in unfamiliar environment, fail, and are eliminated.

• “too smart” AIs consistently generalize and therefore must understand their users’ goals but not share them.

An AI that is “too smart” but doesn’t immediately destroy humanity must be biding its time. But such an AI must be a master of deception in addition to being a superintelligence at its task. For example, an unaligned superintelligent self-driving car would have to develop a theory of mind and future planning abilities far in excess of what’s necessary for sharing the road with humans or planning a trip from A to B.

I think this relates to Chat-GPT’s chess abilities because the best way for a tool intelligence to succeed is to model its user. It’s simplest if the AI and its model of the human share a goal. If goals can be thought of as having different levels of “complexity”, then “pretend to perform my task to deceive humans” is more complex than “perform my task”.

Other notes: I realized my reading reflection left out a couple of important books I read last year. The first was “Facing Mount Kenya” by Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president. Before becoming a politician, he studies anthropology in Britain. His Western teaching in conjunction with his experience growing up near the end of the pre-colonial era equiped him to give an interesting account of Kikuyu life. A lot of it is “political” in the sense that it argues for independence and the preservation of traditional Kikuyu culture. I’d like to read a more modern work to compare it to how anthropologists understand the region’s history now. The two things that gave me the most discomfort were his defense of polygamy and his defense of female genetical mutiliation. At one point he remarks that the average Kikuyu man had 2 wives, which I can only imagine working out with a lot of violence. He defends female genetal mutiliation as a rite of passage for young woman. From what I understand, the earliest political movements for independence focused on bringing back the practice.

The second book I read was “The Other Wes Moore” by Wes Moore. I had gotten the book as a gift from my aunt. The author compares his upbringing to that of a murderer with the same name.

• The Genetic Lottery by Kathryn Paige Harden: The book argues that inequality is in part determined by genetic differences and that egalitarians should embrace this. I came to this book not know what scientists mean by “heritability” or how they measure it but came away from it with a basic understanding of the current state of the nature-nurture debate as it relates to education and class. It’s been almost a year since I read this book (as is the case with other books on this list) but I don’t remember finding the more politically focused parts of the book all that great, though I’m sure I agree with egalitarian ideals.

• Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich: Easily my favorite book of the year. I really inspired me to educate myself more on genetics and human history. I’ve recommended this book to multiple people: not a thing I can say about any other book on this list or even very many off it.

• Human Diversity by Charles Murray: A three part book focusing on cognitive differences rooted in class, sex, and race: ordered from most established to most speculative according to the author. The book is chock-full of info on psychometrics, genetics, and neurology but does a great job explaining everything.

• How to Read the Bible by James L. Kugel: An excellent book. I’m confident I’ll read it again and buy it next time. I wish I had made this book my companion while I was reading the Bible the first time. The book compares ancient interpretations of the Bible with modern scholarship. The author is an Orthodox Jew and has some interesting ideas about how people of faith can understand scripture in light of what we’ve learned but that’s not for me to comment on. I really want a text of this quality that covers the New Testament.

• The Bible (partially: Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, the Poetic books except for Job, the Prophets, all of NT except for John): I feel a real sense of accomplishment having finish the whole Bible. I’ve taken the experience as a lesson in how, by making reading into a habit, you can complete any text. One thing I began to appreciate as I read, and only fully understood as a read secondary texts on the Bible, is how long time spans between its earliest and latest texts. In my head, everything in antiquity and beyond blended together. But reading the Bible, critical texts, and unrelated work on anthropology have inspired me to deepen my understanding of world history. I’m not sure when I’ll next revisit any part of the Bible but when I do, I’d like it to be the King James Version.

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: I finally finished this book after a near year long break from it. I’m disappointed I’ve got so little out of it. But it’s a short read so I’ll give it another go sometime.

Looking forward to this year:

• Shakespeare’s Collected Plays: I intend to read all of them. Wish me good luck! This will be the replacement of my Bible reading plan in the sense that I will make it a daily habit.

• The Cantebury Tales by Chaucer (translated by Nevill Coghill): Another collection culturally important tales. I probably won’t have time to read this unless I finish or take a break from Shakespeare.

• The Catechism of the Catholic Church: The same podcaster I followed along while reading the Bible is starting a similar podcast for the Catechism. I’m not sure what I could learn that I haven’t already either from the Bible, Sunday school, or elsewhere.

Aside from that, I’m non-commitant. I’ve tried picking up Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions again, only to be reminded why I dropped these texts in the first place. I may read more history, anthropology, or biology books. I’ve been telling myself to read more sci-fi for some time now.

I also need to read more an AGI x-risk. I got Superintelligence and The Alignment Problem from the EA book service and I do plan to read them. The problem is that the less I’m convinced by the AI don’t-kill-everyone (or whatever it’s called) argument, the less urgency I feel in getting up to speed on their arguments. I plan to write more about why I’m not worried to better organize my thoughts and motivate my learning. But between my job, working out, and reading, it seems like I have little time for anything else. In hindsight, much of my time as a student was wasted.

• Bowling alone by Robert D. Putnam: Classic book on social alienation in America. I’d like to see more updated statistics and international comparisons. Aside from generational succession, the main driver of the fall in social capital seems to be technological change. This make me pessimistic and I wonder how today’s communitarians hope to solve this problem.

• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: I took fairly detailed chapter by chapter notes. I’ll admit that I didn’t find his arguments convincing and at times I found them hard to follow. But overall, I enjoyed the books and the opportunity to learn more about the Christian worldview.

• The Bible (partially: Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, Job, John): I started the Bible in a Year reading plan in early August and haven’t missed a day yet. I’m on Day 149 and have been taking notes and listening to the accompanying podcast. Above are the books I’ve completed in entirety. Readings often vary wildly in how engaging or interesting they are but overall I’ve enjoyed the readings and look forward to the day I can say I’ve completed it.

• A Time to Build by Yuval Levin: I read this book early fall and didn’t take any notes so my reflection here will be surface level. Levin makes a good argument that America’s current problems are caused by weak institutions. However, its hard to see how to apply this revelation except in the most personal manner. I also don’t see how empowering our institutions in their current state would be good for us. I’m more interested in building alternatives.

• The death of expertise by Tom Nichols: This is another book I don’t fully remember.

• The Precipice by Tony Ord: Very well argued and informative book. It covers a wide range of issues but the author handles it very well. The arguments are presented in a very clear and precise manner. I hope to read it a second time soon. The subject matter is somber but still in general makes me excited about the future of humanity.

• Doing Good Better by William MacAskill: Good book introduction to Effective Altruism. I was already familiar with most of the concepts behind the book but I still enjoyed it.

• Human Compatible by Stuart Russell: I’ll admit that I’m new to the issue but I don’t find the idea of AI as an existential risk very convincing. I hope AGI reading group can help me better understand the arguments presented here. I may re-read this book afterwards to better formulate my criticisms.

Books I’m still reading:

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: Very short. It’s interesting but I haven’t had much use for its wisdom I guess.

• The Bible (remainder): I’ll probably take a break when summer rolls around.

• The structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas Kuhn: I started this one over the summer. I was already familiar with the argument of this book through summaries in other media but felt I ought to read the original.

Looking forward to next year:

I struggled to keep up with my reading pace when the semester got busy. Having one book (Bible) I was constantly making progress through did work though. Looking forward through, I need to figure out how to do so with other books if I’m going to get as much reading done as I’d like.

I don’t expect to get as much reading done. I’ll mostly be focused on personal projects and self-study. I’ll hopefully get into the AGI Safety Fundamentals Program but the reading list is mostly papers.

I’ll focus on finishing up Meditations over the next week, then I’ll continue the Bible reading plan. If I have free time, I hope to read some sci-fi classics. Also, now that I’ve read some intro EA stuff, I hope to read some books off of the Progress Studies reading list.

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