Updates - August 2024
Happy summer!
New writing
- Some thoughts on studying things without any immediate practical value.
- On the importance of norms over policies, where I discuss Trump.
- Thoughts from two-fifths of the way through grad school
Bookclub
We covered a lot of ground in bookclub this summer. Some of my favorite episodes were on Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke, The Fall by Camus, and the ongoing series on Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
Recommendations
- I recently discovered Michael Sugrue's youtube channel, and now have at least a fighting chance of understanding what Hegel and Kierkegaard were on about.
- Ben Recht finished blogging about Paul Meehl's class, which will be terribly fascinating if you're interested in both the history of science and the foundations of statistics, and terribly boring otherwise.
In other news, Kasra and I are hosting a small salon on the state of US politics this Sunday at 11am PST over zoom. See Kasra's tweet about it here. The idea is to discuss all candidates fairly, understand the worries of both sides, and to find out what we're wrong about. If you'd like to join you can comment on his tweet or just reply to this email.
Hope everyone is happy and healthy,
Ben
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