Weekend Reading
Writing worth reading - 6th/7th July 2024
Niall Ferguson: The Democratic Party Awaits Its Gorbachev by Niall Ferguson
“It all put me in mind of Donald Rumsfeld’s typology of knowledge from back in 2002. “As we know,” he told journalists at a briefing about the alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones…”
The West hasn’t figured out what’s going wrong. Voters are the problem by Matthew Syed
“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean,” the historian William Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization. “If war is forgotten in security and peace … then toil and suffering are replaced by pleasure and ease; science weakens faith even while thought and comfort weaken virility and fortitude.” They are words that are perhaps worth pondering as the western world moves closer to the precipice while distracting itself with endless cat videos and online spats about whether…”
Elon and AI at Tesla by Ashok Elluswamy
“In 2016, Tesla started doing all of the computer vision required for Autopilot in-house instead of depending on external vendors. Many people thought it was insane to bet the product on developing the vision system from scratch within a few months, which had taken other companies a decade or more. Yet, we achieved this target within eleven months. This was a strategically important move that started the development of a strong AI team at Tesla.…”
Upcoming meals with 9others
Wednesday 24th July — London — details and signup here.