Bit of a Tangent

Kat Woods is an effective altruist and the co-founder of Nonlinear, which incubates longtermist nonprofits by connecting founders with ideas, funding, and mentorship. Gianluca and Kat discuss brain hacks for curing imposter syndrome and being more agentic, infohazards, the simulation hypothesis, why you don’t need permission to do things, “passive impact” via automation, and Kat’s exciting new projects at Nonlinear. -------- Shownotes: -------- Kat Woods on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kat__Woods Kat’s blog: www.katwoods.org/ Nonlinear: www.nonlinear.org/ Effective Altruism (EA): https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ The Effective Altruism Handbook: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/handbook Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10016013-harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-rationality Replacing Guilt: https://anchor.fm/guilt SMBC cartoon on compatibilism: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/compatibilism  Nonlinear Library (podcast): https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JTZTBienqWEAjGDRv/listen-to-more-ea-content-with-the-nonlinear-library Kat’s post on text-to-speech automation: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tAWK33eNXZKMckPhn/how-and-why-to-turn-everything-into-audio EA Houses: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4zHWQNzCusaTfD7jz/ea-houses-live-or-stay-with-eas-around-the-world Nonlinear support fund: www.nonlinear.org/productivity-fund.html Nonlinear bounty programme: https://super-linear.org/ EA hiring agency: https://second-bellflower-54f.notion.site/EA-Hiring-Agency-0d6d75a0f5934455be9003fd7886d537 Nonlinear newsletter: www.nonlinear.org/subscribe.html Bit of a Tangent on Twitter: www.twitter.com/podtangent Bit of a Tangent on Instagram: instagram.com/podtangent/

Kat Woods is an effective altruist and the co-founder of Nonlinear, which incubates longtermist nonprofits by connecting founders with ideas, funding, and mentorship. Gianluca and Kat discuss brain hacks for curing imposter syndrome and being more agentic, infohazards, the simulation hypothesis, why you don’t need permission to do things, “passive impact” via automation, and Kat’s exciting new projects at Nonlinear. -------- Shownotes: -------- Kat Woods on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kat__Woods Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond Kat’s blog: www.katwoods.org/ Nonlinear: www.nonlinear.org/ Effective Altruism (EA): https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ The Effective Altruism Handbook: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/handbook Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10016013-harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-rationality Replacing Guilt: https://anchor.fm/guilt SMBC cartoon on compatibilism: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/compatibilism  Nonlinear Library (podcast): https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JTZTBienqWEAjGDRv/listen-to-more-ea-content-with-the-nonlinear-library Kat’s post on text-to-speech automation: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tAWK33eNXZKMckPhn/how-and-why-to-turn-everything-into-audio EA Houses: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4zHWQNzCusaTfD7jz/ea-houses-live-or-stay-with-eas-around-the-world Nonlinear support fund: www.nonlinear.org/productivity-fund.html Nonlinear bounty programme: https://super-linear.org/ EA hiring agency: https://second-bellflower-54f.notion.site/EA-Hiring-Agency-0d6d75a0f5934455be9003fd7886d537 Nonlinear newsletter: www.nonlinear.org/subscribe.html Bit of a Tangent on Twitter: www.twitter.com/podtangent Bit of a Tangent on Instagram: instagram.com/podtangent/

In this episode, Gianluca and Jared discuss the neurobiology of predictive processing, the role of dopamine in reward signalling, satisfaction, and human desire. They also touch on the relation of reward to reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence.  The podcast then shifts to discuss the clinical manifestations of the predictive brain, including the computational psychiatry of depression, autism-spectrum-disorder, and schizophrenia, and how top-down prediction, and precision-weighted prediction error explain central aspects of these conditions. -------- Shownotes: -------- Jared on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jnearestn Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: https://www.podtangent.com/e/029-predictive-processing-2-where-the-action-is/

In this episode, Gianluca and Jared discuss the neurobiology of predictive processing, the role of dopamine in reward signalling, satisfaction, and human desire. They also touch on the relation of reward to reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence.  The podcast then shifts to discuss the clinical manifestations of the predictive brain, including the computational psychiatry of depression, autism-spectrum-disorder, and schizophrenia, and how top-down prediction, and precision-weighted prediction error explain central aspects of these conditions. -------- Shownotes: -------- Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: https://podtangent.com/e/029-predictive-processing-2-where-the-action-is/

This week’s episode of Bit of a Tangent is a continuation of our 3 part series on Predictive Processing - a fascinating neuroscientific account of the way our brains come to understand the world. If you haven’t already listened to part 1 (episode 028), check that out first!  In this episode Gianluca and Jared discuss the importance of sensory precision, the circular causality of prediction and action, how action comes about in a counterintuitive way from high confidence predictions, the way in which prior expectations can bias sensory sampling, and how this could lead to self-fulfilling spirals that would make your life either much worse or much better! Find us on Twitter @podtangent

This week’s episode of Bit of a Tangent is a continuation of our 3 part series on Predictive Processing - a fascinating neuroscientific account of the way our brains come to understand the world. If you haven’t already listened to part 1 (episode 028), check that out first!  In this episode Gianluca and Jared discuss the importance of sensory precision, the circular causality of prediction and action, how action comes about in a counterintuitive way from high confidence predictions, the way in which prior expectations can bias sensory sampling, and how this could lead to self-fulfilling spirals that would make your life either much worse or much better! Find us on Twitter @podtangent

It's here. It's finally here! The first in a series of three episodes diving into the predictive processing theory of brain function! Jared and Gianluca discuss top-down versus bottom-up perception, Bayesian Brain hypotheses, the logic of caring only about prediction error, and the phenomenology of visual illusions!  

It's here. It's finally here! The first in a series of three episodes diving into the predictive processing theory of brain function! Jared and Gianluca discuss top-down versus bottom-up perception, Bayesian Brain hypotheses, the logic of caring only about prediction error, and the phenomenology of visual illusions!  

Gianluca and Jared have survived 2020 (so far) and are back for Season 3 of Bit of a Tangent. In this episode they bring you 7 new habits and techniques that can be used to iteratively upgrade yourself — even in lockdown. Forget everything else that’s going on in the world, and take a deep dive into personal optimisation. Or, as they’d put it, prepare to geek out on organisation hacks, bootstrapped learning, and motivation pumps.  -------- Shownotes: -------- Jared on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jnearestn Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: https://www.podtangent.com/e/026-drink-and-be-rational/ Matt D’Avella’s video on Checklists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n2vL2I__WY Alex Vermeer’s Tangibles: https://alexvermeer.com/tangibles/ Roam research: https://roamresearch.com/ Put iPhone in grayscale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNuziJOl61o FitNotes Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.jamesgay.fitnotes Matt D’Avella’s 30-day challenges: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXKuahfdkl6zkBULJhEMNy_RnErOYXwJk How Jerry Seinfeld writes jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWxXyCfW5s Anki (flashcards tool): https://apps.ankiweb.net/ Michael Nielsen’s essay on learning with Anki: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html POLAR bookshelf software: https://getpolarized.io/ How to wrap your headphones up: https://youtu.be/3_FueKBoRO0?t=171

Gianluca and Jared have survived 2020 (so far) and are back for Season 3 of Bit of a Tangent. In this episode they bring you 7 new habits and techniques that can be used to iteratively upgrade yourself — even in lockdown. Forget everything else that’s going on in the world, and take a deep dive into personal optimisation. Or, as they’d put it, prepare to geek out on organisation hacks, bootstrapped learning, and motivation pumps.  -------- Shownotes: -------- Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: https://podtangent.com/e/026-drink-and-be-rational/ Matt D’Avella’s video on Checklists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n2vL2I__WY Alex Vermeer’s Tangibles: https://alexvermeer.com/tangibles/ Roam research: https://roamresearch.com/ Put iPhone in grayscale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNuziJOl61o FitNotes Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.jamesgay.fitnotes Matt D’Avella’s 30-day challenges: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXKuahfdkl6zkBULJhEMNy_RnErOYXwJk How Jerry Seinfeld writes jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWxXyCfW5s Anki (flashcards tool): https://apps.ankiweb.net/ Michael Nielsen’s essay on learning with Anki: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html POLAR bookshelf software: https://getpolarized.io/ How to wrap your headphones up: https://youtu.be/3_FueKBoRO0?t=171

[Epistemic status: slightly intoxicated] Jared and Gianluca exchange rapid-fire questions whilst becoming increasingly inebriated. Think of this episode as the Ferriss/Rose “Random Show,” but with more references to Bayesian inference. It’s pretty likely to entertain you, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting too. Topics include Email response times, VR projects, and the statistical approach to an ethical diet.  -------- Shownotes: -------- Jared on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jnearestn Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: https://www.podtangent.com/e/025-self-supervised-machine-learning-introduction-intuitions-and-use-cases/ The Game Changers: www.imdb.com/title/tt7455754/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Joe Rogan Experience #1389 - Chris Kresser Debunks "The Gamechangers" Documentary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq4Apc2Xk7Q Sam Altman on Conversations with Tyler: conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/sam-altman/ Top 19 Ideas from 2019: www.podtangent.com/e/021-the-top-19-ideas-from-2019/ Jared’s Twitter thread (19 ideas I couldn't stop thinking about in 2019): https://twitter.com/jnearestn/status/1211681767742156803 Donald Knuth on Lex Fridman’s podcast: https://lexfridman.com/donald-knuth/ Glen Weyl on the 80000 Hours podcast: https://soundcloud.com/80000-hours/glen-weyl-radically-reforming-capitalism-and-democracy Eric and Brett Weinstein talking about DISC and the failings of peer review on The Portal: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-prediction-and-the-disc/id1469999563?i=1000462975502 Gianluca’s paper on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.05363 This equation will change how you see the world by Veritasium: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk

[Epistemic status: slightly intoxicated] Jared and Gianluca exchange rapid-fire questions whilst becoming increasingly inebriated. Think of this episode as the Ferriss/Rose “Random Show,” but with more references to Bayesian inference. It’s pretty likely to entertain you, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting too. Topics include Email response times, VR projects, and the statistical approach to an ethical diet.  -------- Shownotes: -------- Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: https://podtangent.com/e/025-self-supervised-machine-learning-introduction-intuitions-and-use-cases/ The Game Changers: www.imdb.com/title/tt7455754/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Joe Rogan Experience #1389 - Chris Kresser Debunks "The Gamechangers" Documentary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq4Apc2Xk7Q Sam Altman on Conversations with Tyler: conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/sam-altman/ Top 19 Ideas from 2019: www.podtangent.com/e/021-the-top-19-ideas-from-2019/ Jared’s Twitter thread (19 ideas I couldn't stop thinking about in 2019): https://twitter.com/jnearestn/status/1211681767742156803 Donald Knuth on Lex Fridman’s podcast: https://lexfridman.com/donald-knuth/ Glen Weyl on the 80000 Hours podcast: https://soundcloud.com/80000-hours/glen-weyl-radically-reforming-capitalism-and-democracy Eric and Brett Weinstein talking about DISC and the failings of peer review on The Portal: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-prediction-and-the-disc/id1469999563?i=1000462975502 Gianluca’s paper on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.05363 This equation will change how you see the world by Veritasium: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk

On this episode of Bit of A Tangent, we discuss the emerging field of self-supervised machine learning. This is an immensely exciting area of active research in machine learning and AI - one which most people haven’t even heard about yet! We build up to the intuition for the topic by covering supervised and unsupervised learning; autoencoders and dimensionality reduction, and exploring how these techniques could be applied to Gianluca’s Quantified Self n=1 sleep quality dataset. We culminate in a detailed discussion of the state-of-the-art Contrastive Predictive Coding model, and how it allows us to learn about the structure of the world, without tonnes of labelled training data! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Show Notes: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summer school on Computational Neuroscience: http://imbizo.africa/ Control problem in AI: https://intelligence.org/stanford-talk/ Coordination problem: https://conceptually.org/concepts/coordination-problems Deep learning overview: https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/2017/06/21/an-overview-of-deep-learning.html t-SNE explained: https://mlexplained.com/2018/09/14/paper-dissected-visualizing-data-using-t-sne-explained/ Variational autoencoders explained: https://anotherdatum.com/vae.html Self-supervised learning by fast.ai: https://www.fast.ai/2020/01/13/self_supervised/ CPC model papers on Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.03748.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.09272.pdf  Blog posts explaining CPC: https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/2019/11/10/self-supervised-learning.html https://yann-leguilly.gitlab.io/post/2019-09-29-representation-learning-with-contrastive-predictive-coding/ https://mf1024.github.io/2019/05/27/contrastive-predictive-coding/

On this episode of Bit of A Tangent, we discuss the emerging field of self-supervised machine learning. This is an immensely exciting area of active research in machine learning and AI - one which most people haven’t even heard about yet! We build up to the intuition for the topic by covering supervised and unsupervised learning; autoencoders and dimensionality reduction, and exploring how these techniques could be applied to Gianluca’s Quantified Self n=1 sleep quality dataset. We culminate in a detailed discussion of the state-of-the-art Contrastive Predictive Coding model, and how it allows us to learn about the structure of the world, without tonnes of labelled training data! -------- Shownotes: -------- Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Summer school on Computational Neuroscience: http://imbizo.africa/ Control problem in AI: https://intelligence.org/stanford-talk/ Coordination problem: https://conceptually.org/concepts/coordination-problems Deep learning overview: https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/2017/06/21/an-overview-of-deep-learning.html t-SNE explained: https://mlexplained.com/2018/09/14/paper-dissected-visualizing-data-using-t-sne-explained/ Variational autoencoders explained: https://anotherdatum.com/vae.html Self-supervised learning by fast.ai: https://www.fast.ai/2020/01/13/self_supervised/ CPC model papers on Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.03748.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.09272.pdf  Blog posts explaining CPC: https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/2019/11/10/self-supervised-learning.html https://yann-leguilly.gitlab.io/post/2019-09-29-representation-learning-with-contrastive-predictive-coding/ https://mf1024.github.io/2019/05/27/contrastive-predictive-coding/

Gianluca announces his latest project—the audio version of Nate Soares’ Replacing Guilt series—and Jared explains why it’s a notable contribution to the rationalist community. Together, they discuss how to gain the most from listening to the series and why it’s something you should strongly consider doing if you often find yourself binging Netflix until 3 AM.   -------- Shownotes: -------- Replacing Guilt podcast: https://anchor.fm/guilt Rationality: From AI to Zombies podcast: www.from-ai-to-zombies.eu/ SlateStarCodex podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/slate-star-codex-podcast/id1295289140 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (audio): http://www.hpmorpodcast.com/ Jared on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jnearestn Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/)

Gianluca announces his latest project—the audio version of Nate Soares’ Replacing Guilt series—and Jared explains why it’s a notable contribution to the rationalist community. Together, they discuss how to gain the most from listening to the series and why it’s something you should strongly consider doing if you often find yourself binging Netflix until 3 AM.   -------- Shownotes: -------- Replacing Guilt podcast: https://anchor.fm/guilt Rationality: From AI to Zombies podcast: www.from-ai-to-zombies.eu/ SlateStarCodex podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/slate-star-codex-podcast/id1295289140 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (audio): http://www.hpmorpodcast.com/ Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/)

Jared and Gianluca have an uncompromising exchange about computational neuroscience and its implications for life and AI research. --------------- Shownotes: --------------- Jared on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jnearestn Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: www.podtangent.com/e/022-6-books-you-need-to-read-in-2020/ Ideas episode: www.podtangent.com/e/021-the-top-19-ideas-from-2019/ The Portal podcast episode with Garrett Lisi: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/15-garrett-lisi-my-arch-nemesis-myself/id1469999563?i=1000458879827 Don Hoffman on Sam Harris’ podcast: https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/178-reality-illusion/

Jared and Gianluca have an uncompromising exchange about computational neuroscience and its implications for life and AI research. --------------- Shownotes: --------------- Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/) Last episode: www.podtangent.com/e/022-6-books-you-need-to-read-in-2020/ Ideas episode: www.podtangent.com/e/021-the-top-19-ideas-from-2019/ The Portal podcast episode with Garrett Lisi: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/15-garrett-lisi-my-arch-nemesis-myself/id1469999563?i=1000458879827 Don Hoffman on Sam Harris’ podcast: https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/178-reality-illusion/

Gianluca presents his much-requested three non-fiction and three fiction recommendations for 2020. Jared recommends a book so long and gripping that you should probably avoid it if you have anything productive to do in the next six months.  --------------- Shownotes: --------------- Jared (twitter.com/jnearestn) and Gianluca (twitter.com/QVagabond) on Twitter Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/podtangent/) Last week’s episode: www.podtangent.com/e/021-the-top-19-ideas-from-2019/ Gianluca on Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/user/show/56535709-gianluca Books Gianluca read in 2019: www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/14773941 Algorithms to Live By, by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths: www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by 80000 Hours podcast with one of the authors of Algorithms to Live By: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/brian-christian-algorithms-to-live-by/ Inadequate Equilibria by Eliezer Yudkowsky: https://equilibriabook.com/ Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Sequences: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences 007 | Game Theory, Alignment, and Civilisational Inadequacy: https://www.podtangent.com/e/007-game-theory-alignment-and-civilisational-inadequacy/ Meditations on Moloch: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ The Replacing Guilt Series by Nate Soares: http://mindingourway.com/guilt/ Half-assing it with everything you’ve got: http://mindingourway.com/half-assing-it-with-everything-youve-got/ Discussions of Replacing Guilt on The Bayesian Conspiracy podcast: www.thebayesianconspiracy.com/2019/08/92-replacing-guilt/ Surfing Uncertainty by Andy Clark: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25823558-surfing-uncertainty Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: www.goodreads.com/book/show/12067.Good_Omens Neil Gaiman on the Tim Ferriss show: https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/ The Metropolitan Man by Alexander Wales: www.goodreads.com/book/show/22872436-the-metropolitan-man Alexander Wales on the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast: www.thebayesianconspiracy.com/2018/07/63-rational-fiction/ The Metropolitan Man audiobook (free podcast): www.hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=1705 The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin: www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518872-the-three-body-problem The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu: www.goodreads.com/book/show/39803561-the-paper-menagerie Worm (the webseries you should probably never read): https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Gianluca presents his much-requested three non-fiction and three fiction recommendations for 2020. Jared recommends a book so long and gripping that you should probably avoid it if you have anything productive to do in the next six months.  --------------- Shownotes: --------------- Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/podtangent/) Last week’s episode: www.podtangent.com/e/021-the-top-19-ideas-from-2019/ Gianluca on Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/user/show/56535709-gianluca Books Gianluca read in 2019: www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/14773941 Algorithms to Live By, by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths: www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by 80000 Hours podcast with one of the authors of Algorithms to Live By: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/brian-christian-algorithms-to-live-by/ Inadequate Equilibria by Eliezer Yudkowsky: https://equilibriabook.com/ Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Sequences: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences 007 | Game Theory, Alignment, and Civilisational Inadequacy: https://podtangent.com/e/007-game-theory-alignment-and-civilisational-inadequacy/ Meditations on Moloch: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ The Replacing Guilt Series by Nate Soares: http://mindingourway.com/guilt/ Half-assing it with everything you’ve got: http://mindingourway.com/half-assing-it-with-everything-youve-got/ Discussions of Replacing Guilt on The Bayesian Conspiracy podcast: www.thebayesianconspiracy.com/2019/08/92-replacing-guilt/ Surfing Uncertainty by Andy Clark: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25823558-surfing-uncertainty Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: www.goodreads.com/book/show/12067.Good_Omens Neil Gaiman on the Tim Ferriss show: https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/ The Metropolitan Man by Alexander Wales: www.goodreads.com/book/show/22872436-the-metropolitan-man Alexander Wales on the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast: www.thebayesianconspiracy.com/2018/07/63-rational-fiction/ The Metropolitan Man audiobook (free podcast): www.hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=1705 The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin: www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518872-the-three-body-problem The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu: www.goodreads.com/book/show/39803561-the-paper-menagerie Worm (the webseries you should probably never read): https://parahumans.wordpress.com/