kenny

What have I read, watched, listened to, and considered this week? Here's a selection:

Books:

• Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. I purchased a beautiful pocket edition of this one several years ago, but it lingered in my unread pile until last week. I picked it up on a whim shortly before heading to a conference for the week, thinking I might like a shorter read. This was the best fiction I've read all year. Woolf's style is hypnotic. The depth of her characters and the complexity of their interior worlds is unrivaled. Of the authors I've read, only Joyce comes close. It takes a bit to warm up to stream of consciousness style, but once you become immmersed, it's unmatched. Highly recommended.

Podcasts:

• Richard Sutton on the Dwarkesh podcast. I found the dialogue a bit frustrating at points, as each person seems to use fundamentally different definitions from the other. That said, it was a worthwhile listen and I would argue that more people need to take contrarian takes on AI seriously. I found Dwarkesh's follow-up just as valuable (perhaps more so) than the original interview. I especially liked the comparison between fossil fuels and pretraining data as essential but limited resources.