Noam Nisan and Shimon Shocken

Very educational, I read through the first 1/3rd in a period of motivation, I'm not sure I could replicate that again

Amazing on my first read through, less enjoyable after learning some of the studies referenced failed replication and that being a rationalist didn't actually give you social skill super powers. Still really funny and exciting. I like books with clever/cunning protagonists and antagonists.

Changed how I saw the world, many things make a lot more sense in light of signalling.

Taught me a lot about a conflict that I knew very, very little about despite being a case of hundreds of thousands of people dying in an avoidable way

Kitchen sink space fantasy with intelligent protagonists and antagonists.

Kitchen sink litRPG with intelligent protagonists overcoming impossible odds.

Like HPMOR but more so. Even smarter major characters with even more elaborate plans that I loved. Even more bunk science and decision theory and self-insert stuff that was offputting. Overall the good parts were amazing and I could ignore the bad parts.

Dramatic series, cool world building, character motivations felt realistic. Fun to talk about a mainstream series with people irl that I also greatly enjoyed.

I enjoyed the political philosophy it lay out, although I disagreed with some points. Its vision of how a military can work was inspiring but also more idealistic than realistic.

Great foreshadowing, decently tight narrative that didn't meander to totally unnecessary long arcs, great world building, clever characters

Great power fantasy, intelligent characters, great action scenes, great world building

Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

I really enjoy evolutionary psychology, gender difference analysis, and primatology. It hit all those boxes and appeared to be accurate

Naruto fanfiction that I'm convinced was actually written by Yudkowsky. Great tight narrative with intense action and a protagonist with very clever plans. Great humour.

Great humour, great action, plot was fun but meandered and was weird

Fantasy book from the 80s that's an anthology of short stories. I loved the symmetric karmic justice where the demons ultimately only harmed people who first broke some ethical rule like lying or being greedy. Also cool to see plot threads interweave. Unfortunately no one else seems to have ever heard of it, and the sequels were much worse because I disagreed with their morals.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Great primer on how the human brain works and what causes impulsive bad decisions

I don't tend to enjoy sci-fi as much as I do fantasy, but it was a great hard sci-fi story that didn't go too far beyond my science knowledge. Had imo a realistic level of optimism vs cynicism about human behaviour that I liked

Painted a convincing picture of the legal portion of the origins of wokeness, a very relevant current political topic. Had very specific political recommendations about specific laws.

Smooth, exciting, and informative read on the first Canadian female infantry officer

Smooth, exciting, and informative read on one of the actresses of my favourite childhood shows

Probably the most famous web serial and a cornerstone of internet fiction culture. Cool super hero world building. Some great mysteries. But the plot really dragged in later portions after the mysteries were solved. Some of the mysterious actions of antagonists just look stupid in hindsight after the mysterious are revealed.

Educational book about WW2 with application to the current politics of war, about how difficult precision bombing is

Self-help book. Normally I don't get too much value out of those but I think it really accurately diagnosed one of my biggest life problems of procrastination as lacking internal motivation, and inspired me to get external motivation. Helped me a lot. Also gave me a somewhat useful framework to view others through.

Military autobiography of a signal operator. Very relatable, about a nerdy guy who went on patrol in Afghanistan. He had a bit of impostor syndrome but was really bad ass. He felt really proud of his radio skills.

Fun parody of power fantasy and litRPG stories. Very easy and quick read to kill some time, and it made me laugh a bunch.

Cool horror story about a very unique enemy. Points off for, imo, cheaping out of solving the problem of "How do you defeat an enemy you can't think about?"

Lots of cool worldbuilding and adventure. Meanders a lot and drags a lot in the end. Still has lots of awesome power fantasy moments.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Really cool book about animal intelligence. Lots of points off for how much Frans de Waal looks down on other researchers for underestimating animal intelligence.

It's really cool how the AI protagonist has truly alien morality, and needs to execute extremely clever plans. Big points off for how the later books focus more on boring human characters and the protagonist becomes less alien and more "optimal" at achieving goals

Good autobiography by Canadian general about his experiences, dragged at times especially in the beginning before he became top general

Neat weird book. Ultimately I didn't really find it that entertaining but it made me think a tiny bit and it was a nice way to pass time.

Similar to Worm, cool world building and mysteries but drags a lot in the end and has a very meandering plot. Not talked about as much online.

Cool Superman fanfiction, posed some interesting problems about Superman in a bit more of a realistic world

Mathy book, fairly thought provoking, asks some questions I desperately want the answers to, but I haven't got far into it. May rise far up the ranks if it provides those answers.

I think STEM-types and algorithms tend to be way more powerful than wishy-washy holistic thinking. Unfortunately didn't introduce to me many actually new algorithm techniques to use in real life, but did show me a couple I still use

Cool anthropology book about English culture and how social class is such a big deal there

Really informative explanation of the advantages of small scale socialism and how they can still be outweighed by socialism's downsides long term. Unfortunately it repeated itself a lot, it was a book that could've been a blog post

I liked the podcast a lot when it first came out, listening to the actual audio book a couple years later felt duller and less insightful

Interesting book, not actually as practical or as funny as I hoped

I agree with it, but it didn't really actually teach me anything new, I already agreed with it all beforehand

I only have vague memories of it tbh, I recall it being interesting but that I didn't learn that much new

Lee Kuan Yew seems like a very unique world leader and understanding Singapore would be crucial to understanding how governance really works. Unfortunately the book is a bit of a drag to read and dull, maybe it'll be more excting later on when he has more power. Note: It got a bit more exciting but still not very interesting, it was mostly electoral battles between him, communists, and Malay nationalists

Starts of strong but gets annoying at the end when Kyoshi was both not wanting to use lethal force but uses it anyway but then internal monologues about how guilty she feels. If she didn't want to kill that's fine, but I have no sympathy for a character who is justified in using lethal force in self-defense but then feels endlessly guilty over it. The antagonist feels like a false gray villain too, he's presented as having a point but is really just pretty evil. Second book is even worse on this.

Classic book but a slog to get through, and I already knew most of the plot points through cultural osmosis

Classic book but I disagree with a lot of the politics and it wasn't that entertaining.

Classic book, slog to get through, but was fine talking about it with other people as the movies came out

Educational albeit biased book about a controversial current issue

Interesting book about a soldier's military experience. Felt a bit arrogant.

Fun fantasy mystery book. But ultimately the characters don't feel that intelligent and the world building doesn't feel realistic.

It's okay, first bit was boring, sucks that the series is taking so long to get finished

Cool book that's an anthology of stories about a town over millenia. Got a bit repetitive. I dropped it during the section set in the middle ages, I don't find the middle ages that interesting.

Protagonist felt very whiney about how guilty she was about being evil, despite not being that evil. I want my protagonists to either not monologue about how guilty they feel, or to be actually evil. Plot meandered and dragged too.

Been a while since I read it, I don't really remember much about why I didn't enjoy it too much. Witcher 3 was a great game though.

Really easy and fun read as a licensed D&D novel. Didn't do anything special but didn't do anything wrong either.

Obtuse world building, not that exciting, still in progress might get better later

I disagree with it's speculative biology takes and some of its psych takes and that's a turn off. Ending was better and had some kind of interesting ideas but it was spoiled by all the bunk.

Very cynical book that's weirdly horny. I don't think it says anything of value politically.

The core conceit for the beginning of simulated people was interesting but I've seen it before. None of the characters caught my interest. The philosophical ideas about personhood thrown around were dumb. It went off into nonsense in the second half.

Very negative on free markets. I feel it underused the potential of an alien AI protagonist.

Has some cool action, too gorey and downer for me. Protagonist wasn't that smart.

First half was cool history, but I didn't buy the theories presented in second half

Interesting topic, but I would've wanted it to be a bit more technical and less pop-y.

Cool story but I already knew most of it from History of Rome podcast

Cool story but I already knew most of it from Hardcore History podcast

Very entertaining and fascinating anecdotes, but I disagree with the actual conclusions and think the studies presented were weak or didn't back the conclusions

Characters aren't that smart, I didn't find the worldbuilding that realistic

Minor characters were randomly cruel to the MC and the way the social order worked given the power system felt unrealistic

Dull read, felt like it took ages for anything to happen and not much action

Felt boring and too much like wish fulfillment of how everyone hated MC but then he lucked into great friends