Thread by @paraschopra

I read 28 books in 2021.

a 🧵 recapping all of them.

1/ This little book is jam-packed with insights about money.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1346689142403395586?s=20

2/ In fact, the learnings from the book resulted in probably my most popular thread so far.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1346688696599252993

3/ "How not to be wrong" was about subtle errors we make that result in massive biases.

The antidote is to train yourself in thinking mathematically.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1350677239138902020?s=20

4/ In the spirit of thinking clearly, the book Factfulness changed my view of the world from "things are not great" to "things are not great, but they were worse before".

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1357571234888876033?s=20

5/ Then I read @Philip_Goff's Gallileo's Error.

The book inspired me to take panpsychism seriously and for most of 2021, I believed in it but now I think I have a slightly more refined view of consciousness (see next tweet).

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1363360845275615235?s=20

6/ I'm now inspired by @seanmcarroll's ideas on how physical laws (that we know for sure) constrain what theories we can put forward about consciousness.

My current hypothesis is very much in line with @drmichaellevin's minimal physicalism.

read more: notes.invertedpassion.com/Consciousness/…

7/ Then upon insistence from @sia_steel (who is a lover of personal memoirs), I read Murakami's reflection on running (which is really an autobiography in disguise).

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1368422275897126913?s=20

8/ This book had a few good ideas but could have been a blog post or a paper.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1373225602736480260?s=20

9/ The only graphic novel I read last year.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1379640350893989889?s=20

10/ I picked up another memoir to read (thanks again to @sia_steel).

This was @esmewang's reflection on what it is to live with schizophrenia. Beautiful writing.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1383414319971405824?s=20

11/ Esme's book inspired me to reach out to @BasicMorality for my podcast.

We talked about how psychedelics hold promise to treat schizophrenia.

12/ This book was perhaps the most insightful book I've ever read on consciousness.

Highly recommended.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1390670673979133953?s=20

13/ The book above is hard to get, so the next best thing you can do is to listen to my conversation with the author.

14/ What better topic to pick after consciousness than how the universe will end :)

TLDR: according to the laws of physics, there are five possible futures of the universe but in all of them, life of any sort is impossible.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1393938934569136135?s=20

15/ After hearing a lot of buzz about Jeff Hawkins' new book on AI, I picked it up.

It certainly impacted the way I thought about the brain and convinced me that neocortex is a general-purpose substrate, which means human-level AI shouldn't be hard.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1395029889179213828?s=20

16/ Here's a comprehensive review of the book and insights in it (not mine).

lesswrong.com/posts/ixZLTmFf…

17/ Then I read about the biology of cancer and why we haven't won the battle against it.

The lesson I remember is that cancer prevention is the way to beat cancer. By the time, it comes to treatment, it's already too late.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1399356404188680195?s=20

18/ @tobyordoxford's book classified different types of existential risks facing humanities and rough odds of them happening.

If we prepare against existential risks, we will spread the light of life, culture, and knowledge throughout the universe.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1401528627427086338?s=20

19/ What is the key to healthy eating?

"eat food, mostly plants, not too much"

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1410832334803279872?s=20

20/ Oh my, what I book!

Introduced me to the fascinating and highly underappreciated world of fungi.

(so much so that I decided to grow them on my own!)

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1419295390730317828?s=20

21/ A 10-page book on pain (which I'm not sure qualifies as a book, but whatever!)

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1421378122025357320?s=20

22/ Another book from 2021 that changed my worldview completely.

I no longer believe people have subconscious or any mental depth. We're bags of reactions to our circumstances.

I made a 50+ part thread on the book:

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1434094146575208452?s=20

23/ After learning about the hidden world of fungi, I wanted to explore more hidden worlds.

So, I picked up a book on microbes that live within us.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1435079182057308161?s=20

24/ In 2021, I started finding pop physics a bit unsatisfying.

Yes, an electron is both wave and a particle but what exactly does it mean?

So, I decided to jump into math and read an introductory textbook.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1437752419086077952?s=20

25/ I have a much better intuition of quantum theory now.

If you want a digest of all my explorations, I wrote a note demystifying quantum mechanics.

notes.invertedpassion.com/Universe/Demys…

26/ Is meritocracy good?

This book takes the controversial stance of it being used to justify injustice.

A refreshing, heretical view indeed.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1438166666374901762?s=20

27/ Then I read a book on (the much-hyped) constructor theory.

Some say it's a new way of doing science, but I still haven't gotten the novelty or benefit of it.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1441606570844983298?s=20

28/ @carlorovelli is a masterful physics writer.

He imbues physics with his Italian love of life.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1444529404168708099?s=20

29/ Continuing my journey into physics, I was craving to learn what physicists working at the very edge of our knowledge have to say.

So, I found this book where Nima is interviewed.

Full of insights about how to look at the world:

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1446012359860912130?s=20

30/ By the way, I can't recommend highly enough the documentary "Particle Fever" which is about the discovery of Higgs Boson and also includes interviews by Nima.

Here's the movie on Youtube:

31/ Taking a break from physics, I explored a topic in mathematics that is always getting hyped up on Hacker News: category theory.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1446332908449374213?s=20

32/ Was disappointed by category theory (not because it's not fun, but I realized mathematics is like solving abstract puzzles and I very much like mysteries of the real world).

So, I picked up a famous book on cosmology.

Thread with my notes:

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1448217438672195584?s=20

33/ Next, I dived into the standard model of particle physics.

The book made me realize that there's an unfulfilled gap between pop-science books and graduate-level science textbooks.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1454808367214387200?s=20

34/ I summarized my understanding of the standard model of particle physics here:

notes.invertedpassion.com/Universe/Demys…

35/ Back to biology.

I followed my exploration into the world of fungi and microbes with ants.

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1461949300011798530?s=20

36/ Finally, I rounded up the year by reading a book by the great scientist Steven Weinberg who died in 2021 at the age of 88 and was contributing professionally until a few months before his death.

He's such a big inspiration!

https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1470308354648014851?s=20

37/ Barring a few, most books I read were excellent.

But if I were to pick my top 3, they would be:

• Inner Presence (book on consciousness)
• The Entangled Web (book on fungi)
• The Mind is Flat (book on mind)

38/ That's it!

Hope you liked the recap.

Which book(s) did you enjoy reading in 2021?

Correction: the book name is “Entangled Life”, not “Entangled Web”.