The leading physicists mobilized in the Manhattan Project were on the one hand applying intelligence in the sense of the same pure quest for knowledge that had driven the discoveries of scientists from Galileo to Einstein. On the other hand as a military scheme, the Manhattan Project was an intelligence problem in the sense of secrets that had to be protected from enemy eyes, or indeed from any eyes, friendly or unfriendly, from outside the charmed circle of the initiated and security-cleared.
Finished reading: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler has so many fascinating ideas about consciousness, intelligence, and language embedded in a good story about a community of octopuses. I really enjoyed this one📚
Finished reading: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is a great story about an outsider being thrust into power and the decisions they need to make without compromising their ideals 📚
I’ve been making an effort to listen to the Moments in Waking Up when the randomly timed notifications come in. This one resonated with me today: “We too have problems that cannot be solved by more thinking”
Finished reading: I really enjoyed Hands of Time by Rebecca Struthers. Although notionally about mechanical watches, there’s also interesting ideas about time, building things by hand, and focusing on what really matters.
The book also resurrected an internal debate about the Apple Watch vs mechanical watches. For now, I’m going to take this as inspiration to reconsider my watch faces 📚
Finished reading: Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson finishes the remarkable trilogy. Robinson’s meticulous detail (though occasionally overwhelming) really brings Mars to life, along with compelling characters and ideas. Although I sympathize with the “reds”, I think the series ended appropriately 📚
