Tim Disney
Stuff I Enjoyed in 2025 - Books
This is part of my 2025 yearly roundup covering the books I read. tbh the middle of January is a bit late for an annual reflection but whatever, this is my blog and I can do what I want lol.
I didn't read as many books in 2025 as I would have liked so one of my 2026 goals is to fix that. Part of my issue is that I read multiple books at the same time. Not ideal so maybe in 2026 I can try and focus on one book at a time.
Books actually finished #
The most interesting book I finished all year, will be thinking about this one for a while. It's about "the industrialisation of decision-making" and how accountability (or unaccountability as the case might be) now works (or doesn't).
we began to get into the habit of ignoring the fact that every year, more of the decisions that affect our lives are made not by people but by systems. Strange, alien intelligences with desires and drives quite different from our own. They’re taking over the world – and not only that, for it seems that some of them are going mad.
By "strange, alien intelligences" he mostly means a corporation and related kinds of decision-making organizations rather than AI but this line is becoming even more true as we restructure the world with LLMs.
My brother wrote a book! It's about figuring out how to deal with The Predicament. Sort of? Maybe?
Interesting in the abstract but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. A book for an alternate timeline.
Required reading for our current technological/political moment if you haven't been following the thinking of "those guys" (MacAskill, Altman, SBF, Kurzweil, Yudkowsky, etc.) for a while.
A classic Neal Stephenson book for both good and bad.
Picked it up after watching the Guillermo del Toro movie version. Thought I had read it before but apparently not. It's good!
Started but not finished #
Most interesting book I started but didn't finish. The basic claim is that structuralism has something interesting to say about LLMs.
Not the Nicholas Sparks novel. Instead a history of note-taking and actual notebooks. Obviously relevant to my interests with Flint.
Just a really fun fantasy novel about detectives solving a murder in a empire that has to deal with the occasional leviathan invasion.
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
I don't agree with the conclusion or arguments but worth reading to get a sense of how the LessWrong crowd thinks (without wading through that site). Pair with More Everything Forever if you must read it.