[I have split my answer loosely across ‘themes’ to strike a balance between spamming answers and allowing more fine-grained voting/discussion.]
Some basic economic history, a good short thing might be e.g. Luke M’s posts on the Industrial Revolution. Or some Our World in Data pages/articles, or I’m sure there are also good academic review articles …
Some basic statistics, though idk about a good source.
Some basic economics, but I probably can’t give you a great list of what exactly I would think is important or what good sources are. I think this piece on Coase and externalities has the right flavor but obv doesn’t cover everything.
Also specifically some of the basics of growth economics. Like know about some basic endogenous growth models and be able to understand, e.g., Nordhaus’s “singularity paper”.
Some basic evolutionary biology, like idk maybe The Selfish Gene works (read it >10 years ago so don’t remember well).
Some basic economic theory + empirics on “general purpose technologies” (just look for the papers with most citations on that search term).
Something on broad trends in technology and/or research, like the Are ideas getting harder to find? or the bottom line of the How predictable is technological progress? paper (ignore all the maths)
Maybe also other ‘long-term trends’, e.g. Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature.
Some basics on international relations, but focused on “how should we think about nation states relating to each other at a very high level?” as opposed to more in-the-weeds debates. Again I don’t really know of a single good intro, but maybe reading e.g. Mearsheimer’s (1994), The False Promise of International Institutions gives you a good sense of some key questions even if you don’t agree with its conclusions (can also look at other contributions to that volume of International Organization if you wanted different views). I would include Wendt’s (1992) very influential Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics if I felt it was more on-point and better written …
Maybe also Fearon (1998), Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation, but I’m not sure how accessible the point which according to me is really important is from just reading the paper is, and I suspect one can also get it from understanding basic economics.
For econ, I have found the videos on Marginal Revolution University to be a good introduction to the basic concepts for somebody with zero background on economics (specially the course on microeconomics, and to a lesser extent the course on macroeconomics).
For stats I am still searching, but when I was preparing for an interview with DeepMind they recommended me PennState’s online material for their stat414 and stat415 courses and they are alright.
Also, on the topic of probability, Jane Street’s guide to probability and making markets is an express introduction and refresher to the topic (more the probability part than the making markets part, though that one is interesting too)
Interesting, thank you! This post also seems somewhat related (though it’s contra contra stagnation, i.e. in broad agreement with Are ideas getting harder to find? etc.).
[I have split my answer loosely across ‘themes’ to strike a balance between spamming answers and allowing more fine-grained voting/discussion.]
Some basic economic history, a good short thing might be e.g. Luke M’s posts on the Industrial Revolution. Or some Our World in Data pages/articles, or I’m sure there are also good academic review articles …
Some basic statistics, though idk about a good source.
Some basic economics, but I probably can’t give you a great list of what exactly I would think is important or what good sources are. I think this piece on Coase and externalities has the right flavor but obv doesn’t cover everything.
Also specifically some of the basics of growth economics. Like know about some basic endogenous growth models and be able to understand, e.g., Nordhaus’s “singularity paper”.
Some basic evolutionary biology, like idk maybe The Selfish Gene works (read it >10 years ago so don’t remember well).
Some basic economic theory + empirics on “general purpose technologies” (just look for the papers with most citations on that search term).
Something on broad trends in technology and/or research, like the Are ideas getting harder to find? or the bottom line of the How predictable is technological progress? paper (ignore all the maths)
Maybe also other ‘long-term trends’, e.g. Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature.
Some basics on international relations, but focused on “how should we think about nation states relating to each other at a very high level?” as opposed to more in-the-weeds debates. Again I don’t really know of a single good intro, but maybe reading e.g. Mearsheimer’s (1994), The False Promise of International Institutions gives you a good sense of some key questions even if you don’t agree with its conclusions (can also look at other contributions to that volume of International Organization if you wanted different views). I would include Wendt’s (1992) very influential Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics if I felt it was more on-point and better written …
Maybe also Fearon (1998), Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation, but I’m not sure how accessible the point which according to me is really important is from just reading the paper is, and I suspect one can also get it from understanding basic economics.
For econ, I have found the videos on Marginal Revolution University to be a good introduction to the basic concepts for somebody with zero background on economics (specially the course on microeconomics, and to a lesser extent the course on macroeconomics).
For stats I am still searching, but when I was preparing for an interview with DeepMind they recommended me PennState’s online material for their stat414 and stat415 courses and they are alright.
Also, on the topic of probability, Jane Street’s guide to probability and making markets is an express introduction and refresher to the topic (more the probability part than the making markets part, though that one is interesting too)
Alexey Guzey wrote a convincing critique of Are ideas getting harder to find?’s methodology. It’s still a draft but you can PM him about it.
Interesting, thank you! This post also seems somewhat related (though it’s contra contra stagnation, i.e. in broad agreement with Are ideas getting harder to find? etc.).