Philip Ball

Two interesting books in the post. First, this fascinating study by @simon_schama, focusing on the little-known pioneer of vaccination Waldemar Haffkine and his work combating cholera and bubonic plague in late 19th C India.

Second, this intriguing short volume from physics Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi, which will hopefully go some way to explaining what he got his Nobel for - which was greeted with some head-scratching at the time.

Realising that we typically give a misleadingly confident (& wrong) "this is how it happens" about not only quantum speed-up but quantum computing generally was one of my motivations for writing Beyond Weird. Scott's article here from 2021 is one of the best explanations of why.

I was prompted here by reading this excellent paper by @MelMitchell1 & David Krakauer - & now find this in it: "can [LLMs'] unimaginably large systems of statistical correlations produce abilities that are functionally equivalent to human understanding?"

This is an important book, believe me.