47th Selected Links

Happy weekend! Here are some links to things I've been reading that you might also enjoy:

1. Issue Four of The Podcast Reader is now available! Exploring a bunch of crucial topics, this edition features top shelf conversations with Malcolm Gladwell, Graham Allison, Roya Hakakian, Nicolai Tangen and David Sinclair.

2. 'Why books donʼt work', an article by Andy Matuschak.

3. 'The symmetry and simplicity of the laws of physics and the Higgs boson', an article by physicist Juan Maldacena explaining gauge symmetry by analogy to currencies and exchange rates.

4. The transcript of Tyler Cowen's 2009 Bloggingheads interview of Peter Singer. According to Tyler, this interview persuaded him to accelerate his thinking on Stubborn Attachments, because he didn’t think Singer had good responses to his ‘redistribution versus growth’ critique.

5. 'The Experience Machine', an excerpt from Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick uses the thought experiment of an 'experience machine' to show that pleasure is not all that matters to us.

Have a great weekend,


Joe