Some of my favourite things
Have been meaning to do this for a while
I initially planned on making a big post divided into things I like/things I don’t like, but this became way longer than I expected, so I guess I’ll save the don’t like for another post.
Some things I like a lot:
Miscellaneous (most important?)
When light reflects off of water onto a wall, then dances
The sound of water
Refreshing sting of cold water
Water as a virtuous reflection and example
Watery reflections moving and breaking, then coming back together after ripples
Watery doppelgangers of objects and people in reflections, puddles, rivers; especially cool when the water is transparent, and two worlds are superimposed on each other, one beneath, one above.
Webs of light reflecting through emerald tree leaves
Russian snow and winter, ghosts of breath in cold night air
St Petersburg as the pinnacle of urban design
Icy blue frost
Light blue
Music that is colorful (Ravel, Bach, Saint-Saens)
Beauty as an ethical virtue (antithesis of poshlost’, I guess)
Sound of cicadas in the summer
Sitting outside in shorts
Feeling through vision, without speaking
Laughing without pain
Pure laughter of kids
Pure laughter of people that seem to have maintained a pure, childlike joy
Laughter of Zen monks
Boundless curiosity and obsessive intensity of kids at completely random things (e.g. ants)
Mono no Aware, but not applied to objects: the realisation that a given sudden moment is incredibly special, and will remain so forever, even though it’s gone in an instant. Painfully tragic but incredibly beautiful.
Elegance
Mastery
Eloquence
Competition and intensity
Aristocratism
Big blue eyes
Excessive jewellery
Seeing the world from underneath a body of water
Silence
Silent morning with sun or snow falling
Silence of winter
Sound of bells ringing in Orthodox Russian church, especially on Easter
Glimmer of sun through falling snow on golden onion domes
When you look at each other and can just kind of feel that time has stopped
Martial arts
Nutcracker - Indian Dance
Chess composition problems
The birthdays spent together, and the birthdays spent apart
Favorite places, buildings, cities
Modernist architecture around Patriarch Ponds
Yusupov palace in St Petersburg
Saviour on the Blood
Isaac Cathedral
Arkhangelskoe estate in Moscow
The Oredezh river
Ryoanji temple in Kyoto
Kamakura, Nara, and Kyoto, the most beautiful cities I have ever seen
The Kumano Kodo, especially Kumano Nachi Taisha
Amsterdam, Kriterion
Hermitage Museum
Tretyakov Gallery
Musee d’Orsay
Ajaccio beach
St Saphorin, Epesses, Lutry
Paris
Antibes
The British Museum
The Russian restaurant in London
The Russian restaurant in Paris
Literature
Russian Fiction and Poetry:
Nabokov, The Gift (Dar). In my opinion this is the greatest book ever written in Russian. In terms of themes, this work is comparable to Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. An incredibly beautiful text about the joy of seeing, the wonder of words, the power of poetry, fiction, aestheticism, the pitfalls of utilitarianism; a very touching tribute to Russia’s greatest gleaming pantheon, that of its literary tradition. What is it like to feel life so deeply that it overwhelms and inspires with light, sounds of flowing water, songs of chirping birds? For a long time I felt like this phenomenology is impossible to describe, but no task is too difficult for Nabokov. Add to this the standard themes of chess, butterflies, games of light - throughout the book, we see a man transform from being a raw device of extreme observation, a talented, but misguided, poet, into a refined, mature artist.
Nabokov fiction: The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, The Eye, Ultima Thule, Christmas, Sounds, (Cloud, Lake, Tower)
Nabokov poetry: Shooting (Rasstrel), Lilith, My Poor Girl
Mandelshtam’s poetry (especially early symbolism, although later political works are also incredible); Pasternak’s poetry (particularly Zhivago’s poems); Brodsky (Presentation, poems on Christmas theme)
For a long time my favorite poet was Lermontov: Demon stands out to me, still, as a masterpiece, and was for a long time my favorite poem. Goes without saying that A Hero of Our Time is a perfectly structured piece of fiction.
Pushkin (especially Onegin (see Nabokov commentary), cycle of poems dedicated to Decembrists, Ruslan and Ludmila)
Victor Pelevin’s earlier works (Buddha’s Little Finger, Generation P) are the best modern works in Russian literature. Later works are pretty bad.
Strugatsky brothers: Hard to be a God, Monday Begins on Saturday, Roadside Picnic
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Death of Ivan Ilyich
Bulgakov, The White Guard, Dog’s Heart
Vladimir Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik, Sugar Kremlin
Sasha Sokolov, A School for Fools, selected poems (“What is in my name?”)
Ilf and Petrov, Twelve Chairs
From King David: Psalm 50, Psalm 90, Psalm 103
Russian non-fiction:
Mikhail Zygar, All The Kremlin’s Men, The Empire Must Die
Alexei Sosinsky, Knots (on mathematical knots and braid groups)
Bibliotechka Kvant books
French fiction:
Antoine de Saint Exupéry, letters to his wife, Petit Prince, Terres des Hommes
Camus, L’etranger
English/translated fiction:
Borges, The Aleph, Library of Babel, Borges and I, Fictions, The Immortal, (Tlön, Uqbar, Tertius), The Zahir, The Lottery in Babylon, Funes the Memorable, The Book of Sand
David Foster Wallace, Good Old Neon (the best short story I’ve ever read), The Depressed Person, Infinite Jest (no, I didn’t finish it but loved it a lot…)
Nabokov: Lolita, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Pale Fire
Goethe, Faust
Yukio Mishima, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Runaway Horses, Spring Snow
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, The Master of Go, Nobel prize speech on Zen
Bashō poems
Gary Snyder poems
Takehiko Inoue, Vagabond (incredible, definitely a favorite)
English/translated non fiction, philosophy, mathematics:
David Foster Wallace, pretty much anything but especially Nadir, pieces on tennis, Consider the Lobster, review of Wittgenstein’s Mistress
Martin Amis, Visiting Mrs. Nabokov, essays on Nabokov, essays on tennis. Amis is the best example of someone taking on Nabokov’s stylistic teaching as gospel.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas, (Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid)
Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind, Road to Reality (the best thing I’ve seen on mathematical physics - not really a textbook, but not really a pop book either. This is quite a rigorous text, but it starts from the basics and gives a winding tour of the beauty of math).
D.T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture
Yukio Mishima, My Hagakure
John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat
Nabokov lectures on Russian and foreign literature
Raymond Smullyan, The Tao is Silent
Courant, What is Mathematics?
Artin, Algebra
Axler, Linear Algebra Done Right
Alekseev and Arnold, Abel’s Theorem in Problems and Solutions (excellent for basic group theory and complex analysis)
Feynman lectures on physics
Scott Aaronson, Quantum Computing Since Democritus (the best introduction to logic, set theory, Gödel’s theorems, P vs NP, halting problem and different cardinalities that I’ve come across. Hofstadter also does a beautiful job).
Moore and Mertens, The Nature of Computation (gentle intro to computational complexity theory. Even though this is a textbook, it’s written in a very readable style).
Evan Chen, Napkin project (best all-around math textbook for higher level topics I’ve seen. Doesn’t go into any mathematical physics though, which is a shame).
Michael Nielsen, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information (read about half of this, very readable with minimal prereqs, this is the standard text on the subject).
Noam Chomsky collected works on linguistics, political science (Manufacturing Consent stands out, response to Skinner’s work, pieces on Vietnam )
Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games
Michel Talagrand, What is a Quantum Field Theory? (recently only started this and have not very gotten far, but this text is excellent since it motivates physical theory from mathematics. It also does not assume very many prereqs apart from standard knowledge of multilinear calc and abstract algebra, and teaches the reader lots of the basics).
John Stillwell, Naive Lie Theory. The best book at introducing Lie groups and topological concepts from scratch, you literally just need linear algebra and calculus. This was extremely useful for me, since I would often struggle to get anywhere with Lie groups before running into unfamiliar representation theory, topology, results from differential equations. This book is really a lifesaver.
Peter Woit, Quantum Theory, Groups, and Representations (very readable book which leads from basics of quantum theory and abstract algebra all the way to QFT; also haven’t finished this yet, but highly recommend since, like above, the only necessary prereqs are standard knowledge of linear algebra and multilinear calc. Even this is covered in the first few chapters, though, so it’s very self contained).
Edward Frenkel, Love and Math
The Heart Sutra
The Gateless Gate (koans)
Musashi, Go Rin no Sho
Paintings, music, artists
Viktor Vasnetsov
Valentin Serov
Mikhail Vrubel (Demon)
Matisse (!)
Degas ballet paintings
Pierre Bonnard - japonisme particularly
Katsushika Hokusai, shin hanga
Odilon Redon, Buddhist paintings
Bach (favorite, especially Goldberg variations!), Shostakovich, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Ravel (Pavane especially), Gerswhin, Stravinsky (Firebird, Petrushka)
Francoise Hardy (Premier Bonheur du Jour)
Everything around Ballets Russes (Bakst, Picasso)
Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Kino, Akvarium, Oxxymiron, Rolling Stones
Icons of Andrei Rublev, Theophanes the Greek
Marcel Duchamp, late works
Anything by Escher
Bilibin illustrations
Rudolf Nureyev
Monet Lilies (basic)
El Greco - religious work is incredible. Peter and Paul - as well as individual depictions of apostles. Very reminiscent of Theophanes.
Movies and TV (including animated)
Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker, Andrei Rublev, Zerkalo
Samurai Champloo
Cowboy Bebop
Death Note
Hunter x Hunter
Jujutsu Kaisen
Naruto, Naruto Shippuden
Dragon Ball Z
One Piece
Princess Mononoke
Akira
Call Me By Your Name
Planet Earth, Blue Planet
Alexei Balabanov, Brat, Zhmurki
Soviet cartoons: Vasilisa the Beautiful, Malenkiy Korablik, Cheburashka, Hedgehog in the Fog
Ghost in the Shell (original)
Kill Bill (volume 1)
Mathematics, physics
Group theory, representation theory, knots and braid groups
Lie groups - E8!
Using braid groups to describe movement of particles
The mysterious properties of complex numbers (Platonic or invented? Paradoxical)
The presence of complex numbers in mathematical physics
Using understanding of symmetry to model physical reality - recognising that physical reality is inherently symmetric (e.g. Noether’s theorem on conservation). I think applications of group theory in mathematical physics are fascinating.
Describing a particle - the basic building block of reality - as a symmetry! Poincare’s idea
Roger Penrose’s twistors
The Julia set
The power of abstract algebra - to bridge together numbers and geometry through groups
The Calabi-Yau manifold
Cantor’s diagonalization proof
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems (the most significant theoretical discovery of all time).
Turing’s halting problem
The elegance of information theory
Surreal numbers
The Hofstadter butterfly
Blogs I like a lot
Gwern (post on L and information theory is amazing)
People I look up to
Richard Feynman, for clarity of thought and incredible intuition - I can only dream of maybe one day developing the same kind of physical sense.
Vladimir Nabokov, for aristocratism, knowledge of self, understanding of beauty, incredible talent of seeing, and understanding of the interplay between aesthetics and ethics.
Douglas Hofstadter, for erudition in mathematics, physics, languages, translation, music, and art - under the hat of cognitive science.
Valeriya Novodvorskaya, for relentless courage in the face of authoritarianism and clear, no-bullshit democracy, individual right to privacy, individual right to freedom of speech, individual right to think as one desires.
Boris Nemtsov, for being (once) the hope of the Russian people.
Jim Simons, for an example of how following beauty and intuition leads to wonder across all fields of your life.
Roger Penrose, for thinking about the most difficult things in the simplest possible way, and using beauty as a guide.
Freeman Dyson, for being a genius problem solver, an amazing scientist who defied the rules of the establishment and beautifully straddled the interplay of mathematics and physics. The ultimate example of a “fox” problem solver, with very sharp intuition, like Feynman; I hope one day to approach at least a fraction of his ability.
Lev Landau, for courage, clarity, erudition, mastery, genius.
Andrei Sakharov, also for courage and tremendous belief in the value of being human.
Oppenheimer, for hearing the music of poetry and the music of numbers.
Andre Weil, for exploring mathematics’ Rosetta Stone.
Miyamoto Musashi, for achieving true freedom through mastery.
Henri Matisse, for creating joy.
Alexander Grothendieck, for being the last person who completely mastered the power of abstraction.
Dogs, for examples to humans of what it means to be truly free and enlightened.
The Decembrists, for bringing Western values to Russian culture.
Alexander II, for abolishing serfdom.
Stolypin, for trying to make the abolition of serfdom actually feasible and saving Russia (almost!).
Sergey Kuryokhin, for being, at one point, the smartest and funniest man in Russia.
Ikkyu, for redefining satori.
Nassim Taleb, for erudition and strength of character.
Kobe, for being relentless.
My grandpa.
My dad.
What do I find really interesting but don’t understand and want to learn more about/learn deeper?
Quantum field theory
General relativity and differential geometry
The path integral
How mathematical physics is connected to number theory
The Langlands program
Playing piano
Playing Go
Understanding music theory
Chess composition
Painting with watercolours (have been improving a bit)
Complex analysis
Complexity theory
How can I get better at quickly, intuitively estimating expected values and sketching probability distributions? This is very important for decision making.
In a similar vein to above - forecasting, manifold markets.
Markov chains, Markov models, stochastic calculus - quantitative trading. I want to improve my intuition around this.
Mechanistic interpretability - how does it work? I only have a very general understanding of this. I think I am largely put off by the engineering flavour it seems to have, but the mathematical side does seem quite appealing.
How exactly do LLMs fail? Why do they fail to generalise? It appears that causality (and causal thinking) seems to be very challenging even for the most advanced GPT. Is this just a property of early-stage transformers? Or is this true for any possible version of GPT? I’ve been meaning to read Judea Pearl’s work but didn’t get around to it yet.
Graph theory and applications to physics
Yang Mills theory
Books I want to read and either didn’t finish or didn’t even start:
George Steiner, After Babel
Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb
Boris Nemtsov biography
Berezovsky biography
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Pearl, Causality
Nabokov, Pnin, (Speak, Memory), Despair
Steven Weinberg books on quantum field theory
I didn’t expect this to be the case, but this turned out surprisingly personal.