Wisereads Vol. 152 — The Art of Inquiry by Andrew Taggart, Elia Scotto on how to read more books, and more
Last week, we shared a preview of Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age by Tom Holland. This week, we're sharing an exclusive full copy of Andrew Taggart's new book, The Art of Inquiry. Plus, read to the end to learn how to enter our giveaway for a paper copy of this week's book!
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Most highlighted Articles of the week
What if It's Not the Phones?
After The Anxious Generation flew off shelves, Haidt's longtime colleague Peter Gray parted ways with him. Gray's Restoring Childhood, out in September, blames the youth mental health crisis on something else: the Common Core. Atlantic writer Kaitlyn Tiffany tracks the blame from smartphones to school standards, starting with the rebuttal Gray published after Haidt’s book came out: "As a society we have almost a knee-jerk reaction to believe that the solution to any problem experienced by kids is to deprive them of yet one more freedom, and this book is helping to jerk some of those knees even further."
How to read more books
Umberto Eco's vast personal library inspired Elia Scotto to become a book-a-week reader. His advice for making reading a constant habit: "What you need to do is read every single time you are not doing something else. In today's world, most people pick up their phones as soon as they get a moment of inactivity. Serious readers pick up their books instead."
The Future Worth Building Is Human
AI lab Thinking Machines argues that advanced intelligence should extend human judgment. "Humanity has flourished through individual weirdness and creative tension. We envision alignment as a feature not of a single model but of an ecosystem of AIs raised in different places, disagreeing, competing, and learning from each other. We believe in keeping the weirdness alive."
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
He Risked Everything To Warn You: No One Is Ready For What's Coming, And The AI Companies Know It!
Former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo, now an AI forecaster, tells podcast host Steven Bartlett why he's alarmed. "It's possible that we'll end up essentially creating a new species that ends up ruling the world instead of us. And then maybe we go the way of other extinct species in the past that were outcompeted by humans."
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
A Framework for Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age
Google DeepMind CEO and Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis shares his framework for safely navigating the road to AGI. "AGI cannot be compared to standard technological breakthroughs, not even ones as consequential as the internet or mobile - it is much more akin to the discovery of electricity or fire. If you stop to think about it, we've essentially found a way to make sand think. It's miraculous."
Most highlighted PDF of the week
AI 2040: Plan A — The Deal
The AI Futures Project, the forecasting group behind the viral AI 2027, imagines its hopeful alternative. "In this scenario, humanity delays the development of superintelligence until 2040, makes all AI research public, allows dozens of companies globally to catch up to the frontier, and intentionally enters a regime of mutually assured compute destruction."
Hand-picked book of the week
The Art of Inquiry
"Almost none of us know what we're doing here." That concession grounds Andrew Taggart's new book, The Art of Inquiry, and it's the starting point for the kind of philosophical questioning he believes can carry a person from existential confusion toward clarity. Trained as an academic philosopher before leaving the university to practice philosophy, Taggart has spent over a decade guiding CEOs, artists, and seekers through life's hardest questions. His book gathers that work into atomic essays that are as compelling to read as a memoir and as practical as a guidebook.
"Unlike 'conversion stories' in which a character is transformed once and for all, inquiry into the heart of one's existence offers a truthful account of the process of self-transformation. As Socrates knew, self-examination is ongoing and increasingly nuanced and, with practice, self-knowledge becomes deeper, sharper, more refined."
We’re honored Andrew is sharing the full ebook of The Art of Inquiry: Meditations on Living Wisdom with Wisereads readers. If it resonates, you can show your thanks by purchasing a physical copy or checking out his newsletter below.
🚨 Giveaway! Our U.S. readers can reply to this email for a chance to win one of twenty paperbacks from Andrew.
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Total Work Newsletter
This week's author, practical philosopher Andrew Taggart, writes Total Work, a newsletter on work, leisure, and the examined life. From Cultivating a Clear Mind: "If one gets the hang of staying with the task at hand, then vital energy will flow, and fewer and fewer 'energy taxes' will be incurred during the course of the day."