Dominic Cummings

1 week ago | dominiccummings.substack.com | Dominic Cummings

I would rather discover one cause than be king of Persia. DemocritusAt such a time the life of the city was all in disorder, and human nature, which is always ready to transgress the laws, having now trampled them under foot, delighted to show that her passions were ungovernable, that she was stronger than justice, and the enemy of everything above her. If malignity had not exercised a fatal power, how could anyone have preferred revenge to piety and gain to innocence?

1 month ago | dominiccummings.substack.com | Dominic Cummings

We are now brought face to face with a tyranny which holds out the threat of becoming, thanks to “the conquest of nature” and in particular of human nature, what no earlier tyranny ever became: perpetual and universal…Their [the classical view’s] implicit prophecy that the emancipation of technology, of the arts, from moral and political control would lead to disaster or to the fundamental dehumanisation of man has not yet been refuted.

Mar 6, 2025 | dominiccummings.substack.com | Dominic Cummings

What is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records and Hollywood? Hitler, 14 June 1941My business is making things. William Knudson, 28 May 1940You find your key men by piling work on them. They say ‘I can’t do any more’ and you say ‘Sure you can’. So you pile it on and they’re doing more and more. Pretty soon you have men you can rely on absolutely. Henry Kaiser.

Feb 15, 2025 | city-journal.org | Dominic Cummings |Shivaji Sondhi

Editor’s note: This article is edited and adapted, with permission, from a conversation held at New College, Oxford, on November 19, 2024. Shivaji Sondhi: It’s an instructive time to discuss the intersection of AI with various domains of human experience. Historically, as a scientist, I tend to think of advances in science and technology. The ordering is often unclear, but these are the deepest drivers. Then you have economics, which might take around 50 years to shape culture.

Feb 13, 2025 | dominiccummings.substack.com | Dominic Cummings

We’ve been fundamentally overestimating the extent to which even very high IQ people actually have beliefs… The level of just outright trend following dominates everything. Overheard Washington/DOGE/Silicon Valley discussionSo little trouble do men take in the search after truth, so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand. Thucydides 1.20Yes, all the papers say the same thing, that’s true.