I feel like I should learn some subject that’s entirely new to me. I basically did that with behavioral economics a few years back, and I found that fun. Now I’d like to find some subject that’s really interesting, totally new to me, and hopefully somewhat off the beaten path. Behavioral economics, for instance, is rather overplayed in the public discourse. Sociology and anthropology, on the other hand, are probably underplayed: among the social sciences, they get the least treatment in mass media, and the least respect among the sort of technical folks who would laud economics. So sociology and anthropology would be good candidates. Maybe I should start with Weber (apart from The Protestant Ethic, which I read and which is a Bad book — a book that is Bad), since he seems to be a father of sociology. And maybe Durkheim?

What about other fields? Anyone have any suggestions on books I really ought to be reading, in subjects about which I know little?

As always, I’d also like to learn more math. I’m much less good at it than I’d like to be. I think writing code may be the right way to learn it, so I think I’ll try to take that avenue in. It’d be interesting to actually code up some crypto and primality-testing algorithms, for instance. I tried to code up the AKS algorithm, but I didn’t really understand why I was coding what I was coding. So a textbook of number theory or crypto, taught via programming examples, would be useful. Likewise for linear algebra and complex analysis. Maybe Coding The Matrix would be the way to go.

Open thread. Let me know what I should stuff into my brain this year!