Episode · The Peterman Pod · 2026-10-12
Books mentioned on Scott Aaronson: The Mathocalypse, Will Intelligence Matter Anymore?
Scott Aaronson is one of the world's leading quantum computing researchers and spent two years at OpenAI working on AI safety. We talked about why he thinks the singularity has already begun for math, who gets credit when AI writes the proof, and whether intelligence will still matter once machines do the thinking.
Scott Aaronson recommended The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and discussed Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges and The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Mind-Body Problem
Recommended“A novel that had a really big impact on me was, uh, was called The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein. Um, it's, it's just a, it's a novel about, uh, like, a, a, a woman who marries a mathematician.”
Where to get it
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Alan Turing: The Enigma
Discussed“I was also very, very affected as a kid by reading biographies of scientists, uh, especially, uh, Alan Turing, the Enigma by Andrew Hodges. Uh, uh, uh, the man who knew infinity, which is a biography of, of, uh, Ramanujan.”
Where to get it
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The Man Who Knew Infinity
Discussed“The man who knew infinity, which is a biography of, of, uh, Ramanujan. Um, and then, uh, I read, uh, uh, biographies of Feynman and of course his, his, his autobiographies. Um, and because I felt like this is the world that I am trying to enter, right?”
Where to get it
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a classic American novel depicting a young boy's journey down the Mississippi River with an escaped slave, confronting society and morality.
Recommended“What I still, you know, regard as like, you know, the, the, the, the, the best novel or my, my, my real favorite is, is, is, is, is Huckleberry Finn, right? Which I think is just probing, you know, the nature of morality more deeply than, than almost maybe anything else I've read.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“I remember we read that in high school. It was a good book. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I mean, I mean, like, like, like school has the capacity to ruin any work of literature, right?”