I think it's worth going back and reading Vinge's "The Coming Technological Singularity" (https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html) and then follow it up reading The Peace War, but most importantly its unappreciated detective novel sequel, Marooned In Realtime, which explores some of the interesting implications about people who live right before the singularity. I think this book is even better than Fire Upon the Deep.
When I read the Coming Technological Singularity back in the mid-90s it resonated with me and for a while I was a singularitarian- basically, dedicated to learning enough technology, and doing enough projects that I could help contribute to that singularity. Nowadays I think that's not the best way to spend my time, but it was interesting to meet Larry Page and see that he had concluded something familiar (for those not aware, Larry founded Google to provide a consistent revenue stream to carry out ML research to enable the singularity, and would be quite happy if robots replaced humans).
[ edit: I reread "The Coming Technogical Singularity". There's an entire section at the bottom that pretty much covers the past 5 years of generative models as a form of intelligence augmentation, he was very prescient. ]
Not OP but I've got a 6 month old. I got some good advice from strangers and am compelled to pay it forward.
I highly recommend the book Happiest Baby on the Block, and even more so, the video (still sold as a DVD, but you can also stream online[1]). There are a lot of shorter videos of the author, Harvey Karp doing his thing if you want a taste[2]). The basic idea is that because humans have to be born early due to skull size, babies have a virtual 4th trimester. For the first 3-4 months of life the best way to help them is to simulate the womb environment using the 5 S's: swaddling, sucking reflex, swaying (really more like jiggling), shhing (white noise), side or stomach position (for calming, not for sleeping). The right combination of these will activate a "calming reflex".
Another good starter resource I recommend is the Wonder Weeks book and app. It marks out periods when your baby will be going through a "leap" in cognitive ability, which often are accompanied by fussy behaviour that seems to come out of nowhere. It's very reassuring to understand that your baby, who you think you had figured out, is currently a bit overwhelmed because they are all of a sudden seeing clearly beyond 8 inches or understanding that things are related to other things, and knowing that the fussing is a natural adjustment period to new skills and awareness makes their sudden shifts in behavior interesting rather than distressing.
There are also 3-4 pages of great advice in the book Bringing up Bebe on the French approach to "sleep teaching", which revolves around taking a few minutes to watch a baby who wakes up crying instead of just picking them up right away, thus giving them a chance to fall back asleep naturally, combined with the idea of establishing a window between midnight and 5am when you calm a crying baby down with any method other than feeding. This helps them to establish the idea of nighttime and hopefully means that the parents can get some sleep. 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep is a godsend, especially for a breastfeeding mom.
A couple of books that should appeal to a lot of the HN crowd are Emily Oster's Expecting More and Cribsheet which looks at various aspects of pregnancy and childcare from a research-focused perspective.
Sleep training is really tough, and there are a lot of books out there that repeat the same ideas. I found Sleep Sense to have a pretty clearly laid method for "camping out" or "graduated extinction" aka "Ferberizing", both of which are more gentle than Weissbulth's full cry it out approach. YMMV and there are a lot of strong opinions on this. I'm in the middle of this so I'm less confident to make recommendations.
When I read the Coming Technological Singularity back in the mid-90s it resonated with me and for a while I was a singularitarian- basically, dedicated to learning enough technology, and doing enough projects that I could help contribute to that singularity. Nowadays I think that's not the best way to spend my time, but it was interesting to meet Larry Page and see that he had concluded something familiar (for those not aware, Larry founded Google to provide a consistent revenue stream to carry out ML research to enable the singularity, and would be quite happy if robots replaced humans).
[ edit: I reread "The Coming Technogical Singularity". There's an entire section at the bottom that pretty much covers the past 5 years of generative models as a form of intelligence augmentation, he was very prescient. ]