The book Silicon Dreams: Information, Man, and Machine by Robert Lucky is where I got mine. It's a pop science book that explores the theoretical limits of human computer interaction using information theory. It's written to do exactly the thing you're asking for: Convey deep intuitions about information theory using a variety of practical examples without getting bogged down in math equations or rote exercises.
Covers topics like:
Very grim. I think that almost everybody is bouncing off the real hard problems at the center and doing work that is predictably not going to be useful at the superintelligent level, nor does it teach me anything I could not have said in advance of the paper being written. People like to do projects that they know will succeed and will result in a publishable paper, and that rules out all real research at step 1 of the social process.
This is an interesting critique, but it feels off to me. There's actually a lot of 'gap' between the neat theory explanat...
As a fellow "back reader" of Yudkowsky, I have a handful of books to add to your recommendations:
Engines Of Creation by K. Eric Drexler
Great Mambo Chicken and The Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis
EY has cited both at one time or another as the books that 'made him a transhumanist'. His early concept of future shock levels is probably based in no small part on the structure of these two books. The Sequences themselves borrow a ton from Drexler, and you could argue that the entire 'AI risk' vs. nanotech split from the extropians represented an argument about ...
Get married, drive a white/silver car, and then buy a house near roads, greenery, and water. Got it.