Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 431 posts.
About 80 people pointed me to this post by Uri Simonsohn, Joe Simmons, and Leif Nelson about a 2012 article, “Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end.” Apparently some of the data in that paper were faked; see for example here:
Three years ago, a survey team identified a staggering 569,148 time-based media objects on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University—that’s over half a million sound recordings, video recordings…
This blog is a direct follow up of Starship Is Still Not Understood, and is part of the series on popular misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. I think it is relatively s…
I’m late to posting this, but it’s important enough to be worth sharing anyway: Sandberg, Drexler, and Ord on Dissolving the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox asks: given the immense num…
The plane crashed and nobody checked the bodies
In our previous installment of this podcast, we learned from independent researcher Alexey Guzey that famed sleep researcher Matthew Walker seems to have committed research misconduct in his bestselling book, Why We Sleep. Walker is a University of California professor, Google researcher, and Ted talk star, and his…
Every once in a while the internet gets talking about Geometric Algebra (henceforth GA) and how it’s a new theory of math that fixes everything that’s wrong with linear algebra and multivariable calculus. When I come across this stance I am compelled to respond with something like: “wait wait, it’s not true! GA is…
In early spring 2020, I reported an article for The New York Times on which I put the tentative headline: “New Coronavirus Is ‘Clearly Not…
Part of my series countering misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. Starlink, SpaceX’s plan to serve internet via tens of thousands of satellites, is a staple in the…
In the two months since I last blogged, the US has continued its descent into madness. Yet even while so many certainties have proven ephemeral as the morning dew—the US’…
In 1965, I. J. Good described for the first time the notion of “intelligence explosion”, as it relates to artificial intelligence (AI):
The previous pages have explained three very different methods for defining a color: (1) the measurement of the color stimulus as a spectral emittance or reflectance curve in colorimetry ; (2) the proportional responses to the stimulus by the L , M and S cones, represented as a chromaticity diagram ; and (3) the…
Most technician textbooks do a very poor job of explaining the details of transistors' internal workings. First they assume that the Base current is somehow controlling the Collector current, then they try to explain how one current can affect another. These explanations invariably fail because Bipolar transistors…
Notice. Since this seems to be such a common question I think I should describe my background. I have a PhD in molecular microbiology and I was once a tenured academic (professor). I now work in the biotech sector. I have published a number of peer reviewed papers in virology. If you really want to know more about me…
“If a $1000 PhD side project could kill millions of people, we must end viral [gain-of-function research], or it may end us.”
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Puente Hills Landfill outside of Los Angeles, California. The first truckload of trash was dumped here in 1957, and the trucks just kept coming. For more than five decades, if you threw something away in LA County, t
CPM MagnaCut is a new stainless knife steel designed to be better than anything that has been available before. Is it a success?
A beginner's guide to longevity research
Scan Head STM Tips Vibration Isolation Electronics Software Scans Image Gallery Useful Links This project is my attempt to build a low-cost scanning tunneling microscope (STM) capable of atomic res…
The environmental and cognitive factors at play that have people eating more without realising.
OpenAI may have tested on the training data. Besides, human benchmarks are meaningless for bots.
Color blindness is an inaccurate term. Most color-blind people can see color, they just don't see the same colors as everyone else. There ha...
Economist. Policy Entrepreneur. Geek. Co-recipient of the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. University Professor at NYU. Focused on urbanization; cooperation at scale of millions and billions; science; technology; economic development; long-term growth; code as language.
Updates: 12th of September 2021: I’m writing a book on DNA! If you want to become a beta reader, or have suggestions, I’d love to hear from you! 8th of January 2021: This article has been revised and updated, scientifically and in terms of dead links. Revision made by Tomás Simões (@putadagravidade /…
by Jody Lanard and Peter M. Sandman NOTE FROM IAN: The expert risk communication team of Lanard and Sandman has given me permission to post their very well-considered reply to my question of them just
[ An updated treatment of some of this material appears in Chapter 6 of the Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet (free) textbook. ]
