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Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 153 posts.
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We can break up Big Tech
By Elizabeth Warren
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Fossil Fuels
Fossil fuels were key to industrialization and rising prosperity, but their impact on health and the climate means that we should transition away from them.
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The Church of Interruption
A conversation with a Wizard
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Status as a Service
Editor's Note 1 : I have no editor. Editor’s Note 2 : I would like to assure new subscribers to this blog that most my posts are not as long as this one. Or as long as my previous one . My long break from posting here means that this piece is a collection of what would’ve normally been a series
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What Percentage of Americans Own Guns?
Read Gallup's short answer to this common question about gun ownership, including what percentages of major demographic subgroups own guns.
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Happiness and Life Satisfaction (2017)
Self-reported life satisfaction differs widely between people and between countries. What explains these differences?
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What was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima?
When we think of nuclear safety, two accidents often come to mind: Chernobyl and Fukushima. What was the death toll and impact of these disasters?
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Only 2% of federal criminal defendants went to trial in 2018, and most who did were found guilty
Trials are rare in the federal criminal justice system: Just 2% of criminal defendants went to trial in fiscal 2018. Acquittals are even rarer.
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Alcohol Consumption
Who consumes the most alcohol? How has consumption changed over time? And what are the health impacts?
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Reasons Not to Use Apple (2018)
Apple reportedly had objections to what Jon Stewart said in his video program — it canceled the show after he had criticized China, and something the article describes as "AI". (It could be that what he criticized was actually large language models, which may be an important issue but are not "intelligence" .)
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Geek Social Fallacies (2003)
Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interp
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What's Our Problem? A Self-Help Book For Societies
Available today
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The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
On Medium, Nassim explains how once an intransigent minority reaches a tiny percentage of the total population, the majority of the population will
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Renewable Energy
Renewable energy sources are growing quickly and will play a vital role in tackling climate change.
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A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty
*Note: the discussion of historical poverty trends here is updated and developed more fully in the recent article, “ Capitalism and extreme poverty ”, published in World Development . Dear Steven, I’m writing to respond to a letter you posted regarding claims I made in the Guardian about
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Why American Construction Costs Are So High
I am embarking on a long-term project to investigate why US construction costs are high using case studies, so everything I’m going to say so far is tentative. In particular, one of my favori…
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Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist
I was first introduced to Austrian economics during my senior year in high school, when I first read and enjoyed the writings of Mises and Rothbard. The summer before I began my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, I was able to attend the 1989 Mises Institute summer seminar at Stanford, where I met Murray Rothbard and…
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On Recent Controversial Events
Update in 2024 : You may have linked to this page because it's heavily quoted by a semi-anonymously published website called the “Stallman Report”. While the author of that document tried to contact me shortly before launching their site, I missed that email for a week or two. (I get a lot of email and as those of you…
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Link between health spending and life expectancy: US is an outlier (2017)
Americans have a lower life expectancy than people in other rich countries despite paying much more for healthcare. What factors may explain this?
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Urbanization
Around 80% of the world’s population lives in cities, towns, and suburbs rather than rural settlements. How has this changed, and what does urbanization look like across the world today?
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The Poorest 20% of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most European Nations
The US is so economically exceptional that the poorest 20 percent of Americans are richer than many of the world’s most affluent nations.
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How much do incarcerated people earn in each state?
Prison wages come up again and again in the context of prison conditions and policies. So, we found the most up-to-date information for each state.
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Non-Glamorous Gains: The Pennsylvania Land Tax Experiment
Since 1913, Pennsylvania has allowed cities to tax land at a higher rate than buildings. This decision has led to some unique success stories: cities that have weathered post-industrial decline and revitalized their urban cores.
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Party Affiliation
In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent? (Asked of independents: As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?)
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The world’s most-surveilled cities
We've gathered data on CCTV cameras in use in 120 major cities across the globe to determine which cities have the most surveillance cameras per person.