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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 409 posts.
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The Great Filter – Are We Almost Past It? (1998)
Combining standard stories of biologists, astronomers, physicists, and social scientists would lead us to expect a much smaller filter than we observe. Thus one of these stories must be wrong. To find out who is wrong, and to inform our choices, we should study and reconsider all these areas. For example, we should…
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UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low
Sometimes I pride myself on my taking an intellectual strategy of tackling neglected important questions.
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Mild Covid-19 induces lasting antibody protection
People who have had mild illness develop antibody-producing cells that can last lifetime
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The Breeder's Equation
R is the response to selection, S is the selection differential, and h 2 is the narrow-sense heritability. This is the workhorse equation for quantitative genetics. The selective differential S, is the difference between the population average and the average of the parental population (some subset of the total…
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The Tarnished Moon
Remote sensing observations reveal the presence of ferric iron in the form of the mineral hematite at high latitudes on the Moon, possibly the product of reaction of ferrous iron on the Moon with oxygen from the Earth�s upper atmosphere.
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Synthetic Cartilage (2020)
The thin, slippery layer of cartilage between the bones in the knee is magical stuff: strong enough to withstand a person’s weight, but soft and supple enough to cushion the joint against impact, over decades of repeat use. That combination of soft-yet-strong has been hard to reproduce in the lab. But now, Duke…
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Maps Of Matter
Status: Rough working notes – me thinking aloud. Speculative, and likely contains errors, misconceptions, and omissions; thoughtful, informed comments are welcome. Intended for a general scientifically curious audience, not requiring much detailed specialist background.
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The Joy of Condensed Matter
I published a slightly different version of this article in Nautilus on February 24, 2021. Everyone seems to be talking about the problems with physics: Woit’s book Not Even Wrong, SmolinR…
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The Geometry of Color Perception
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…
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Ontology of Psychiatric Conditions: Taxometrics
Is mental illness a thing? What kind of thing is it?
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IceCube detection of a high-energy particle proves 60-year-old theory
On December 8, 2016,* a high-energy particle called an electron antineutrino hurtled to Earth from outer space at close to the speed of light carrying 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) of energy. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a particle that quickly decayed into a…
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Research team demonstrates world’s fastest optical neuromorphic processor
An international team of researchers has demonstrated the world’s fastest and most powerful optical neuromorphic processor for artificial intelligence, which is capable of processing ultra-large scale data.
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The Wolfram Physics Project: A One-Year Update
An update from Stephen Wolfram on the Physics Project. Exploration of models, connections to existing frameworks, space and time, quantum mechanics, experimental implications, applications to other fields.
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Sputnik V: fraudulent clinical trial data
Sputnik V clinical trial data seems as trustworthy as Putin’s election results.
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How Dangerous Are Solar Storms?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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How is efficacy vs. severe disease strong if 60% of hospitalized are vaccinated?
A surge involving the rapidly-transmitting Delta variant in heavily vaccinated countries has led to much hand-wringing that the vaccines are not effective against Delta, or vaccine effectivenss wanes after 4-6 months. This has fueled anti-vaccine sentiment suggesting the vaccines are not working, and causing much…
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Mammalian Aggression
Introduction
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Neuroscientists roll out first comprehensive atlas of brain cells
Researchers funded by the federal BRAIN Initiative have mapped all the cell types — more than a hundred — in the motor cortex of the brain
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Neurons might contain something within them
Neurons might contain something incredible within them.
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How the brain navigates cities
An MIT study suggests our brains are not optimized to calculate the shortest possible route when navigating on foot. Instead, pedestrians use vector-based navigation, choosing “pointiest” paths that point most directly toward their destination, even if the routes are longer.
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Scientists build new atlas of ocean’s oxygen-starved waters
MIT scientists built a 3D atlas of the ocean’s oxygen-starved waters that could help predict oceanic response to climate change.
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Out of Africa's midlife crisis
on bottlenecks, crashes and what diversity really looks like
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Lead Poisoning and Rome
"The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them."