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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 952 posts.
The concept of property is a social construction. Animals, such as cats, can own a piece of food, or a territory, but only as long as they are able to personally maintain a credible threat of violence. And animals can only defend concrete, physical properties, such as an area, a dead bird or a tree. … Continue reading…
Unfortunately for the countless hapless people I've talked to in the past few months, this was inexorable. Ever since ChatGPT exploded in popularity, my inner designer has been bursting at the seams.
More than raw factual errors, I’m interested in how science and scientists are depicted and how it influences peoples’ opinions of science as a process. You can’t see lasers and X…
Breaking through the illusion of convenience that's used to sell us automation
Highlight of cool technologies mentioned in "The Dark Forest".
If you don’t give money its purpose, it will end up defining yours.
A few things Marc Andreessen forgot to mention
A central puzzle in evolutionary biology is that of spontaneous altruism. When two creatures interact, why might one sacrifice something of value in order to help the other? Why, if I'm rich, might I want to help the poor? In one view of the problem, there's n
The tech behind peer-to-peer (P2P) social networks such as Secure Scuttlebutt enforces permanency. Absolute permanency isn’t what you want in a social network.
This week we’re going to take a detour into understanding the structure of academia, in particular the different kinds of ‘professors’ and their academic ranks in the American sys…
Eric Park's website
Despite dealing with issues like depression, suicide, domestic violence, and PTSD, these apps share data freely and raise many security concerns
Douglas Adams on Hypercard + New Educational Models
My post Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first” really took off. It sat at the top of Hacker News for a full day, and is …
It’s an empirical observation that rail riders who are faced with a transfer are much more likely to make the trip if it’s near their home than near their destination. Reinhard Clever&#…
The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene, and unoriginal.
Raiding the Global South like a piggy bank.
A data-driven examination of the 12% increase in US homelessness, the structural causes behind the numbers, and what the data tells us about housing policy failures.
The WGA's win may pave the way for more.
How many cardiac arrest survivors later have a conscious recollection of their death experience—and are their recollections accurate?
Few things are harder to start than a narrative of the thing you “do” and what all the ramifications of it are. For people who don’t make it the center of their lives, your thing …
Isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?
