Top all-time · #4329
Carcinisation
Personal blog · carcinisation.comphilosophyscience
Carcinisation is a personal blog at carcinisation.com about philosophy and science. Since 2014, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 33 times, most often “Survey Chicken”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-20, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for critiques of survey research and social science, the Big Five personality model, and an anti-deathist FAQ on life extension. It is cited as a source for points about survey reliability.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
One of nature's many attempts to evolve a crab.
Most-linked posts?
- Survey Chicken6 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2020-12-12
- The Ongoing Accomplishment of the Big Five3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-07-05
- A Case Against the Placebo Effect2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-14
What Hacker News says?
Yes, we're not going to get to the bottom of it here. Since most of us aren't social scientists and don't have experience with any particular diagnostic tool, all we are doing is comparing priors, and there's no reason why you should take the priors of some other stranger commenting on the Internet all that seriously. But I'll say that my priors lean heavily towards the idea that most surveys, even the standard ones…
Comment linking /2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
on “Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior”Submitted A Case Against the Placebo Effect as a story · 83 points
HN discussionI like the scenarios described in https://carcinisation.com/2015/07/23/defensive-epistemology/ . One of them is using the efficient market hypothesis (true enough for this application) to avoid being taken in by a real estate broker.
Comment linking /2015/07/23/defensive-epistemology/
on “Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful”Submitted The Ongoing Accomplishment of the Big Five as a story · 61 points
HN discussionWell, it’s based on a survey. (And surveys are cursed instruments [1].) > Generally, owners' equivalent rent is obtained through surveys asking homeowners the following question: "If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?" [2] I would guess that some owners’ ideas of what their house would rent for might lag the market? [1] https://ca…
Comment linking /2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
on “It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere”Submitted Why Cultural Evolution Is Real (And What It Is) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIt's funny I seem to have expressed my thoughts on this very recently [1]. Also a FAQ that you might be interested in [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14205938 [2] https://carcinisation.com/2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/
Comment linking /2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/
on “Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013)”Submitted Survey Chicken as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> I never understood the people who argue for indefinite life extension. I'd say admitting an inability to understand something is a good first step towards making progress. Don't lose hope. Here's something to read in the meantime [1] [1] https://carcinisation.com/2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/
Comment linking /2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/
on “Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013)”Submitted The Last of the Monsters with Iron Teeth as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you believe getting old, and sick, and miserable, and then dying, is good or natural or the way it is supposed to be, then I respectfully disagree with you [0]. [0] https://carcinisation.com/2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/...
Comment linking /2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/comment-page-1/
on “Your Life”Submitted A Case Against the Placebo Effect as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> There are more gut bacteria than human cells in our body "[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets." http://carcinisation.com/2014/08/14/science-journalism-march...
Comment linking /2014/08/14/science-journalism-marches-on/
on “Calories in, calories out”Submitted Survey Chicken as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe Big Five is a much less impressive accomplishment than you’d think for how much people talk about it. https://carcinisation.com/2020/07/04/the-ongoing-accomplishm... > The interesting thing about the Five Factor Model is what it gets away with, in terms of being considered a theory, even though it is not causal, and makes no predictions. What counts as a “replication” of the Five Factor Model, as in Soto (2019),…
Comment linking /2020/07/04/the-ongoing-accomplishment-of-the-big-five/
on “What's wrong with social science and how to fix it”Submitted The Ongoing Accomplishment of the Big Five as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe study is paywalled, but since it seems to based on surveys I’ll link to an article about why research based on surveys are often bullshit: https://carcinisation.com/2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
Comment linking /2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
on “It Turns Out You Can Bullshit a Bullshitter After All”Submitted The Ongoing Accomplishment of the Big Five as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe Big 5 replicate, but that's about all; they don't predict, work across cultures, and they're not really orthogonal. https://carcinisation.com/2020/07/04/the-ongoing-accomplishm...
Comment linking /2020/07/04/the-ongoing-accomplishment-of-the-big-five/
on “Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown”Submitted Fake Martial Arts, a Disorientation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnother, related phenomenon is when scientists confuse themselves into believing that what they’re studying and a common noun are the same thing. For example, the Big Five traits or whatever “happiness” means in happiness surveys. Labeling an axis with a common noun doesn’t make it coincide with the common meaning, but it ensures it will be confused with it. This is why scientific names for species are useful. Too b…
Comment linking /2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
on “Improper Nouns”Submitted Words Fail (2020) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt’s an unwarranted assumption that people given a question to answer always understand what it’s asking and answer truthfully. Another possibility is that many users won’t understand or care much and will just click at random to make the dialog go away. Or they might use default rules like saying “no” to anything they don’t understand. Since we can’t ask users what they meant, it’s not something we can know. For mo…
Comment linking /2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
on “Facebook’s ad campaign shows how worried it is about Apple's privacy changes”Submitted Antique Beef as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn case some people are on the fence about the whole idea or have questions: The Anti-Deathist FAQ: http://carcinisation.com/2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/
Comment linking /2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/
on “Calico, Google’s Anti-Aging Company, Announces New Research Facility”Submitted The Extended Sniff Test (2020) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> With answers as "very often" means very different things to different people. Agree, I think it's certainly a problem and I too wish it was more defined, but alas. Related, Literal Banana on surveys: https://carcinisation.com/2020/12/11/survey-chicken/ > In addition these general questions that a lot of people can relate to will cause a lot of people to get unneeded screening Yes, a lot of people have ADHD. I link…
Comment linking /2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
on “A One-Minute ADHD Test”Submitted Against Automaticity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe same author's discussion of surveys is even better: https://carcinisation.com/2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
Comment linking /2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
on “The Ongoing Accomplishment of the Big Five”Submitted Survey Chicken – Carcinisation as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
