Top all-time · #9489
David Epstein
Personal blog · davidepstein.substack.comsciencecareer
David Epstein writes Range Widely, a personal blog at davidepstein.substack.com about science and career. Since 2023, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 13 times, most often “How to use ChatGPT without brainrot”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters cite David Epstein's posts on AI use and learning, including a post on how LLMs remove "desirable difficulty" from learning tasks. One comment also shares a post from the feed alongside an arXiv article.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The newsletter for generalists.
Most-linked posts?
- How to use ChatGPT without brainrot2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-27
- A Risk of Cognitive Convenience2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-06
What Hacker News says?
David Epstein calls this "desirable difficulty" in the book Range. Interestingly he recently discussed how using LLMs tends to remove this desirable difficulty: https://davidepstein.substack.com/p/a-risk-of-cognitive-conv... This means that the results (both of the task and of the learning by the student) are lower if the student uses an LLM first, but slightly improves if they use it second
Comment linking /p/a-risk-of-cognitive-convenience
on “Thin desires are eating life”Submitted Frances Hesselbein's leadership story (2022) as a story · 148 points
HN discussionThere was an article[1] about two gene mutations which cause (a) lose fat, lose muscle, and (b) lose fat, gain muscule. If you could build a selector between these three modes (normal human, (a), (b)), you could solve HALF OF HUMANITY PROBLEMS. For real. That's not a joke. I see a lot of people around whose lifes are crippled by the fact they're not in the body mass which would be most productive/healthy for them. P…
Comment linking /p/the-diy-scientist-and-the-olympian
on “Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed”Submitted Plan to Get Less Done as a story · 31 points
HN discussionThe post from my feed: https://davidepstein.substack.com/p/how-to-use-chatgpt-witho... , with the corresponding article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
Comment linking /p/how-to-use-chatgpt-without-brain
on “Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school”Submitted Q&A with Malcolm Gladwell: "Revenge of the Tipping Point" as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to use ChatGPT without brainrot as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Risk of Cognitive Convenience as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Genetic Medicine Never Arrived as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What's Driving Healthcare Costs? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Make Resolutions That Might Stick as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted From High Conflict to Good Conflict as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Leadership in Context – By David Epstein as a story · 1 points
HN discussion