Top all-time · #2891
Dominic Cummings
Personal blog · dominiccummings.compolitics
Dominic Cummings's personal blog at dominiccummings.com covers politics. Since 2017, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 37 times, most often “Branching histories of the [Brexit] referendum and ‘the frogs before the storm’”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (18) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog as the place to read Dominic Cummings's own writing on UK government, Brexit, policy and expertise, and as a niche blog worth following.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 18 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Branching histories of the [Brexit] referendum and ‘the frogs before the storm’4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-04-18
- No. 10 Downing Street hiring data scientists, physicists, weirdos3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-02
- The Hollow Men II: Some Reflections on Westminster and Whitehall Dysfunction3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-12-27
- The most secure biolabs routinely make errors that could cause a pandemic (2019)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-26
- Unrecognised simplicities of effective action #1: expertise and business2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-20
- Unrecognised simplicities of effective action #2(b): the Apollo programme2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-10-22
- Dominic Cummings's Blog2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-25
What Hacker News says?
Back when he was still considered quotable, Dominic Cummings often mused about the UK's future post-Brexit. I seem to remember his blog mentioning data science and drug research as possible areas where UK could build a global advantage. I can't be bothered to wade through it all but if you're interested his (old) stuff is here: https://dominiccummings.com
Comment linking /
on “UK's hardware talent is being wasted”Submitted No. 10 Downing Street hiring data scientists, physicists, weirdos as a story · 84 points
HN discussionMost of the top comments in this thread are badly missing the point. This is probably partly due to the title -- the point here is not whether connections and reputation are important. The point is that at the very highest levels of US government, when they have brought in an academic advisors from elite universities, they have ended up presenting absurdly wrong child-like nonsense as their best attempt at analyzing…
Comment linking /the-odyssean-project-2/
on “So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering”Submitted The most secure biolabs routinely make errors that could cause a pandemic (2019) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionDominic Cummings https://dominiccummings.com/an-index-of-blogs-articles-paper...
Comment linking /an-index-of-blogs-articles-papers/
on “Ask HN: What niche blogs are worthwhile to follow?”Submitted Branching histories of the [Brexit] referendum and ‘the frogs before the storm’ as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe claim that Turkey was soon going to join the EU (which isn't going to happen) and flood the country with Turkish immigrants was a major component of vote leave messaging: "Turkey/NHS/£350 million". Edit: FYI Dominic Cummings actually blogged about the important of Turkey to their success: https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-...
Comment linking /2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/
on “Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents”Submitted Effective action: ‘Expertise’, prediction and noise as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSome disagree about that: > Generally the better educated are more prone to irrational political opinions and political hysteria than the worse educated far from power. Why? In the field of political opinion they are more driven by fashion, a gang mentality, and the desire to pose about moral and political questions all of which exacerbate cognitive biases, encourage groupthink, and reduce accuracy. Those on average…
Comment linking /2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/
on “The Clean Network – United States Department of State”Submitted Performant Government, ‘Cognitive Technologies’, Michael Nielsen and Bret Victor as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIs this as big a gotcha as people think it is? The article which he quoted in length in 2019 [0] hasn't been modified and did mention both SARS and Coronavirus. He's just amending the quote he took from it. Obviously the first time he quoted it, he didn't think it was relevant to show the example, so contracted it by hand to "[An example]" [1]. In 2020, he realises that specifically mentioning SARS and Coronavirus i…
on “UK government advisor caught out by Wayback machine”Submitted Project Maven, procurement, lollapalooza results and nuclear/AGI safety as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHow do you lose citizenship of the place you're born without explicitly giving it up? If you can support yourself off savings you don't need an income, which is why retirees can go to Spain. But you do need to be able to support yourself financially and without much time to do so. I wouldn't be that amazed, given I've been to Berlin many times. Sure, you can go to big cities and then compete with locals for unskille…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/screenshot-2016-11-27-13-58-441.png?w=498&h=458
on “Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6-8%, investments by 12-18% [pdf]”Submitted Review of “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYou’ve probably seen this, but posting in case you haven’t: https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-w...
Comment linking /2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/
on “Marc Andreessen interview”Submitted The Hollow Men II: Some Reflections on Westminster and Whitehall Dysfunction as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI get it, but I am wary of this brewing corporate FETISHISATION of 'neurodivergence'. The UK government held a similar recruitment scheme a year ago[1] - headed by Dominic Cummings - which is no surprise since he is very much in touch with this culture. Of course, he uses SFW synonyms of mental ailments: weirdos, oddballs, wild-cards, etc. It's almost as if these people recently watched Rain Man (1988). [1] https://…
Comment linking /2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/
on “Strengthening our workplace with neurodiverse talent”Submitted On the referendum #20: the campaign, physics and data science (2016) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion>chief advisor to PM stating that UK civil service should be entirely abolished Citation? The original article advocates reform, and possibly abolishing permanent secretaries, but nothing like entirely abolishing the civil service https://dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-som...
Comment linking /2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-some-reflections-on-westminster-and-whitehall-dysfunction/
on “Turkey's block on Wikipedia violates rights, court rules”Submitted Dominic Cummings's Blog as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm committing the sin of commenting w/o having read the article yet, so this might be duplicative or orthogonal, but: Without feedback, there is no real expertise. Most experts are in domains w/o feedback, so they are mostly full of shit. Good blog posts exploring this topic a bit: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/05/dominic-cummings-on-fi... (above is a summary/intro to following:) https://dominiccummings.com/20…
Comment linking /2018/05/22/effective-action-4a-expertise-from-fighting-and-physics-to-economics-politics-and-government/
on “The Limits of Expertise”Submitted Unrecognised simplicities of effective action #1: expertise and business as a story · 1 points
HN discussion>I wonder if the Apollo project would have worked today, instead of in the 1960s. George Mueller (who was head of NASA during the Apollo program) said that it would be impossible to repeat Apollo today without it being a classified program as Congress has passed so many laws and regulations in the meantime. Source: https://dominiccummings.com/2017/06/12/the-unrecognised-simp...
on “Oroville Dam: Cost to repair spillways nearly doubles in price to $500M”Submitted How to change science funding post-Brexit [updated with comment by Alan Kay] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf anyone from California YIMBY is reading this thread, I really hope you get a chance to read the following: - https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-... - "Win Bigly" by Scott Adams
Comment linking /2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/
on “California higher-density housing bill blocked in first committee hearing”Submitted Unrecognised simplicities of effective action #2(b): the Apollo programme as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe author seems to confuse "Brexit can be viewed through the prism of" with "Brexit is". He provides evidence for the weaker claim, but then treats the issue as if he has proven the stronger claim. I highly recommend reading Dominic Cummings directly to see the level of thinking exhibited by one of the Brexit architects. For example, https://dominiccummings.com/2019/02/21/on-the-referendum-29-...
Comment linking /2019/02/21/on-the-referendum-29-genetics-genomics-predictions-the-gretzky-game-a-chance-for-britain-to-help-the-world/
on “Brexit can best be understood as a civil war within capitalism”Submitted Unrecognised simplicities of effective action #1: expertise and quadrillion $ biz as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe leader of this, Dominic Cummings, advocates for a quantitative/tech approach to policy, e.g. https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-w... on who he wants to hire. https://dominiccummings.com/2019/06/26/on-the-referendum-33-... on tech to assist decision making in government. https://dominiccummings.com/2014/08/19/standin-by-the-window... on his trip to SciFoo, and being a policy person amongst…
on “The British Government Takes on the British Civil Service”The article says this is led by Dominic Cummings, whose blog is https://dominiccummings.com/ if you want to know more about him. He advocates for a tech/quantitative approach to policy, e.g. https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-w... on who he wants to hire. https://dominiccummings.com/2019/06/26/on-the-referendum-33-... on tech to assist decision making in government. https://dominiccummings.co…
on “The British Government Takes on the British Civil Service”
