Top all-time · #412
Freddie deBoer
Personal blog · freddiedeboer.substack.comculturepoliticswriting
Freddie deBoer's personal blog at freddiedeboer.substack.com covers culture, politics and writing. Since 2021, 135 different Hacker News readers have linked it 441 times, most often “I wouldn't say Pangram is broken, but I would say that it's brittle”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his Substack for education and admissions analysis (SAT, selection bias, gifted programs), and for essays on addiction, disability and psychosis.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Called 'one of his better ones', 'much more data-backed' and 'a deep discussion'; some say everyone should read it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
cool but rude. Click to read Freddie deBoer, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- I wouldn't say Pangram is broken, but I would say that it's brittle9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2026-07-23
- It's All Just Displacement7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-03-22
- /p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-01-07
- You Aren't Mad at the SATs5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-05-17
- Planet of Cops5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-08-26
- The conventional wisdom on educational spending5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-08-23
- Think critically about college admissions4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-05-27
- Education Doesn't Work [for creating socioeconomic mobility]4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-04-13
- Education Commentary Is Dominated by Optimism Bias3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-03-19
- Many Kids Don't Have a Warm, Safe, Healthy Home in Which to Do “Remote Learning”3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-08
What Hacker News says?
> If we can do both, why do we never do both? https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-we-cannot-do-bo...
Comment linking /p/perhaps-we-cannot-do-both
on “GitHub, fuck your name change”Submitted You can't censor away extremism or any other problem as a story · 428 points
HN discussion> generated text being watermarked is universally good. If it worked perfectly, maybe you could make this argument in a vacuum. It does not work perfectly. (It cannot. It is by definition a heuristic). That means there will be false positives. There is a chance those false positives ruin someone's career. See [0] for just how easy it is to push SotA "AI text detectors" in one direction or another. Now, with watermar…
Comment linking /p/i-wouldnt-say-pangram-is-broken-but
on “Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1”Submitted “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist as a story · 159 points
HN discussion> i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead. Ok, I'll bite. What is having empathy for the homeless? Is allowing unconstrained immigration to increase competition for entry-level positions empathy? What about restrictions on construction that make housing completely unaffordable? Is that empathy? Is leaving the drug-addicted portion of the homeless out on the st…
Comment linking /p/you-call-that-compassion
on “The Origins of Wokeness”Submitted I would like closure, but I'll take honesty as a story · 128 points
HN discussionIt’s like “trickle down economics.” It’s a phrase coined by its opponents to describe a real ideological trend. Obviously the people advancing that collection of ideas and policies don’t embrace the label and would describe their views differently. That doesn’t mean the label doesn’t describe a real thing. See also: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tel... (“Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Te…
Comment linking /p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what
on “Heresy”Submitted Think critically about college admissions as a story · 87 points
HN discussionThe dirty secret of education is that no school outperform nor underperform much other schools when adjusting for differences in student populations : https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/why-selection-bias-is-t...
Comment linking /p/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education?s=r
on “The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)”Submitted The main thing with kids is to keep them alive as a story · 66 points
HN discussionThe formal definition according to Google is "a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality", so I guess technically, a dream meets that definition. I think the commenter you're responding to is also referring to the way that in a psychotic state, all actions make sense to the psychotic person. The "psycho" stops following a deductive/conscious/scie…
Comment linking /p/i-would-like-closure-but-ill-take
on “Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works”Submitted Why doesn't AI want to show me Jesus washing the feet of his disciples? as a story · 58 points
HN discussionAs for the shell casing I think the best commentary so far has been https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/notes-on-the-heavenly-a... https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/constituent-parts-of-a-... I can't approve completely of his appropriate of dynamical systems theory but the idea that Kirk was "killed by memes" appeals to me as does Fred's description of these as "brainrot". People on the right are likely to see s…
Comment linking /p/constituent-parts-of-a-theory-of
on “ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair”Submitted We Are Experiencing Definitional Collapse as a story · 54 points
HN discussionHi Bryan, I liked your piece, and agree with almost all of it, but I'm surprised by your faith in the accuracy of Pangram at detecting AI writing. Is your faith based on testing it with lots of writing of known origins, or are you just saying that it reaches the same conclusion that you do as a talented human? In particular, I wondered if you have tried running all of your own writings through it to verify that it t…
Comment linking /p/i-wouldnt-say-pangram-is-broken-but
on “The revolt of the reader”Submitted Joe Rogan, Parody of the Open Mind as a story · 47 points
HN discussionNo. I was completely baffled by your questions, but I think I now understand. Someone once upon a time fed the Declaration of Independence into an AI-detector and got a false positive, and you're saying that this means that all putative AI-detectors are "no better than astrology". First, I think it's worth distinguishing "had a false positive once" from "is no better than astrology". Second, once it occurred to me t…
Comment linking /p/how-to-produce-a-pangram-4-false
on “Claude Duet”Submitted The Modern Curse of Overoptimization as a story · 45 points
HN discussionThere are many students for whom "warehousing" is considerably better than the alternatives. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w...
Comment linking /p/many-kids-dont-have-a-warm-safe-healthy
on “I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control”Submitted Planet of Cops as a story · 43 points
HN discussionFreddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w... The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize. It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like: We encoura…
Comment linking /p/many-kids-dont-have-a-warm-safe-healthy
on “I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control”Submitted The Gentrification of Disability as a story · 42 points
HN discussionhttps://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tel...
Comment linking /p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what
on “Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda”Submitted Why the Fuck Do You Trust Harvard? as a story · 32 points
HN discussionyeah but antipsychotics severely retard every mental process and have a high risk of permanent motor and intellectual disability (it really sucks to have tardive dyskinesia). There’s absolutely no reason that should be prescribed. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-weight Freddie explains it in this article - he deems it worth it for him to be able to keep a job and friends, but it is in no way called for for…
Comment linking /p/the-weight
on “Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes”Submitted Human Capital Is Real, and Some People Are Smarter Than Other People as a story · 30 points
HN discussionI've actually found these takes quite interesting, though I wouldn't say I am in agreement. You might find some of Freddie de Boer's writing on disability interesting, such as this piece [1], this one [2], and others. [1] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/your-mental-illness-bel... [2] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-gentrification-of-d...
Comment linking /p/the-gentrification-of-disability
on “Stop postponing things by embracing the mess”Submitted Journalists Are Terrified of Criticizing BlackLivesMatter as a story · 25 points
HN discussionHere is a seemingly well informed text claiming the opposite: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-think-critically...
Comment linking /p/please-think-critically-about-college
on “It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel”Submitted If You Want to Make It as a Writer, for God's Sakes, Be Weird as a story · 24 points
HN discussion
