Top all-time · #1120
Henrik Karlsson
Personal blog · henrikkarlsson.xyzphilosophywritingculture
Henrik Karlsson writes Escaping Flatland, a personal blog at henrikkarlsson.xyz about philosophy, writing and culture. Since 2023, 60 different Hacker News readers have linked it 123 times, most often “Childhoods of Exceptional People”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Henrik Karlsson's essays on writing to think, blogging, explore/exploit decisions, childhood and original thinking. Several recommend them as helpful and worth reading.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called a good series on writing to think; gives insight into life priorities; recommended for original thinking.
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.
I write essays about relationships, thinking, and agency, sometimes with my wife. We live on a windswept island in the Baltic Sea with our two daughters. Click to read Escaping Flatland, by Henrik Karlsson, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- Childhoods of Exceptional People9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2024-03-11
- On Agency7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2025-07-07
- A blog post is a long and complex search query to find people (2022)6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2023-08-21
- Becoming Perceptive5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-09-10
- How to think in writing4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-04-25
- Looking for Alice3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-04-05
- Scene Creation Engines and Apprenticeships3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-26
- Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-26
- How to Solve a Problem3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-08-18
- Pseudonyms lets you practice agency3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-22
What Hacker News says?
Here is a somewhat different motivation: "A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox" https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query
Comment linking /p/search-query
on “Why blog if nobody reads it?”Submitted Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself as a story · 773 points
HN discussionWriting helps me think. Posting a thought in public forces me to commit to an idea and clean up how I communicate it. I learn more about the subject and myself along the way. Henrik Karlsson has a good series of posts on this subject: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-to-think I journal daily about a topic I pull off a backlog of ideas. After the end of my allotted journaling time, if I think “there are more…
Comment linking /p/writing-to-think
on “Why blog if nobody reads it?”Submitted Lessons I learned working at an art gallery as a story · 488 points
HN discussionIn other words: "A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox" [1] [1] https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query
Comment linking /p/search-query
on “Pirating the Pirates”Submitted After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative as a story · 428 points
HN discussionThis feels like a side tangent, but why have you focused on technology for creative and curious childhood? I'm curious if you have considered the following: I.e. Maria Montessori (founder of the Montessori methodology of teaching) did a pretty good job showing that's the natural state of kids, and there's quite a bit in her teachings about the importance of physical things, being outdoors, etc. There's some pretty s…
Comment linking /p/childhoods
on “Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth”Submitted How to think in writing as a story · 424 points
HN discussionThis feels like a side tangent, but why have you focused on technology for creative and curious childhood? I.e. Maria Montessori (founder of the Montessori methodology of teaching) did a pretty good job showing that's the natural state of kids, and there's quite a bit in her teachings about the importance of physical things, being outdoors, etc. There's some pretty strong reasoning that technology might in fact be t…
Comment linking /p/childhoods
on “Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth”Submitted Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog as a story · 348 points
HN discussionThis essay I read recently speaks about solitude in a way you might find interesting. Basically how valuable it is to be in solute but also become sensitive to how it feels when you’re not getting influenced by other minds, as you say. https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas
Comment linking /p/good-ideas
on “De-Brainrot Vacations”Submitted When is it better to think without words? as a story · 284 points
HN discussionLeetcode is good practice but go into full exploring mode and learn new tech. I got back into full stack development (mainly backend guy) and I now have endless ideas. I learned sveltekit and tailwind css to build my portfolio website. I love rucking and did some research and found out there's no real good rucking tracker. Consider social media such as Twitter and Reddit groups like saas, entrepreneur, and indiehack…
Comment linking /p/search-query
on “IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023”Submitted Think more about what to focus on as a story · 273 points
HN discussionhttps://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/multi-armed-bandit Applies world models and explore/exploit concepts in ML to real life. Gives insight about dynamics of priorities in our life.
Comment linking /p/multi-armed-bandit
on “Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?”Submitted On limitations that hide in your blindspot as a story · 215 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in preserving your ability to think for yourself in the age of AI, I recommend Henrik Karlsson's blog Escaping Flatland. While not directly about AI, his articles "Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born" [1] and "Childhoods of exceptional people" [2] explore similar themes of how to train your mind to have original ideas and learn to solve problems on your own. [1] https://www.henr…
Comment linking /archive?sort=top
on “Knowledge Management in the Age of AI”Submitted How is music possible as a story · 174 points
HN discussionThe architect Christopher Alexander has this pattern in "A Pattern Language" called "Home Workshop". (Summary: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/christopher-alexanders-arch... ) Roughly, the idea was that if you can walk around your neighborhood and see different people working at their professions, the wholeness of the neighborhood increases. It comes more alive. Children imbibe a more realistic sense of what differ…
Comment linking /p/christopher-alexanders-architecture
on “Tell HN: I underestimated how lonely building solo can be”Submitted Relationships are coevolutionary loops (2023) as a story · 160 points
HN discussionI quit at April 2025. Mostly because of agonizing corporate culture, loss of meaning and long term direction. It took me couple of months to recuperate. Turned down couple of similar jobs and some nicer ones. Then I started working on cheap sidewalk delivery robots, knowing nothing about robotics [1]. Made far enough to lunch a pilot (as a research project) and thinking about commercial pilots afterwards. Absolutely…
Comment linking /p/unfolding
on “Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)”Submitted Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process as a story · 133 points
HN discussion> ideally people can always just think in concepts Are you pursing an idea of how to help people like this author* access this mode that some of us are always in unless kicked out of it by the need for words? Very needed right now — the opposite of the YouTube-ization of idea transfer. It doesn't seem clear this is accessible without other changes in wiring? The inability to "picture" things as visuals seems to swap…
Comment linking /p/wordless-thought
on “We collected 10k hours of neuro-language data in our basement”Submitted First we shape our social graph, then it shapes us (2022) as a story · 98 points
HN discussionGuarding your heart with elegant nonsense you don't really mean is a classic defensive posture, and probably is directly impeding their ability to be present in emotionally intense (and often difficult) situations. It reminded me of this: >There is a scene in the opening of Into the Abyss. Werner Herzog is interviewing a Reverend who in fifteen minutes will go in to be with a boy as the boy is led to the gurney to b…
Comment linking /p/looking-for-alice
on “Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies”Submitted The Learning System as a story · 28 points
HN discussionHere is an article that really helped me write better blogs https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/start-a-blog
Comment linking /p/start-a-blog
on “Ask HN: How to write better tech blogs”Submitted The Third Chair as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI'm working on a collection of networked games, around the central theme of a lockstep deterministic network model with 'delay frames' (between acting directly on user input and progressing actual shared network state). You can try this here: https://locksteparcade.com/Client Games included in the arcade, currently: - Neon Swarm, a take on the classic lemmings game, with multiplayer versus and coop modes - Serpents,…
Comment linking /p/scene-creation-engines
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)”Submitted How to think in writing as a story · 8 points
HN discussion
