Top all-time · #4344
John Horgan
Personal blog · johnhorgan.org/cross-checksciencephilosophy
John Horgan's personal blog at johnhorgan.org covers science and philosophy. Since 2015, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “John Wheeler and the "It from Bit" (2023)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite John Horgan's pieces as context and sources, including his Cross-Check interview on the Trinity test's thermal-flash theory and his 2003 essay on leaving a Buddhist retreat. Several comments are neutral citations rather than judgements.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- John Wheeler and the "It from Bit" (2023)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-29
What Hacker News says?
So let me get this straight, statistics can be misused? I almost stopped reading as soon as I saw the image from the big bang theory. (That show presents nerds the way other people want to see them. Not the way nerds actually are.) It appears that the author of this article is just a journalist: http://www.johnhorgan.org/ I don't see anything in there about him ever being a scientist, a statistician, or anyone who w…
Comment linking /
on “Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?”Submitted Douglas Hofstadter on Loops, Beauty, Free Will, AI, God, Utopia and Gaza as a story · 37 points
HN discussionNote: algeria 1830s https://baheyeldin.com/writings/culture/how-the-dutch-got-th... Thanks for application of irony to a thread about iron laws! Led me to the “unnamed” Ping-Pong Lemma, a great counterexample! Vespasian was, apparently, more inconsistent: https://sci-hub.wf/10.2307/1192680 (Im guessing he was as aware as MAA of the burdens of office) Hopefully we can return to the formalization of Nietzsche/Greco-Ro…
Comment linking /cross-check/physicist-john-wheeler-and-the-it-from-bit
on “The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010)”Submitted Is God a Strange Loop? as a story · 29 points
HN discussionThis was from 2003. I think at the time the author(John Horgan) was a kind of a 'religion debunker', and maybe he had latched onto a few sects of Buddhism that sound kind of 'Christian' and 'debunkable'. He has some follow up writings that indicate his views on Buddhism may have shifted. From 2023 https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/a-buddhism-critic-goes-on... "But I’m glad I went on the retreat. The Lama, during ou…
Comment linking /cross-check/a-buddhism-critic-goes-on-a-buddhist-retreat
on “Buddhist Retreat: Why I gave up on finding my religion (2003)”Submitted The "Horgan Surface" and "The Death of Proof" as a story · 22 points
HN discussionYou made me curious. It seems the theory is thermal, but it was never taken that seriously. Bethe called it “absolute nonsense”—interview: https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/oppenheimer-bethe-and-the... Here's a student paper giving a pretty thorough analysis (AFAICT): http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/chung1/ Here's more discussion of it: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/52802/where-did-... An…
Comment linking /cross-check/oppenheimer-bethe-and-the-doomsday-hypothesis
on “Lost Images from the 1945 Trinity Nuclear Test Restored”Submitted Francis Crick's Depressing Hypothesis as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Free Will, War and the Tolstoy Paradox as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Cancer Industry: Hype versus Reality as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Scientific American Loses Its Bold Leader as a story · 3 points
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HN discussionSubmitted Physicists Teleport Bullshit Through Wormhole as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Who Supervises the Supervisor? A Riff on Machine Learning as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted John Wheeler and the "It from Bit" (2023) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is "Information" Eternally Conserved? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Encounter with Philosophical Anarchist Paul Feyerabend as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Confessions of a Namedropping Humblebragger as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Kicked Caffeine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Conservation of Ignorance: A New Law of Nature as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mitchell Feigenbaum and the End of Chaoplexity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Writer Reflects on Turning 71 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Free Will and the Sapolsky Paradox as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Free Will and ChatGPT-Me as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Brouhaha over Consciousness and “Pseudoscience” as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Delusion of Scientific Omniscience as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Pluralism: Beyond the One and Only Truth as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thomas Kuhn’s Skepticism Went Too Far as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Meeting with David Bohm, Tormented Quantum Visionary as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mammography Screening Is a Failed Experiment as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
