Top all-time · #10671
Kaj Sotala
Personal blog · kajsotala.fiaiphilosophy
Kaj Sotala's personal blog at kajsotala.fi covers ai and philosophy. Since 2013, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-07-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Kaj Sotala's posts, mainly 'How I found & fixed the root problem behind my depression and anxiety' on 'self-concept', plus pieces on AI risk and Harry Potter fanfiction analysis.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
It is the autumn of humanity, and we are moments between raindrops
What Hacker News says?
"How I found & fixed the root problem behind my depression and anxiety after 20+ years" by Kaj Sotala. It describes the concept of 'self-concept' and a, I guess, pseudo-treatment for addressing deep-set neurosis/anxiety caused by having one that is a little malformed. This post led (in a sort of roundabout way, hitting at a good time in my life and while I was already thinking in the direction of fixing this problem…
Comment linking /2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years/
on “Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?”Submitted Doing Good in the Addiction Economy as a story · 114 points
HN discussionAs others have said, various therapies. You can also get a similar result with self-exploration, in my experience. Something like what's described here: https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob...
Comment linking /2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years/
on “Parents’ trauma leaves biological traces in children”Submitted Software for moral enhancement as a story · 48 points
HN discussionRelevant account: http://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-probl...
Comment linking /2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years
on “Stanford scientist searches for answer to his son’s Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”Submitted Doing Good in the Addiction Economy (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThat makes no sense to me, if you're trying to deal with mental health problems and struggling you're going to be looking for new ideas from any source. Doctors are good at giving garden-variety medical advice that's validated by studies, but there's so many other ideas out there that they're not going to know about. Their background gives them expertise on what medicine says about mental health, not about the human…
Comment linking /2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years/
on “Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?”Submitted Social media saps more than just short-term attention as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think everyone has that. For what it's worth it seems like the path to _not_ doing that involves being fine with doing it. Somehow the 'wanting to have done something this year' causes a sort of anxiety that makes one not do things. I find that when I can release the feeling that I ought to be doing something, or that I'm failing or doing the wrong thing, I... start to desire to do things again and end up happier…
Comment linking /2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years/
on “If You Have Writer's Block, Maybe You Should Stop Lying”Submitted DeepDream: Today psychedelic images, tomorrow unemployed artists as a story · 2 points
HN discussionEven if you imagine just a small risk of an AI being hostile or indifferent toward us, is it worth gambling our future on that risk? Where is your evidence that a vastly greater intelligence would have a moral that is perfectly aligned with ours, unless we programmed it perfectly for that purpose and made sure any self-modification by the AI preserved those moral invariants? http://kajsotala.fi/2007/10/14-objections…
Comment linking /2007/10/14-objections-against-aifriendly-aithe-singularity-answered/
on “Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and fearing the machine”Submitted Social media saps more than just short-term attention as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFunny he mentions Latent Dirichlet Allocation. If you want to see it applied to Harry Potter, you're out of luck. However, if you want to see it applied to Harry Potter fanfiction, Kaj Sotala wrote a post three days ago! http://kajsotala.fi/2015/05/harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-...
Comment linking /2015/05/harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-latent-dirichlet-allocation/
on “Finding topics in Harry Potter using K-Means clustering”Submitted Teaching Bayesian networks by means of social scheming as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted My current take on Internal Family Systems “parts” as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why I’m considering a career in educational games as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
