Top all-time · #88
Nicky Case
Personal blog · ncase.mesciencedesigngames
Nicky Case writes Nicky's New Shtuff, a personal blog at ncase.me about science, design and games. Since 2014, 386 different Hacker News readers have linked it 531 times, most often “Game theory illustrated by an animated cartoon game”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 12 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Nicky Case's interactive explorable explanations of game theory, voting systems, trust and social networks. Commenters call them fun and awesome and tell others to read them.
- Recommended for · 12 comments
- Called 'fun', 'awesome', 'a pretty good illustration' and 'adequately explained'; one commenter says they enjoyed 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.
i make shtuff for curious & playful peeps
Most-linked posts?
- Game theory illustrated by an animated cartoon game96 people · 113 mentions · first linked 2018-08-01
- Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society43 people · 53 mentions · first linked 2014-12-08
- To Build a Better Ballot (2016)33 people · 48 mentions · first linked 2018-10-06
- How To Remember Anything Forever-ish (2018)31 people · 38 mentions · first linked 2018-10-29
- Parable of the Polygons (2014)19 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2018-07-26
- The Evolution of Trust16 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2017-07-25
- /16 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2018-07-30
- The Wisdom And/or Madness of Crowds16 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2018-06-27
- To Build a Better Ballot – An interactive guide to alternative voting systems13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2016-12-11
- Privacy preserving contact tracing: the comic11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-04-09
What Hacker News says?
I assume you're referring to the graph that appears (among other places) on this page[1] about 3/5ths of the way down? You're right that score voting does better in that simulation when everyone votes honestly. But if everyone votes strategically, then score voting and approval voting are the same. (This makes sense because tactical score voting is mostly just score voting with maximalized votes, which is basically…
Comment linking /ballot/
on “Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.”Submitted Fireflies as a story · 1243 points
HN discussionmore fun at https://ncase.me/
Comment linking /
on “Stimulation Clicker”Submitted Loopy: a tool for thinking in systems as a story · 508 points
HN discussionSimilar ones: - https://www.redblobgames.com/ - https://ncase.me/
Comment linking /
on “GPS”Submitted Game theory illustrated by an animated cartoon game as a story · 449 points
HN discussionCould something like this be used for synchronization in such a scenario? https://ncase.me/fireflies/
Comment linking /fireflies/
on “Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?”Submitted The Evolution of Trust as a story · 440 points
HN discussionThere's two parts to it. First, there's the reasonable position that the government is inefficient or has too much bureaucracy or regulation. If that's the case, how do you improve that? Chesterton's Fence says that all those regulations are in place for a reason, but it's reasonably to believe that some of those reasons may not be relevant anymore, or could be better written to allow for more efficiency. However, s…
Comment linking /ballot/
on “The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE”Submitted Interactive introduction to game theory and trust as a story · 405 points
HN discussionThe background noise is so soothing. http://ncase.me/fireflies/sounds/forest.mp3
Comment linking /fireflies/sounds/forest.mp3
on “Fireflies”Submitted Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society as a story · 357 points
HN discussion(Warning: halfway through writing the thing below it accidentally morphed into a "big picture" rant, sorry about that) This is probably one of the best examples of how the internet can amplify human kindness that I have ever seen. Reading your message fills me with joy, and I think that goes for most of us. The same is true for your linked post. While it was sad to read you felt like that at the time, but I'm happy…
Comment linking /trust/
on “Ask HN: What has HN given you?”Submitted Loopy: a tool for thinking in systems as a story · 293 points
HN discussionSad reality, adequately explained by game theory: https://ncase.me/trust/
Comment linking /trust/
on “Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life”Submitted What Happens Next? Covid-19 Futures, Explained with Playable Simulations as a story · 286 points
HN discussionI agree with your point, too, although I'm skeptical we can do much more than, maybe, polish the brass while the ship founders. Still, shiny brass (slightly nicer surroundings) is better than not. I do think we need radical reforms if we want the ship to not sink, though, so I don't feel that encouraging people to vote, without urgently arguing that voting reform is necessary, is deeply meaningful. On another curren…
Comment linking /ballot/
on “US Senate votes to undo FCC internet privacy rules”Submitted Loopy: a tool for thinking in systems (2017) as a story · 250 points
HN discussionIf you liked this article, here's another one about the spread of information in social networks: https://ncase.me/crowds
Comment linking /crowds
on “Going Critical”Submitted Back to the Future with RSS as a story · 244 points
HN discussionReminds me of the Nicki Case tool: https://ncase.me/matrix/
Comment linking /matrix/
on “Interactive Linear Algebra”Submitted Joy.js – make happy little programs (2017) as a story · 209 points
HN discussionFor those who aren't doing the math, there are now about 340M Americans, so 500K immigrants per year would be about 0.128% or roughly 1/780 of the population arriving as immigrants per year. If you figure the average immigrant stays for about 5 years (there's likely a long tail, where many people on temporary H1Bs go back to their home countries in 3-5 years while green card holders stay forever), you'd expect < 1%…
Comment linking /polygons/
on “Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program”Submitted Interactive demos on network theory, game theory, trust etc as a story · 209 points
HN discussionThis explorable for spaced repetition learning is awesome: https://ncase.me/remember/ I can already see explorables is one of the very rare content sites that I will bookmark and go back to.
Comment linking /remember/
on “Explorabl.es”Submitted Fireflies (2017) as a story · 196 points
HN discussionHah, was planning on linking to Nicky Case[0], but of course that's exactly who's behind this! :D Very exciting project. We're absolutely leaving "leaving money on the table" by not leveraging the full power of the brain for education and reasoning about complex systems. See also: Bret Victor's "Ladder of Abstraction" [1], and Kevin Simler's "Going Critical" [2]. [0] https://ncase.me/ [1] http://worrydream.com/Ladde…
Comment linking /
on “Explorabl.es”Submitted Anxiety: An Interactive Story as a story · 179 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of Nicky Case's Explorable Explanation of a 2D transformation matrix: http://ncase.me/matrix/
Comment linking /matrix/
on “Matrix Multiplication”Submitted A Simulation in Emoji as a story · 145 points
HN discussion
