Top all-time · #11402
Paul Crowley
Personal blog · mindsarentmagic.orgmathprogramming
Paul Crowley writes Minds aren't magic, a personal blog at mindsarentmagic.org about math and programming. Since 2016, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “A Picture of Graham's Number”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Paul Crowley's blog for its posts on pictures of Graham's number, lambda calculus notation and diagrams, and sarcasm. One commenter called a Graham's number post great.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Paul Crowley
Most-linked posts?
- A Picture of Graham's Number3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-10-01
What Hacker News says?
Some people downvote sarcasm for reasons like https://mindsarentmagic.org/2014/09/13/never-be-sarcastic/
Comment linking /2014/09/13/never-be-sarcastic/
on “UK votes to leave EU”Submitted Lambda calculus, Church numerals, and Graham's number as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's not hard to type in lambda calculus [1]: (λ (λ 2 1 (λ 1 (λ λ 1 2 (λ 1)) (λ λ 5 (2 1)) 3) 1) (λ λ 2 (3 2 1))) (λ λ 2 (2 (2 1))) [1] https://mindsarentmagic.org/2012/11/22/lambda-graham
Comment linking /2012/11/22/lambda-graham
on “An ancient geometry problem falls to new mathematical techniques”Submitted Lambda calculus, Church numerals, and Graham's number as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGreat post and image here of Graham's number: https://mindsarentmagic.org/2020/02/19/a-picture-of-grahams-...
Comment linking /2020/02/19/a-picture-of-grahams-number/
on “Lambda Calculus Diagrams (2015)”Submitted A Picture of Graham's Number as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> someone was sharing a photograph of a forearm with a tattoo of the Y combinator. Benjamin Pierce looked at it for a moment, thought, and said, “That’s not the font I would have chosen”. They might have preferred this "font" https://mindsarentmagic.org/2020/02/19/a-picture-of-grahams-...
Comment linking /2020/02/19/a-picture-of-grahams-number/
on “Programming language notation is a barrier to entry”Submitted $1000 TCR hashing competition as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAuthor here. Thanks for the appreciation! Since this piece was written, I have discovered another notation by John Tromp which I consider to be the most breathtakingly beautiful: - https://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html Here used by Paul Crowley to describe Graham's number: - https://mindsarentmagic.org/2020/02/19/a-picture-of-grahams-... - https://mindsarentmagic.org/2020/02/24/some-more-numbers-as-...
Comment linking /2020/02/24/some-more-numbers-as-lambda-calculus/
on “A circuit-like notation for lambda calculus (2015)”Diagrams. https://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html And a picture of Graham’s number. https://mindsarentmagic.org/2020/02/19/a-picture-of-grahams-...
Comment linking /2020/02/19/a-picture-of-grahams-number/
on “Binary Lambda Calculus (2012)”
