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Richard Carrier
Personal blog · richardcarrier.infohistoryphilosophypolitics
Richard Carrier's personal blog at richardcarrier.info covers history, philosophy and politics. Since 2015, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
27mentions?
20HN people?
2015–2026first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (20) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Richard Carrier's blog for his arguments on the historicity of Jesus, Josephus, scholarly consensus, philosophy and probability, and ancient history such as Herculaneum papyri.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 20 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Richard Carrier, Ph.D. Historian and philosopher. Author of Sense and Goodness without God and On the Historicity of Jesus.
Most-linked posts?
- /archives/93452 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-07-11
What Hacker News says?
It is certainly a minority position, but some historians and scholars of religion do see reason for doubt: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/21420
Comment linking /archives/21420
on “Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar”Submitted AI Is Garbage and a Bubble as a story · 20 points
HN discussionThought experiments (including "reductio ad absurdum" method) aren't the best to explain the phenomenons of physical world: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/17279 Philosophers shoud better stay away from physics. Not saying here, that the thought experiments can't provide valuable insights. It's just they can't be used to define the truth about the reality.
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on “Daniel Dennett has died”Submitted Doing the Math: Historicity of Jesus Edition as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt doesn't change "drastically," only by a point or so. Knowing the way studies like this typically work, it could also be that if you are smart with your money (e.g. frugal and not chronically short on cash), you're just as happy as making someone more. I'm sure many of the 6's were in the "I'm doing okay, but man my life would be better if I weren't so broke right now" camp. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archive…
Comment linking /archives/13954
on “A man who destroyed his multimillion dollar company in 10 seconds (2018)”Submitted Bayesian Calculator as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI recommend Dennett's review of Harris's book to people who recommend it: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13814 Also Elbow Room , or, better, Freedom Evolves .
Comment linking /archives/13814
on “What If Consciousness Comes First?”Carrier addresses Josephus, both in the On the Historicity of Jesus [0], and in his blog posts [1]. His points, as I understand them, are that: 1) The first Josephus passage — the so called Testimonium Flavianum — is an insertion by Christian scribes. He gives stylistic arguments for why this is the case: both by how dissimilar this passage is from Josephus's style, and by how similar it is to the Gospel of Luke; an…
Comment linking /archives/12071
on “Is the Q source the origin of the Gospels?”Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt" is great. He wrote about Q (he isn't a fan) in his blog, which seems to be struggling at the moment. https://www.richardcarrier.info
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on “Is the Q source the origin of the Gospels?”A 20 year old roman could expect to live to ~50: http://www.richardcarrier.info/lifetbl.html In the US in 1900, a 20 year old could expect to live to ~62: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html Today, a 20 year old can expect to make it to about 80. So the gains aren't really limited to infant and child mortality. A substantial portion of the gain has certainly come from improvements there though.
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on “How cancer was created by evolution”This sounds horrible, as if philosophy is now some kind of fringe pseudo thing. Quite the contrary, Richard Carrier for one is arguing[1] that what we are doing is (natural) philosophy and we should call it that (again) (and in fact some university departments have been renamed to contain the word 'philosophy' again). As for the other poster's remark on Thomism, Carrier writes[2]: "Thomism [...] the Medieval Dumbity…
Comment linking /archives/18356
on “When scientific orthodoxy resembles religious dogma”> Here's a list of 9 counterfactual claims from just one video: https://www.reddit.com/r/thunderf00t/comments/lrhznb/i_fact_ ... I don't think counterfactual means what you think it means. Anyways, I didn't ask for minutia of objections people have against him. Just for one thing he called bs that eventually turned out to be as good as how it was advertised. > Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "…
Comment linking /archives/9345
on “Johns Hopkins medical school will be free for most after $1B donation”> Care to share specifics? What was he ultimately wrong on? Here's a list of 9 counterfactual claims from just one video: https://www.reddit.com/r/thunderf00t/comments/lrhznb/i_fact_... Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "The Never Sinking Ship: How Thunderf00t Sucks at Science (or Else He’s a Liar; Probably He’s Just a Liar)": https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9345 Appears he's also a cre…
Comment linking /archives/9345
on “Johns Hopkins medical school will be free for most after $1B donation”To be honest, I'm stealing from here: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11868 (The cost of making excuses) Which if I understand; would go like this on explaining UFOs: Naive Approach: P(ALIENS) = 50% p(~ALIENS) = 50% Time elapses and I find some new evidence that looks like this: P(Evidence | ALIENS) = 30% P(Evidence | ~ALIENS) = 90% Which gives my hypothesis (Its Aliens) a posterior probability of 25% => (5…
Comment linking /archives/11868
on “I’m a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. U.F.O.s Don’t Impress Me”> Nowhere does it say Jesus was Mary and Joseph's only child This is a very weak argument. Of course, almost anything you imagine could be possible. > These are all minority views in scholarship You should read this article on evaluating argument from consensus: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/5553 It does a great job explaining in what situations consensus should be challenged. The evidence for and against…
Comment linking /archives/5553
on “What did Jesus really look like? (2015)”The case is not as clear cut as you suggest. This article explains well why the current consensus should be questioned: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/5553
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on “What did Jesus really look like? (2015)”This article explains why quite well: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7924
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on “What did Jesus really look like? (2015)”> There is plenty of evidence Such as? > but that's not the only kind of evidence of a historical figure, and lots of historical figures are accepted as such without that form of evidence This argument has been debunked pretty well: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7924 > It is really strange and anti-academic to adopt a higher standard of proof for the existence of Jesus than other ancient figures. See abov…
Comment linking /archives/7924
on “What did Jesus really look like? (2015)”This article does a great job of explaining why you should question that consensus. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/5553
Comment linking /archives/5553
on “What did Jesus really look like? (2015)”> Except there isn't a lack of evidence unless you require more evidence for Jesus than every other historical figure. Are you going to say there's now no evidence for Alexander the Great? What about Socrates? What about Pythagoras? That's the exact point so many people have tried to make -- there's just as much evidence, if not more, for Jesus than for these other people. It's the exact point so many (apologists) m…
Comment linking /archives/7924
on “What did Jesus really look like? (2015)”> Second, we have a couple of references to a single person (Josephus, Tacitus). These references have been largely debunked. 1. Josephus: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7437 "The evidence that the Testimonium Flavianum (or TF) is entirely a late Christian forgery is now as overwhelming as such evidence could ever get." 2. Tacitus: https://www.quora.com/Was-Tacitus-a-Christian "With ultra-violet examinatio…
Comment linking /archives/7437
on “What did Jesus really look like? (2015)”True, but the sheer amount that was produced means that some, through fortunate circumstances, have been preserved to the present day: https://www.richardcarrier.info/papyrus/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/44968442
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on “Roman dodecahedron: 12-sided object has baffled archaeologists for centuries”Well, I'm basing that particular claim on the published opinion of a professional academic historian of science. If you or anyone else interested has a lot of free time, you may want to skim these pages by Dr. Richard Carrier: http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2006/11/science-and-medie... http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/search/label/history%20of... https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14660 Unfortunately, es…
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on “The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad”This Tim O'Neil? https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14324
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on “The Strange Afterlife of Pontius Pilate (2016)”That logic appears to be flawed though and involves a fair amount of hand-waving. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13752 > Feser’s formalization of this argument appears around page 35. It has 49 premises. I shit you not. Most of them are uncontroversial on some interpretation of the words he employs (that doesn’t mean they are credible on his chosen interpretation of those words, but I’ll charitably ignore…
Comment linking /archives/13752
on “Young people are flocking to astrology”https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14879 Richard Carrier takes an extremely similar position in total (ie: both in position towards "is ought" and biological grounding). It engages with Hume by providing a way to side step the problem.
Comment linking /archives/14879
on “Claude's New Constitution”Very fascinating! For anyone interested, the article on the of books that might be uncovered at Herculaneum, is a great read as well! https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/23380
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on “Reading Ancient Scrolls”
