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sam[ ]zdat
Personal blog · samzdat.comphilosophypolitics
sam[ ]zdat is a personal blog at samzdat.com about philosophy and politics. Since 2017, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 38 times, most often “Man as a Rationalist Animal (2017)”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link sam[ ]zdat for long essays on society and state knowledge, especially reviews of James Scott's Seeing Like a State, and for pieces on rationalism, belief, and illegibility.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
antecedents have consequences
Most-linked posts?
- Man as a Rationalist Animal (2017)7 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2017-06-20
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-07
- The Meridian of Her Greatness (2017)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-12
- The Guardian's Inferno2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-11-08
- Science Cannot Count to Red. That’s Probably Fine2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-22
- The Use and Abuse of Witchdoctors for Life – Sam[ ]Zdat2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-30
- /2017/06/28/without-belief-in-a-god-but-never-without-belief-in-a-devil/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-01-20
What Hacker News says?
When I finally took the time to learn how the proof of The Halting Problem worked, I was fascinated by just how "edge-case" it actually is: it's less a general principle, than a proof that a black-hat exploit can always exist that will break any given halting-prediction algorithm. With the caveat that I'm a Chomskyan free-speech absolutist, and I generally agree with you: it's not hard to apply the same Halting Prob…
Comment linking /2017/06/28/without-belief-in-a-god-but-never-without-belief-in-a-devil/
on “Still alive”Submitted Man as a Rationalist Animal (2017) as a story · 50 points
HN discussionhttps://samzdat.com/2017/06/28/without-belief-in-a-god-but-n... samzdat makes similar points in this article -- esoteric but insightful
Comment linking /2017/06/28/without-belief-in-a-god-but-never-without-belief-in-a-devil/
on “The Internet of Beefs”Submitted Man as a Rationalist Animal (2017) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> An analogy from a couple years ago is bridge building before physics. You accumulate rules of thumb, you get a vague understand what works. You get better. But you aren't producing a systematic field. This would be more like Kuhn's pre-paradigmatic (pre-scientific) activity, than moving from one scientific paradigm to another ? https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/ (I don't know which one is…
Comment linking /2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/
on “Machine Learning: The Great Stagnation”Submitted The apparent takeaway of this fiasco:“you aren’t good unless you’re into STEM” as a story · 2 points
HN discussionRichard Feynman — 'Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.' Well, this blogpost shows where this analogy breaks down : birds (AFAWK) don't try to discuss ornithology. "bureaucrats running the asylum" is normal science ! Thomas Kuhn has shown how it works in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions : https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/ The problem is…
Comment linking /2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/
on “Machine Learning: The Great Stagnation”Submitted The Meridian of Her Greatness (2017) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSamzdat has an absolutely excellent article on the distinctions between state-level (often technocratic) knowledge and on-the-ground knowledge, and the difficulties of communicating between the two and acting on them. It's part of a discussion of the book Seeing Like A State. I think you'd find it stimulating. https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
Comment linking /2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
on “Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)”Submitted Science Cannot Count to Red. That’s Probably Fine as a story · 1 points
HN discussionUnrelated: Is there any connection between the author and the other sam[]zdat who writes about society and other intriguing topics? https://samzdat.com/
Comment linking /
on “Help Message for Shell Scripts”Submitted Democracy Scales Are Still Bad, and Four Panicked Suggestions (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWell, all sciences have this issue : see Kuhn, Feyerabend... https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/ It would be kind of ironic if psychologists were more susceptible to the "Pop-Baconian" simplification of science ? And damning if what I've heard about psychology going through multiple paradigms during the 20th century alone is true. But then, indeed, also understandable, due to the "softness"…
Comment linking /2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/
on “The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Autocorrelation”Submitted On Social States as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://samzdat.com/2018/05/31/science-cannot-count-to-red-t...
Comment linking /2018/05/31/science-cannot-count-to-red-thats-probably-fine/
on “Why the weak nuclear force is short range”Submitted The Use and Abuse of Witchdoctors for Life – Sam[ ]Zdat as a story · 1 points
HN discussionctrl+F "church" in this essay https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/ there is no exact alternative, because the church-ness is an essential element
Comment linking /2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
on “Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30? (2012)”Submitted The Guardian's Inferno as a story · 1 points
HN discussionQuite a lot of people try(ied) to buy it with blood and still fail(ed) : https://samzdat.com/2017/06/01/the-meridian-of-her-greatness... (Note how depending how one (mis)reads what you wrote, this is human nature, and there no escaping it, and you would likely be miserable if you tried.)
Comment linking /2017/06/01/the-meridian-of-her-greatness/
on “Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected”Submitted The Thresher as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI’m generally sceptical of attempts to quantify concepts like ‘internet freedom’.⁰ However, the conclusion is probably right, insofar as it’s meaningful to refer to internet freedom ‘around the world’, even going on a qualitative approach. The long-term trend is the spread of China-style internet controls at the very least in non-democracies.¹ There is not much stopping this process except bureaucratic inertia. It i…
Comment linking /2018/03/26/enter-a-search-term-e-g-democracy/
on “Internet Freedom Around the World Declines for 11th Consecutive Year”Submitted Man as a Rationalist Animal (2017) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionEpisteme vs metis ? https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/ (The free market does sound closer to metis ... but is also EXTREMELY focused on the short term, see : negative externalities. )
Comment linking /2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
on “Peru's ancient irrigation systems turned deserts into farms because of culture”Oh, and as far as misalignment of government and citizens' desires in democracies... You may want to read "Seeing Like a State" by James Scott, or https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/ for an illustrative review if you don't want to read the whole book. Some of the examples in the book are from totalitarian regimes, but Brazil is a democracy and still ended up with some of the same failure mode…
Comment linking /2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
on “Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start”That "local knowledge" tidbit reminded me : Looks like India is currently undergoing a similar transformation that Paris went through in the 19th century : when Statism becomes a social fact : https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/ (There are some arguments that Statism is actually a positive development, however it at least also has very nasty failure modes like Police State, and/or the situati…
Comment linking /2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
on “Let Google decide”I don't look at Medium blogs that often. Some great blogs not hosted by Medium: - http://samzdat.com - http://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com
Comment linking /
on “A critique of Gmail's “smart replies””Like "Magic(k) is the Art (and Science) of causing changes to occur in conformity with will" ? Also reminds me of : "The Use and Abuse of Witchdoctors for Life" https://samzdat.com/2017/06/19/the-use-and-abuse-of-witchdoc...
Comment linking /2017/06/19/the-use-and-abuse-of-witchdoctors-for-life/
on “When science was the best show in America”See also, also, this interesting but sometimes long-winded essay / review / examination of Seeing Like a State, and similar literature[0]. It's part of a series that goes through subjects like rationalism, narcissism, and tribal knowledge. Fair warning, it's almost the length of a novel! https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
Comment linking /2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
on “The Irresistible Urge to Build Cities from Scratch”Well, the Atlantic is not really free now, but I feel that this criticism still applies : https://samzdat.com/2017/10/13/the-guardians-inferno/ (This is not just about social media.)
Comment linking /2017/10/13/the-guardians-inferno/
on “Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine”A bit like for Marxism, so many schools tried to claim that name, with a messy history, it's hard to even know what you mean by that : https://samzdat.com/2018/01/26/platonism-without-plato/
Comment linking /2018/01/26/platonism-without-plato/
on “The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe”
