Top all-time · #5358
Samo Burja
Personal blog · samoburja.comhistorypoliticsphilosophy
Samo Burja's personal blog at samoburja.com covers history, politics and philosophy. Since 2020, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “Live versus Dead Players”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Samo Burja's essays on institutions, incentives, the centralised internet, tech companies and his Great Founder Theory. Comments on his posts are mixed, with some reading the arguments as speculative.
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.
I research how civilizations function. There has never been an immortal society. Our society is unlikely to be an exception. To secure a positive common future that defies these odds, we must understand the hidden forces that shape society.I write and speak on history, institutions, and strategy wit
Most-linked posts?
- Live versus Dead Players2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-03
- Great Founder Theory2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-02-24
- Great Founder Theory [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-07-20
What Hacker News says?
Interesting links in the article and comments, but it seems like two different concepts are mixed here – the nature of bureaucracies and wrong incentives. I struggle to understand how cobra and rat cases are "institutions trying to preserve the problem". Cobra effect, in particular, is an immensely interesting topic of how rewarding the metrics can distort the system, otherwise known as Goodhart's effect. I highly r…
Comment linking /gft/
on “Institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”Submitted The YouTube revolution in knowledge transfer (2019) as a story · 143 points
HN discussionI found this to be a novel perspective on your question: https://samoburja.com/the-centralized-internet-is-inevitable...
Comment linking /the-centralized-internet-is-inevitable/
on “Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse”Submitted Knowledge Production and Intellectual Legitimacy as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these people are actually doing any work that directly impacts the platform. At least half the employees are probably not doing anything really useful. This applies even to tech companies with a mere 100 total employees. At 3000 employees it's probably even more so…
Comment linking /how-elon-musk-is-making-engineers-cool-again/
on ““Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized””Submitted Live versus Dead Players as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> Are we really expecting Apple as a company within the global capitalist system to just isolate itself from the network and do everything themselves without relying on anyone anywhere? That's not really what it's about. I would say an antifragile system is one that adapt to changes (even unexpected one). A good example are businesses that were able to adapt to covid and earn more revenue by doing things like provid…
Comment linking /live-versus-dead-players/
on “Apple is now an antifragile company”Submitted Great Founder Theory as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhat I want to know is who is this person and why would their opinion matter? So I did a cursory search and they appear to to be a sociologist/political scientist and have a website: https://samoburja.com/ They seem to have knowledge but predictions are just that: a guess that is a gamble really.
Comment linking /
on “China will eventually open its borders to mass immigration”Submitted Great Founder Theory [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAnnouncement page, actual document is linked at the end of the advert. (2020, pdf). Not sure why the author prefix is in the title here. https://samoburja.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Great_Found... A non-pdf introduction to it here: https://medium.com/@samo.burja/great-founder-theory-93751e25...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Great_Founder_Theory_by_Samo_Burja_2020_Manuscript.pdf
on “Great Founder Theory (2020)”Submitted Most institutions are broken (2018) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Borrowed versus Owned Power as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Intellectual Legitimacy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Civilizations Collapse as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Find the Frontier of Knowledge as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The risk of an American civil war is remote (2018) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Elon Musk Is Making Engineers Cool Again (2018) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Live versus Dead Players (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Functional Institutions Are the Exception as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
