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Scott London
Personal blog · scott.londonwritingphilosophy
Scott London's personal blog at scott.london covers writing and philosophy. Since 2021, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times, most often “Touching the Essence of Things: A Conversation with Stephen Mitchell”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog's reviews, including a review of Neil Postman's Technopoly, cited in a thread on decentralised content moderation. A Tao Te Ching thread discusses translations by Stephen Mitchell and Robert Henricks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Touching the Essence of Things: A Conversation with Stephen Mitchell2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-28
What Hacker News says?
And Neil Postman's book, Technopoly Book Review: Technopoly https://scott.london/reviews/postman.html Interview with Neil Postman - Technopoly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbAPtGYiRvg
Comment linking /reviews/postman.html
on “Decentralised content moderation”Submitted Touching the Essence of Things: A Conversation with Stephen Mitchell as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSo I have Mitchell's version and like it as well. But he notably did not call his piece a new translation, only a new version. He doesn't speak or read any Chinese himself[1]. For example Mitchell begins #3: > If you overesteem great men, > people become powerless. > If you overvalue possessions, > people begin to steal. While American sinologist Robert Henricks[2] translated it this way: > By not elevating the wort…
Comment linking /interviews/mitchell.html
on “Tao Te Ching”