Top all-time · #1066
talyarkoni.org
Personal blog · talyarkoni.orgscience
talyarkoni.org is a personal blog at talyarkoni.org about science. Since 2010, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 102 times, most often “What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)13 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2010-07-07
- What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)9 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2018-01-11
- No, it’s not The Incentives–it’s you (2018)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-06-11
- The homogenization of scientific computing (2013)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-11-18
- No, it’s not the Incentives–it’s you4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-10-02
- It's Not the Incentives (2018)4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2025-04-26
- Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-12-12
- R, the master troll of statistical languages (2012)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-03-27
- Editors for the New York Times don't understand brain imaging2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-10-02
- An Academic Psychologist's Defense of Facebook2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-06-29
What Hacker News says?
Fun fact: Dunning & Kruger measured perceived vs actual performance on very simple, and somewhat subjective tasks. Ability to recognize humor was one of them. It's strangely difficult to find this important piece of the methodology. Wikipedia's article doesn't even mention it, and this context is fairly critical to understanding the effect. I think you're right that some amount of inexperience and youth makes the ki…
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/
on “Be Kind”Submitted Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier as a story · 525 points
HN discussion> Humanity would be better off of a single ISA does become truly universal. This is an interesting thought. I think I would agree with this in the CPU world of the last 20-30 years, but it makes me wonder a few things. Might a universal ISA eliminate major pieces of competitive advantage for chip makers, and/or stall innovation? It does feel like non-vector instructions are somewhat settled, but vector instructions…
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/
on “Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B”Submitted R, the master troll of statistical languages (2012) as a story · 184 points
HN discussionI'm sorry, but this cop-out really pisses me off. It is far too common and frankly, unacceptable. It really is insulting that you'd expect others to accept this as a justification. It's a lazy dismissal and not even a proper excuse. You're excuse for doing something shitty is... that someone else will? What does another person even have to do with it?! Seriously, let them have the blood on their hands. You can't eve…
Comment linking /blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/
on “Someone at YouTube needs glasses”Submitted What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010) as a story · 176 points
HN discussionRelevant blog post - It's not the incentives it's you. https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-in...
Comment linking /blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/
on “Software effort estimation is mostly fake research”Submitted What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010) as a story · 99 points
HN discussionThis post has a lot of details about it: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2016/12/12/why-i-still-wont-r...
Comment linking /blog/2016/12/12/why-i-still-wont-review-for-or-publish-with-elsevier-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/
on “German research institutions boycott Elsevier”Submitted What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010) as a story · 81 points
HN discussionI'm not sure people are trying to fix academic publishing so much as burn Elsevier to the ground. Whether or how they are replaced is a separate question. https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2016/12/12/why-i-still-wont-...
Comment linking /blog/2016/12/12/why-i-still-wont-review-for-or-publish-with-elsevier-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/
on “Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research”Submitted The homogenization of scientific computing (2013) as a story · 71 points
HN discussionFor the other side "No, it’s not The Incentives—it’s you" https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-in...
Comment linking /blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/
on “The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed”Submitted R, the master troll of statistical languages (2012) as a story · 66 points
HN discussion> I guess the “wrong side” is the side anywhere under the 70th percentile in the skill in question? This is being far too generous to parent’s claim, IMO. Note how much “people of all competency levels see themselves slightly closer to the 70th percentile than they actually are” sounds like regression to the mean. And it has been compellingly argued that that’s all DK actually measured. [1] DK’s primary metric for s…
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/
on “GPT-4”Submitted What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn't as a story · 62 points
HN discussionLaw-abiding is by no means synonymous with good, or even neutral in a moral sense. Obligatory reposting of old HN content (especially under the section "Is Elsevier really so evil?"): "Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier–and think you shouldn’t either" http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2016/12/12/why-i-still-wont-r... I'm also discovering that law-abiding is as much a reputation as a technicality. Com…
Comment linking /blog/2016/12/12/why-i-still-wont-review-for-or-publish-with-elsevier-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/
on “Science’s Pirate Queen”Submitted It's Not the Incentives (2018) as a story · 48 points
HN discussionR is awful. It's full of decisions made by people who seem to not have much programming experience, in that they seem good at the time but cause major issues later on. See, for instance, http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2012/06/08/r-the-master-troll... , http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2008/12/use-equals-or-ar... , http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2012/02/29/parsin... , and the necessity of http://tim-sm…
Comment linking /blog/2012/06/08/r-the-master-troll-of-statistical-languages/
on “The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy”Submitted Python: The homogenization of scientific computing as a story · 39 points
HN discussionOne of the best commentaries on DK is Tal Yarkoni’s, and he came to the (perhaps similar?) conclusion that DK is probably regression to the mean. https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-... It bugs me that DK reached popular consciousness and get misinterpreted and misused more often than not. For one, the paper shows a positive correlation between confidence and skill. The paper is very clearly…
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/
on “I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation””Submitted The homogenization of scientific computing (2013) as a story · 32 points
HN discussionAlso, it's extremely hard to account for all kinds of biases and systematic errors in a meta-analysis. I'd take most meta-analyses, even by renowned statiticians, very, very skeptically. Teasing out small effects from samples that need corrections for lots of confounding factors, and then trying do combine many such results is next to impossible. If your effect is small enough that you need a meta-analysis in the fi…
Comment linking /blog/2016/06/11/the-great-minds-journal-club-discusses-westfall-yarkoni-2016/
on “Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients”Submitted The Dunning-Kruger Effect: What It Is & What It Isn't as a story · 18 points
HN discussion> I can't blame researchers for tailoring their research to help their own careers but this should help prevent that. It regularly astonishes me how easily people are willing to accept scientific malpractice with such excuses. While I agree that mechanisms like registered reports are the way to fix these things at the core, I do think that these mentalities ("it's just the system, I can't do anything but cheat with…
Comment linking /blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/
on “First analysis of ‘pre-registered’ studies shows sharp rise in null findings”Submitted Confounding Is a Serious Problem Thats Mostly Ignored as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThere's a great recent blog post on the basic point you're making: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...
Comment linking /blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/
on “First analysis of ‘pre-registered’ studies shows sharp rise in null findings”Submitted It's not The Incentives–it's you as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt may happen anyway but you can say the exact same thing for AI development. In neither case does it seem like a good excuse for bad behavior. https://talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incent...
Comment linking /blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/
on “Publish fake stats, get cited in LLMs”Submitted No, it’s not The Incentives–it’s you (2018) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
