At the risk of being called obvious, I'm going to say, "Hacker News." I've never found a site that lets me tap into the brains of so many extremely smart people. This site has made me a much smarter person, dramatically improved my writing, and made me far better at what I do.
I don't think HN deserves this reputation. Most discussions are shallow, some people don't even bother reading the story. Meta discussions are frequently the most upvoted and stories that takes more than a couple of minutes to appreciate are often left to die.
Partly it's because of the format and the platform. Instead of seeking out the information yourself, you're feed bits of it before moving on to the next bit. It works great for news, commentary, as entertainment or a starting guide to startups. But less so for actually acquiring and/or exchanging information.
I'm not sure that HN has dramatically improved my writing so much as it has gotten me in the habit of only posting when I have something worthwhile to add to a conversation. I appreciate how many users seem to follow this rule of thumb on HN.
This is not a site full of smart people submitting and discussing smart things. This is a site where someone says 'stealing' and someone else patiently points out that piracy is not stealing because bla bla bla YAWN.
Hackers news is only intellectually stimulating if you are a developer, programmer or work in start up. It doesn't really have that much interesting discussions beyond that.
Completely agree with your comment. The only thing I am not quite sure of is if it really changed my writing style. Any suggestions how you approached this/how HN helped you on the way?
MetaFilter! http://metafilter.com/. Community blog with high standards ($5 registration fee helps this, I suspect) and lots of challenging, intelligent posts and commenters.
And its related site for questions, Ask MetaFilter: http://ask.metafilter.com/. From browsing it regularly I know [good, well-supported] answers to a thousand interesting and useful questions I'd never have even thought to ask.
Absolutely. Both the quality of submission (it's an aggregator like HN or Reddit) and of discussion are unparalleled in my experience of web communities. Three things possibly related to its success:
- Lack of an upvoting mechanism, which can lead to problems
- Incredibly fair and considered moderation
- MetaTalk, an area of the site where no rules apply, and where arguments/vendettas/in-jokes can carry on out of the way
A lot of the main sequences of material (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences) there were written by a Hacker News member, Eliezer Yudkowsky. But it's also a great living community (like here), with new stuff constantly being added.
So I've been there a couple of times, mostly via HN, and I had this odd experience of being unable to place the site somewhere in my internal onthology of web communities. Forum? Wiki? Blog? Scifi? Psychology? Religion? Agnostics? Atheists?
It's OK if you filter out the Neo-classical economics and free (unregulated) markets are good bias. I haven't read it much since 2008 though so it may have changed tack but I doubt it.
I've been reading Steve Keen's blog and he makes much more sense than other prominent economists. He was one of the few to predict the crash with a model which can actually generate crashes unlike many of the standard economic models. If anyone can point me to some well argued criticism of his theory I would be very interested. I'm not sure about all his proposed remedies to prevent bubbles though, jubilee shares at least feels wrong to me at some level.
It also has an agenda (basically, globalist, pro-EU etc) which is easy to miss if you are overly-impressed by the intellectual veneer. That said, my favourite Economist contribution to the world of letters is the Big Mac index, which is rather clever.
None. I love some websites like Hacker News, Quora, etc. for the knowledge content they give me, but none of them are nearly as intellectually stimulating as a book. There's something about focusing on a topic for hours at a time that leads me to understand it much better than if I spend the same amount of time in smaller chunks.
Seconding this, except I learned the hard way that (1) there is a world of difference between books, such that reading the best ones may end up being one the greatest things to ever happen to you, and reading some of the less good ones can arguably make you less smart than you were before you started reading, that (2) someone else's opinion is not always the best way to determine which book is good, and that (3) the selection one reads while in school is often biased to fulfill pedagogic purposes, so one has to do some independent searching.
Exploring, reading, writing, upvoting, and commenting on great question and answers from all sorts of subjects, has helped me learn a lot. The people there are great too, with many lending expert knowledge you wouldn't see elsewhere.
a bigger note, though, is that to be stimulated we need to go beyond our comfort zones, both in terms of intellectual or academic comfort ("i'll never understand this stuff") or opinions and viewpoints. finding such material is easier than ever, but avoiding it is just as easy. the trick to growing and learning is to grow your experiences meaningfully.
If you want a secret tip to exploring a new world, download Papers (http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/), put all the interesting publications you find in one Dropbox folder, and import them. The annotation and note features - as well as the back-up option - makes this a really enjoyable way to publications.
It really is something to read papers that define the way we think, and it's a nice alternative to short blog posts and (pop) articles versus (pop) books.
Slightly OT, but the "Nothing to Hide"/Privacy article is yet another example of "how not to write an abstract":
>In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.
In other words, "there's a common argument out there, and I'm gonna refute it". Does that help me decide whether to read the paper? No, because it gives no hint about specific part of the argument it's going to refute, or what "underpinning" it's going to claim is "faulty".
This kind of crap is extremely prevalent in abstracts, and in people's ability to summarize and justify recommendations.
Is that a typo on their page ? It says "Papers Livfe
Share your collection with colleagues and peers, discover new papers, collaborate." in the bottom right call out boxes.
This is slightly off-topic but I thought I'd ask HN's opinion on an intellectual website idea I have.
I want to call it "intellegacy", for "intellectual legacy"
I really enjoy reading insightful essays and comments on the internet, and thought it'd be cool to have a website with all kinds of intellectuals with their own pages on it where I could read their essays, see a list of their books, and have conversations with them.
I envision scientists, artists, politicians all interacting on the site. For example, Neil de Grasse Tyson could post his blogs or essays there, and fans of his could get a summary of all his work, books, and what he's currently working on or reading.
Besides the goal of intellectuals having their own space to publish their insights, I also want the public to be able to read and learn on a clearly organized website, by taking their time. Maybe this isn't good for pageviews, but on other websites the content refreshes so quickly that a lot of insights are lost in the shuffle.
The grand vision is to be a huge library of insights, clearly organized and that can be read by anyone who wishes to learn and follow the thought leaders in our world.
We could "best-of" the best debates and discussions and future generations could read everything.
> The central theme of You Are Not So Smart is that you are unaware of how unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old-but-growing body of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or think the way you do. Despite this, you continue to create narratives to explain your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and these narratives – no matter how inaccurate – become the story of your life.
You Are Not So Smart not only features great content, but it's also written in a very readable and understandable style. He also links to multiple high quality sources for every article. His pace has slowed down now that he's finished his book, but the backlog is well worth reading.
I expected http://www.3quarksdaily.com/ to be somewhere near the top of that list, but it’s nowhere to be found, which really surprised me. It’s one of the most consistently interesting sites on the Internet, if you ask me.
If you want a challenging economics blog, I'd vote for Marginal Revolution. Tyler Cowen writes on a wide range of interesting economic topics from a unique (libertarian oriented, but minimally ideological and empirically grounded) perspective.
[+] [-] hluska|13 years ago|reply
Thanks!
[+] [-] throwaway34539|13 years ago|reply
Partly it's because of the format and the platform. Instead of seeking out the information yourself, you're feed bits of it before moving on to the next bit. It works great for news, commentary, as entertainment or a starting guide to startups. But less so for actually acquiring and/or exchanging information.
[+] [-] mcphilip|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure that HN has dramatically improved my writing so much as it has gotten me in the habit of only posting when I have something worthwhile to add to a conversation. I appreciate how many users seem to follow this rule of thumb on HN.
[+] [-] nostromo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benologist|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thornofmight|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrslx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glhaynes|13 years ago|reply
And its related site for questions, Ask MetaFilter: http://ask.metafilter.com/. From browsing it regularly I know [good, well-supported] answers to a thousand interesting and useful questions I'd never have even thought to ask.
[+] [-] 1as|13 years ago|reply
- Lack of an upvoting mechanism, which can lead to problems
- Incredibly fair and considered moderation
- MetaTalk, an area of the site where no rules apply, and where arguments/vendettas/in-jokes can carry on out of the way
[+] [-] MikeCapone|13 years ago|reply
http://lesswrong.com/
A lot of the main sequences of material (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences) there were written by a Hacker News member, Eliezer Yudkowsky. But it's also a great living community (like here), with new stuff constantly being added.
[+] [-] morsch|13 years ago|reply
This provides some meta information, though I have no idea whether it's accurate: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong
[+] [-] impendia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephlord|13 years ago|reply
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/
I've been reading Steve Keen's blog and he makes much more sense than other prominent economists. He was one of the few to predict the crash with a model which can actually generate crashes unlike many of the standard economic models. If anyone can point me to some well argued criticism of his theory I would be very interested. I'm not sure about all his proposed remedies to prevent bubbles though, jubilee shares at least feels wrong to me at some level.
[+] [-] vixen99|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alpine|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SatvikBeri|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluekeybox|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puredanger|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluekeybox|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahmud|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nick_urban|13 years ago|reply
http://www.aldaily.com
[+] [-] pork|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exue|13 years ago|reply
Question: Engineering Management: Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?
Answer: http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software...
Exploring, reading, writing, upvoting, and commenting on great question and answers from all sorts of subjects, has helped me learn a lot. The people there are great too, with many lending expert knowledge you wouldn't see elsewhere.
[+] [-] _csoz|13 years ago|reply
Is it just me or is that list a bit too shallow?
[+] [-] MattSayar|13 years ago|reply
The list at the top of the page is perfunctory, the rest of the top-level comments are meant to add to it.
[+] [-] b_emery|13 years ago|reply
http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_1.html#lakoff http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_1.html#gardner http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_2.html#schank http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_2.html#carroll
These are links I keep going back to, and have been thinking about for weeks.
[+] [-] dfc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danboarder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VMG|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnazario|13 years ago|reply
http://delong.typepad.com/
and paul kedrosky's infectious greed:
http://paul.kedrosky.com/
i wish this blog was more updated, the book was very fun to read:
http://nudges.org/
a bigger note, though, is that to be stimulated we need to go beyond our comfort zones, both in terms of intellectual or academic comfort ("i'll never understand this stuff") or opinions and viewpoints. finding such material is easier than ever, but avoiding it is just as easy. the trick to growing and learning is to grow your experiences meaningfully.
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
It really is something to read papers that define the way we think, and it's a nice alternative to short blog posts and (pop) articles versus (pop) books.
Here are some papers to get you started:
\* 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=0998565
\* Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006
\* A technique for isolating differences between files: http://ejohn.org/projects/javascript-diff-algorithm/
\* A Future-Adaptable Password Scheme: http://static.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos.html
Maybe this is cheating, maybe it isn't, but I definitely recommend it.
---
If you want to get political, some left-of-centre-leaning writers you can't go wrong with:
1. Matt Taibbi on Wall Street, Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog)
2. Frank Rich in American politics, now at New York Magazine (https://twitter.com/frankrichny)
3. Glenn Greenwald on civil liberties and foreign policy, in moderation (http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/)
4. Juan Cole on the Middle East, in moderation (http://www.juancole.com/)
5. Lawyers, Guns, and Money (http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/)
6. The New Yorker's long-form articles. (I find their blog posts to be really poor, by any standards.) Also, ditch the Malcolm Gladwell articles.
[+] [-] SilasX|13 years ago|reply
>In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.
In other words, "there's a common argument out there, and I'm gonna refute it". Does that help me decide whether to read the paper? No, because it gives no hint about specific part of the argument it's going to refute, or what "underpinning" it's going to claim is "faulty".
This kind of crap is extremely prevalent in abstracts, and in people's ability to summarize and justify recommendations.
[+] [-] sayemm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intended|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will_work4tears|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thornofmight|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] F_J_H|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cremnob|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeremyt|13 years ago|reply
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/12/gold-an...
[+] [-] kristofferR|13 years ago|reply
It's definitely worth checking out, it's one of my favorite web sites.
[+] [-] intellegacy|13 years ago|reply
I want to call it "intellegacy", for "intellectual legacy"
I really enjoy reading insightful essays and comments on the internet, and thought it'd be cool to have a website with all kinds of intellectuals with their own pages on it where I could read their essays, see a list of their books, and have conversations with them.
I envision scientists, artists, politicians all interacting on the site. For example, Neil de Grasse Tyson could post his blogs or essays there, and fans of his could get a summary of all his work, books, and what he's currently working on or reading.
Besides the goal of intellectuals having their own space to publish their insights, I also want the public to be able to read and learn on a clearly organized website, by taking their time. Maybe this isn't good for pageviews, but on other websites the content refreshes so quickly that a lot of insights are lost in the shuffle.
The grand vision is to be a huge library of insights, clearly organized and that can be read by anyone who wishes to learn and follow the thought leaders in our world.
We could "best-of" the best debates and discussions and future generations could read everything.
[+] [-] harrylove|13 years ago|reply
Edward Tufte Forum http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1
[+] [-] codesuela|13 years ago|reply
> The central theme of You Are Not So Smart is that you are unaware of how unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old-but-growing body of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or think the way you do. Despite this, you continue to create narratives to explain your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and these narratives – no matter how inaccurate – become the story of your life.
[+] [-] jokermatt999|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aw3c2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgrytoyr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msluyter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ovi256|13 years ago|reply