gwern.net on Hacker News

Learning to Be Me (1990) [pdf](gwern.net)

18 points by zahrevsky 1 day ago | 3 comments

PDF of Greg Egan's science fiction short story "Learning to Be Me," about a brain-implanted jewel that learns to imitate its host's mind.

Samon: Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle(gwern.net)

51 points by networked 20 days ago | 23 comments

A design document by Gwern for Samon, a one-stroke Zen garden sand-raking puzzle game, covering rules, solver experiments, level generation, and a playable prototype.

The Legend of von Neumann (1973) [pdf](gwern.net)

292 points by suopspaces 24 days ago | 163 comments

A 1973 essay by mathematician Paul Halmos recounting the life, achievements, and legends of John von Neumann, presented as a scanned PDF.

PDF Forgeries Are Surprisingly Rare (2022)(gwern.net)

47 points by 1317 1 month ago | 38 comments

On Really Trying (2009)(gwern.net)

83 points by whoami_nr 1 month ago | 47 comments

Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight (2025)(gwern.net)

115 points by andsoitis 1 month ago | 35 comments

Blackmail Fail (2013)(gwern.net)

34 points by simonebrunozzi 2 months ago | 2 comments

Clarity didn't work, trying mysterianism (2012)(gwern.net)

68 points by dboon 3 months ago | 39 comments

Guardian Angels: LLM Personalization for Productivity and Security(gwern.net)

83 points by andsoitis 3 months ago | 13 comments

Lean Software Scaling Laws(gwern.net)

11 points by gmays 3 months ago | 0 comments

Human-Like Neural Nets by Catapulting(gwern.net)

39 points by telotortium 4 months ago | 10 comments

The Letter S, by Donald Knuth (1980) [pdf](gwern.net)

255 points by bambax 5 months ago | 49 comments

NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)(gwern.net)

87 points by Ariarule 5 months ago | 36 comments

Cat Itecture: Better Cat Window Boxes (2023)(gwern.net)

69 points by gggscript 7 months ago | 12 comments

The normalization of corruption in organizations (2003) [pdf](gwern.net)

237 points by rendx 8 months ago | 131 comments

Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf](gwern.net)

456 points by gurjeet 8 months ago | 278 comments

A 1984 academic paper by M. A. (Ken) Clements giving a biographical account of Terence Tao's mathematical precociousness as a young child and its educational implications.

Gwtar: A static efficient single-file HTML format(gwern.net)

269 points by theblazehen 8 months ago | 79 comments

Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2011)(gwern.net)

71 points by teej 8 months ago | 15 comments

Video Games as Art(gwern.net)

88 points by andsoitis 9 months ago | 57 comments

First, make me care(gwern.net)

742 points by andsoitis 9 months ago | 221 comments

Gwern blog post arguing that nonfiction writing should open by making the reader care, e.g. with a compelling question, rather than with background.

Scientific production in the era of large language models [pdf](gwern.net)

50 points by nkko 9 months ago | 14 comments

Spaced repetition for efficient learning (2019)(gwern.net)

109 points by tsenturk 10 months ago | 43 comments

Breaking Paragraphs into Lines [pdf] (1981)(gwern.net)

30 points by Smaug123 10 months ago | 6 comments

Formula One Handovers and Handovers From Surgery to Intensive Care (2008) [pdf](gwern.net)

98 points by bookofjoe 10 months ago | 34 comments

Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought (2024) [pdf](gwern.net)

111 points by netfortius 11 months ago | 49 comments

Gwern's "Stem Humor" Directory(gwern.net)

43 points by surprisetalk 11 months ago | 7 comments

Plumbing vs. Internet, Revisited(gwern.net)

57 points by Ariarule 11 months ago | 28 comments

Cormac McCarthy's tips on how to write a science paper (2019) [pdf](gwern.net)

202 points by surprisetalk 1 year ago | 80 comments

Everything is correlated (2014–23)(gwern.net)

244 points by gmays 1 year ago | 108 comments

Perfume reviews(gwern.net)

308 points by surprisetalk 1 year ago | 162 comments

LLM Daydreaming(gwern.net)

174 points by nanfinitum 1 year ago | 124 comments

Cats as Horror Movie Villains(gwern.net)

22 points by mparramon 1 year ago | 33 comments

Hacking Pinball High Scores(gwern.net)

10 points by surprisetalk 1 year ago | 4 comments

October the First Is Too Late(gwern.net)

7 points by adiabatty 1 year ago | 0 comments

Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022)(gwern.net)

48 points by james_impliu 1 year ago | 35 comments

Why Tool AIs Want to Be Agent AIs (2016)(gwern.net)

8 points by ctoth 1 year ago | 0 comments

Magnesium Self-Experiments(gwern.net)

146 points by yamrzou 1 year ago | 91 comments

Self-Funding Harberger Taxes(gwern.net)

86 points by surprisetalk 1 year ago | 81 comments

Towards Nyquist Learners(gwern.net)

59 points by sleepingreset 1 year ago | 35 comments

Why so few Matt Levines?(gwern.net)

209 points by iNic 2 years ago | 108 comments

Why to Not Write a Book(gwern.net)

195 points by telotortium 2 years ago | 158 comments

Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf](gwern.net)

365 points by hardmaru 2 years ago | 279 comments

PDF of a 2024 paper by Fedorenko et al. arguing that language is primarily a tool for communication rather than for thought.

How Should We Critique Research? (2019)(gwern.net)

42 points by lazyjeff 2 years ago | 9 comments

Epigrams in Programming (1982) [pdf](gwern.net)

73 points by ustad 2 years ago | 37 comments

My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s (2019)(gwern.net)

57 points by csdvrx 2 years ago | 52 comments

Writing a GPT-4 script to check Wikipedia for the first unused acronym(gwern.net)

212 points by telotortium 2 years ago | 83 comments

Nicotine (2016)(gwern.net)

124 points by blitz_skull 3 years ago | 185 comments

Are Sunk Costs Fallacies? (2012)(gwern.net)

12 points by yamrzou 3 years ago | 3 comments

Sidenotes in Web Design(gwern.net)

86 points by 12_throw_away 3 years ago | 11 comments

Internet search tips(gwern.net)

186 points by herbertl 3 years ago | 65 comments

The Neural Net Tank Urban Legend(gwern.net)

89 points by belter 3 years ago | 42 comments

A Personal View of Average-Case Complexity (1995) [pdf](gwern.net)

57 points by ftxbro 3 years ago | 2 comments

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy [pdf] (2005)(gwern.net)

123 points by mooreds 3 years ago | 43 comments

On Having Enough Socks (2019)(gwern.net)

56 points by hacb 3 years ago | 129 comments

Feynman’s Maze-Running Story(gwern.net)

184 points by telotortium 3 years ago | 42 comments

The invention of selective breeding was unbelievably late (2019)(gwern.net)

43 points by barry-cotter 3 years ago | 15 comments

Open Questions(gwern.net)

94 points by ianyanusko 3 years ago | 53 comments

GPT-3 Creative Fiction (2020)(gwern.net)

77 points by ijidak 3 years ago | 31 comments