Top all-time · #2279
argmin gravitas
Personal blog · gleech.orgprogrammingaiphilosophy
argmin gravitas is a personal blog at gleech.org about programming, ai and philosophy. Since 2017, 33 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “Reversals in Psychology (2020)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link gleech.org for an interactive comparison of which computer counts as 'first', a critique of psychology studies, and an essay on Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. Comments cite these pages as references.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter says they like the main sections of the 'Against the Culture' post; another calls the first-computers site an interesting exploration.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Reversals in Psychology (2020)11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-03-09
- Disambiguating the first computer3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-06-22
- How I Don't Use LLMs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-08
- Paper AI Tigers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-17
- Timeline of Emergent Capabilities2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-09-29
What Hacker News says?
If you just want to reference the entire data set of potential "first computers" (including ones that aren't referable in the javaScript app, due to missing toggles), you can access the source data here (warning, small CSV download): https://www.gleech.org/files/computers.csv
Comment linking /files/computers.csv
on “Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)”Submitted How I Don't Use LLMs as a story · 60 points
HN discussionhttps://www.gleech.org/first-computers
Comment linking /first-computers
on “Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)”Submitted Reversals in Psychology (2020) as a story · 56 points
HN discussionYes, it has major, major problems. There's a post here that lists quite a few of the problems: "Against the Culture" https://archive.is/gv0lG https://www.gleech.org/culture The main sections I like there are "partial reverse alignment" and "the culture as a replicator", with either this or Why the Culture Wins talking about what happens when the Culture runs out of moral patients. "Partial reverse alignment" means b…
Comment linking /culture
on “The muscular imagination of Iain M. Banks: a future you might want”Submitted How I Don't Use LLMs as a story · 13 points
HN discussionRelevant: "Reversals in Psychology" [1] [2] [1] https://www.gleech.org/psych [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709266
Comment linking /psych
on “Must-read psychology books”Submitted Paper AI Tigers as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI also wondered why people are so freaked out by it, asked around, and came up with these more or less worrying reasons: http://gleech.org/genes-out
Comment linking /genes-out
on “How To Use 23andMe Irresponsibly (2014)”Submitted Paper AI Tigers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFor those interested, here's my critique of sleep science ( https://guzey.com/theses-on-sleep/#our-priors-about-sleep-re... ): >Do you believe in power-posing? In ego depletion? In hungry judges and brain training? [1] >If the answer is no, then your priors for our knowledge about sleep should be weak because “sleep science” is mostly just rebranded cognitive psychology, with the vast majority of it being small-n, n…
Comment linking /psych
on “Theses on Sleep”Submitted A list of exaggerated psychological phenomena as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere are many first computers, depending on what adjectives you apply. The "official" claim is that ENIAC is the "first electronic, general purpose, large scale, digital computer". For an interesting exploration of what computer is first under what definition, see the interactive website https://www.gleech.org/first-computers I highly recommend the book "ENIAC in Action" for a thorough discussion of the computer. P…
Comment linking /first-computers
on “ENIAC Simulator”Submitted Hardening the Browser as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI don't trust any studies in psychology, especially social psychology. https://www.gleech.org/psych
Comment linking /psych
on “1960s Mouse Utopias Led to Grim Predictions for Future of Humanity (2015)”Submitted Timeline of Emergent Capabilities as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI made a tiny app to solve this kind of disagreement; I was annoyed by the unjust dominance of the ENIAC over Hoelzer's 50 Jahre Computer and the Z3, but also over the Manchester Baby, which really was a massive step forward. There are about 2304 "first" computers, by my model. http://gleech.org/first-computers
Comment linking /first-computers
on “The Manchester Baby was the first stored-program computer”Submitted NY Sounds as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPer https://www.gleech.org/psych : - Stanford Prison Experiment; Not an experiment, abuse was scripted, experimenter constantly intervened, reactions of participants were faked, and there was not even a scientific hypothesis they were testing. Definitely read the paper[0] debunking it. - Milgram Experiment: (the one where people were ordered to shock actors) No good evidence for it. Researchers did not follow script…
Comment linking /psych
on “Harvard ethics prof fabricated multiple behavioral science studies”Submitted Mathematical Dark Matter as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reversals in psychology: A list of exaggerated psychological phenomena as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reversals in Psychology as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reversals in Psychology as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reversals in Psychology as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reversals in Psychology as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Timeline of Emergent Capabilities as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bayesianity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Transnormalism as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ways we can fail to answer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hardening the Browser (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
