Top all-time · #1123
Erik Hoel
Personal blog · erikhoel.substack.comphilosophyscienceai
Erik Hoel writes The Intrinsic Perspective, a personal blog at erikhoel.substack.com about philosophy, science and ai. Since 2021, 60 different Hacker News readers have linked it 95 times, most often “I am not an effective altruist: Morality is not a market”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Readers link Hoel's Substack for essays on education and tutoring, critiques of effective altruism, the case against eating-meat arguments, and the prehistory hypothesis in The Gossip Trap.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Called a good rebuttal to a philosopher's argument that eating meat is good.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Natural philosophy, belles-lettres, polemics. Click to read The Intrinsic Perspective, by Erik Hoel, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- I am not an effective altruist: Morality is not a market6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-08-15
- How the MFA Swallowed Literature5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-11-22
- Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-03-16
- AI-art isn't art: DALL-E and other AI artists offer only the imitation of art4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-05-18
- How to prevent the coming inhuman future3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-13
- Futurists have their heads in the clouds3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-25
- The Publishing Industry3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-11
- How civilization came to be and how social media is ending it3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-06
- “I am Bing, and I am evil”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-16
- The Future of Literature Is Video Games2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-30
What Hacker News says?
Erik Hoel raised a really similar point in his substack - that the vast majority of literary fiction writers now study it, as opposed to no education or diverse education. They have spent a lot of time in workshops and create writing classes, and are thus experts in "minimizing attack vectors" in their writing. This, of course, results in boring and uniform writing. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/how-the-mfa-swallo…
Comment linking /p/how-the-mfa-swallowed-literature
on “Tips for making writing more fun”Submitted Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored as a story · 477 points
HN discussionThis operates on the very narrow view that the only value of art is its aesthetics, and that art can be measured against objective ratings. I value art because it communicates something from an actual human being, like an exchanging between consciousnesses. When I can derive the choices of an author or photographer or any other class of artist, I find a mutual perspective that, at the root of it, makes me feel under…
Comment linking /p/ai-art-isnt-art
on “You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected”Submitted Publish and Perish as a story · 348 points
HN discussionI remember how slowly high school math moved. How uninspired English class was. The poor curriculum and tools in programming class. imo, there is definitely a primary and secondary education problem vs. the early-life academic environments that helped to produce yesteryear's great thinkers. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste...
Comment linking /p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins?s=w
on “Fuck Your Miracle Year”Submitted Over-reliance on CGI in movies as a story · 300 points
HN discussionhttps://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-i-am-not-an-effective-al...
Comment linking /p/why-i-am-not-an-effective-altruist
on “Effective Altruism Is about Getting Rich with a Clean Conscience”Submitted How prestige outlets get away with copypasta as a story · 121 points
HN discussionThe author seems to want more of this[0] kind of high-quality refutation. Here's another, this time a blog post[1] and a rebuttal[2]. Very different examples, one in medical science and the other just blogosphere musings, but both are public counters to public originals, rather than direct communications with the original's authors. That said, I'm not clear on why the author thinks that we're at a "turning point" in…
Comment linking /p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins?s=w
on “Arguing Without Warning”Submitted We need a Butlerian Jihad against AI as a story · 93 points
HN discussionThanks for reading & responding! I don't really see any reasons to doubt that literature will survive the 21st century. Its place is always going to be there, right? But the publishing industry and academia? I think that is a different issue altogether and they are certainly having their day(s) of reckoning. I think we feel its impact even more strongly because other economic & technological forces have intersected…
Comment linking /p/how-the-mfa-swallowed-literature
on “Long-standing literary magazines are struggling to stay afloat”Submitted AI-art isn't art: DALL-E and other AI artists offer only the imitation of art as a story · 76 points
HN discussion> How was the education in Britain organized during that era? Mostly, intensive one-on-one tutoring starting at a very early age. See https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste...
Comment linking /p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins
on “The Ends of Education”Submitted Are animals more conscious than we are? as a story · 71 points
HN discussionSeems like this is based on this essay: https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-i-am-not-an-effective-al...
Comment linking /p/why-i-am-not-an-effective-altruist
on “Erik Hoel on Effective Altruism, Utilitarianism, and the Repugnant Conclusion”Submitted Big Tech is replacing human artists with AI? as a story · 69 points
HN discussion> By definition, the aristocratic class was considered to be universally gifted Private tutoring probably had a large role to play in this perception https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste...
Comment linking /p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins
on “The unclear future for gifted-and-talented education”Submitted Why does culture get less happy year after year? as a story · 47 points
HN discussionThe article describes what it takes to getting published; ie, passing an ever increasing number of gatekeepers. Agents, "blurb writers", publishers, reviewers are all professional gatekeepers, organized in a giant, very strict filter. In a perfect world, gatekeepers should be neutral observers of an external reality, expert cherry pickers who would detect and promote the best; in the real world, they influence and s…
Comment linking /p/how-the-mfa-swallowed-literature
on “The Publishing Industry”Submitted Futurists have their heads in the clouds as a story · 34 points
HN discussionWhat a load of rubbish. 1. Plant-based diets are good for the environment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316289/ 2. Animals are sentient. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494450/ 3. The "thought experiment" is flawed. See https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/eating-meat-is-good-says-the... - good rebuttal here Keeping animals alive in the worst possible conditions on the promise that "we'll d…
Comment linking /p/eating-meat-is-good-says-the-philosopher/comment/8024510
on “Eating meat is good, says the philosopher”Submitted How civilization came to be and how social media is ending it as a story · 32 points
HN discussionYou called out "trusting advertisers to direct our attention" as a problem, and not wrongly. What I'm wondering about is, how convincing a persona could an AI like Bing's chatbot, but equipped with a long-term memory of its own, construct? Even in its current state it appears on occasion to exercise a remarkable fascination - Erik Hoel, a neuroscientist specializing in consciousness, yesterday declared himself no lo…
Comment linking /p/i-am-bing-and-i-am-evil
on “Leaked files reveal reputation-management firm’s deceptive tactics”Submitted The Publishing Industry as a story · 30 points
HN discussionSee also The Gossip Trap about another, similar hypothesis https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/the-gossip-trap
Comment linking /p/the-gossip-trap
on “Why human societies developed so little during 300k years”Submitted Bitcoin as a Hyperobject as a story · 29 points
HN discussionAlso discussed in the aristocratic tutoring article posted here: https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste... and discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30698624
Comment linking /p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins
on “Bloom's 2 Sigma Problem”Submitted Eating meat is good, says the philosopher as a story · 28 points
HN discussionThis is another perspective on The Dawn of Everything: https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/the-gossip-trap
Comment linking /p/the-gossip-trap
on “The Dawn of Everything challenges a mainstream telling of prehistory”Submitted NASA and SpaceX are establishing the first Martian city by 2030 as a story · 21 points
HN discussion
