Top all-time · #2461
Richard Hanania
Personal blog · richardhanania.compoliticsculture
Richard Hanania's personal blog at richardhanania.com covers politics and culture. Since 2023, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 100 times, most often “Understanding the Tech Right”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Foreign policy, American politics, and social science. Click to read Richard Hanania's Newsletter, a Substack publication.
Most-linked posts?
- Understanding the Tech Right5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-06-05
- Privacy versus Progress in Medicine3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-31
- Did industrial policy drive East Asian growth?2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-12-09
- The Old School Reformer's Case for Privatizing Education2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-30
- Eating Animals and the Virtues of Honesty2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-06-19
- Flock, Mass Surveillance, and the Collapse of Crime2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-08-24
- Bioaccelerationism Is a No-Brainer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-21
- Forty Years of Economic Freedom Winning2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-30
- Fatima and the Sample Size Compensation (SSC) Fallacy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-31
- /p/wokeness-as-saddam-statues-the-case2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-03
What Hacker News says?
I would be interested to hear HN views on Richard Hanania's take on Epstein: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-inverted-reality-of-eps... .
Comment linking /p/the-inverted-reality-of-epstein-conspiracy
on “Show HN: Jmail – Google Suite for Epstein files”Submitted Why Are Americans So Rich? as a story · 18 points
HN discussionIt doesn’t matter what Democrats think about unions. This wasn’t a union summit or a summit on party values—it was about EVs. Tesla is the world leader in EVs and the top American EV manufacturer. Excluding them because they don’t support unionization — an issue tied to massive political support for Democrats through campaign contributions and institutional backing—is indefensible. It undermines the purpose of the s…
Comment linking /p/wokeness-as-saddam-statues-the-case
on “Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts”Submitted Why Asia Stopped Having Kids as a story · 18 points
HN discussionI am a pro-flock real person. I'll get down-voted and likely flagged for saying this so you may believe I don't exist but I do. Crime has gone down considerably in the last two years. > The declines were reflected in several of the FBI’s long-term measures. The 2025 robbery rate of 49.4 per 100,000 was the lowest in 20 years, while the rape rate of 36.1 was the lowest since 2012. The murder rate was the lowest in th…
Comment linking /p/flock-mass-surveillance-and-the-collapse
on “In Leaked Audio, Flock CEO Tells Cops Backlash to the Company Isn't Real”Submitted Why You Shouldn't Worry about AI Taking Jobs as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThey have better outcomes actually. Higher economic growth, higher population growth, lower state debt, lower unemployment. Of course, exceptions apply but the overall data is pretty clear. https://www.richardhanania.com/p/forty-years-of-economic-fre...
Comment linking /p/forty-years-of-economic-freedom-winning
on “Study finds that budget cuts to public R&D would significantly hurt the economy”Submitted How Federal Law Made Us All Disabled as a story · 6 points
HN discussionDaniel 2 is totally vague. Could be describing many situations. Miracle in Poland: let's see the peer-reviewed results. Same for Mexico. Not surprising that the reported Mexican blood type would be the same as found on the shroud of Turin, which is clearly a fake from the image. [ https://www.richardhanania.com/p/fatima-and-the-sample-size-... ] Jesus said he would return before his disciples died. Did that prophecy…
Comment linking /p/fatima-and-the-sample-size-compensation
on “An ex-Intel CEO's mission to build a Christian AI: Hasten the return of Christ”Submitted Government Science and the Prestige Economy as a story · 6 points
HN discussionRecent blog post about unions that I found interesting: >Let’s say a nation is concerned about poverty. So it passes a law that says the rich will have some of their money redistributed to the poor. But instead of a progressive income tax used to fund cash payments to the unfortunate, the government decides that wealthy people who happened to be born in the spring will give their money to poor people whose birthdays…
Comment linking /p/why-labor-unions-are-evil
on “Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move”Submitted Boy, Girl, Boy as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThe CFTC is overstepping its mandate: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/how-to-legalize-prediction-...
Comment linking /p/how-to-legalize-prediction-markets
on “Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99”Submitted Americans Should Celebrate China's Biotech Revolution as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe original expose: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/richard-hanania-white... Hanania's response: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-i-used-to-suck-and-hope... And a related addendum: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/a-new-opportunity-and-a-res...
Comment linking /p/a-new-opportunity-and-a-response
on “Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires”Submitted A Mate Selection Theory of Feminization as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHe's sometimes a tad trollish, but you'd probably learn much more about the world from Hanania's Twitter feed [1] and Substack [2] than you would from the entirety of content produced by the NY Times. Especially if you live inside a left-wing bubble. He also has an upcoming book, which has a good chance of becoming a bestseller. [3][4] Hopefully, all the pushes for cancelling him will trigger the Streisand effect. […
Comment linking /p/why-you-should-preorder-my-book
on “Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires”Submitted Understanding the Tech Right as a story · 5 points
HN discussionUnfortunately there's a lot of evidence that fraud really is very prevalent and we don't hear about it anywhere near enough. It depends a lot on the field though. One piece of evidence comes from software like GRIM and SPRITE. GRIM was run over psychology papers and found around 50% had impossible means in them (that could not be arrived at by any combination of allowed inputs) [1]. The authors generally did not coo…
Comment linking /p/flying-x-wings-into-the-death-star
on “Replace Peer Review with “Peer Replication” (2021)”Submitted Somewhere in America as a story · 5 points
HN discussionReminder: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/unions-are-not-the-way-to-h... Unions trample human rights and they don't increase wages long-term, rather they increase deadweight-loss and limit opportunities. I would not work for an employer with a mandatory union and I strongly recommend nobody work for one either.
Comment linking /p/unions-are-not-the-way-to-help-workers
on “The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker”Submitted Why Are Americans So Rich? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYou're welcome to say EA is a cult if you include the caveat that "by cult, I mean a thing that gives lots of money and upvotes to people who criticize it". That way it will be clear that your definition of "cult" is broad enough to include things like that. Not everyone defines the word so broadly. BTW, for people reading this discussion, here's an alternative explanation of why EA tends to be controversial: https:…
Comment linking /p/effective-altruism-thinks-youre-hitler
on “The OpenAI Board Member(Helen Toner) Who Clashed with Sam Altman Shares Her Side”Submitted When to Use Fancy Words as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> But something odd then happened in the US. The left, having been pushed too far by something or other (Trump being the usual cited example), began to reason that since the “right” had free speech as a value, the “left” were free to oppose it. This is where I believe the new trend of what has been called “cancel culture” comes from. Left-wing intolerance in the United States became more publicly prominent after the…
Comment linking /p/wokeness-as-saddam-statues-the-case
on “Free Speech Is in Trouble”Submitted Were 1970s Korean Orphanages a Great Place to Raise Kids? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAlso, labour unions are ammoral: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-labor-unions-are-evil
Comment linking /p/why-labor-unions-are-evil
on “Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte”Submitted The Case for UFOs Is Weaker as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHow do you measure consensus? There are many researchers who claim there's a consensus of whatever they happen to believe, but when counter-examples are pointed out they start No True Scotsmanning ("no real expert believes..."). Health related research is in a much worse state than ML unfortunately. ML suffers from metrics gaming and overfitting but there's probably not much outright fraud? Common estimates are that…
Comment linking /p/flying-x-wings-into-the-death-star
on “Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer”Submitted Flock, Mass Surveillance, and the Collapse of Crime as a story · 4 points
HN discussion