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There's been an increase in gwern articles on Hacker News recently, I like it. Just curious why now?

by gmaster1440 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
watizdat 13y ago
Check the username of the OP.
perturbation 13y ago
I, for one, am suspicious. Gwern's posting of old articles from his site (which are nonetheless articulate, intelligent, and interesting) makes me think that this is step 437 of a 21352 part plan that ends with him as Emperor of the Moon, laughing as he abuses the escape from Earth's gravity well to extract utility via threat of kinetic bombardment. To paraphrase Arthur Weasley: "Never trust anyone if you can't see where they keep their utility function."
- gwern 13y ago
  Perturbation, I am hurt by your comments. What did I ever do to deserve such well-founded paranoia?
  - Eliezer 13y ago
    What is non-well-founded paranoia? Is it when you think there's a conspiracy behind the conspiracy behind the conspiracy... and so on indefinitely?
    - pjscott 13y ago
      n+1 conspiracies are strictly less likely than n conspiracies, for obvious reasons. There's got to be some length of the conspiracy chain beyond which you're forced to assume that either (a) you've postulated too many conspiracies, or (b) there's a conspiracy whose main goal is the creation of ridiculously long chains of conspiracies behind other conspiracies, and it's doing a good job.
- urbit 13y ago
  Hey, wait! That's my plan. By the way, I don't think there's anything wrong at all with bribing early adopters. Just sayin'...
gwern 13y ago
Oh, that's easy: because I'm submitting them. More interesting is why I'm submitting them: I've long waffled on whether I should routinely submit my stuff to HN because while one or two submissions did well, most of my submissions sank without a trace. The obvious thing to do in this situation is to test it out systematically, so for the past few days (and until such time as I get bored with it or run out), I've been submitting 3 links a day: 1 link to a good gwern.net article, and 2 links to non-gwern.net articles which I liked a lot.
- telephonetemp 13y ago
  Do you also submit your links at the same time of the day each day (when the same part of the globe is awake, the rate of new stories is similar, etc.) or do you vary the time? There have been several examinations of HN story performance vs. timing (e.g., http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news-a-comprehensive-answer/ http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker...).
  - gwern 13y ago
    I submit them early in the morning as one of the first tasks. So the timing isn't perfectly synchronized (I don't think it'll make a huge difference), but they're all fairly comparable. Amusingly, this turns out to be pretty similar to that post's recommended time.
- gmaster1440 13y ago
  Interesting, I can expect a post on your findings then?
  - gwern 13y ago
    Whenever I lose patience, I suppose. That can take a while: eg my Redshift sleep experiment is up to 495 days so far.

There's been an increase in gwern articles on Hacker News recently, I like it. Just curious why now?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

watizdat 13y ago

Check the username of the OP.

perturbation 13y ago

I, for one, am suspicious. Gwern's posting of old articles from his site (which are nonetheless articulate, intelligent, and interesting) makes me think that this is step 437 of a 21352 part plan that ends with him as Emperor of the Moon, laughing as he abuses the escape from Earth's gravity well to extract utility via threat of kinetic bombardment. To paraphrase Arthur Weasley: "Never trust anyone if you can't see where they keep their utility function."

gwern 13y ago
Perturbation, I am hurt by your comments. What did I ever do to deserve such well-founded paranoia?
- Eliezer 13y ago
  What is non-well-founded paranoia? Is it when you think there's a conspiracy behind the conspiracy behind the conspiracy... and so on indefinitely?
  - pjscott 13y ago
    n+1 conspiracies are strictly less likely than n conspiracies, for obvious reasons. There's got to be some length of the conspiracy chain beyond which you're forced to assume that either (a) you've postulated too many conspiracies, or (b) there's a conspiracy whose main goal is the creation of ridiculously long chains of conspiracies behind other conspiracies, and it's doing a good job.
urbit 13y ago
Hey, wait! That's my plan. By the way, I don't think there's anything wrong at all with bribing early adopters. Just sayin'...

gwern 13y ago

Oh, that's easy: because I'm submitting them. More interesting is why I'm submitting them: I've long waffled on whether I should routinely submit my stuff to HN because while one or two submissions did well, most of my submissions sank without a trace. The obvious thing to do in this situation is to test it out systematically, so for the past few days (and until such time as I get bored with it or run out), I've been submitting 3 links a day: 1 link to a good gwern.net article, and 2 links to non-gwern.net articles which I liked a lot.

telephonetemp 13y ago
Do you also submit your links at the same time of the day each day (when the same part of the globe is awake, the rate of new stories is similar, etc.) or do you vary the time? There have been several examinations of HN story performance vs. timing (e.g., http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news-a-comprehensive-answer/ http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker...).
- gwern 13y ago
  I submit them early in the morning as one of the first tasks. So the timing isn't perfectly synchronized (I don't think it'll make a huge difference), but they're all fairly comparable. Amusingly, this turns out to be pretty similar to that post's recommended time.
gmaster1440 13y ago
Interesting, I can expect a post on your findings then?
- gwern 13y ago
  Whenever I lose patience, I suppose. That can take a while: eg my Redshift sleep experiment is up to 495 days so far.