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Sam Arbesman
arbesman.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2009
Sam Arbesman, a scientist and author, curates lists and catalogs on research organizations, education models, and tech culture, and wrote The Half-Life of Facts.
What HN saysCommenters praise his catalogs, such as the Overedge Catalog of new research organizations and his list of lists, and link his half-life of facts writing.
15HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
25stories submitted
297story points
6 months agolast shared
2009people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Overedge Catalog: Misfit Research and Tech Organizations3 people · 48 points · first shared 2021 · 4 comments on HN
- 2Tech of the Rings: tech companies with names from the world of Lord of the Rings3 people · 6 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3Sports Teams Named After Technologies2 people · 5 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 4The Garden of Computational Delights2 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 5The City-States of America2 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 6New Educational Models2 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 7The half life of facts2 people · first shared 2012
- 8Potentially Habitable Planet Discovered1 people · 151 points · first shared 2010 · 68 comments on HN
- 92011: The Year You Weren’t Expecting1 people · 44 points · first shared 2011 · 14 comments on HN
- 10Why Apollo 12 Was Amazing1 people · 26 points · first shared 2011 · 3 comments on HN
- 11Constant Decay: a short story about technology, truth, and reality1 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 12The Humanistic Computation Project1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 13America’s Age, Empires, and Mathematics1 people · 1 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 14Bill Miller’s Mutual Fund Streak1 people · 1 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 15The Slippery New Year1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
pokpokpok · 2026-05-20
Love this project. Author has made some other great lists / directories in the past:
https://arbesman.net/listoflists/
My favorite being this list of interesting shaped schools and learning organizations: https://arbesman.net/newlearning/
activatedgeek · 2021-05-27
Perhaps, you may enjoy this collection - "The Overedge Catalog: New Types of Research Organizations" [1].
I think it has quite the variety, and may help you distill a broader sense of where things are headed (and find people to reach out to).
[1]: https://arbesman.net/overedge/
arbesman · 2021-05-27
I've been exploring the landscape of new types of research institutes/organizations, with a catalog of my findings here: https://arbesman.net/overedge/ I'm happy to discuss the possibilities for research orgs, so please feel free to reach out.
lukifer · 2013-07-19
Not to mention how easy it is to forget the historical track record of science being overturned by better science: http://arbesman.net/the-half-life-of-facts/
GregBuchholz · 2012-12-04
There is a excerpt from chapter 1 of the book at the authors website.
http://arbesman.net/the-half-life-of-facts/
grandalf · 2017-02-24
> How many cities would we need to add together to get to roughly 50% of the population?
While this is an interesting question, it's not the one that we should ask:
Instead, what is the lowest number of flights a candidate needs to take to visit a majority of the voters' nearby area? If the candidate can drive for under three hours to arrive at another area, the trip does not qualify for a flight.
See these links for the map visuals supporting this line of reasoning:
http://www.arbesman.net/blog/2011/02/02/the-city-states-of-america/
and
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/sunday/a-new-map-for-americ…
A popular vote system decreases the number of flights substantially compared to the EC system, and would make much of the US utterly irrelevant in a national election. The EC system was created to prevent this from happening.
Also, flights are a proxy for overall campaign spending. A popular vote system would reward spending on the most populous visits and (compared to the EC system) penalize visits to the least populous areas.