Dennis Hackethal’s Blog

My blog about philosophy, coding, and anything else that interests me.

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This blog is largely retired. Check out my new blog, libertythroughreason.com.

2026

Four Great Debates in Science, Retold on Veritula

2025

The Fatal Flaw with Marty Supreme

Hayek’s ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ – Simplified

Hard to Vary or Hardly Usable?

Executable Ideas

Reflections on Rat Fest ’25

Quiet

Apple File Icon Misquotes Think Different Ad Campaign

Error Prevention: Error Correction’s Forgotten Brother

Physical vs Moral Explanations

Fun Criterion vs Whim Worship

Reason by Purge or by Patch?

Why People Like Kant – and Why They’re Wrong

How to Get Fit

Deutsch and the Institute of Art and Ideas

Election Results Aren’t as Important as You Think

Do You Not Need Deodorant After All?

Why Is Today’s Art So Ugly?

New Homepage

How to Secure Your WiFi Router

What You Should Know About Elliot Temple

A Guilty Person’s Tell

Sam Altman Lies About AGI

Simple Explanation of Mental Integration

My Honest Review of The Sovereign Child

2024

“Could another species evolve to compete with humans?”

Abolition + Picking Crops

“How can humans evolve in response to rapidly changing ways of life?”

“Am I the only neurotypical person on the internet?”

Guzey’s Misquotes Re: Walker

Don’t Take Fallibilism Too Far

Do Objectivists Attribute Moral Value to Animals?

“Who Is Henry Galt?”

What Proves the Theory of Evolution?

What Are Examples of Cultural Evolution in Animals?

How Is It That Our Own Brains Are ‘Black Boxes’ to Us?

Could Human Intelligence Be Considered the ‘Best’ or ‘Ultimate’ Adaptation?

How I Quote

“Why is human evolution so interesting to learn about and study?”

Evidence of Animal Insentience

Software License for Objectivists

Can You Create Life in a Lab?

“Has the human brain evolved over thousands of years?”

Why Do Humans Have Fewer Genes than Flies?

Mysticism and the Mathematicians’ Misconception

Don’t Bulk and Cut

Setting Up a Heroku Root Domain with Squarespace Domains

Investigating Hayek’s Misquotes

The Enlightenment Case against Public Property

The Injustice of Pacifism

Key Insights from Kevin Samuels

Taking Anne Frank Seriously

Honesty and Popperian Epistemology

“An Objectivist Refutation of Anarcho-Capitalism”

Bodybuilding as Art

“Should there be a process of relieving bad parents from their children?”

This Ramadan, Remember to Take Jihadists Seriously

Basic Safety Guide for Men

A Better Way to Generate the Fibonacci Sequence

I Don’t Get the Hype around GPT-4

“Would it be right to have a constitution you couldn’t change?”

“How do you deal with irrationality from family and friends?”

Sam Altman’s Hidden Motive

Why Are People Afraid to Form Their Own Judgment?

What to Do If a Six-Year-Old Is Too Scared to Use the Toilet?

Enabling UJS in Rails 7

Conditional Femininity

Don’t Date Single Mothers

“How can I help my 5yo feel more in control of her life”

How Is Spanking Still Legal?

Objectivist Institutes Suck at Quoting

Introducing: Quote Checker

Camera Not Showing Anything in Unity 2D? Try This Simple Fix.

Core Objectivist Values

2023

Mentzer’s Consolidated Routine

Mentzer’s Ideal Weightlifting Routine

Pre-exhaust Training

The Mind as a Courtroom

Some Lessons in (Dis)honesty

In Defense of Taking Children Seriously

Criticisms of Atlas Shrugged

Was Ayn Rand a Hypocrite for Collecting Social Security?

When Can Parents Use Force?

But You’re Not a Parent!

Unwanted Protection is Oppression

Charity vs Justice

Criticism of Kolya Wolf’s ‘Against ego-centric epistemology’

The ‘Right’ to Education Is Bad

Ist es notwendig, Autorität abzulehnen?

Society Depends on School

Food Safety without Government

A Woman’s Plight to Choose

My Thoughts on xAI

Is Sanctioned Force Still Force?

The Easiest Way to Find All Permutations… Is Counting?!

Example of Not Outthinking the Question

Outthinking the Question

Schlaue Frauen

So When Can a Woman ‘Date Up’?

Olaf Klonus ist ein schlechter Versicherungsmakler

Can You Refute This?

These Two Mistakes Led to a Grueling Divorce

War-Poster Analysis

How to Open ml5js.org without Supporting BLM

Where’s David Deutsch’s Accountability?

What Would Popper Have Said about Covid Scientism?

A Critical Reading of Karl Popper on the Necessity of Critical Discussion

What’s the Issue with Hypergamy?

Don’t Use Text Messages for Two-Factor Authentication

Crypto-Fallibilism

Discussion with Amaro and Dirk about Copyright

Minefeld

Women, Don’t Divorce after a Promotion

On Deutsch and Naval

Conscription Is Not Defensive Coercion

Don’t Be Fooled by Zelensky

ChatGPT Is a Feminist Tool

Why Do Younger Women Typically Date Older Men?

Chat about Male-Female Dynamics

Men Have No Reproductive Rights

Die Folgen unserer Ideen aus der Kindheit

Uncontroversial

2022

Mind Reading

Help: My Kid Doesn’t Want to Be Vegan Anymore!

Ungenutzte Cover-Ideen für Der Anfang der Unendlichkeit

How to Delete All User-Defined Routines in PostgreSQL

Why I Mirror My Tweets – and Why You Should, Too

Why Doesn’t Angier Use the Machine Only Once?

Don’t Trust Screenshots of Browsers

Handy Git Commands

Starting Over

Ein Traum von Sokrates

Inwiefern stellt ein Kompromiss keine echte Lösung dar?

Simple Way to Get Rid of Smelly Feet

Boundaries

Unconflicted

Wie erzieht man ein Kind zum Glauben an die Freiheit?

Klärung der Frage, was ich mit ›Zwang‹ meine

Die gesellschaftliche, erzieherische, wirtschaftliche und politische Unterdrückung von Kindern

Explain Irrational Minds!

Do Children Owe Their Parents?

Fehler in Der Anfang der Unendlichkeit

Fallibility Table

The Religion of Terror

In Solidarity with Salman Rushdie

Quick Security Tip

Criticism of David Deutsch’s ‘Taking Children Seriously and fallibilism’

Don’t Use Square

Looking Cute

Change Twitter Links to Improve Your Privacy

Wash Organic Produce

Crazy

(Potential) Errors in The Beginning of Infinity

Popper’s Criterion Is Insufficient

Sleepwalking

Chat with Damian about Abortion

Death Sentence

Your audio devices might divulge your private information. Here’s how to protect yourself.

Wer soll über die Kinder herrschen?

‘Noise-Canceling’ Headphones

Brain Maturity

Wrong-Number Pattern

Covid Exile

Kinder ernst nehmen – Interview

Ukraine

Recording, Sending, and Receiving Audio Using JavaScript

Brain-Half Nonsense

Images and Privacy for the Web

Astrid Lindgren’s Never Violence!

Notable Quotes about Authority

School Can’t Be about Learning

My Response to a Google Recruiter

Negative Weights

Neues Buch: Könnte das auch anders sein?

What’s an Explanation?

2021

Give a Man a Mirror…

Sleep Hangups

Chat with Amaro and Sashin about Animal Sentience

Lying Little Injun

Extracting References from HTML in Rails

Views on Animal Sentience in The Beginning of Infinity

Leave Austria NOW

Chapter Order in The Beginning of Infinity

Lockdowns Are a Collectivist-Altruist Nightmare

Second Interview with David Deutsch / Zweites Interview mit David Deutsch

The Strongest and Weakest Argument

Government and Parenting

Konrad Lorenz Hacked Animals

Why Do People Make Mistakes?

Choosing between Theories

Fauci vs Beagle Puppies

Breaking Out of Frames in Unity

Pathfinding in Unity

Controlling a Character’s Movements in Unity

Being a Beginner Again

A Programmer’s Guide to Revolutions

Animal-Sentience Discussion Tree

Animal-Sentience FAQ

English Transcript of German Interview with David Deutsch

Hyphenation Rules Are Confusing

The Beginning of Infinity → Der Anfang der Unendlichkeit

What Christians Get Right

What Makes Creative Computer Programs Different from Non-creative Ones?

The ‘Animal-Rights’ Community Is Based on Fear and Intimidation

Simple JavaScript Recursion without Stack Consumption

Evidence Is Ambiguous

Buggy Dogs

Snake

Violent Paternalism

A Quick Proof That Problems Are Inevitable

Discounting Future Knowledge

True Controversial Ideas

Two Guesses About Creativity

Programming in Strings

Objectivism vs. the Myth of the Framework

A Comprehensive Guide to Eric Weinstein’s Paper on Geometric Unity

Analyzing The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

Teachers Who “Take Children Seriously”

Meme Replication vs. Idea Replication

Competence First, Incentives Second

Taking Ideas Seriously

Wealth Tax Is Evil

Sending Emails in Production using Rails, Heroku, and MailGun

Setting Sublime Text as Git Editor

Tally in Ruby vs. Clojure

Lockdowns: Science vs. Morals

Governments Are Involuntary

Running Custom Logic in Rails Devise Controller

Want to Learn about AGI? Read These Chapters from “The Beginning of Infinity”

2020

Using Rails Production Credentials with Heroku

Reduce Need Not Be Hard

How to Use the Proper Mood in English-to-German Translations

Santa Clara County’s Immoral Health Order

Libertarian FAQ

A Truth Commission is Tyrannical

Two Razors to Quickly Evaluate Any Theory of the Mind

The True Purpose of Schools

Balinski and Young—beyond Elections

Forced to Freedom

What to Do in the Face of Corporate Wokeism

This Mask Replacement Will Change Your Life

Scientific American?

Three Revolutionary Ideas

“The Brain Works in Mysterious Ways”

The Tragedy of Children Becoming Teachers

The Descent into Mediocrity Continues

Anyone Can Become a Developer — Here’s How I Did It

The Neo-Darwinian Theory of the Mind

The Case against Commas and Operators

Preserving the Common-Sense Definition of Racism

How Do Some Peaceful Ideas Result in Violent Protests?

Guaranteeing Referential Transparency

What Is the Difference Between a Person and a Recording of That Person?

Do Explain Episode 11 — A Window on Intelligence, with Dennis Hackethal — Transcript

New Domain

New Landing Page and Navbar Design

Domain and Markdown

2019

Another Update on the Discussion Site

Update on the Discussion Site

Highlighting Arbitrary Passages

Neat Clojure Function

Discussions Revisited

Recovering from Blindness