
What are the most intellectually stimulating websites you know of? - ColinWright
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_the_most_intellectually_stimulating/
======
hluska
At the risk of being called obvious, I'm going to say, "Hacker News." I've
never found a site that lets me tap into the brains of so many extremely smart
people. This site has made me a much smarter person, dramatically improved my
writing, and made me far better at what I do.

Thanks!

~~~
throwaway34539
I don't think HN deserves this reputation. Most discussions are shallow, some
people don't even bother reading the story. Meta discussions are frequently
the most upvoted and stories that takes more than a couple of minutes to
appreciate are often left to die.

Partly it's because of the format and the platform. Instead of seeking out the
information yourself, you're feed bits of it before moving on to the next bit.
It works great for news, commentary, as entertainment or a starting guide to
startups. But less so for actually acquiring and/or exchanging information.

~~~
itmag
I think HN does host an abundance of really smart folks.

The main irritant is that so many of them are nitpicky and/or snarky.

Anyone else noticed this?

~~~
modarts
Compared to, let's say Slashdot? This place is pretty tame in comparison.

------
glhaynes
MetaFilter! <http://metafilter.com/>. Community blog with high standards ($5
registration fee helps this, I suspect) and lots of challenging, intelligent
posts and commenters.

And its related site for questions, Ask MetaFilter:
<http://ask.metafilter.com/>. From browsing it regularly I know [good, well-
supported] answers to a thousand interesting and useful questions I'd never
have even thought to ask.

~~~
1as
Absolutely. Both the quality of submission (it's an aggregator like HN or
Reddit) and of discussion are unparalleled in my experience of web
communities. Three things possibly related to its success:

\- Lack of an upvoting mechanism, which can lead to problems

\- Incredibly fair and considered moderation

\- MetaTalk, an area of the site where no rules apply, and where
arguments/vendettas/in-jokes can carry on out of the way

~~~
dkl
Also, having a conversation is pretty much impossible if there are a lot of
comments, mainly because the comments are linear. If you want to catch replies
to your comments, you need to read everything or search for your username
(hoping they included it).

I always hoped that Mefi would go threaded, but the current way is clearly the
desired mode. It's also the reason I don't really look at the comments on Mefi
anymore.

~~~
keypusher
Metafilter comments sections are still very often worth reading, but the lack
of threading means the conversation is always moving somewhere, and going back
to reply to someone 15 comments up is less likely. The upside to this is that
it favors newer comments, unlike reddit/hn, which favor upvoted comments
(which are often the oldest).

------
MikeCapone
My submission would be for:

<http://lesswrong.com/>

A lot of the main sequences of material
(<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>) there were written by a Hacker
News member, Eliezer Yudkowsky. But it's also a great living community (like
here), with new stuff constantly being added.

~~~
morsch
So I've been there a couple of times, mostly via HN, and I had this odd
experience of being unable to place the site somewhere in my internal
onthology of web communities. Forum? Wiki? Blog? Scifi? Psychology? Religion?
Agnostics? Atheists?

This provides some meta information, though I have no idea whether it's
accurate: <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong>

~~~
dbaupp
I think a reasonable classification of LessWrong would be a forum-blog
combination; it's mostly made up of agnostics & atheists, but this is not at
all a focus.

The RationalWiki article is reasonably accurate, I think (speaking as someone
who hangs around on LessWrong a bit), none of it is obviously untrue, although
there is a bit of "undue weight" given to some things (i.e. the some of things
mentioned only come up occasionally, especially the more negative things in
the Ugly and Bad sections). It is even edited[1] by LessWrong regulars (e.g.
David Gerard, Gwern and Ciphergoth), and not at all as vandalism, they all
seem to have added both positive and negative material.

[1]:
[http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=LessWrong&acti...](http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=LessWrong&action=history)

------
impendia
How about the Economist (<http://www.economist.com>)? By far the most
intellectual and globally-oriented news website I'm aware of.

~~~
alpine
It also has an agenda (basically, globalist, pro-EU etc) which is easy to miss
if you are overly-impressed by the intellectual veneer. That said, my
favourite Economist contribution to the world of letters is the Big Mac index,
which is rather clever.

~~~
vosper
I've never thought their agenda was subtle, or that they make any attempt to
conceal it - The Economist is full of statements like "this magazine has long
argued for" or "this would be a mistake" when referring to a policy or idea.

You might not agree with their viewpoint but they don't hide it.

~~~
arjunnarayan
It's the british journalistic tradition: every magazine or newspaper openly
establishes the fact that it has certain assumptions, and then argues from
there. There is no "unbiased" source when it comes to politics/economics.
You'll notice that the pure empiricists do not have opinions on
macroeconomics.

It's only in America that certain news organizations pretend to be unbiased
arbiters.

~~~
pfedor
While it may be true that it's impossible for a newspaper to be completely
unbiased, that doesn't mean this is not the ideal they should strive to. Just
like it's not possible to have completely bug-free code, but you shouldn't
give up fixing bugs because of that. If engineers assumed from the get go that
their code will be buggy, that would simply mean lowering their standards,
giving themselves an excuse to be lazy. I imagine it's similar with news
organizations, if they set out to provide biased reporting, then they will be
happy to gloss over or justify much more glaring abuses of reason than if
objective information was their goal.

Anecdotally, I see this opinion (that unbiased reporting is impossible, so why
not have journals be openly partisan) mostly coming from people who themselves
hold pretty extreme political views. It's almost as if the level of
liberal/conservative bias they feel most comfortable with was so high that
they couldn't pretend, even to themselves, that their sources are objective,
and they deal with the cognitive dissonance by saying that it's OK since no
source is completely objective.

~~~
vl
But American media takes it to the absurd. Every article becomes unchewable
piece of "he said, she said" you have to fish out fact from with the
microscope. They can't say "day was sunny", they would say, "Joe Farmer said
that the day was sunny after observing it for few hours".

------
SatvikBeri
None. I love some websites like Hacker News, Quora, etc. for the knowledge
content they give me, but none of them are nearly as intellectually
stimulating as a book. There's something about focusing on a topic for hours
at a time that leads me to understand it much better than if I spend the same
amount of time in smaller chunks.

~~~
bluekeybox
Seconding this, except I learned the hard way that (1) there is a world of
difference between books, such that reading the best ones may end up being one
the greatest things to ever happen to you, and reading some of the less good
ones can arguably make you less smart than you were before you started
reading, that (2) someone else's opinion is not always the best way to
determine which book is good, and that (3) the selection one reads while in
school is often biased to fulfill pedagogic purposes, so one has to do some
independent searching.

------
puredanger
<http://lambda-the-ultimate.org>

~~~
bluekeybox
Also Dan Piponi's blog (<http://blog.sigfpe.com/>) is pretty good if you're
Haskell hacker, but in that case you probably already heard about it.

~~~
usual
I came across his post about psychological effects of learning category
theory[1]. As someone who has just started learning category theory, I am a
bit alarmed since I sort of experience these symptoms. Anyone has thoughts
about this?

[1] [http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/03/category-theory-screws-you-
up...](http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/03/category-theory-screws-you-up.html)

------
nick_urban
Arts and Letters Daily collects links to a variety of interesting articles,
mostly from the humanities.

<http://www.aldaily.com>

~~~
pork
Don't forget the nicer UI at litlet.com

------
exue
Quora! The question and answer site: Here's a great example:

Question: Engineering Management: Why are software development task
estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?

Answer: [http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-
software...](http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software-
development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3/answer/Michael-
Wolfe)

Exploring, reading, writing, upvoting, and commenting on great question and
answers from all sorts of subjects, has helped me learn a lot. The people
there are great too, with many lending expert knowledge you wouldn't see
elsewhere.

------
_csoz
How did <http://Edge.org> miss the list

Is it just me or is that list a bit too shallow?

~~~
dfc
I like the edge but there RSS feed is so terrible that I gave up reading it.

~~~
alexqgb
Do yourself an enormous favor and subscribe via email. I recognize the
friction, and I understand why this may keep Edge from shooting to the top of
lists like these. But in terms of actual content it's unparalleled.

------
danboarder
<http://marginalrevolution.com> and <http://kottke.org> are both longtime
favorites of mine, featuring interesting content ranging from economics to
food to philosophy to art...

~~~
VMG
I'll tag <http://www.overcomingbias.com> also on here

------
kmfrk
If you want a secret tip to exploring a new world, download Papers
(<http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/>), put all the interesting publications you
find in one Dropbox folder, and import them. The annotation and note features
- as well as the back-up option - makes this a really enjoyable way to
publications.

It really is something to read papers that define the way we think, and it's a
nice alternative to short blog posts and (pop) articles versus (pop) books.

Here are some papers to get you started:

\\* _'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy_ :
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=0998565>

\\* _Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of
Anonymization_ : <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006>

\\* _A technique for isolating differences between files_ :
<http://ejohn.org/projects/javascript-diff-algorithm/>

\\* _A Future-Adaptable Password Scheme_ :
<http://static.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos.html>

Maybe this is cheating, maybe it isn't, but I definitely recommend it.

\---

If you want to get political, some left-of-centre-leaning writers you can't go
wrong with:

1\. Matt Taibbi on Wall Street, Rolling Stone
(<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog>)

2\. Frank Rich in American politics, now at New York Magazine
(<https://twitter.com/frankrichny>)

3\. Glenn Greenwald on civil liberties and foreign policy, in moderation
(<http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/>)

4\. Juan Cole on the Middle East, in moderation (<http://www.juancole.com/>)

5\. Lawyers, Guns, and Money (<http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/>)

6\. The New Yorker's long-form articles. (I find their blog posts to be really
poor, by any standards.) Also, ditch the Malcolm Gladwell articles.

~~~
thornofmight
What's wrong with Malcolm Gladwell?

~~~
zecho
Personally, I don't mind his style. It's entertaining, but he has a tendency
to draw some ridiculous conclusions by drawing a few lines between here and
there. I prefer his New Yorker articles over his books, though, which tend to
merely repeat his thesis over and over.

------
jeremyt
The posts are excruciatingly long, but fascinating and thought-provoking
whether you agree or not:

[http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/12/gold-
an...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/12/gold-and-central-
banks-game-theory.html)

------
kristofferR
TheBrowser (<http://thebrowser.com/>) collects the best long form articles
from around the web every day.

It's definitely worth checking out, it's one of my favorite web sites.

~~~
zalew
for long articles I visit <http://longreads.com/> and <http://longform.org/>

~~~
mcphilip
Thanks for the link to longreads! I've been reading longform for a couple
months now and absolutely love it. The articles may take 20-30 minutes to
read, but it feels so much more fulfilling than skimming over all the image
macro memes you get exposed to on things like reddit and facebook news feeds.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
You may also want to try ‘The Feature’ (formerly known as ‘Give Me Something
To Read’):

<http://thefeature.net/>

------
intellegacy
This is slightly off-topic but I thought I'd ask HN's opinion on an
intellectual website idea I have.

I want to call it "intellegacy", for "intellectual legacy"

I really enjoy reading insightful essays and comments on the internet, and
thought it'd be cool to have a website with all kinds of intellectuals with
their own pages on it where I could read their essays, see a list of their
books, and have conversations with them.

I envision scientists, artists, politicians all interacting on the site. For
example, Neil de Grasse Tyson could post his blogs or essays there, and fans
of his could get a summary of all his work, books, and what he's currently
working on or reading.

Besides the goal of intellectuals having their own space to publish their
insights, I also want the public to be able to read and learn on a clearly
organized website, by taking their time. Maybe this isn't good for pageviews,
but on other websites the content refreshes so quickly that a lot of insights
are lost in the shuffle.

The grand vision is to be a huge library of insights, clearly organized and
that can be read by anyone who wishes to learn and follow the thought leaders
in our world.

We could "best-of" the best debates and discussions and future generations
could read everything.

~~~
Scene_Cast2
I'd use something like this, but there's the chicken & egg problem. Thing is:
the content already exists, but it's spread and fractured across the net. Try
making a content aggregator first, with a layer of UI + comments on top, then
slowly introduce your own "hosting".

Also: how is this different from a subreddit?

~~~
MattSayar
I like this idea. It'll be difficult to convince the best and brightest to
start using your site when they have their pick of the entire internet. Tell
them that you have a space already prepared for them, with a curated list of
all their previous work... might make it more tempting for them to add to it.

And don't call it "intellegacy." When I read it the first time I pronounced it
"intellajesse" because I was thinking of "intelligent", then I re-read it as
"intel, legacy."

~~~
intellegacy
Thank you very much for your comment. The name is now 0/3. Heh.

Will let HN know when the site is launched.

on another note, I will probably need to change my HN username soon :)

------
harrylove
Arts and Letters Daily <http://www.aldaily.com/>

Edward Tufte Forum <http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1>

~~~
glhaynes
What is it about usability guys and their shitty, shitty websites?

That Tufte page is a wall of red (and red underlined!) smashed together links.
Just needs an Under Construction sign and a starfield background. [I'm certain
the content is very good - I enjoy reading/listening to Tufte.]

I remember reading an article from usability guru Donald Norman a few years
ago, another person whom I respect and enjoy reading. His (awesome) article
was all about how aesthetics matter and are a key part not just of being
beautiful, but about being _usable_. I wrote him an email asking (nicely) why
his webpage containing that article was so ugly and had such poor typography,
then; he promptly wrote back saying that it'd take too much time to format it
nicely when there's too much to do already. _sigh_

~~~
dredmorbius
Nielsen's site may not be a thing of beauty, but 1) it works, 2) it's usable,
and 3) _it is unchanged in style from when it first appeared_.

How many sites can make the same claim: that they created a design and it has
_worked_ for 17 years of Web evolution?

It's a tour de force of Neilsen's key message: usability is design, and it
works.

------
codesuela
I'm shocked that no one has mentioned <http://youarenotsosmart.com/>

> The central theme of You Are Not So Smart is that you are unaware of how
> unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old-but-growing body
> of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or
> think the way you do. Despite this, you continue to create narratives to
> explain your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and these narratives –
> no matter how inaccurate – become the story of your life.

~~~
jokermatt999
You Are Not So Smart not only features great content, but it's also written in
a very readable and understandable style. He also links to multiple high
quality sources for every article. His pace has slowed down now that he's
finished his book, but the backlog is well worth reading.

------
aw3c2
<http://projecteuler.net/> made me try so many different programming languages
just for fun.

~~~
notJim
I seem to be in the minority here, but I've never really understood the love
for Project Euler problems for programming. From the ones I did, it was far
more focussed on math and abstract problem solving. I guess that will help you
understand how to do basic things: looping/recursion, and conditionals, but to
me problems that involve things like user interfaces, visualization, IO or the
way you structure your code are far more interesting.

Project Euler reminds me of when I did computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for
a while. From a programming standpoint, a lot of CFD is fairly simple--the
place where CFD methods really differentiate themselves is in their modeling
of the underlying physics. From that standpoint, I wouldn't really advocate
doing CFD as a way of learning to program, because being a great programmer
isn't really the thing that will make you great at doing CFD—being great at
math and modeling is. (On the other hand, if someone wants to get into physics
modeling or simulation, CFD is quite fun and satisfying.)

~~~
gms7777
Its not for everyone. I think the reason that a lot of programmers like
Project Euler is because a lot of programmers tend to be problem-solvers by
nature, mathy and sciency folks, and enjoy doing these sorts of things
(especially when they get to use their programming skills in the process). So
its more of a correlation in my mind than a direct link.

I seem to be the exact opposite of you (Doing UI makes me want to jump off the
nearest tall building. Scientific computation is where its at for me). And its
great that our community has a wide range of personalities.

~~~
barrkel
But most Project Euler problems, once you get past the trivial ones (wherein
the relevance is straight-up brute forcing), have almost nothing to do with
programming.

IMO you'd be better off doing past IOI problems.

~~~
gms7777
I never said they did, and I never said that Project Euler improved your
programming skills (I agree with you there)

I was just commenting that IMO the reason that Project Euler comes up often in
discussions amongst programmers is because many programmers tend to be the
type of people that enjoy Project Euler style problems.

------
sgrytoyr
I expected <http://www.3quarksdaily.com/> to be somewhere near the top of that
list, but it’s nowhere to be found, which really surprised me. It’s one of the
most consistently interesting sites on the Internet, if you ask me.

~~~
teeja
And it even has hooters today.

------
msluyter
If you want a challenging economics blog, I'd vote for Marginal Revolution.
Tyler Cowen writes on a wide range of interesting economic topics from a
unique (libertarian oriented, but minimally ideological and empirically
grounded) perspective.

------
ovi256
Who else had an attack of elitist "Eternal September" panic and checked if HN
was on that list ? I admit I did.

------
patrickg
Nobody mentions wikipedia? I think this is one best sites for understanding
historical things (amongst others of course).

~~~
teeja
Wikipedia is like accordions that way.

------
wickedchicken
<http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/>

<http://blog.kenperlin.com/>

<http://blog.vixra.org/>

<http://www.nature.com/>

[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/groups/science/publicati...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/groups/science/publications.aspx)

<http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html>

<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>

<http://lwn.net/>

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/transcriptions....](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/transcriptions.html)

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki> if you're into seeing how the Elders thought about
computing

<http://idlewords.com/>

<https://ccrma.stanford.edu/papers>

<http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/>

~~~
caustic
I would also add to your list:

* <http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/dbpl/>

* <http://arxiv.org/corr/home>

* <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/index>

* <http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/>

* <http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>

* <http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/>

and the like

~~~
SilasX
Wow, Scott Aaronson's blog must be really good to add it to a list that
already includes it!

------
joeld42
<http://www.butdoesitfloat.com/> is my favorite site when im stuck for
inspiration.

~~~
mturmon
Thanks.

------
edwardy20
Quora (<http://quora.com>) helps me learn new things every day in all
subjects.

------
corford
One that seems to be missing so far: www.lettersofnote.com. Sometimes, it can
be profoundly stimulating.

------
omaranto
I mentioned MathOverflow [1] on that post and only one person upvoted it (I
wouldn't be too surprised if it were someone I know or at least have heard of,
now that I think about it).

[1] <http://mathoverflow.net>

------
b_emery
Here's a personal favorite: <http://calnewport.com/blog/>, which has been on
HN before. The post interval (~2wks to a month) is perfect for to keep me
thinking about deliberate practice, learning methods, and being 'too good to
ignore'. It's fundamentally changed my outlook on what it means to be smart,
and it has in fact encouraged me to pursue a PhD. So, yeah, it's pretty
stimulating. Here's a favorite post:

[http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-ace-calculus-
th...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-ace-calculus-the-art-of-
doing-well-in-technical-courses/)

~~~
maneesh
Cal just gave a keynote speech at the World Domination Summit this weekend on
'Why follow your passion is wrong.' His insights and depth are incredible.
Highly recommended

~~~
b_emery
"World Domination Summit "? sounds like an interesting conference!

------
Scene_Cast2
My suggestion isn't quite going to be a link, but here it goes. Get a hobby.
Programming, sport, (specific) art, etc. There is a myriad of niche
communities for all sorts of things, and I would argue that the more in-depth
creative ones are more stimulating than any of the "general-purpose" ones
listed here.

My "intellectual stimulation" consists of coming up with or doing things.
Sure, self-reflection helps, but more often than not, they're inspired by
something I see in a "specialized" community.

Slightly off-topic, but asking "why" helps with self-reflection and
creativity.

------
HarshaThota
Not a website per se, but AskScience (<http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience>) is
an amazing place for various science discussions.

~~~
prawn
Big up vote from me. Also put r/askhistorians on your list.

------
TeMPOraL
<http://ted.com> \- the number and quality of ideas there still amazes me.
Pretty much every talk can be a start of an interesting, constructive and deep
conversation. Almost every video leaves me with a feeling of wonder. Culture
at it's highest.

I'm pretty sure everyone on HN knows what TED is, but just in case someone
doesn't, here are some of my favourite talks - they show the breadth of the
topics covered:

\-
[http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_differen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_different.html)
\- 2 minutes about how things we thing work in some way may be completely
different somewhere else

\-
[http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html)
\- how technology really improves lives

\-
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eythor_bender_demos_human_e...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eythor_bender_demos_human_exoskeletons.html)
\- exoskeletons, with _wheelchair woman standing and walking live on the
scene_

\-
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sam_richards_a_radical_expe...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_in_empathy.html)
\- a talk about empathy

And of course, the obligatory one,

\-
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_says_schools_k...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html)
\- how school kills creativity

~~~
wickedchicken
> Almost every video leaves me with a feeling of wonder. Culture at it's
> highest.

Pop culture, yes. There is a whole world of knowledge behind TED's glossy
sheen, and that world is found by looking up original sources. Don't read the
Wikipedia article on Gödel's incompleteness theorem and stop there. Read _On
Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems
I._ It will be hard, but it will be _awesome_. Don't watch a cool TED talk and
immediately show it to all your friends: look up the journal paper the
presenter was referencing and actually _see_ what happened. You will find out
something along the way.

TED has its place in getting people excited about things, but there is much,
much more beyond it. Not all knowledge is packaged in neatly-produced 4 minute
feel-good videos. Go explore :).

~~~
TeMPOraL
> Go explore :).

Thanks for the encouragement :).

Of course TED is not a knowledge compendium, it's a starting point - to get
excited about some idea, technology or solution, or to start a deep discussion
about a particular topic. I always treated it as a "high-level overview"; in
cases of topics one knows a bit about it is easy to see how those talks show
only surface layer of the topics.

------
vijayr
someone collected most links mentioned in the comments
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_the_most_intellectually_stimulating/c4o3csl)

------
primodemus
Both are full of interesting ideas:

<http://lesswrong.com/>

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/>

------
confluence
Calculated Risk (<http://www.calculatedriskblog.com>) - I highly recommend
this awesome blog for my fellow HNers - it plays host to great
discussions/links/facts on the economy, housing, finance and the
global/domestic (US) recovery.

They did a series on the upcoming SF rent/real estate bubble, as well as the
return of housing back in early 2012.

The direct links for those who want more detail:

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/san-francisco-
rent...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/san-francisco-rents-on-
tear.html)

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/bottom-for-
house-p...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/bottom-for-house-
prices.html)

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/wsj-on-housing-
bid...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/wsj-on-housing-bidding-wars-
are-back.html)

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/private-money-
comi...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/private-money-coming-back-
into-housing.html)

------
TylerE
May not quite as high-brow as much of what i've seen listed, but:

Sporcle: <http://www.sporcle.com>

~~~
teeja
Just tried that today (thanks to the Reddit list) and it has over 280,000
quizzes ... some of them are surprisingly robust ... including user-submitted
ones.

------
halvsjur
The fifth site on the list (<https://www.ifeveryoneknew.com/>) of the guy that
started that thread is pretty interesting.

The five points listed there are well known and well documented. Those are not
crazy unfounded theories.

Yet most people I meet do not believe any of them. Why is that? Cognitive
dissonance?

------
SolarUpNote
The Long Now Foundation podcast

<http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/>

------
metaphorical
<http://butdoesitfloat.com> for visual and conceptual thinking.

------
BlackNapoleon
The Last Psychiatrist: <http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/>

------
Samuel_Michon
The Middle East Media Research Institute translates Arab and Persian news into
English. It's fascinating how much it differs from news in the Western world,
in style as well as content.

<http://www.thememriblog.org/middleeastculture>

------
zitterbewegung
This one: <http://cstheory.stackexchange.com>

------
ThomPete
All these are great, but nothing beats <http://www.spacecollective.org>

Just to give you an example is this book recommendation post

[http://spacecollective.org/wilfriedhoujebek/4076/Summery-
Boo...](http://spacecollective.org/wilfriedhoujebek/4076/Summery-Books-Too-
Far-Out-For-Johnny-Depp)

Warning: There is some weird flash thing in the very beginning but just click
to continue.

------
markkat
<http://hubski.com/> You choose who curates content for you. Posts are shared
rather than voted on.

------
Spittie
I really like BetterExplained (<http://betterexplained.com/>). It made me a
bit more interested in math, which i never liked.

I also love the whole StackExchange network, especially skeptics
(<http://skeptics.stackexchange.com>). A great way to learn new stuff from
common myth.

------
ajays
Here are some others that are interesting:

Vitamin Cr : <http://vitamincr.com>

Brain pickings: <http://www.brainpickings.org/>

Synaptic Stimuli: <http://synapticstimuli.com/>

Timoni's blog: <http://blog.timoni.org/>

~~~
MartinMond
I also recommend <http://lesswrong.com/>

------
justinhj
I agree that hn fits the bill well. It is quite limited in the diversity of
topics and type of people, by design.

I've found I also get good mental stimulation by picking free online courses
at random. For example Yale University has a brilliant set of lectures on
Milton, which I knew very little about prior.

------
jameszol
I recommend this as a starting point for finding intellectually stimulating
websites:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cktxy/reddit_let...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cktxy/reddit_lets_compile_a_list_of_the_best_online/)

------
glaze
<http://www.theoildrum.com/>

------
morganf
Unqualified Reservations, by our very own Moldbug: <http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/>

------
scottjad
<http://mises.org> (economics and politics) and <http://volokh.com> (law)

------
stevencorona
<http://lumosity.com> for keeping your mind sharp (costs money, free to test
for 3 days)

~~~
edwardy20
Alternatively, learn to play blindfold chess. Much more challenging than
Lumosity.

~~~
dsrguru
Blindfold chess is certainly effective for improving your spacial memory, but
why leave it at that? I highly recommend anyone and everyone learn the memory
palace technique (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci>), which takes
advantage of the fact that our spacial memory is vastly superior to our memory
for facts, allowing anyone to develop the functional equivalent of a
photographic memory. In _Moonwalking with Einstein_ (a really fun and fast
autobiographical tutorial on memory), the author Joshua Foer explains how to
encode facts into images and then arrange them along spacial layouts to
maximize the brain's potential. In convincing my mother to read the book, I
had her memorize a 10-item shopping list in about five minutes when she was
incredibly tired (which is when her memory and general thinking ability are at
their absolute worst), and she still remembers all ten items, in order, to
this day.

------
mahmud
my favorite news aggregator: scholar.google.com

------
mmphosis
<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/>

------
skbohra123
Thank you, this has to be one of the best thread ever on HN. Good to find
interesting stuff other than HN

------
platz
Casting my vote for <http://www.ribbonfarm.com>

------
known
I'd advocate <http://www.economist.com/>

------
taofu
Hacker News. Simply because it just gifted me this thread, full of
intellectual goodness.

------
AmadKamali
<http://www.3quarksdaily.com/>

------
kul
<http://bookforum.com/>

------
lignuist
<http://www.koko.org/>

------
ececconi
How is Quora not on there?

------
Paul12345534
<http://www.rand.org>

------
nova
htt://www.lesswrong.com (it was better a few years ago)

------
bocmaxima
futility closet <http://futilitycloset.com>

------
Maven911
Slate.com n famous economists blogs

------
readymade
Hacker News! (just kidding)

------
mirceagoia
Quora.com.

------
dmoo
www.Thersa.org I particularly like the animate items

------
comatose_kid
braintripping.com

------
nacker
Intellectual stimulation is not always a pleasant experience, which tends to
make people susceptible to restricting their reading to material with which
they broadly agree.

For most HN readers, I'd suggest visiting a site like <http://www.vdare.com>

------
ybother
reddit is still a great site once you remove the default subreddits and find
some of the more active but smaller subreddits. /r/truereddit regularly has in
depth articles that are still accessible to a general audience.

Science subreddits with a cognitive barrier to entry like /r/neuro are a great
source of news specific their scientific communities. Geographic subreddits
such as /r/[yourmetro] are also a great way to keep in touch with the general
vibe and events of your city.

------
Buzaga
www.cracked.com is one for me, seriously

~~~
jokermatt999
Cracked itself isn't written to intellectually stimulate, but you're right
that it can be. Their lists are frequently excellent starting points for
Wikipedia/research binges, as they cover a lot of interesting topics. I'm
often turned off by their style, but there's no denying that they've covered a
lot of interesting things in their articles, albeit usually with a brief
summary and a joke.

