Hacker Courses The online courses programmers keep recommending, ranked from 20 years of public forum comments.
i
#513 overall

Arithmetic, Population and Energy (Albert Bartlett)

YouTube

1 recommender · 1 thread · recommended in 1 year, 2020 · score 1.0

Search for it ↗

A lecture series by physicist Albert Bartlett on the mathematics of exponential growth, applying simple arithmetic to population growth and energy consumption. It is delivered as a long recorded talk available on YouTube.

Commenters describe it as absolutely amazing and say it changes how you see the news, though the only comment here mentions it briefly as a lecture video worth including.

Science & Engineeringbeginnerfreevideo lectures#exponential growth#population#energy#arithmetic#bartlett

Recommendations by year

20062026

What commenters said (1)

  1. Strongly recommendsjiggawatts2020in “Ask HN: What are some deep, mentality changing books?”

    For me, several books by Greg Egan fall into this category. Permutation City, Diaspora, Quarantine, and Schild's Ladder have all... changed me.

    I was a different person before and after I had read those books, and now I categorise all works of fiction into those that forever alter my way of thinking and those that do not.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan#Novels

    Which reminds me, I should finish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_(series)

    The Culture series by Iain Banks, especially Inversions also satisfy this requirement, as does The City at the End of Time by Greg Bear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_at_the_End_of_Time -- which is a difficult to consume masterpiece that nonetheless left me permanently horrified in the way that H. P. Lovecraft tried but failed.

    For the non-fiction category the CGP Grey video "The Rules for Rulers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

    and Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU

    have totally changed the way I look at all political discourse, and this is coming from someone who has already absorbed The Prince. It's based on the Dictator's Handbook, which I should read also, but the CGP video was an effective summary already!

    https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

    Last, but not least, if I'm allowed to include lecture videos, then the "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" lecture by Al Bartlett is absolutely amazing. You will never see the news in the same way again after watching it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY

Related courses

Keyboard

In the course grid
←↑→↓
Move between courses
Home End
Start / end of row (with Ctrl: first / last)
PgUp PgDn
Jump several rows
Enter
Open course
S
Save / unsave course
1–5
Best, Trending, Hidden gems, Evergreen, Saved
[ ]
Previous / next topic
On a course page
← →
Previous / next course in your list
S
Save / unsave
O
Open the course website
Esc
Back to the grid
Everywhere
/
Search
T
Light / dark theme
?
This help