Erik Hoel (@erikphoel) / X

Erik Hoel

19.7K posts

Erik Hoel

@erikphoel

Placeholder for the scientist and author. Active on Substack not on X. erikhoel.substack.com

erikhoel.substack.com

Joined November 2013

Pinned
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
May 28, 2025
We did it! Or, rather, he did it! Tutoring reading achieved a roughly 3rd-grade reading level at 3-years-old (he tested this, officially, a few months ago). On to math! For which I recently got a 100 tiny plastic ducks...
How I taught my 3-year-old to read like a 9-year-old
From theintrinsicperspective.com
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Feb 21, 2024
They buried the lede on this new study. It's not that exercise beats out SSRIs for depression treatment, but that *just* dancing has the largest effect of *any treatment* for depression. That's kind of beautiful.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Jan 15, 2024
Christian Keil
@pronounced_kyle
Jan 14, 2024
Still blows my mind that you can take ANY MIT COURSE you want, online, for free. Machine learning? Nuclear physics? Quantum computing? All there. Truly unreal.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Jul 31, 2025
1. "Education experts" have been saying for decades that we must wait to start teaching reading until 6-7 for neuroscientific reasons. These reasons appear, as far as I can tell, to be basically made up. Consider this recent article, which quotes a bunch of experts on this.
This post is unavailable.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Aug 20, 2024
Dreams are synthetic data. But why use data so unconnected from the real world? My answer is that it probably helps with overfitting to our daily lives.
This post is unavailable.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Jan 3, 2023
Citation formatting is so pointless. It's just a reflection of the inability of humans to let go of busy work. Why does it matter what city a publishing company is located in????
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Dec 4, 2022
I once knew a guy in college who couldn't imagine pictures. He said he got a flicker of an image while reading the part of Paradise Lost where Lucifer raises a flaming sword to storm the gates of heaven, and that was the only image he ever saw in his mind
Russ Roberts
@EconTalker
Dec 4, 2022
This blew my mind. My inner monologue full-of-pictures mind.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Jun 30, 2024
1. You might remember the finding in evolutionary psychology that women prefer more masculine faces for short-term mating partners, but prefer less masculine faces for long-term mating partners. Yeah, it doesn't replicate.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Jun 8, 2024
The most fundamental difference between the new vs old Star Treks
Morgan Cameron Ross
@Morgan_C_Ross
Jun 6, 2024
80 years ago today, June 6, 1944, James M. Doohan of Vancouver, led D Company of Royal Winnipeg Rifles ashore at Juno beach. He would be shot 6 times, survive and go on to become Scotty on Star Trek.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Dec 30, 2024
John von Neumann has become the poster-child for scientific genius lately. Probably because of the current thinking that genius = high IQ + rationality. But actually von Neumann envied Einstein, the greater scientist, because Einstein had something he lacked.
Amjad Masad
@amasad
Dec 28, 2024
As great as Einstein is, he comes no where close to the brilliance of von Neumann. It’s an error of history that he’s not the most eminent scientist.
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Apr 3, 2024
Scientists sequenced Beethoven's genome from a strand of hair and found a funny result. Applying the gene-wide associations studies to musicality (that we know, there are methodological limits), Beethoven's genetic propensity to musicality was... low?
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Jun 25, 2024
btw my jaw dropped when I found this. Why is this number so high? How do 37% of *all* children in the US get reported to Child Protective Services at some point?
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Jun 25, 2024
Replying to @erikphoel
10. That number is extremely high! Right? Unfortunately, no. It’s pretty much identical to the national average (the base rate). Here’s the cumulative risk of triggering a CPS report by age 18 (from researchers):
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Apr 7, 2023
Elon Musk has blocked all Substack links on Twitter from being RTed or liked. This gives huge advantage to the MSM he claims is bad, but ok. Canceled my Twitter blue, and likely won't be on this godforsaken platform for much longer. Please follow me on Substack (link below)
Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
Apr 3, 2023
That was a shocking fast drop-off. RIP the humanities.