The Bugs in Our Mindware

And immediately follows that with an example where "four hits is no less likely to happen by chance than two hits and two misses or three hits and one miss" (perhaps if he said "two hits followed by two misses", but that would make no sense in the context, so I think he meant exactly what he wrote, i.e. that having 2 hits out of 4 is as likely as having 4 out of 4.)

Honestly, this is just ridiculous.

If you click on the domain name to the right of the link you'll see that the site is being submitted by a few HN regulars. All it takes from there is 3 additional upvotes. Similar patterns exist around techcrunch, the wall street journal, the economist and many other domains that appear on HN with clockwork regularity. Pretty much every article on TC for instance is submitted within a very short time from the time they press 'publish' on TC and many HN'ers will submit these articles. It's more or less the exact reason why HN exists, to share links related to certain subjects and websites that cater to those subjects will see a great deal of exposure.

Most of the comparable sites are penalized * on HN, but Nautilus isn't because we had the impression that their articles were of higher quality. Wrong?

* This penalty doesn't prevent stories from making the front page, it just requires more votes to do it, or a moderator to waive the penalty. It's the solution we came up with for media websites that put out reams of fluff but also the occasional solid story.

generally I've found that an article (bad or good) sets the topic for really interesting discussions and points of views here in HN

For years I've talked to people about getting basic logic skills taught in school. Everyone looks at me like I have a number of heads between 1 and 3.