# Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People by Maciej Cegłowski

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People by Maciej Cegłowski and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Praised as a rare critique of AI doom that understands the case for it; critics call it poorly written and dated.

## Why people recommend it

- Useful source for AGI discussions (2 comments): "I like this essay, and have very often referred to it when someone talks about AGI." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361523)) "Some good sources on the matter in general" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47016400))
- Still holds up on rereading (2 comments): "upon rereading completely holds up technically" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872021)) "still hits just as hard as it did back then" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870176))

## What people warn about

- Claims more than it delivers (2 comments): "For all its talk of inoculation, this is a terribly written essay." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361790)) "The talk does the former and pretends it's done the latter." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48366648))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [The Grug Brained Developer by Carson Gross](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grug-brained-developer.md): 13 recommend
- [Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley](https://hackerapproved.com/p/choose-boring-technology.md): 11 recommend
- [The Bitter Lesson by Rich Sutton](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bitter-lesson.md): 10 recommend
- [Things You Should Never Do by Joel Spolsky](https://hackerapproved.com/p/things-you-should-never-do.md): 10 recommend
- [The Illustrated Transformer by Jay Alammar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/illustrated-transformer.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People by Maciej Cegłowski", https://hackerapproved.com/p/superintelligence-the-idea-that-eats-smart-people/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).