Stanford: the videos Hacker News recommends
Not the channel's most viewed videos: the ones HN commenters kept linking with real commentary. The top pick, "1. Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology", one of the most consistently recommended lecture series on HN, praised as fascinating, funny and eye-opening about human behavior across many scales.
- 15 HN recommenders 15 months 2012–2026lectureOne of the most consistently recommended lecture series on HN, praised as fascinating, funny and eye-opening about human behavior across many scales.
- 14 HN recommenders 12 months 2009–2026lectureHN returns to it repeatedly as the best single introduction to understanding clinical depression.
- 11 HN recommenders 11 months 2008–2020courseRecommended as the rigorous, math-heavy original course, deeper than the Coursera version, for learning machine learning.
- 9 HN recommenders 8 months 2009–2023talkHN returns to it for motivation and perspective, and quotes it constantly, especially the connect-the-dots and remembering-death passages.
- 7 HN recommenders 8 months 2012–2025lectureHN regulars treat it as an essential, fun Hofstadter talk for any discussion of concepts, analogy and metaphor.
- 3 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2024lectureHN repeatedly recommends it as an approachable, math-light route to understanding mass and the Higgs field.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2014–2023talkRecommended as a detailed, candid case study of scaling a real system from zero users to millions.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2012–2022lectureHN recommends it as a classic look at systems engineering at Google, whose fundamentals have held up well despite its 2010 date.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2010–2025talkHN points to it as the best account of what Self made possible and what its team went on to do.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2011–2024lectureCommenters rate the whole playlist as high-quality, clear teaching that builds foundations from memory and machine instructions up to different paradigms.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2021lectureRecommended in game-theory and cooperation threads, with the whole lecture series endorsed.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2009–2014lectureHN commenters recommend it as a way to understand what the VPRI group considers core, such as supporting any syntax on one JIT compiler and removing boundaries between application and interpreter.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2011–2023talkHN people point to it as an inspiring, rewatchable speech, especially for anyone worrying about wasted time or direction.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2015–2024lectureHN recommends it, and the whole course, for understanding the brain and language acquisition.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2021lectureHN recommends the series as an entertaining, serious route into physics for self-learners comfortable with basic math.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2025lectureHN recommends Susskind as a very good explainer who uses real math at an accessible level, and links this lecture series for self-learners.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2011–2022lectureHN recommends Boyd's lectures as a fantastic, often funny follow-up to linear algebra and as a step in machine learning study paths.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2009–2026lectureHN suggests it as a free lecture for beginners that eases them into writing readable, reusable code.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2010–2017lectureRecommended as a researcher presenting actual diet-study results, including a trial with 311 women on different diet books.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2019–2021lectureHN cites it as a real academic source to back up or correct claims about emotion, anger and anxiety in the brain.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2016–2023talkMentioned as a great talk and related reading in threads on parsing techniques.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2017–2024lecturePointed to as a clear statement of irreducible complexity, the limits of reductionism, and why simple neuron-level explanations fall short.
Questions
Which Stanford video does Hacker News recommend most?
1. Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology: recommended in 15 different months by 15 HN users between 2012 and 2026.
Is this every Stanford video?
No. Only videos that at least three different HN users linked, in at least three different months, with at least a sentence of their own commentary. That filter is what makes the list useful.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.