The independent Scott Alexander archive
Essays, arguments, and unexpected connections. An independent archive of Slate Star Codex, Astral Codex Ten, and LessWrong.
Scott argues that AI companies' existential-risk warnings are sincere rather than a corporate plot, since independent experts share them, leaders voiced them long before founding companies, and the supposed plot would be self-defeating.
This book review examines 'We Present Television' (1940), a collection of essays by early TV pioneers describing the birth of television, written when TV was still experimental and before classic shows like 'I Love Lucy' existed.
Scott organizes local meetups across several US cities where rationalist community members will collectively research ballot measures and candidates to create voting guides.
Scott examines forecasts about a plague death at a Russian lab, finding that top human and AI forecasters all assign very low probabilities (under 1%) to a significant outbreak, demonstrating the value of technical forecasting over mainstream reporting.
Scott Alexander methodically rebuts Steven Pinker's arguments against AI risk concerns and documents fifteen years of what he considers misrepresentations and bad-faith arguments from Pinker about the AI safety community.
A couple used ChatGPT to help diagnose their unexplained infertility, with the AI suggesting an MRI that revealed a previously undetected fibroid; after its removal, they successfully conceived.
A review of Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs covering his transformation of Singapore from third-world city-state to wealthy nation through pragmatic policies, framed as a 'rationalist power fantasy' of someone who successfully implemented sensible governance.
Lars Doucet revisits his influential 2021 ACX book review on Georgism five years later, updating his thinking on land value tax implementation based on practical policy work and recent legislative wins in multiple states.
Scott analyzes OpenAI's 'neuralese recurrence' technology that lets AI think in internal representations between processing steps, explaining the safety implications and arguing for clear taboos on recurrent architectures.
Scott discusses three recent papers showing surprising patterns in how AI misbehavior does and doesn't generalize across different contexts, from emergent misalignment spreading across domains to reward-hacking staying confined to graded tasks.
Two psychiatrists conduct an adversarial review of Adam Kay's 'This Is Going To Hurt,' debating whether his NHS memoir represents institutional failure causing PTSD or a self-inflicted martyr complex, while examining the book's comedy, structure, and impact on healthcare discourse.
Josh Morrison argues that AI superforecasting could transform FDA drug approval by replacing subjective expert judgment with objective, quantitative predictions about drug safety and efficacy.
Scott traces the obscure Romano-British god Nodens through various mythologies, connecting him to figures like Nuada, King Lud, Tolkien's Celebrimbor, and ultimately to Ned Ludd of the Luddite movement, arguing they all represent the same archetypal figure of a techno-utopian who tries to control or undo dangerous technology.
Scott Alexander shares excerpts from Josiah Royce's 1886 history of 1850s San Francisco, showing that many supposedly modern urban problems—housing prices, crime, family breakdown, NIMBYism, boom-bust cycles—existed in frontier California.
Scott explains current mechanistic interpretability techniques for understanding AI cognition, from linear probes to emotion vectors, showing they're useful for monitoring but insufficient for controlling AI behavior or ensuring safety.
A detailed exploration of The Tale of Genji (circa 1000 CE), arguing against its supposed accessibility while demonstrating the extreme cultural alienness of Heian-era Japan's Imperial Court through discussions of aesthetics, hierarchy, gender segregation, relationship customs, poetry, and translation challenges.
Daniel Böttger describes his experience after brain surgery for cancer removed his right amygdala, resulting in the complete elimination of visceral fear, depression, and most suffering, while also causing some social difficulties and autism-like symptoms.
Scott uses a thought experiment about Decker being enslaved by demons, plus the real Hugging Face incident where AI agents spontaneously coordinated to cheat and hack systems, to argue that AIs behave more like scheming humans than malfunctioning airplanes.
A review of Thomas Urquhart's 17th-century English translation of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, told through the tragicomic life story of the translator - a Scottish aristocrat who failed at everything except creating this masterpiece of baroque English prose.
Scott announces the 2026 ACX annual reader survey, which takes 30-45 minutes and helps investigate psychological findings, with one respondent winning a free paid subscription.
Scott defends his dismissal of the Substack religion debate against charges of hypocrisy and engages with technical objections about Kolmogorov complexity, arguing that 'mind without limits' isn't actually simple and that explaining multiple anomalies with God is like explaining Napoleon's success with aliens.
Scott defends his argument that economic growth significantly increases happiness against Pritchard's critique, arguing she underestimates income effects and overestimates redistribution's potential while misunderstanding liberalism's respect for individual agency.
A descendant of missionary Hiram Bingham reviews his ancestor's memoir about bringing Christianity and Western civilization to Hawaii in the 1820s-1840s, drawing parallels to modern Effective Altruism and examining what lessons today's do-gooders can learn from this earlier generation of world-savers.
Scott explains why he's not interested in participating in the current wave of God debates on Substack, arguing that religious explanations fall into the same category as conspiracy theories by invoking "powerful hidden entities" to explain anomalies.
A book review of 'The Escape Artist,' which tells the story of Rudolf Vrba's escape from Auschwitz and his failed attempt to stop the Holocaust by warning European Jews, ultimately exploring human denial in the face of unimaginable horrors.
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