The independent Scott Alexander archive
Essays, arguments, and unexpected connections. An independent archive of Slate Star Codex, Astral Codex Ten, and LessWrong.
A replication of a 2023 neuroscience study on brain entrainment and learning found that the original effect likely doesn't exist, revealing how the study obscured key issues through statistical averaging and highlighting how AI tools are democratizing scientific scrutiny.
Scott provides detailed probabilistic timelines and beliefs about AGI development, AI safety, geopolitics, and future outcomes, with his median expectation being AGI in 2031 and 20% probability of existential catastrophe given current safety efforts.
Scott announces the finalist selection phase for the 2026 Book Review Contest, asking readers to help rate 162 entries using a new website built by Rob Ennals.
Scott reviews a history of the Frankfurt School, explaining their response to Marxism's failures through negative dialectics, cultural criticism, and the belief that society needed conceptual transformation before communist revolution could succeed, while examining their actual influence on modern leftism.
Scott uses Claude AI to help research California primary races and finds its tailored candidate analyses and recommendations align well with his eventual voting choices, suggesting AI advisors could improve democratic participation.
Scott argues that even if AGI requires a new paradigm beyond LLMs, we shouldn't expect significant delays, since Lindy's Law suggests major paradigm shifts could occur within 3-5 years, and new paradigms typically emerge precisely when scaling hits limits.
Scott categorizes California's 60 gubernatorial candidates into humorous types rather than covering them individually, from generic top-tier politicians to increasingly bizarre fringe candidates with conspiracy theories, supernatural visions, and incomprehensible platforms.
Scott debunks the "all exponentials become sigmoids" argument against AI risk by showing how forecasters consistently predict premature flattening of exponential trends, and argues that without deep understanding of AI dynamics, we should expect current AI progress to continue for roughly as long as it's already been going.
Scott uses Nostalgebraist's analysis of AI fiction's 'eyeball kicks' to develop a theory where bad taste means overusing cheap tricks that work on unsophisticated audiences, while good taste involves complex patterns only experts can appreciate - then questions whether sophisticated taste actually produces more pleasure.
Scott examines three "model organisms" for understanding aesthetic taste: vexillology (flag design), movie plot holes, and tech company naming, using each to explore different aspects of what makes something tasteful or tasteless.
Scott argues that aesthetic discussions wrongly conflate sensory delight with novelty and context, and that modern art's obsession with being part of a historical conversation has led to the abandonment of beauty in favor of mechanical innovation.
Scott explores what constitutes a deontological bar (hard moral rule) by examining when consequentialist reasoning should be constrained, using debates within AI safety about working with AI companies versus pursuing regulation as his main examples.
Scott argues that projects attempting to "solve debate" through argument mapping or similar technologies are fundamentally doomed because real arguments don't work like logical syllogisms, people don't actually want structured debates, and there's no evidence this approach has ever worked.
Scott Alexander's April 2026 links roundup covers diverse topics including Venn diagram complexity, flag desecration laws, AI developments, political analysis, scientific studies, and various cultural curiosities.
Scott Alexander provides fifteen pieces of writing advice for aspiring bloggers, emphasizing authenticity, avoiding microdishonesty, mastering basic disciplines before breaking rules, and finding original angles on common topics rather than recycling blogosphere content.
Scott argues that Viktor Orban's election loss doesn't vindicate him or disprove concerns about democratic backsliding, since autocrats can do many undemocratic things and still lose elections.
Scott argues against the concept of "telescopic altruism" - the claim that liberals care more about distant strangers than nearby people - showing that people who care about faraway causes also care about nearby ones, and that compassion is generally correlated across all distances rather than inversely related.
Scott Alexander reports on a 1990s Buddhist sun miracle in Bangkok that closely resembles the famous 1917 Fatima miracle, suggesting sun miracles may be a specific psychological phenomenon related to meditation practices rather than divine intervention.
Scott discusses how new schizophrenia genetics research confirms that psychiatric conditions combine both 'tradeoff' components (with compensating advantages) and 'failure' components (purely negative), then argues this pattern is common sense for any multifactorial problem.
A satirical dialogue showing how opponents of AI pause proposals often ignore that advocates explicitly call for bilateral agreements with China, not unilateral pauses.
Scott argues that Trump supporters and conservative-aligned people who push back on bad administration policies should be supported rather than pressured to publicly denounce Trump, as they're often the only ones who can effectively prevent worse outcomes.
Scott argues that AI 'hallucinations' should be called 'shameless guesses' because they work the same way as students guessing on tests - making their best attempt when uncertain rather than admitting ignorance, revealing an alignment problem.
A guest post arguing that ratifying the Congressional Apportionment Amendment from the original Bill of Rights would expand the House to 6,641 members and fix Congress by reducing gerrymandering, diluting donor influence, and increasing constituent accountability.
Scott argues that California's proposed billionaire tax is actually an extortion scheme by SEIU, which has a history of proposing destructive ballot initiatives and withdrawing them in exchange for concessions.
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