The independent Scott Alexander archive
Essays, arguments, and unexpected connections. An independent archive of Slate Star Codex, Astral Codex Ten, and LessWrong.
Scott Alexander finds a correlation between animals' cortical neuron count and people's intuitive perception of their moral value, based on a small survey.
The post examines the relationship between neuron count and intelligence across species, challenging traditional brain size measures and exploring implications for AI development.
Scott Alexander argues that Free Energy/Predictive Coding and Perceptual Control Theory are fundamentally the same, and proposes using PCT's more intuitive terminology to help understand FE/PC.
Scott Alexander reviews 'Inventing The Future', critiquing its communist strategy while acknowledging its utopian vision.
Scott Alexander examines AI-generated poetry produced by Gwern's GPT-2 model trained on classical poetry, highlighting its strengths and limitations.
Scott Alexander explores how straight-line trends on graphs might mask the true impact of interventions, using examples like the Clean Air Act and Moore's Law to illustrate the complexity of interpreting such data.
Scott Alexander creates a humorous 'Puritan' checklist to rank historical American figures, lamenting the loss of this eccentric, morally serious archetype in modern American culture.
Scott Alexander critiques the FDA approval of esketamine for depression, discussing issues with drug development, efficacy, cost, and administration requirements.
Scott Alexander shares a diverse collection of links on topics including architecture, history, science, politics, and economics, offering brief commentaries and insights on each.
Scott Alexander introduces 'prospiracy theories', positive conspiracy-style memes designed to spread true and beneficial information, in response to the rapid spread of conspiracy theories on social media.
Scott Alexander presents a series of nested dialogues exploring the nature of understanding and meaning, from AI to humans to angels to God, questioning what true understanding entails.
Scott Alexander analyzes an article about Facebook moderators' working conditions, drawing parallels to his experience in psychiatric hospitals and discussing the challenges of content moderation.
Scott Alexander argues for valuing thinkers who produce original ideas, even if they're often wrong, criticizing the tendency to dismiss intellectuals for their mistakes.
Scott analyzes wage stagnation since 1973, examining various explanations and concluding that while wages have risen 40-50%, there is still significant decoupling from productivity due to multiple factors.
Scott Alexander explains why the controversial Culture War thread was removed from r/slatestarcodex due to harassment, and discusses the challenges of hosting spaces for difficult conversations online.
Scott Alexander discusses unintentional plagiarism in his writing, reflecting on how writers blend their influences at various levels of recognition.
Scott Alexander explores GPT-2's unexpected capabilities and argues that it demonstrates the potential for AI to develop abilities beyond its explicit programming, challenging skepticism about AGI.
Scott Alexander draws parallels between OpenAI's GPT-2 language model and human dreaming, exploring their similarities in process and output quality.
Scott Alexander presents results from an SSC Survey on SSRI usage, covering effectiveness, side effects, and discontinuation experiences among 2,090 users.
Scott Alexander compares two contrasting models of how social movements gain or lose respectability, using examples from gay rights and environmental issues to explore their implications.
Scott Alexander reviews 'Zero To One' by Peter Thiel, discussing its advice on creating monopolies, believing in secrets, and embracing definite optimism for successful startups.
A diverse collection of news items and interesting links covering science, technology, politics, and culture, with brief commentary on each.
Scott Alexander shares his 118 predictions for 2019, covering politics, economics, technology, and personal matters, with assigned probability percentages for each prediction.
Scott Alexander introduces the 'Psychiat-List', a crowd-sourced list of recommended mental health professionals for the rationalist community.
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