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Book Review: Age of Em
Scott Alexander reviews Robin Hanson's 'Age of Em', praising its creativity while critiquing its assumptions and arguing the future may be even stranger.
59 min read 9,060 words
The independent Scott Alexander archive
Scott Alexander, collected.
Essays, arguments, and unexpected connections. An independent archive of Slate Star Codex, Astral Codex Ten, and LessWrong.
The collection
2,008 essaysSSC
Three Great Articles On Poverty, And Why I Disagree With All Of Them
Scott Alexander critiques three articles on poverty, proposing a framework to categorize poverty approaches, and reluctantly advocates for basic income as the best available solution despite its flaws.
16 min read 2,461 words
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Teachers: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Scott Alexander reviews research on teacher effectiveness, examining Value-Added Modeling (VAM) and its criticisms, while expressing uncertainty about claimed long-term impacts on adult earnings.
49 min read 7,545 words
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Skin In The Game
Scott Alexander examines the ethics of sympathy for workers in difficult professions, exploring the tension between economic incentives and personal experiences in shaping our views on labor issues.
25 min read 3,856 words
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Solidarity
Scott Alexander discusses the British junior doctors' strike, detailing the harsh working conditions and systemic issues that likely led to it, based on his experience in a similar system.
19 min read 2,838 words
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Links 5/16: Linko de Mayo
A collection of interesting links and studies on various topics, from bad statistics and media coverage to technological progress and scientific discoveries, with commentary from Scott Alexander.
28 min read 4,206 words
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Hidden Test Post
The post only contains the phrase 'Hidden test post' without any additional content.
1 min read 3 words
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Myers’ Race Car Versus The General Fitness Factor
Scott Alexander refutes PZ Myers' race car analogy against genetic engineering for intelligence, showing that high IQ positively correlates with many beneficial traits.
23 min read 3,458 words
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Be Nice, At Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness
Scott Alexander proposes the principle 'be nice, at least until you can coordinate meanness' and applies it to ethical dilemmas and blog moderation.
15 min read 2,228 words
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Why Were Early Psychedelicists So Weird?
Scott Alexander examines why early psychedelic researchers often became eccentric, proposing that psychedelics might permanently increase openness to unusual ideas.
12 min read 1,813 words
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Book Review: Albion’s Seed
Scott reviews 'Albion's Seed' by David Fischer, exploring how four British cultural groups that settled colonial America shaped regional cultures and may still influence modern US political divisions.
64 min read 9,826 words
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Links 4/16: They Can’t Link Our Dick
A links roundup examining various scientific studies, social developments, and historical findings, with a particular focus on recent research about confounding variables and replication issues in science.
17 min read 2,623 words
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A Theory About Religion
Scott Alexander theorizes that ancient religions were inseparable from culture, comparing them to modern American civil religion and explaining how they evolved into distinct belief systems.
15 min read 2,317 words
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The Ideology Is Not The Movement
Scott Alexander examines tribalism, arguing that ideologies often serve as 'rallying flags' for tribes rather than defining their core identity.
50 min read 7,647 words
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Beware Regional Scatterplots
Scott Alexander cautions against drawing strong conclusions from regional scatterplots, demonstrating how apparent correlations can be artifacts of regional clustering rather than true relationships.
8 min read 1,168 words
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Book Review: My Brother Ron
Scott reviews a book arguing against deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, agreeing with many of its claims but ultimately disagreeing with its conclusion.
50 min read 7,612 words
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Links 3/16: Klapaucius And URL
A Links post presenting various interesting news and studies from different fields, with brief commentary on each item.
22 min read 3,366 words
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The Price Of Glee In China
Scott Alexander examines the paradox of economic growth not increasing happiness in developing countries, questioning the moral implications for global development efforts.
12 min read 1,852 words
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Book Review: The Art Of The Deal
Scott Alexander reviews Trump's 'The Art of the Deal', finding it mostly autobiographical with little useful business advice, and revealing Trump's deal-focused worldview.
25 min read 3,811 words
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Non-Shared Environment Doesn’t Just Mean Schools And Peers
The post argues that 'non-shared environment' in twin studies is often misunderstood, encompassing more than just different experiences and potentially overestimating the impact of nurture on personality and life outcomes.
15 min read 2,256 words
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Links 3/16: Rulink Class
A links roundup post covering recent developments in science, medicine, psychology and politics, with particular focus on research replication issues and the 2016 election season.
20 min read 3,099 words
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Reverse Voxsplaining: Prison and Mental Illness
Scott Alexander criticizes the idea that prisons have replaced mental hospitals, arguing for better community and forensic mental health care instead of long-term institutionalization.
19 min read 2,847 words
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Against Interminable Arguments
Scott Alexander examines the problem of endless, unproductive arguments in online communities and proposes ways to mitigate them while maintaining healthy discourse.
13 min read 1,861 words
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2016 Nootropics Survey Results
Scott Alexander presents results from a survey of 850 people rating various nootropics, showing a range of perceived effectiveness and exploring addiction potential for some substances.
11 min read 1,606 words
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Two Attitudes In Psychiatry
Scott Alexander explores two contrasting attitudes in psychiatry, discussing their merits and pitfalls, while reflecting on his own tendency to favor a more straightforward approach.
16 min read 2,354 words
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