The independent Scott Alexander archive
Essays, arguments, and unexpected connections. An independent archive of Slate Star Codex, Astral Codex Ten, and LessWrong.
Scott explains why no perfect voting system exists, using examples to show how different voting procedures lead to different outcomes, and discusses mathematical proofs demonstrating that all reasonable voting systems must allow some tactical voting.
Scott explains the economics of bargaining and auctions, showing how prices emerge from negotiations between buyers and sellers when both parties lack perfect information about supply and demand.
Scott defines signaling and explains how it works through examples ranging from college degrees to diamond necklaces, emphasizing both its necessity for conveying credible information and its potential for wasteful resource destruction.
Scott examines experimental data on how people actually behave in Prisoner's Dilemma and Ultimatum Game situations, finding that people use various heuristics like tit-for-tat and fairness considerations rather than purely rational strategies.
Scott explains how real-world solutions to Prisoner's Dilemmas work through social institutions, reputation systems, and evolved emotions like friendship and anger.
Scott explains backward reasoning in game theory through decision trees, culminating in a counterintuitive example where giving the US president line-item veto power could actually reduce the president's ability to achieve desired outcomes.
Scott introduces the Prisoners' Dilemma, showing how rational reasoning leads two criminals to defect against each other even when mutual cooperation would benefit both, then explores why iterating the dilemma doesn't fully solve the problem.
Scott explains Nash equilibria (outcomes where no player regrets their strategy given the other's choice) and Schelling points (focal points that help coordinate between multiple equilibria), using examples ranging from meeting a partner to military strategy to show how these game theory concepts apply to real-world coordination problems.
Scott introduces a 10-post sequence on game theory fundamentals, drawing from 'The Art of Strategy' by Dixit and Nalebuff, with links to all planned posts.
Scott argues that if Big World theories are true and we accept the consequentialist view of identity used by cryonics advocates, then perfect copies of you already exist throughout the multiverse, making cryonics unnecessary for a form of immortality.
Scott asks readers for examples of popular, important, factual questions with high uncertainty and no clear 'responsible' position, to use when teaching probabilistic thinking, noting that his previous examples like global warming have become too polarized.
Scott analyzes four mechanisms that make slippery slopes real, using examples like Murder-Gandhi and playing Civilization, and proposes 'Schelling fences' as the solution - clear stopping points that people can credibly commit to defending.
Scott presents a thought experiment about using perfect knowledge and intellect to take over ancient Rome as an upper bound for understanding AI takeover scenarios.
Scott Alexander presents comprehensive results from the 2011 Less Wrong survey of 1090 respondents, covering demographics, beliefs, probability estimates on various topics, and a calibration test that shows the community performs better than average but has some calibration issues.
Fiction by Scott Alexander
Scott announces a new Less Wrong census and survey to replace the outdated 2009 version, maintaining its structure for comparison while fixing problems and updating questions.
Scott announces an essay competition on 'risk' with a 200 euro first prize, noting the organizer's interest in probability calibration and cognitive biases.
Scott proposes that class-based attitudes toward wealth redistribution are driven by status signaling rather than "last place aversion," where lower middle class people oppose redistribution to differentiate themselves from the poor, while upper middle class people support it to differentiate themselves from the lower middle class.
Scott discusses how people's subjective self-assessments are often miscalibrated, using his own exam experiences and research on physical attractiveness and likeability to argue for replacing internal feelings with objective external measurements.
Scott argues against Eliezer's position that reversed stupidity is never intelligence, showing that observing many people believe something for bad reasons can help identify 'popular claims' that people assert regardless of truth, which lets you properly discount future assertions of those claims.
Scott offers evidence-based advice for buying a home, covering common psychological pitfalls like underestimating commute times, availability bias, and comparison shopping effects.
Scott announces his implementation of 'Dungeons and Discourse,' a philosophy-meets-fantasy RPG, and seeks players for an IRC campaign, particularly those with diverse philosophical views.
Scott argues that mental states like beliefs and preferences may not exist as unified entities in the brain, but rather emerge from collections of behaviors and contextual responses.
Scott explores how people's moral intuitions often conflict and can be reconciled through reflective equilibrium, using the example of inconsistent punishment judgments for theft by people of different socioeconomic classes.
Scott explains connectionism as a neural network-based theory of mind that evolved from spreading activation models, showing how it resolves philosophical problems and mirrors brain function better than classical computing approaches.
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