A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “institutional critique”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott critiques the phrase 'the purpose of a system is what it does' by showing how it confuses outcomes with intentions and leads to absurd or paranoid conclusions.
Scott Alexander explores the ethics of using Sci-Hub, introducing 'Dark Rule Utilitarianism' to argue that pirating scientific papers could be ethical despite being illegal.
Scott Alexander discusses the online forum Longecity, where users organize group buys of experimental chemicals, seeing it as a risky but intriguing counterbalance to slow drug approval processes.