The reader’s shortlist
Essays ranked by captured source likes. Essays without a saved count are listed last.
Scott Alexander reviews recent developments in prediction markets, including Google's internal market and Metaculus' 'fortified essays', while discussing challenges and applications in various fields.
Scott Alexander explores various applications and recent developments in prediction markets and forecasting, covering topics from election betting to teacher evaluation and social media moderation.
Scott Alexander analyzes prediction markets for the Ukraine crisis, introduces Manifold Markets, and discusses recent Metaculus questions and forecasting initiatives.
Scott Alexander announces Stage 2 of the 2023 Prediction Contest, encouraging participants to use any resources to make accurate predictions.
Scott analyzes why people are more curious about pseudoscience than real science, arguing that our sense of mystery is an evolutionary algorithm that responds to solvability, worldview-altering potential, social status, and human-level problems rather than actual importance.
Scott Alexander announces the ACX Reader Research Survey, inviting researchers to submit questions for the blog's readership by July 10.
Scott Alexander discusses a new expert survey on long-term AI risks, highlighting the diverse scenarios considered and the lack of consensus on specific threats.
Scott shares a draft FAQ arguing for consequentialism, targeting intelligent readers without philosophy backgrounds, and requests feedback especially from non-consequentialists.
Scott Alexander announces a plan to create voter guides for major US cities, listing meetup details for eight locations where ACX readers will collaborate on local election recommendations.
Scott Alexander examines recent developments in model cities, including political threats to ZEDEs in Honduras, El Salvador's Bitcoin city plan, and the mysterious Praxis project.
Scott Alexander highlights and responds to expert comments on his previous posts about Zulresso and Zuranolone, covering various aspects of these drugs and related topics.
Scott Alexander announces the final rules and details for his postponed book review contest, including submission guidelines, prizes, and publication plans.
Scott examines new techniques in forecasting and prediction markets, including reciprocal scoring and iterated markets, while highlighting the accuracy of prediction markets compared to traditional media.
Scott announces the draft of the 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey and requests community feedback on question clarity, suggestions for additional questions, and recommendations for an internet IQ test before the official launch.
Scott Alexander summarizes reader comments about CBT-i apps, their effectiveness, pricing challenges, and FDA regulation.
Scott Alexander explores expert and reader comments on his post about motivated reasoning and reinforcement learning, discussing brain function, threat detection, and the implementation of complex behaviors.
Scott responds to various comments on his article about supplement labeling, addressing concerns about the industry and providing additional context and analysis.
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 Alexander presents brief descriptions of 66 diverse projects seeking funding or support as part of the ACX Grants program.
Scott Alexander opens voting for the book review contest, listing 17 finalists and providing a voting link.
The review analyzes Robert Ellickson's 'Order Without Law', which argues that close-knit communities often develop welfare-maximizing social norms that supersede formal laws.
Scott provides updates and reader responses to his previous 'Quests and Requests' article, addressing the status and potential of each proposed project.
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 explains the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which measures unconscious associations by testing reaction times when categorizing concepts, and argues it's better understood as measuring distances in conceptual space rather than as a simple test for prejudice.
Scott explains two psychological techniques for detecting hidden attitudes: the Bogus Pipeline (a fake lie detector that reduces conscious lying) and the Bona Fide Pipeline (a reaction-time computer test that measures unconscious associations).