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Blogging The Anissimov – Smith Reaction Debate
Scott Alexander reviews and critiques a polite but underwhelming video debate between Noah Smith and Michael Anissimov on neoreactionary ideas.
21 min read 3,172 words
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2,008 essaysSSC
Book Review: A Future For Socialism
Scott reviews 'A Future for Socialism', finding its economic proposals underwhelming but valuable for its insights on corporate governance and principal-agent problems.
18 min read 2,666 words
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Book Review: After Virtue
Scott Alexander critiques Alasdair MacIntyre's 'After Virtue', finding fault with its arguments for virtue ethics and its historical claims about morality in ancient societies.
15 min read 2,290 words
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Book Review: Against The Grain
Scott Alexander reviews 'Against The Grain', which argues that early grain agriculture and state formation were detrimental to human welfare and mainly benefited emerging state powers.
21 min read 3,212 words
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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
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Book Review: Ages Of Discord
Scott reviews 'Ages of Discord', which applies cyclic theories of civilizational rise and fall to modern America, finding the data interesting but the core theory questionable.
43 min read 6,622 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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Book Review: All Therapy Books
Scott Alexander critiques therapy books, highlighting their exaggerated claims and questioning the validity of their approaches, based on his clinical experience and historical misdiagnoses in psychology.
21 min read 3,193 words
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Book Review and Highlights: Quantum Computing Since Democritus
Scott Alexander reviews 'Quantum Computing Since Democritus' by Scott Aaronson, sharing insights gained despite the book's complexity and his own mathematical limitations.
21 min read 3,139 words
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Book Review: Behavior – The Control Of Perception
Scott reviews Will Powers' book on Perceptual Control Theory, finding it convincing for explaining lower-level brain functions but skeptical of its application to higher-level concepts.
25 min read 3,846 words
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Book Review: Capital In The Twenty-First Century
Scott Alexander reviews Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century', finding its analysis of long-term economic trends and inequality compelling but pessimistic about proposed solutions.
37 min read 5,698 words
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Book Review: Chronicles Of Wasted Time
Scott Alexander reviews Malcolm Muggeridge's autobiography, examining his experiences exposing Stalin's regime and the West's willful ignorance of Soviet crimes.
48 min read 7,335 words
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Book Review Contest: Call For Entries
Scott Alexander announces a book review contest for Slate Star Codex, outlining submission guidelines and prizes for the winners.
5 min read 698 words
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Book Review: Eichmann In Jerusalem
Scott Alexander reviews Hannah Arendt's 'Eichmann in Jerusalem', exploring key aspects of the Eichmann trial and the Holocaust, and reflecting on their implications.
57 min read 8,698 words
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Book Review: Evolutionary Psychopathology
Scott reviews a book applying evolutionary psychology to psychiatry, finding the approach intriguing but hard to verify and potentially open to misuse.
37 min read 5,616 words
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Book Review: History Of The Fabian Society
Scott Alexander reviews 'History of the Fabian Society', examining how this socialist organization became influential and why its ideas were compelling in late 19th century Britain.
46 min read 7,091 words
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Book Review: Hive Mind
Scott Alexander reviews 'Hive Mind' by Garett Jones, which argues that national IQ matters more for economic success than individual IQ, while raising several criticisms of the book's methodology and conclusions.
29 min read 4,487 words
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Book Review: Hoover
The review examines Herbert Hoover's life, from his business success and humanitarian work to his presidency and post-presidential career, presenting him as a complex and influential figure in American history.
77 min read 11,786 words
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Book Review: House of God
Scott Alexander reviews 'House of God', a satirical novel about medical internship that exposed systemic issues in healthcare and influenced real-world changes.
36 min read 5,502 words
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Book Review: Human Compatible
Stuart Russell's 'Human Compatible' presents AI safety concerns and potential solutions in an accessible way, though the reviewer has reservations about its treatment of current AI issues.
33 min read 5,043 words
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Book Review: Inadequate Equilibria
Scott Alexander reviews 'Inadequate Equilibria' by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a book exploring systemic failures, decision-making, and the limits of social consensus.
56 min read 8,532 words
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Book Review: Infinite Jest (alternate title: “Look At Me! I Read Infinite Jest!”)
A review of David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest', exploring its themes, structure, and critique of postmodern society through comparison with 'Illuminatus' and analysis of its complex narrative.
24 min read 3,598 words
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Book Review: Inventing The Future
Scott Alexander reviews 'Inventing The Future', critiquing its communist strategy while acknowledging its utopian vision.
50 min read 7,632 words
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Book Review: Just Giving
Scott Alexander reviews 'Just Giving' by Rob Reich, criticizing its arguments against philanthropy by showing how they could also be used to condemn book-writing.
22 min read 3,374 words
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Book Review: Legal Systems Very Different From Ours
Scott reviews David Friedman's book on unconventional legal systems, exploring how different societies have developed unique ways to enforce laws and resolve conflicts without centralized government.
36 min read 5,431 words