The reader’s shortlist
Essays ranked by captured source likes. Essays without a saved count are listed last.
Scott defends his argument that economic growth significantly increases happiness against Pritchard's critique, arguing she underestimates income effects and overestimates redistribution's potential while misunderstanding liberalism's respect for individual agency.
Scott argues against the concept of "telescopic altruism" - the claim that liberals care more about distant strangers than nearby people - showing that people who care about faraway causes also care about nearby ones, and that compassion is generally correlated across all distances rather than inversely related.
Scott explains the Buddhist claim that 'life is suffering' through a temperature analogy: just as cold is merely the absence of heat, joy is merely less suffering, with nirvana being 'absolute zero suffering' rather than a neutral state.
Scott Alexander explores how love embodies libertarian principles and resists regulation, proposing it as a model for libertarian thinking.
Scott explores the 'missing heritability' problem in genetics, where twin studies show traits like IQ and educational attainment are highly heritable but newer genomic methods find much lower heritability, analyzing various potential explanations for this discrepancy.
Scott proposes the "noncentral fallacy" as a candidate for the worst argument in the world: applying emotional reactions from archetypal category members to non-archetypal examples, illustrated through examples like calling Martin Luther King Jr. a "criminal."
Scott reflects on how COVID-19's massive death toll of 1.2 million Americans has been overshadowed in public discourse by more controversial but less significant aspects of the pandemic.
Scott Alexander presents a satirical, fictional Republican primary debate with absurd rules to highlight candidate personalities and critique political debate formats.
Scott explains the "typical mind fallacy" - the tendency to assume everyone's mind works like your own - using examples from mental imagery, personality differences, and social behavior, arguing that rationality requires overcoming this bias.
A review of L.R. Hiatt's book on Aboriginal anthropology that examines the complexity of their traditional social structures and practices, while exploring broader questions about cultural evolution and the impact of colonialism.
Scott Alexander rejects the 'cultural Christianity' argument, stating that both Christian and secular liberal societies eventually succumb to modernism, making Christianity no more stable than secular alternatives.
Scott Alexander's poem, inspired by a tragic aid airdrop incident in Gaza, explores the challenges and unintended consequences of altruism through various philosophical lenses.
Scott explains why he's not interested in participating in the current wave of God debates on Substack, arguing that religious explanations fall into the same category as conspiracy theories by invoking "powerful hidden entities" to explain anomalies.
Scott Alexander analyzes ivermectin studies for COVID-19, finding most positive results likely due to methodological flaws, fraud, or confounding by parasitic infections.
Scott defends psychology against broad dismissals by showing that the replication crisis primarily affected only social priming within social psychology, while the vast majority of the field consists of solid, replicable research across many subdisciplines.
Scott reviews Tom Wolfe's 'From Bauhaus To Our House', which explains how modernist architecture took over American buildings despite being widely disliked, through a combination of European influence, academic capture, and institutional pressures.
Scott analyzes how the term 'fascist' combines factual meaning with implied violence-justifying connotations, making its casual use potentially dangerous in current political discourse.
Scott Alexander defends effective altruism by highlighting its major accomplishments and arguing that its occasional missteps are outweighed by its positive impact on the world.
Daniel Böttger describes his experience after brain surgery for cancer removed his right amygdala, resulting in the complete elimination of visceral fear, depression, and most suffering, while also causing some social difficulties and autism-like symptoms.
This review explores how schools are primarily designed to maximize motivation rather than learning, explaining why age-graded classrooms and seemingly inefficient group learning have persisted despite numerous attempts at reform.
Scott Alexander examines the problematic nature of emotional support animal letters, highlighting the ethical dilemmas for psychiatrists and the system's shortcomings.
Scott Alexander uses thought experiments to explore how people form coalitions and support networks, relating these to real-world social and political dynamics.
Scott explains why it's important to explicitly acknowledge when you're wrong in an argument before moving on to your next point, rather than just continuing with 'but...'
Scott argues that dismissing AI as 'just a next-token predictor' is like dismissing humans as 'just reproduction machines' - both confuse the optimization process that shaped an entity with how that entity actually thinks.
Scott Alexander reviews 'The Cult of Smart' by Freddie DeBoer, praising its main arguments while criticizing several aspects, particularly DeBoer's stance on education reform.