The reader’s shortlist
Essays ranked by captured source likes. Essays without a saved count are listed last.
Scott Alexander shares fascinating excerpts from 'Legal Systems Very Different From Ours', highlighting unique aspects of various historical and cultural legal systems.
Scott Alexander reviews and comments on passages from David Friedman's 'The Machinery of Freedom', discussing various libertarian ideas and their implications.
Scott Alexander shares and comments on highlights from Philip Tetlock's 'Superforecasting', discussing forecasting, cognitive biases, and organizational effectiveness.
Scott Alexander shares and comments on excerpts from Joseph Henrich's 'The Secret of Our Success', exploring cultural evolution and its impact on human societies.
Scott Alexander shares intriguing excerpts from 'Willpower', a book on self-control, while cautioning readers about the claims' reliability and expressing skepticism about some assertions.
Scott Alexander lists five reasons why Guy Fawkes Day should be forgotten, demonstrating how easy it is to generate arguments when one puts some thought into it.
Scott Alexander shares and briefly comments on various insightful quotes from Jonathan Haidt's 'The Righteous Mind', covering topics like psychology, politics, and religion.
Scott Alexander shares and comments on highlighted passages from 'The Two-Income Trap', covering various economic and political issues related to bankruptcy and financial distress.
Scott Alexander analyzes the complex relationship between contraception and abortion rates, concluding that in societies where contraceptives are already legal, increasing access likely decreases abortion rates.
Scott Alexander humorously invents various absurd types of 'eclipses', ranging from astronomical to metaphorical and apocalyptic.
Scott Alexander examines two cases of online mob justice in feminist circles to argue that movements abandoning civility ultimately self-destruct.
Scott Alexander criticizes mainstream media's recent focus on 'coddled' college students in social justice debates, arguing it overlooks more serious issues and reflects a bias towards elite academic perspectives.
Scott Alexander investigates the prevalence of Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder (HPPD) and explores potential connections between perception, cognition, and belief in supernatural phenomena.
Less Wrong is hosting a party in Berkeley for Bay Area SSC readers, with Scott Alexander and the Less Wrong team attending.
Scott Alexander critiques a study claiming to have found biomarkers for suicide risk, arguing that the results are overstated and such a test would have limited clinical utility even if accurate.
Scott Alexander creates an interactive geographic-style map visualizing the landscape of effective altruism, including cause areas, organizations, and key individuals.
Scott humorously describes his frustrating attempts to dispose of an oversized trash can, exploring various communication strategies with garbage collectors.
Scott Alexander presents an interactive concept map of the rationalist community, inspired by previous community maps and showcasing various websites and adjacent communities.
Scott updates his stance on marijuana legalization based on new data showing increased traffic accidents, but remains uncertain due to the complexity of the issue.
Scott Alexander examines evidence on marijuana legalization's effects on usage, health, and drug war costs, finding uncertainties too large for firm conclusions but suggesting traffic accidents may be the key factor.
Scott Alexander criticizes Ted Chiang's article that compares AI risk to capitalism, arguing that the analogy is flawed and the reasoning behind it is unsound.
Scott Alexander explores a theory suggesting that complex features of human biology evolved as defenses against parasite manipulation, discussing its implications for understanding psychiatric medications and biological complexity.
Scott Alexander presents a series of nested dialogues exploring the nature of understanding and meaning, from AI to humans to angels to God, questioning what true understanding entails.
Scott Alexander analyzes the health risks of eating processed meat, demonstrating how to put such risks in perspective and interpret mortality statistics accurately.
Scott Alexander presents a roundup of recent medical and psychological studies, covering topics from UV light exposure to belief in science during stress.