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Survey Results On SSRIs
Scott Alexander presents results from an SSC Survey on SSRI usage, covering effectiveness, side effects, and discontinuation experiences among 2,090 users.
11 min read 1,596 words
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2,008 essaysSSC
Survey Results: Sexual Roles
Scott Alexander analyzes SSC survey data on sexual roles, finding strong gender and orientation influences, but no connection to self-sabotaging behaviors or altruism.
5 min read 746 words
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Survey Results: Suffering Vs. Oblivion
Scott Alexander surveys people's preferences between suffering and oblivion, finding split opinions and weak correlations between different scenarios and real-world beliefs.
8 min read 1,091 words
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Swifties 3: The Race Is Not To The Swifty
Scott Alexander presents 50 new 'Tom Swifties', a form of wordplay combining quotes with punning adverbs, in his third collection of these jokes.
6 min read 896 words
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Symptom, Condition, Cause
Scott Alexander argues that psychiatric diagnoses, while imperfect, are useful tools despite potentially combining multiple conditions with different causes.
9 min read 1,390 words
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Take The New Nootropics Survey
Scott Alexander announces a new survey on nootropics experiences, inviting readers to participate in the 2020 SSC Nootropics Survey.
1 min read 64 words
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Talents Part 2: Attitude vs. Altitude
Scott Alexander uses NBA player heights as an analogy to discuss intelligence and IQ, advocating for a balanced view that acknowledges both innate talent and effort.
13 min read 1,993 words
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Targeting Meritocracy
Scott Alexander defends true meritocracy against misguided critiques, arguing for a system based on demonstrated ability rather than educational credentials.
13 min read 1,877 words
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Tax Bill 3: Don’t Mess With Taxes
Scott Alexander responds to criticisms of his tax bill posts, maintains that wealth distribution is more important than growth, and argues the bill likely won't benefit the poor as much as current spending.
11 min read 1,659 words
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Teachers: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Scott Alexander reviews research on teacher effectiveness, examining Value-Added Modeling (VAM) and its criticisms, while expressing uncertainty about claimed long-term impacts on adult earnings.
49 min read 7,545 words
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Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Scott Alexander examines evidence for technological unemployment, finding little current impact but signs of 'technological underemployment' pushing workers to lower-skill jobs.
45 min read 6,822 words
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Ten Things I Want To Stop Seeing On The Internet In 2014
Scott Alexander humorously criticizes ten irritating internet trends he hopes will end in 2014, ranging from overused words to memes and logical fallacies.
10 min read 1,549 words
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Terrorists Vs. Chairs: An Outlier Story
Scott Alexander critiques the argument that terrorism is less concerning than mundane accidents, showing how excluding 'outlier' events can dangerously skew risk assessments for threats like terrorism and pandemics.
8 min read 1,187 words
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Testimonials for SSC
Scott Alexander shares a collection of mostly critical and often insulting testimonials about his blog Slate Star Codex, revealing the diverse and polarized reactions to his work.
13 min read 1,919 words
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Thank you for doing something ambiguously between smoking and not smoking
Scott Alexander argues that e-cigarettes are likely replacing regular cigarettes rather than non-smoking, making them beneficial for public health despite government attempts to ban them.
12 min read 1,738 words
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That Chocolate Study
Scott Alexander dissects a hoax chocolate study to critique common misconceptions about nutrition science, study design, and statistical methods.
19 min read 2,924 words
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The Alzheimer Photo
Scott Alexander analyzes a photo of Alois Alzheimer's research team, discussing the reasons for their scientific productivity and theorizing about patterns of scientific progress.
7 min read 969 words
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The Amish Health Care System
Scott Alexander examines the Amish health care system, which costs much less than the American system while maintaining good health outcomes, and considers its implications for broader healthcare policy.
28 min read 4,269 words
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The Anti-Reactionary FAQ
This post systematically rebuts common Reactionary political beliefs on topics like societal decline, traditional governance, progress, and social issues through data analysis and historical examples.
228 min read 35,234 words
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The APA Meeting: A Photo-Essay
Scott Alexander humorously describes his observations at the American Psychiatric Association meeting, highlighting pharmaceutical influence, social justice focus, and historical context of psychiatry.
30 min read 4,622 words
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The Argument From Cultural Evolution
The post examines cultural evolution, arguing that while within-culture evolution is effective, between-cultures evolution is too slow and weak to justify cultural practices like opposition to gay marriage.
14 min read 2,016 words
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The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project
Scott examines the phenomenon of Hungarian scientific geniuses in the early 20th century, attributing it to a high concentration of high-IQ Ashkenazi Jews in Budapest rather than exceptional education.
30 min read 4,597 words
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The Battle Hymn
The post explores the Battle Hymn of the Republic, its lesser-known verses, history, and evolutionary development as a song.
4 min read 546 words
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Semite Times: The Bible In Palindromes
Scott presents a creative reinterpretation of the Bible using palindromes to represent key themes and stories from each major section.
2 min read 237 words