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Author Archives: Scott Alexander
Against Tulip Subsidies
I. Imagine a little kingdom with a quaint custom: when a man likes a woman, he offers her a tulip; if she accepts, they are married shortly thereafter. A couple who marries sans tulip is considered to be living in … Continue reading
…And I Show You How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes
. Seen on Tumblr, along with associated discussion: Yellow: People’s minds are heartbreaking. Not because people are so bad, but because they’re so good. Nobody is the villain of their own life story. You must have read hundreds of minds … Continue reading
OT21: Master And Commenter
This is the semimonthly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. This week, there are no comments that need signal-boosting, no links that need correcting, no one in special need of your money, and no changes … Continue reading
That Chocolate Study
Several of you asked me to write about that chocolate article that went viral recently. From I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How: “Slim by Chocolate!” the headlines blared. A team of German researchers had found … Continue reading
No Time Like The Present For AI Safety Work
I. On the recent post on AI risk, a commenter challenged me to give the short version of the argument for taking it seriously. I said something like: 1. If humanity doesn’t blow itself up, eventually we will create human-level … Continue reading
Links 5/15: Link Floyd
Researchers Find Bitterness Receptors On Human Heart. This wins my prize for “most unintentionally poetic medical headline”. New volleys in the debate about whether moderate drinking is good for your health or it’s all just bad statistics. At the age … Continue reading
AI Researchers On AI Risk
I first became interested in AI risk back around 2007. At the time, most people’s response to the topic was “Haha, come back when anyone believes this besides random Internet crackpots.” Over the next few years, a series of extremely … Continue reading
Beware Summary Statistics
Last night I asked Tumblr two questions that had been bothering me for a while and got some pretty good answers. I. First, consider the following paragraph from JRank: Terrie Moffitt and colleagues studied 4,552 Danish men born at the … Continue reading
Bicameral Reasoning
[Epistemic status: Probably not the first person to think about this, possibly just reinventing scope insensitivity. Title with apologies to Julian Jaynes] Non-American readers may not be familiar with the history of the US House and Senate. During the Constitutional … Continue reading
OT20: Heaven’s Open
This is the semimonthly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1. Corrections from last week’s links: thinking probably doesn’t fuel brain cancers (thanks, Urstoff), and the discussion of the psychology replication results is still … Continue reading