Top Posts

My most popular posts are very long and dense, but if you’re up for that kind of thing, you can read:

If you’re looking for something a little shorter or lighter, you can find yourself a different blog check out for example:

More specifically by topic:

I am a doctor and try (usually unsuccessfully) to focus this blog on medicine. I’m especially interested in the pharmaceutical system and drug discovery process, but I also write about my own experiences practicing psychiatry:

My interest in drug discovery naturally segues into scientific and statistical methods in general. My longest piece on this is ‘The Control Group Is Out Of Control’, linked above, but I’ve also written about:

I write a lot about politics from a vaguely centrist point of view with occasional forays to the right or left. Some especially interesting political threads here include:

Although I acknowledge the importance and danger of racism and sexism, I also think a lot of the social justice movement as it currently exists is an attempt to sanctify ad hominem arguments and poor epistemology that can be used by a would-be cognitive elite to abuse and humiliate anyone who disagrees with them. I start the explanation in ‘I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup’, linked above, but there is more in:

Sometimes I get bored and just research the hell out of something to try to resolve a difficult question to my own satisfaction. Thus far this has resulted in cost-benefit analyses like:

I’m also very interested in rationality – questions like how debates work in general and how we can conduct them better. I find the current set of logical fallacies mostly orthogonal to the way debates between smart people fail, so I have tried to do better:

I’ve also tried writing a little bit of fiction, of which I most like:

Other people who might be less biased have put together their own recommended lists here and here. And you can find a full archive of all SSC posts here.

36 Responses to Top Posts

  1. SocioDude says:

    You might be interested to know that the “Control Group is out of Control” link is incorrect.

  2. Zargon says:

    Burdens link is malformed. Feel free to delete this if you like after fixing.

  3. Glen Raphael says:

    The link to “burdens” in paragraph three is broken due to html (a “br” tag) that got inside the link target.

  4. Karin says:

    Why do you think believing in man made global warming, gay marriage, attacking the Koch brothers etc is consistent with labeling yourself centrist? Aren’t these all litmus tests for belonging to the Blue Tribe?

  5. Pingback: On Moloch and a Disneyland with no children | The Daily Pochemuchka

  6. Jeck says:

    This is a great blog. I say that, never having “followed” anyone’s blog before. I think I’ll be following yours now, and catching up on past posts. It’s a shame I don’t still live in A2, I’d be interested in attending a meetup.

  7. KidWinTinker says:

    I know this is a silly question to ask here, but is there a way to comment on older posts/ archived posts?

  8. Decius says:

    Why isn’t “The Toxoplasma of Rage” listed?

  9. daniel says:

    You should repost the story of emily and control on SSC!

    http://squid314.livejournal.com/293753.html

  10. stargirl says:

    Great Work.

    +MANY internet points

  11. I feel the pill story was quite entertaining and could go in the fiction section:
    https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/
    Also the Moloch one needs more of a plug/hook imho. Feel free to delete this post Scott.

  12. s^3 says:

    I would put social justice for the highly demanding of rigor on here

  13. Eike Scholz says:

    “Top Post” Request – I hope:

    First of all, thanks for your content, it “radiates” comforting reason and saneness.

    With regards to a resent discussion on a survey here, where at least one question had the structure “Was X and while you did not wan’t Y ?” and the supposed unambiguity of that question, could you please write something on the current state of knowledge in psychiatry on the ambiguity of wanting. I mean, you can want to eat chocolate and want to not get fat. You can want to be successful and not want to work hard, you can want to be sexually taken, because it makes you feel attractive and you can want to be not brutally raped, etc.
    That seems to be a question type about priority decisions, whose answer in it self does not provide very meaningful data, while not beeing very ambiguous. It just does not tell very much but seems invite for bias boldly. Is there any literature on that kind of kind of bias, or a post that I am not aware of?

    Anyway I see this kind of error a lot in discussions about democratic decision making. Its depressing. How can we determine what a society wants if its already that problematic on the individual level?

    By the way what kind of entity is “wanting” in formal logic? It seems a bit hard to formalise. And than how do you statistics with that?

    Best Regards,

    Eike Scholz

  14. Thomas says:

    Thanks so much Scott. Have spent the last couple of weeks reading many of your posts which I find highly interesting and educating and have definitely broadened my thoughts. Keep up the good work.

  15. zmpster says:

    2 year reader of this blog, first time commenter. I wish to make as strong an argument as I can for including https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/ here. That post almost single-handedly convinced me to take the Giving What We Can pledge, and I think it’s probably the most important post you’ve written, in terms of impact on the readers and, ultimately, the world.

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  18. Edvanza says:

    Yes, I agree the following links helped me a lot to understand Turchin’s predictions a lot. Just go through the following link and you all will get a rough idea about the big history.
    Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
    Books by Ian Morris such as Why the West Rules and War! What is it Good For
    Book review from /r/TheMotte
    Elliot/Kondratriev wave theories
    https://www.coursera.org/learn/big-history
    Better Angels of our Nature
    I also took an online course on https://www.edvanza.com/blog/
    and enjoyed it a lot since it is very engaging. You can also try it out for free.

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