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Slate Star Codex

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Slate Star Codex
Screenshot of the Slate Star Codex home page prior to deletion
Type of site
Blog
Available inEnglish
Successor(s)Astral Codex Ten
Created byScott Alexander
URLwww.slatestarcodex.com [formerly]
astralcodexten.substack.com [currently]
LaunchedFebruary 12, 2013; 11 years ago (2013-02-12)
Current statusActive (as Astral Codex Ten, Slate Star Codex is online but inactive)

Astral Codex Ten, formerly called Slate Star Codex (SSC), is a blog focused on science, medicine (especially within psychiatry), philosophy, politics, and futurism. The blog is written by Scott Alexander Siskind,[1] a San Francisco Bay Area psychiatrist,[2] under the pen name Scott Alexander.

Slate Star Codex was launched in 2013, and was discontinued on June 23, 2020, after Alexander's full name was published by the New York Times, in what Alexander and his supporters referred to as doxing.[3][4] As of July 22, 2020, the blog is partially back online, with the content restored but commenting disabled. The successor blog, Astral Codex Ten (ACX),[2] was launched on Substack on January 21, 2021.

Alexander also blogged at the rationalist community blog LessWrong,[5] and wrote a fiction book in blog format named Unsong.[6]

Notable posts

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The New Yorker states that the volume of content Alexander has written on Slate Star Codex makes the blog difficult to summarize, with an e-book of all posts running over nine thousand pages in PDF form.[5] Many posts are book reviews (typically of books in the fields of social sciences or medicine) or reviews of a topic in the scientific literature. For example, the March 2020 blog post "Face Masks: Much More Than You Wanted To Know" analyzes available medical literature and comes to the conclusion that, contrary to early guidance by the CDC, masks are likely an effective protection measure against COVID-19 for the general public under certain conditions.[5][7] Some posts are prefaced with a note on their "epistemic status," an assessment of Alexander's confidence in the material to follow.[5]

Effective altruism

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In 2017, Slate Star Codex ranked fourth on a survey conducted by Rethink Charity of how effective altruists first heard about effective altruism, after "personal contact", "LessWrong", and "other books, articles and blog posts", and just above "80,000 Hours."[8] The blog discusses moral questions and dilemmas relevant to effective altruism, such as moral offsets (the proposition that bad acts can be cancelled out by good acts), ethical treatment of animals, and trade-offs of pursuing systemic change for charities.[9]

Artificial intelligence

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Alexander regularly wrote about advances in artificial intelligence and emphasized the importance of AI safety research.[10]

In the long essay "Meditations On Moloch", he analyzes game-theoretic scenarios of cooperation failure like the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons that underlie many of humanity's problems and argues that AI risks should be considered in this context.[11]

Controversies and memes

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In "The Toxoplasma of Rage", Alexander discusses how controversies spread in media and social networks. According to Alexander, memes that generate a lot of disagreement spread further, in part because they present an opportunity to members of different groups to send a strong signal of commitment to their cause. For example, he argues that PETA with its controversial campaigns is better known than other animal rights organizations such as Vegan Outreach because of this dynamic.[12] Another example of this cited by Alexander is the Rolling Stone article "A Rape on Campus".[13]

Shiri's scissor

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In the short story "Sort By Controversial", Alexander introduces the term "Shiri's scissor" or "scissor statement" to describe a statement that has great destructive power because it generates wildly divergent interpretations that fuel conflict and tear people apart. The term has been used to describe controversial topics widely discussed in social media.[14]

Anti-reactionary FAQ

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The 2013 post "The Anti-Reactionary FAQ" critiques the work and worldview of the neoreactionary movement, arguing against the work of Curtis Yarvin (whose views include a belief in natural racial hierarchies and a desire to restore feudalism). Alexander allowed neoreactionaries to comment on posts and in "culture war" threads on the forum on the grounds that he wanted to promote an open marketplace of ideas; Alexander engaged in extended dialogues with these users, including his thirty-thousand-word FAQ.[5] Alexander's essays on neoreaction have been cited by David Auerbach and Dylan Matthews as explanations of the movement.[15][16]

Lizardman's Constant

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In the 2013 post "Lizardman's Constant is 4%," Alexander coined the term "Lizardman's Constant," referring to the approximate percentage of responses to a poll, survey, or quiz that are not sincere.[17] The post was responding to a Public Policy Polling statement that "four percent of Americans believe lizardmen are running the Earth", which Alexander attributed to people giving a polling company an answer they did not really believe to be true, out of carelessness, politeness, anger, or amusement.[17]

Alexander suggested that polls should include a question with an absurd answer as one of the options, so anyone choosing that option could be weeded out as a troll.[18][19]

Reception

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The site was a primary venue of the rationalist community and also attracted wider audiences.[5] The New Statesman characterizes it as "a nexus for the rationalist community and others who seek to apply reason to debates about situations, ideas, and moral quandaries."[4] The New Yorker describes Alexander's fiction as "delightfully weird" and his arguments "often counterintuitive and brilliant".[5] Economist Tyler Cowen calls Scott Alexander "a thinker who is influential among other writers".[20]

The New York Times controversy

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Alexander used his first and middle name alone for safety and privacy reasons, although he had previously published Slate Star Codex content academically under his real name.[2] In June 2020, he deleted all entries on Slate Star Codex, stating that a New York Times technology reporter intended to publish an article about the blog using his full name. Alexander said that the reporter told him that it was newspaper policy to use real names,[21] and he referred to it as doxing.[5] The New York Times responded: "We do not comment on what we may or may not publish in the future. But when we report on newsworthy or influential figures, our goal is always to give readers all the accurate and relevant information we can."[22] The Verge cited a source saying that at the time when Alexander deleted the blog, "not a word" of a story about SSC had been written.[23] The Poynter Institute's David Cohn interpreted this event as part of an ongoing clash between the tech and media industries, reflecting a shift from primarily economic conflicts to fundamental disagreements over values, ethics, and cultural norms.[24]

Prior to the article's publication, several commentators argued that the Times should not publish Alexander's name without good reason. Writing in National Review, Tobias Hoonhout said that the newspaper had applied its anonymity policy inconsistently.[21] The New Statesman's Jasper Jackson wrote that it was "difficult to see how Scott Alexander's full name is so integral to the NYT's story that it justifies the damage it might do to him", but cautioned that such criticism was based solely on Alexander's own statements and that "before we make that call, it might be a good idea to have more than his word to go on."[4] As reported by The Daily Beast, the criticism by Alexander and his supporters that the paper was doxing him caused internal debate among Times' staff.[3]

Supporters of the site organized a petition against release of the author's name. The petition collected over six thousand signatures in its first few days, including psychologist Steven Pinker, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, economist Scott Sumner, computer scientist and blogger Scott Aaronson, and philosopher Peter Singer.[5]

According to New Statesman columnist Louise Perry, Scott Alexander wrote that he quit his job and took measures that made him comfortable with revealing his real name,[25] which he published on Astral Codex Ten.[1]

The New York Times published an article about the blog in February 2021, three weeks after Alexander had publicly revealed his name.[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b Lyons, Kim (February 13, 2021). "Go read this New York Times report on SlateStarCodex and Silicon Valley tech leaders". The Verge. Archived from the original on February 21, 2021. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d Metz, Cade (February 13, 2021). "Silicon Valley's Safe Space". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on February 13, 2021. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
  3. ^ a b Tani, Maxwell (June 24, 2020). "The Latest Squabble Inside The New York Times". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on June 26, 2020. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c Jackson, Jasper (June 25, 2020). "Why is the New York Times threatening to reveal blogger Scott Alexander's true identity?". New Statesman. Archived from the original on June 27, 2020. Retrieved June 28, 2020.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (July 9, 2020). "Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley's War Against the Media". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 10, 2020.
  6. ^ Yudelson, Larry; Palmer, Joanne; Adler, Leah (January 3, 2017). "The great American kabbalistic novel?". Jewish Standard. Archived from the original on July 7, 2023. Retrieved July 6, 2023.
  7. ^ Alexander, Scott (March 23, 2020). "Face Masks: Much More Than You Wanted To Know". Slate Star Codex. Archived from the original on August 20, 2020.
  8. ^ Mulcahy, Anna; Barnett, Tee; Hurford, Peter (November 17, 2017). "EA Survey 2017 Series Part 8: How do People Get Into EA?". Rethink Charity. Archived from the original on April 29, 2019. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  9. ^
  10. ^ Miller, James D. (2017). "Reflections on the Singularity Journey". In Callaghan, Victor; Miller, James; Yampolskiy, Roman; Armstrong, Stuart (eds.). The Technological Singularity. The Frontiers Collection. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 223–228. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-54033-6_13. ISBN 978-3-662-54031-2. Archived from the original on September 9, 2020.
  11. ^
  12. ^ Steve Omohundro (January 16, 2018). "Costly Signaling". This idea is brilliant: lost, overlooked, and underappreciated scientific concepts everyone should know. Brockman, John, 1941- (First ed.). New York. ISBN 9780062698216. OCLC 1019711625.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  13. ^ Lewis, Helen (November 26, 2015). "If activists want real change they must ditch the dying cat". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 8, 2020.
  14. ^
  15. ^ Auerbach, David (June 10, 2015). "When All It Takes to Be Booted From a Tech Conference Is Being a "Distraction," We Have a Problem". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved August 4, 2020. If you're curious, the tireless Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex has written extensive rebuttals of neoreactionary theory, which go to prove Brandolini's Law
  16. ^ Matthews, Dylan (April 18, 2016). "The alt-right is more than warmed-over white supremacy. It's that, but way way weirder". Vox. Archived from the original on August 31, 2017. Retrieved August 4, 2020. Note that these empirical claims are, well, not true. Scott Alexander explains well here; his devil's advocate account of reactionary beliefs is also well worth your time.
  17. ^ a b Alexander, Scott (April 12, 2013). "Lizardman's Constant is 4%". Slate Star Codex. Archived from the original on October 12, 2021.
  18. ^ Elledge, Jonn (June 7, 2021). "More people think the world is run by lizards than that the PM negotiated a very good Brexit deal". New Statesman. Archived from the original on October 29, 2021. Retrieved October 14, 2021.
  19. ^ Hartman, Rachel (April 20, 2021). "Did 4% of Americans Really Drink Bleach Last Year?". Harvard Business Review. Archived from the original on October 26, 2021. Retrieved October 14, 2021.
  20. ^ Cowen, Tyler (May 4, 2018). "Tyler Cowen: Holding up a mirror to intellectuals of the left". Twin Cities Pioneer Press. Archived from the original on June 21, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2019.
  21. ^ a b Hoonhout, Tobias (June 23, 2020). "What an NYT Reporter's Doxing Threat Says about the Paper's 'Standards'". National Review. Archived from the original on June 23, 2020. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  22. ^ Athey, Amber (June 23, 2020). "The death of the private citizen". Spectator USA. Archived from the original on June 23, 2020. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  23. ^ Schiffer, Zoe (July 16, 2020). "How Clubhouse brought the culture war to Silicon Valley's venture capital community". The Verge. Archived from the original on July 16, 2020. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  24. ^ Cohn, David (September 1, 2020). "When journalism and Silicon Valley collide". Poynter Institute. Archived from the original on September 1, 2020. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
  25. ^ Perry, Louise (February 24, 2021). "The Slate Star Codex saga proves a new blasphemy code is emerging among liberals". New Statesman. Archived from the original on February 24, 2021.
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