Lizardman's Constant

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

''Slate Star Codex'' was launched in 2013 and was discontinued on June 23, 2020. , the blog is partially back online, with the content restored but commenting disabled. The successor blog, ''Astral Codex Ten'', was launched on January 21, 2021.

Alexander also blogged at the rationalist community blog ''LessWrong'', and wrote a fiction book in blog format named ''Unsong''. A revised version of ''Unsong'' was published on May 24, 2024.

Content

The site was a primary venue of the rationalist community and also attracted wider audiences. 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." ''The New Yorker'' describes Alexander's fiction as "delightfully weird" and his arguments "often counterintuitive and brilliant". Economist Tyler Cowen calls Scott Alexander "a thinker who is influential among other writers".

''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. 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 a 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. Some posts are prefaced with a note on their "epistemic status", an assessment of Alexander's confidence in the material to follow.

Effective altruism

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''." The blog discusses moral questions and dilemmas relevant to effective altruism, such as moral offsets (the proposition that good acts can cancel out bad acts), ethical treatment of animals, and trade-offs of pursuing systemic change for charities.

Artificial intelligence

Alexander regularly writes about advances in artificial intelligence and emphasized the importance of AI safety research.

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.

Controversies and memes

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. Another example of this cited by Alexander is the ''Rolling Stone'' article "A Rape on Campus".

Shiri's scissor

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.

Anti-reactionary FAQ

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 neo-reactionaries to comment on posts and in "culture war" threads on the forum because he wanted to promote an open marketplace of ideas; Alexander engaged in extended dialogues with these users, including his thirty-thousand-word FAQ. Alexander's essays on neoreaction have been cited by David Auerbach and Dylan Matthews as explanations of the movement.

Lizardman's Constant

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. 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.

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.

''The New York Times'' controversy

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. In June 2020, he deleted all entries on ''Slate Star Codex'', stating that a technology reporter from ''The New York Times'' (NYT) 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, and he referred to it as doxing. ''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." ''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. 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.

Prior to the article's publication, several commentators argued that ''The New York 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. 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'' 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." As reported by ''The Daily Beast'', the criticism by Alexander and his supporters that the paper was doxing him caused internal debate among ''The New York Times'' staff.

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.

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, which he published on ''Astral Codex Ten''.

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

References

External links

slatestarcodex.com
the original, now discontinued blog

''Astral Codex Ten''
the successor blog.

Scott Alexander's writings
on LessWrong

{{LessWrong

Internet properties established in 2013
Works about effective altruism
Rationalism
Philosophy blogs
Science blogs