1
I Am Deleting the Blog
[EDIT 2/13/21: This post is originally from June 2020, but there’s been renewed interest in it because the NYT article involved just came out. This post says the NYT was going to write a posi…
Scott Alexander
Thanks for bearing with me the past few months. My new blog is at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ . I’ll try to have a less unwieldy domain name working soon.
- Popular posts
- 98
- Total points
- 13,803
- HN comments
- 9,051
- Rank
- #52 personal
Visit slatestarcodex.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Jun 2013 – Jan 2024
Society, Policy & Culture 65Life, Learning & Writing 48Science & Space 33Tech Industry & Business 13History & Retro Computing 6Math & Algorithms 4
2
Bullshit Jobs
A surprisingly common part of my life: a patient asks me for a doctor’s note for back pain or something. Usually it’s a situation like their work chair hurts their back, and their work …
3
Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
[I am not an economist or an expert on this topic. This is my attempt to figure out what economists and experts think so I can understand the issue, and I’m writing it down to speed your goin…
4
Considerations on Cost Disease
I. Tyler Cowen writes about cost disease. I’d previously heard the term used to refer only to a specific theory of why costs are increasing, involving labor becoming more efficient in some ar…
5
Wage Stagnation
[Epistemic status: I am basing this on widely-accepted published research, but I can’t guarantee I’ve understood the research right or managed to emphasize/believe the right people. Som…
6
Silicon Valley: A Reality Check
The nation has spoken: weird pointless $400 wi-fi enabled juicer company Juicero is the perfect symbol of Silicon Valley. So says the Washington Post: Juicero Shows What’s Wrong With Silicon …
7
Scott Alexander Reviews Thiel's Zero to One
I. Zero To One might be the first best-selling business book based on a Tumblr. Stanford student Blake Masters took Peter Thiel’s class on startups. He posted his notes on Tumblr after each l…
8
Book Review: Hoover
You probably remember Herbert Hoover as the guy who bungled the Great Depression. Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should remember him as a bold explorer looking for silver in the jungles of Bu…
9
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…
10
Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia
Some Democrats angling for the 2020 presidential nomination have a big idea: a basic jobs guarantee, where the government promises a job to anybody who wants one. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, E…
11
Book Review: Red Plenty
I. I decided to read Red Plenty because my biggest gripe after reading Singer’s book on Marx was that Marx refused to plan how communism would actually work, instead preferring to leave the e…
12
Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy
[Conflict of interest notice: I’ve volunteered for both private and public charities, but more often private. I received a small amount of money for work done for a private charity ten years …
13
[REPOST] The Non-Libertarian FAQ
[This is a repost of the Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka “Why I Hate Your Freedom”), which I wrote about five years ago and which used to be hosted on my website. It no longer completely refle…