The Library of Scott Alexandria: Essays on Psychology, Rationality, and Philosphy

by Scott Alexander

Includes nearly 200 of Scott Alexander's essays, compiled by Rob Bensinger in 2015.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Science

796 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
This one is set up as Scott^^^Alexander

Scott Alexander is a pen name used by a blogger on The Slate Star Codex, Astral Codex Ten and other sites.

Please note: Blog posts are not considered valid published e-books to be listed on Goodreads.

Reviews

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basically the world's greatest blogger (though shoutout to IOZ, L'Hote, Mencius Moldbug, and Kevin Williamson).

Hilariously I didn't realize that many of these pieces were written by the same guy until I saw the full list, at which point my jaw dropped . . . it felt similar to realizing, many years after the fact, that DFW had written the Rolling Stone McCain article that I'd read at age 17, which I had distinctly remembered, in the intervening years, as being the best magazine article I had ever come across.

Anyway, when I say that he's the greatest blogger of all time, I use the word "blogger" advisedly; like 99.99% of successful bloggers, Scott is compelling and readable and also not at all an expert or authority on almost anything that he writes about (except for psychology, which is his field).

He has intellectual honesty and makes great points (seriously, MANY great points), but when he strays beyond his expertise it's just sort of painful -- though, to be sure, when the other so-called "rationalist" bloggers out there do the same thing, it's 10x worse. Still, there are definitely some autodidact-related blind spots, especially re: theology/religion, like I just want to sit the guy down and give him a proper theological reading list, or something?

I always think of what someone on Twitter said about him years ago, that Scott's popularity is due to the fact that "he explores heavy moral questions with only flimsy contemporary tools. It's like with each blog post he's attempting the Kon-Tiki voyage, but on a raft made from Diet Coke bottles."

This is exactly right -- Scott is like the distilled essence of every really smart person in a Reddit thread or blog comment section, where the key is that experts generally don't bother participating in such discussions. He's a really inquisitive and intellectually honest guy who decided that, well, expertise is great and all, but the real answer to all questions can be found by talking to people in comment sections and becoming a Google power-user. (When experts would occasionally jump into SSC comment sections, I felt like it was reasonably common that they were gently correcting a misinterpreted graph/argument, which is telling.)

Scott's articles have a certain tonal similarity to the "Wait But Why" blog, where I find myself thinking, "okay, so you did Google searches for three months and added clip art"?, though of course Scott's work is head-and-shoulders above anything published on WBW.

But I don't want to be negative, this guy is truly amazing -- he's a better writer and a better thinker than I am, certainly. So many good articles: "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup," "Historical Realism," "The Control Group Is Out of Control" . . . at this point in my life (mid-thirties), after many years of writing and thinking about various topics, I think it's fair to say that my views are settled on almost all issues, and I've thought a great deal about everything that I hold a strong opinion on. So imagine my surprise when Scott's "Anti-Reactionary FAQ" article legitimately made me change my views on that topic (just a couple years ago), which, to me, is mind-boggling. There were shortcomings in various parts of that 33,000 word (?!) article, but it turns out that a really smart, intellectually honest person Googling the shit out of a topic is more effective than you might think.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not really a book. But he's been so important to me that I wanted to include him here.

ePub version free here.

[Anya · Rating 5 out of 5]

SSC is dead, long live ACX!
There are so many useful and/or interesting concepts and frameworks SSC has introduced me to over the years, and it's a treasure to have it all collected as one.

My all-time favourite essay of his is quite likely 'Who by Very Slow Decay'. So many difficult-to-address points, given the sanctity of life and such, but so direly in need of being said aloud. It was cathartic to see someone notice and discuss this with clarity, when I had only just begun to vaguely sense the dissonance of this system. More surprising to me was how it's his #10 most popular article (on the defunct SSC blog), meaning there are legions of people that found it as interesting as I did.

I've been noticing the same prominent pattern over the past ~year as explored in 'What is Signalling, Really?', except that I've been unifying all these behaviours under the concept of 'potlatch' (or in other terms, the handicap principle). This goes for drinking contests, surfacely-bad advertising, 'weirdness points', then leisure class + now luxury belief class, [and so on].

-----
Starting from the top, the ones that stand out to me upon reading through this time 'round:

* My top top--
Talking Snakes: a Cautionary Tale (arrogance is a killer);
Book Review: The Nurture Assumption (to reread when a mom);
Against Tulip Subsidies (cut out the damn tulip middleman);
SSC Gives a Graduation Speech (oh, this makes me laugh so hard, and not just because the school system is a joke);
A Thrive/Survive Theory of the Political Spectrum;
Meditation on Creepiness (ah, True Love x modern culture);
Meditation on the War on Applause Lights (sometimes I want to get the Principle of Charity tattooed on my chest, too!);
In Favor of Niceness, Community and Civilizations ("Boll weevils in our beautiful walled garden!" + "liberalism [as] a terrifying unspeakable Elder God");
Right is the New Left;
I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup;
Meditations on Moloch

* Against fuzzy thinking--
The Apologist and the Revolutionary;
Beware the Man of One Study (good reminder);
If it's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing with Made-up Stats;
Are You a Solar Deity?;
Epistemic Learned Helplessness;
Medicine, as not Seen on TV;
Proving Too Much;
Social Psychology is a Flamethrower;
All in All, Another Brick in the Motte

* Misc good stuff--
Blue- and Yellow-Tinted Choices;
Historical realism (too funny!);
The Least Convenient Possible World;
Typical Mind and Politics;
Game Theory as a Dark Art;
Applied Picoeconomics;
Schelling Points and Slippery Slopes;
The Noncentral Fallacy;
Physical and Mental Behavior;
Ego-Syntonic Thoughts and Values;
Doing Your Good Deed for the Day;
Read History of Philosophy Backwards;
Non-Libertarian FAQ;
A Blessing in Disguise, Albeit a Very Good Disguise;
Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarians;
A Signaling Theory of Class x Politics;
Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell;
Can Atheists Appreciate Chesterton?;
Practically-a-Book Review: Dying to be Free;
Meditations on Superweapons (+ the "and Bingo" sequel);
All Debates are Bravery Debates;
We are all MsScribe (just.. wow);
A Response to Apophemi on Triggers;
The Wonderful Thing about Triggers;
Book Review: The Two-Income Trap;
Book Review: Red Plenty

[Timo Brønseth]

I've grown a lot on his posts, and it has shaped my worldview more than a little. His posts are very intelligent, valuable and well-written. I think the main value I got from them was learning--through reading his many posts where he tries to summarise and reason about a topic of research--more about how good research is done, and how to identify good vs bad research. He's taught me more about how to filter out the signal from the noise in different fields of science, to get most of the value while avoiding being mislead by spurious research.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know what else to say but: 😌 I'm done. I think I shouldn't have commited to reading from cover to cover and maybe skipped around more. Some articles I found more interesting than others but now I can say I am an SSC fan right? Right?