Scott Alexander reviews 'The Cult of Smart' by Freddie DeBoer, praising its main arguments while criticizing several aspects, particularly DeBoer's stance on education reform. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reviews Freddie DeBoer's book 'The Cult of Smart', which argues that intelligence is largely innate and that society's obsession with academic achievement is misguided. The review praises the book's main theses but criticizes DeBoer's arguments on race, meritocracy, and education reform. Alexander particularly takes issue with DeBoer's support for expanding public education despite acknowledging its limitations, leading to a passionate critique of the school system as harmful to children. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander examines whether psychiatric conditions result from evolutionary failures or tradeoffs, proposing that most disorders involve a combination of both. Longer summary

Scott Alexander explores the nature of psychiatric conditions, discussing whether they result from evolutionary failures or tradeoffs. He presents evidence for both hypotheses, noting that recent research favors the failure hypothesis. However, he argues that some conditions likely involve both failures and tradeoffs. He uses analogies from justice systems and nuclear war scenarios to illustrate how failures and tradeoffs can interact. The post concludes by suggesting that most psychiatric disorders exist on a spectrum from mostly-tradeoff to mostly-failure, and critiques the neurodiversity movement's blanket statements about conditions like autism. Shorter summary