Daniel Böttger describes his experience after brain surgery for cancer removed his right amygdala, resulting in the complete elimination of visceral fear, depression, and most suffering, while also causing some social difficulties and autism-like symptoms.

Scott defends his argument that economic growth significantly increases happiness against Pritchard's critique, arguing she underestimates income effects and overestimates redistribution's potential while misunderstanding liberalism's respect for individual agency.

Scott reviews three methods for reducing caffeine's half-life to enable evening coffee consumption without sleep disruption, ultimately recommending paraxanthine as the safest and most effective option.

Scott's monthly links roundup covering AI progress, the coming flood of philanthropic funding to effective altruism from AI companies, new research on persuasion and forecasting, and various scientific and cultural topics ranging from dementia prevention to Romanian politicians' embarrassing quotes.

Scott shares his monthly collection of interesting links from around the internet, covering topics from Jeremy Bentham's linguistic legacy to AI developments, with characteristic commentary and fact-checking caveats.

A review of 'Great and Desperate Cures' by Elliot Valenstein, which examines the history of lobotomy and psychosurgery, explaining how tens of thousands of patients underwent dangerous brain operations from the 1930s-1950s despite poor evidence of effectiveness.

Scott analyzes whether whole-body screening MRIs are worth it by doing a detailed cost-benefit calculation, finding they cost about $108,000 per quality-adjusted life-year saved (right around the threshold of cost-effectiveness), and argues that while rich people immune to anxiety might benefit, most people claiming to be rational about medical decisions probably aren't.

A replication of a 2023 neuroscience study on brain entrainment and learning found that the original effect likely doesn't exist, revealing how the study obscured key issues through statistical averaging and highlighting how AI tools are democratizing scientific scrutiny.

Scott demonstrates that US crime rates are at historic lows using multiple data sources, then debunks the theories that this is due to reporting bias or improved medical care, before briefly discussing possible explanations for the decline.

Scott reviews the state of prediction markets after explosive growth, finding that most volume is degenerate sports gambling rather than useful forecasting, and proposes both technical solutions and two potential futures for the field.

Scott Alexander presents 51 links covering AI progress and safety, political developments, scientific research, cultural oddities, and ongoing philosophical debates about miracles and education reform.

A detailed investigation of the Sun Miracle of Fatima in 1917, where 70,000 people witnessed the sun appear to spin, change colors, and fall to earth, analyzing witness testimonies, skeptical explanations, and similar phenomena at other Marian apparition sites.

Scott analyzes the sudden emergence of commercial trait-based embryo selection services, discussing both the scientific validity and ethical implications of selecting embryos for health outcomes, intelligence, and physical traits.

A detailed review of a 1995 paper introducing the PDAPP mouse model for Alzheimer's disease, examining how its limitations were overlooked and shaped decades of potentially misguided Alzheimer's research.

This review explores how schools are primarily designed to maximize motivation rather than learning, explaining why age-graded classrooms and seemingly inefficient group learning have persisted despite numerous attempts at reform.

Scott Alexander responds to comments and criticism on his earlier post about 'Missing Heritability', discussing issues like gene-environment interactions, sequencing technology limitations, and the use of polygenic scores across ancestry groups.

Scott shares his monthly collection of 56 interesting links and developments from July 2025, covering AI, politics, science, and culture, with brief commentary on each.

Scott Alexander refutes Stephen Skolnick's theory that schizophrenia is caused by gut microbes rather than genetics, showing why the evidence better supports schizophrenia being a complex genetic neurodevelopmental disorder.

Scott explores the 'missing heritability' problem in genetics, where twin studies show traits like IQ and educational attainment are highly heritable but newer genomic methods find much lower heritability, analyzing various potential explanations for this discrepancy.

Scott reviews updates from two cohorts of ACX Grants recipients (from 2021 and 2024), analyzing their progress and sharing lessons learned about what makes grants successful.

Scott investigates the correlation between intelligence and neuron count, exploring various theories before suggesting that more neurons allow for less polysemantic (overlapping) representations of concepts.

Scott Alexander and 1DaySooner outline potential positive health policy initiatives that could emerge under three key Trump administration health appointees: Jim O'Neill, Marty Makary, and Jay Bhattacharya.

Scott Alexander examines Richard Lynn's controversial national IQ estimates and argues they are actually consistent with environmental rather than genetic explanations of IQ differences, while explaining common misconceptions about what low IQ means.

Scott summarizes and responds to reader comments on his prison effectiveness analysis, covering topics like criminal psychology, policing, El Salvador's crime reduction, probation issues, and proposed alternatives to imprisonment.

Scott analyzes research on whether longer prison sentences reduce crime, examining studies on deterrence, incapacitation, and aftereffects, to conclude that while prison does decrease crime through incapacitation, it's less cost-effective than other methods like policing.