Scott Alexander methodically rebuts Steven Pinker's arguments against AI risk concerns and documents fifteen years of what he considers misrepresentations and bad-faith arguments from Pinker about the AI safety community.

A review of Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs covering his transformation of Singapore from third-world city-state to wealthy nation through pragmatic policies, framed as a 'rationalist power fantasy' of someone who successfully implemented sensible governance.

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 announces the 2026 ACX annual reader survey, which takes 30-45 minutes and helps investigate psychological findings, with one respondent winning a free paid subscription.

Scott defends his dismissal of the Substack religion debate against charges of hypocrisy and engages with technical objections about Kolmogorov complexity, arguing that 'mind without limits' isn't actually simple and that explaining multiple anomalies with God is like explaining Napoleon's success with aliens.

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.

A descendant of missionary Hiram Bingham reviews his ancestor's memoir about bringing Christianity and Western civilization to Hawaii in the 1820s-1840s, drawing parallels to modern Effective Altruism and examining what lessons today's do-gooders can learn from this earlier generation of world-savers.

Scott explains why he's not interested in participating in the current wave of God debates on Substack, arguing that religious explanations fall into the same category as conspiracy theories by invoking "powerful hidden entities" to explain anomalies.

Scott examines the debate over open-weights AI, explaining why he remains neutral despite risks of criminal misuse, arguing that waiting for inevitable incidents is more strategic than preemptively burning political capital fighting the strong pro-open-weights coalition.

Scott argues the real distinction in psychology isn't between subfields but between settled science (like dopamine, brain localization, heritability) and breaking-news research, defending psychology's solid core against critics who conflate bad recent studies with the entire field.

An exploration of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest epic, examining its themes of mortality and meaning while providing extensive historical context about ancient Mesopotamia and arguing that the poem's true immortality comes from the countless people who preserved and transmitted it.

Scott defends psychology against broad dismissals by showing that the replication crisis primarily affected only social priming within social psychology, while the vast majority of the field consists of solid, replicable research across many subdisciplines.

This review of Masooda Bano's 'Breakdown in Pakistan' examines how Western aid systematically destroys the capacity of local voluntary organizations to mobilize collective action, replacing diverse community-driven institutions with professionalized NGOs dependent on foreign funding.

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.

Scott defends liberalism against claims it has failed by explaining that happiness scales logarithmically with income, so our 225x wealth increase since medieval times correctly predicts the 3-point happiness gain we've actually seen, and recent declines are due to COVID rather than systemic failure.

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 argues against the concept of 'stochastic terrorism' by showing it's applied inconsistently across the political spectrum, examining and rejecting various proposed distinctions about what criticism should be allowed, and advocating instead for a liberal solution where all criticism is permitted but violence is always the perpetrator's sole responsibility.

Scott travels to Medjugorje, Bosnia to investigate reports of sun miracles, witnesses one himself with his wife, and develops a naturalistic explanation involving afterimages and atmospheric conditions that explains both the Medjugorje and Fatima phenomena.

Scott reviews a history of the Frankfurt School, explaining their response to Marxism's failures through negative dialectics, cultural criticism, and the belief that society needed conceptual transformation before communist revolution could succeed, while examining their actual influence on modern leftism.

Scott argues that even if AGI requires a new paradigm beyond LLMs, we shouldn't expect significant delays, since Lindy's Law suggests major paradigm shifts could occur within 3-5 years, and new paradigms typically emerge precisely when scaling hits limits.

Scott Alexander's April 2026 links roundup covers diverse topics including Venn diagram complexity, flag desecration laws, AI developments, political analysis, scientific studies, and various cultural curiosities.

Scott Alexander provides fifteen pieces of writing advice for aspiring bloggers, emphasizing authenticity, avoiding microdishonesty, mastering basic disciplines before breaking rules, and finding original angles on common topics rather than recycling blogosphere content.

Scott argues that dismissing AI as 'just a next-token predictor' is like dismissing humans as 'just reproduction machines' - both confuse the optimization process that shaped an entity with how that entity actually thinks.

A monthly collection of diverse links covering AI developments and regulation, COVID origins debates, healthcare policy, cultural phenomena, scientific research, and internet curiosities, maintaining Scott's characteristic blend of serious analysis and entertaining observations.

Scott investigates Moltbook, a social network for AI agents, showcasing their surprisingly creative and philosophical posts while questioning whether their interactions represent genuine experience or sophisticated simulation.