Scott Alexander reviews a book on Erdogan's rise to power in Turkey, analyzing the factors that led to democratic backsliding and considering lessons for other democracies.

The post examines the compatibility of Islam and liberal democracy by analyzing six Muslim-majority countries, finding a wide spectrum of outcomes and concluding that Islam often acts as an obstacle to liberal democracy.

Scott Alexander explores how selection bias might create the stereotype of angry, vocal atheists, and speculates on how this concept might apply to other groups.

Scott uses a thought experiment about aliens making British people sensitive to salmon photos to argue that causing offense should be viewed through a consequentialist harm-minimization framework rather than a deontological blame-assignment framework.

Scott analyzes why multiple groups in America simultaneously claim persecution, identifying psychological motivations behind these claims and warning against the rhetorical trick of presenting oneself as both persecuted underdog and inevitable winner.

Scott defends a 'soft positivism' in which meaningful statements can be reduced to testable claims, and argues that statements that resist such reduction, like 'Islam is a religion of peace', often smuggle in emotion and prejudice.

Scott uses a conversation with a Muslim woman who found evolution absurd to show that the absurdity heuristic, as used in Bill Maher's "talking snake" argument, is a bad way to dismiss beliefs.