Want to dive into Scott Alexander's work and his thousands of blog posts? This fan website lets you sort and do semantic search through the whole codex. Enjoy!

See also Top Posts and All Tags.

Tag: twin studies

Or pick a range
–
min
Blog
Only
Year
2026
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
Include tag...
Exclude tag...
Links to
Filter by linked site (twitter, substack…)
Remember which posts I've read on this device
10 posts
Date
Length
Likes
Comments

The Permanent Emergency

Scott shares humorous anecdotes about the daily chaos of raising toddler twins, from emergency police visits triggered by screaming over the wrong version of a song, to elaborate bedtime battles and the children's obsession with identifying vehicles and animals.

acx
Jan 9, 2026 2,851 words 676 likes 330 comments Listen · 16 min Read Read

The Good News Is That One Side Has Definitively Won The Missing Heritability Debate

Scott examines a new genetic study on missing heritability that both hereditarians and nurturists claim vindicates their position, concluding that despite the study's advances, the fundamental debate over how heritable traits like IQ actually are remains unresolved.

acx
Dec 3, 2025 1,961 words 422 likes 589 comments Listen · 13 min Read Read

Contra Skolnick On Schizophrenia Microbes

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.

acx
Jun 30, 2025 1,619 words 256 likes 180 comments Listen · 11 min Read Read

Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

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.

acx
Jun 26, 2025 10,491 words 459 likes 669 comments Listen · 62 min Read Read

Some Unintuitive Properties Of Polygenic Disorders

Scott Alexander uses simulations to explain why seemingly counterintuitive arguments against the genetic basis of schizophrenia are misleading.

acx
Jan 24, 2024 1,561 words 229 likes 187 comments Listen · 9 min Read Read

Birth Order Effects: Nature vs. Nurture

Scott Alexander explores new data on birth order effects among his blog readers, finding social factors likely explain firstborns' overrepresentation.

acx
Jun 1, 2022 2,853 words 118 likes 346 comments Listen · 22 min Read Read

SSC Journal Club: Childhood Trauma And Cognition

Scott Alexander discusses a study challenging the idea that childhood abuse lowers IQ, and explores its implications for understanding the effects of child abuse on various outcomes.

ssc
Apr 21, 2017 1,254 words 0 likes 150 comments Read Read

The Heart Has Its Reasons That Reason Knows Not Of

Scott examines conflicting evidence on whether humans choose mates based on parental imprinting or genetics, concluding that mate choice might be based on mysterious romantic love.

ssc
Oct 21, 2016 2,648 words 0 likes 205 comments Read Read

Non-Shared Environment Doesn’t Just Mean Schools And Peers

The post argues that 'non-shared environment' in twin studies is often misunderstood, encompassing more than just different experiences and potentially overestimating the impact of nurture on personality and life outcomes.

ssc
Mar 16, 2016 2,256 words 0 likes 414 comments Read Read

Does the Glasgow Coma Scale exist? Do comas?

Scott Alexander defends the validity of intelligence and IQ tests by comparing them to comas and the Glasgow Coma Scale in medicine.

ssc
Aug 11, 2014 3,056 words 0 likes 144 comments Read Read
Per page:
Showing 1 to 10 of 10 results
Get these search results in an EPUB

Your filters match 10 posts.

Posts to include
–
Leave empty to keep the defaults. Range cannot exceed 500 posts.
Download now

Generates an EPUB right now and downloads it to your device.

Send to email

Generates an EPUB in the background and emails you a temporary download link.

Your email is not shared with anyone.

Email address

To send to your Kindle, just use this link.