How to explore Scott Alexander's work and his 1500+ blog posts? This unaffiliated fan website lets you sort and search through the whole codex. Enjoy!

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5 posts found
Sep 18, 2023
acx
90 min 12,558 words 413 comments 101 likes podcast (66 min)
Scott Alexander summarizes and responds to reader comments on his Elon Musk book review, covering various aspects of Musk's life, work, and personality. Longer summary
This post is a compilation of highlights from comments on Scott Alexander's review of Elon Musk's biography. It covers various aspects of Musk's career and personality, including debates about his intelligence and mental health, discussions about his companies (Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, Boring Company), his Mars colonization plans, and comparisons to other historical figures. The post also includes critiques of Scott's original review and updates to his views based on the comments. Shorter summary
Sep 13, 2023
acx
75 min 10,417 words 985 comments 317 likes podcast (49 min)
Scott reviews Ashlee Vance's 2015 Elon Musk biography, analyzing Musk's personality, work ethic, and business strategies to understand his successes and controversies. Longer summary
This book review analyzes Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography of Elon Musk, examining Musk's personality, work ethic, and business strategies. The review explores Musk's engineering abilities, management style, and the reasons behind his companies' successes despite controversial decisions. It discusses Musk's intense focus, his tendency to set unrealistic timelines, and his impact on employees. The review also touches on Musk's social skills, his approach to PR, and speculates on his future success with Twitter/X. Shorter summary
Nov 01, 2021
acx
25 min 3,387 words 335 comments 40 likes podcast (26 min)
Scott Alexander explores various applications and recent developments in prediction markets and forecasting, covering topics from election betting to teacher evaluation and social media moderation. Longer summary
Scott Alexander discusses several topics related to prediction markets and forecasting. He starts with the concept of a Keynesian beauty contest applied to long-term forecasting, then analyzes recent developments in PredictIt markets, particularly the Virginia gubernatorial election. He explores the idea of using prediction markets to evaluate teacher performance, and examines some recent Metaculus predictions on SpaceX valuation, college enrollment, and AI code assistance adoption. The post also covers Vitalik Buterin's proposal for using prediction markets in social media moderation, and concludes with various links to prediction market-related news and articles. Shorter summary
Apr 08, 2020
ssc
13 min 1,765 words 91 comments podcast (15 min)
Scott Alexander reviews and analyzes his 2019 predictions, finding he was generally well-calibrated but slightly underconfident across all confidence levels. Longer summary
Scott Alexander reviews his predictions for 2019, made at the beginning of the year. He lists all the predictions, marking which ones came true, which were false, and which were thrown out. The predictions cover various topics including US politics, economics and technology, world events, personal projects, and his personal life. Scott then analyzes his performance, showing that he was generally well-calibrated but slightly underconfident across all confidence levels. He attributes this underconfidence to trying to leave a cushion for unexpected events, which didn't materialize in 2019. Scott notes that his worst failures were underestimating Bitcoin and overestimating SpaceX's ability to launch their crew on schedule. Shorter summary
Feb 06, 2018
ssc
11 min 1,435 words 302 comments podcast (13 min)
Scott Alexander shares his 100 predictions for 2018 on topics like politics, economics, technology, and personal goals, with assigned probabilities for each. Longer summary
Scott Alexander presents his annual predictions for 2018, covering various topics including US politics, economics, technology, culture wars, the rationalist community, and personal matters. He makes 100 predictions with assigned probabilities, ranging from political outcomes to personal goals. The post includes predictions about Donald Trump's presidency, cryptocurrency prices, SpaceX launches, and the growth of Scott's blog. He also mentions some secret predictions about friends' personal lives. Scott explains his methodology and notes some predictions he already believes may be miscalibrated. Shorter summary