Slate Star Codex
134
MENTIONS
34
EPISODES
25
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Search complete. 134 mentions across 34 episodes found for "Slate Star Codex".
Oct 25, 2026
KaveGUEST
Yeah.
KaveGUEST
So, yeah, I thought it was like kind of, that was kind of interesting to me to be like, I was reminded of Scott Alexander talking about like super persuaders.
KaveGUEST
And he's like, how high does a super persuasion ladder go in humans? And he was like, maybe the limit is more like Muhammad.
KaveGUEST
Then maybe this is what it really looks like.
ElisaHOST
the commenters said, yeah, you know, for rationalism, the first generation is Yudkowsky.
ElisaHOST
The second generation might be Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex.
ElisaHOST
And then the third generation is Ayla on Substack.
ElisaHOST
so yeah this person's a pipeline into rationalism currently right and these are her bffs that again she's producing content with
Casey HartHOST
I forget what Eliezer's previous blog was called.
Casey HartHOST
And then you have the Slate Star Codex, which eventually becomes called the Astral Codex.
Casey HartHOST
And that's from a guy named Scott Alexander.
Casey HartHOST
His full name is Scott Alexander Siskinds.
Christian BritschgiHOST
bear.
Christian BritschgiHOST
You made me read that like 20,000 word Slate Star Codex essay.
Christian BritschgiHOST
Did I? I didn't read it.
Christian BritschgiHOST
I don't think that narrows it down to which essay it is.
StablyHOST
This is the funny – I think we've all been – I don't know.
StablyHOST
We've read enough Slate Star Codex to absorb all the rationality nonsense, right?
JerryHOST
I'm with Bob Wright.
JerryHOST
The other day I heard him talking to Paul Bloom, his conversation partner.
JerryHOST
And Paul Bloom said something like that.
JerryHOST
Like, oh, you know, we've all read enough Slate Star Codex.
JerryHOST
And Bob's like, speak for yourself.
JerryHOST
That guy, I can't get through it.
David Patrick HarryHOST
I searched the internet, found it.
David Patrick HarryHOST
This is the 2014 blog post by Scott Alexander.
David Patrick HarryHOST
Um, and so you'll see what he's saying.
David Patrick HarryHOST
He's agreeing with the premise of the poem and saying that these are the traps that are erecting that are sort of Moloch's traps of contemporary society, the prisoner's dilemma, uh, Dollar auctions...
Robert WrightHOST
Yeah.
Paul BloomGUEST
And finally, Scott Alexander couldn't take it anymore and who-
Robert WrightHOST
Yeah, I know
Paul BloomGUEST
...
Paul BloomGUEST
I challenge you to a debate."
Robert WrightHOST
Mm-hmm.
Paul BloomGUEST
Very un-Scott Alexander like, but totally.
Robert WrightHOST
And he said, he said there will be like a jury that decides who the winner is, and let's put money on it, right? Didn't he say that?
Theo JaffeeGUEST
It will become a thing in my 20s.
Theo JaffeeGUEST
So in 2022, when I was 18 years old, I just started college, it was my freshman year, my fall semester of my freshman year, I discovered Actually, first, I had been keeping tabs on AI a little bit because of Stable Diffusion that year and Codex.
Theo JaffeeGUEST
Actually, back in 2021, I had used GPT-3, and I thought of it as interesting, but still basically a toy, not very useful.
Theo JaffeeGUEST
I had played with Stable Diffusion.
12 MINS LATER
Theo JaffeeGUEST
Forecasting is, you know, if you've read Tetlock, it is a rigorous deal that should not be merely dismissed entirely.
Theo JaffeeGUEST
It was written primarily by Daniel Kovatajlo, who was an OpenAI governance researcher who left in 2024 because he no longer trusted OpenAI's approach to superintelligence.
Theo JaffeeGUEST
And also Scott Alexander, who was Slate Star Codex's He's a very, very famous rationalist blogger.
Theo JaffeeGUEST
So Daniel Kogutazlo, Scott Alexander, and a few other members of the AI Futures Project, which is Daniel Kogutazlo's AI forecasting and governance initiative that he founded after leaving OpenAI.
Mike SolanaGUEST
So very excited to be here.
Josh BarroHOST
Specifically, what I was tweeting about was there's this spat that has emerged between Steven Pinker and Scott Alexander.
Josh BarroHOST
Steven Pinker, the psychology professor at Harvard and prominent public intellectual who does not really buy this stuff about how AI is going to become omnipotent and omniscient and kill us all.
Josh BarroHOST
And Scott Alexander, who is a psychiatrist by trade but is sort of a folk leader of this rationalist movement – That's what is it about the rationalists other than they're supposed to be like especially good at thinking and smarter than all of us.
Josh BarroHOST
I mean, I know they're they're particularly focused lately on, you know, AI doom, but it's a little bit self-appointed that like Scott Alexander is like the expert of all domains as a. I'm sure he's a good psychiatrist, but- It's a little bit confusing because you have, there's the rationalist circle
Mike SolanaGUEST
and then there's the effective altruist circle and they
Ben DreyfussHOST
mostly
Josh BarroHOST
It basically took you from a thing where you could sort of have low trust and evaluate whether they were doing what they said they did.
Richard Yetter ChappellGUEST
There are some interesting lists, I think.
Richard Yetter ChappellGUEST
Um, Scott Alexander had an interesting one in hi- in a post, um, in def- in continued defense of effective altruism.
Richard Yetter ChappellGUEST
He sort of lists, uh, hundreds of thousands of lives saved from anti-malarial bed nets, charities, lots of work in factory farming, cage-free egg campaigns.
Richard Yetter ChappellGUEST
Work developing cultivated meat, the various work on sort of AI safety and stuff.
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