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Scott Alexander

Psychiatrist and blogger, author of Slate Star Codex and its successor Astral Codex Ten.

11 books on the record · 27 Apr 2016 – 11 Sep 2025

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 7d is days, 4yr is years.

mixed on it

Raise a Genius! by László Polgár

I was hoping that this book would explain Lazslo Polgar's secrets for raising gifted children. It does so only in very broad strokes.

on slatestarcodex.com · 31 Jul 2017 · Report

loved it

Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott

Seeing Like A State is the book G.K. Chesterton would have written if he had gone into economic history instead of literature. Since he didn't, James Scott had to write it a century later. The wait was worth it.

on slatestarcodex.com · 16 Mar 2017 · Report

Everything Scott Alexander recommends — not just books — on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.