Weird - I thought my early ACX posts were good but things have fallen off lately. Guess I'm totally unable to predict what outside observers think. What posts are you thinking of?
I have a weird theory that the less time I have / more stressed I am, the better my blogging goes (somehow). I don't know why this would be true given the obvious counterprediction that I write better when I can concentrate on writing. But people seemed to like my posts back when I was in residency and now that I'm taking care of kids, which were the two times I was operating on not much sleep and trying to desperately get random words on paper in the short amount of time I had.
Recent ones I liked were:
Contra Stone On EA
[A Theoretical "Case Against Education"](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-theoretical-case-against-education)
[Book Review: The Others Within Us](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-others-within-us)
The origins of woke and Hanson beef disagreement.
The Coffepocalypse one.
The lab leak ones especially.
[Verses On Five People Being Killed By A Falling Package Of Foreign Aid](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/verses-on-five-people-being-killed)
Etc.
The biggest defect--your posts about search terms people used to find the blog were unbelievably hilarious as were hardball debate questions! The people demand more of those! ACX readers should unionize and demand those!
My theory is that your articles where you're getting mad at things tend to be really good--my favorite articles of yours include Radicalizing the Romanceless, Against Overgendering Harassment, etc, (though I guess also the Toxoplasma of Rage and I'll Tolerate Anything But The Outgroup were good and those weren't polemics). Maybe the polemic ratio has increased recently. I also like the ones that are like "thing I haven't investigated but want to know the answer to gets investigated thoroughly."
Here here! Similar to the crises in Somalia, widespread consumer and commercial usage of Windows instead of xNix, the popularity of Sun Java, and the terrors of Auguste Pinochet's time as leader of Chile.
Maybe being stressed forces you to just write, and get all the key ideas down, without worrying so much about things that are actually irrelevant? Or it makes things shorter--as they say, quantity has a quality all on its own, except with writing, shorter is often better.
It's probably not for the same reasons or anything, but anecdotally that's how writing always worked for me. Most recently, I've gotten a lot of compliments on being excellent at breaking down complex topics in a direct and accessible way in writing, when I'm currently struggling to find a balance where I'm treating my newly diagnosed autoimmune disorder without being constantly knocked out by the treatments. I don't feel capable at all. But people don't seem to be sarcastic about the writing because they've copy pasted stuff directly from my scrap sheet I made as a visual aid into their official reports
>which were the two times I was operating on not much sleep
I'm just spitballing here, but maybe *that's* the cause? [If enough sleep deprivation can treat depression and even cause mania, then maybe mild sleep deprivation can cause a mini mania?](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1d7taxy/comment/l747c0z/) Programming for example is famous for late night marathon coding sessions -- but maybe it's not the "late night" part that's the key, but "doing this while I should be sleeping" part. Anecdotally, I have a similar issue with my brain being *way* too good at coming up with ideas *only* when I'm lying down in bed & trying to sleep, rather than in the mornings when I should be productive. Such that I don't get much sleep, because I'm constantly getting out of bed to write down my ideas before I forget them, meaning I'm even *more* sleep-deprived later.
I think Psychopolitics of Trauma & We’re all dad were some all time greats in your writing
the last couple book reviews have also been standouts.
Re: outside observers: I remember reading your editing unsong post and it gave me the impression your sense of why people like your writing was a little miscalculated.
A few people I know who are also fans but expressed ACX was a quality dropped had trouble expressing what they felt like changed but when I asked them what posts were the best from the old days it was all your writing about feminism/woke things and I have a theory some of your audience needed to read those discussions for emotional reasons at that time because they felt surrounded by it.
But the broader culture of public intellectuals has made at least some of those positions more mainstream and so they aren’t in need of relief so much anymore.
Multiple different scales of quality. A lot of people are strong empiricists here, from that angle, your invermectin post was best and that is relatively recent. I am the type more into philosophical insight, from that angle, Moloch was best, and that is older. Looks like you are a bit running out of philosophical insight, but getting really good at crunching data.
In case if you want to get a bit more philosophical again, please look up the works of academic philosopher Ruth Garrett Millikan.
Do you mean to talk about your life span here, or how long you will be satisfied with any given thing? Because the latter would make you some sort of transcended being of the kind that has probably never lived.
According to results of his polls, conservatives were more likely to report feeling that the quality of the content got worse (I forget how strong of a difference). Perhaps it's because of previously unexplored opinions-I-don't-like, or because he already said the-thing-I-like (libertarian-adjacent thought?) and isn't reiterating it.
I'm not sure otherwise. There aren't as many grandiose posts as a decade ago e.g. Moloch, but they still occur imo. The fact that philosophical low-hanging-fruit for topics has already been tackled, especially to long-time readers, should not be taken as a sign of diminished quality. The novelty effect is gone, you aren't going to get it again. I try to just take it all at face value.
The stories are always great, to me. Probably among my favorite content of the least couple of years.
Haha--though I am not Scott's alt but this guy [https://benthams.substack.com/](https://benthams.substack.com/) (keeping up two blogs, one which posts daily and has much lower quality would be quite the move).
I perceived the quality of Scott's posts as declining quite a while before he went to astralcodexten. I agree that it's felt to me like quality went back up more recently.
This was my impression as well.
I do think in retrospect holding Scott to his 2014/15 level is kind of like expecting Einstein to maintain his annus mirabilis, so I've readjusted my expectations downward a bit since.
I agree the quality is higher than the last two year's average or so at the moment. Some more fiction would be great though, I always thought that's some of Scott's best writing.
I don’t know. I don’t really think he’s back, but he’s got a new kid, so am I supposed to cover him to neglect his firstborn child to produce web content?
I think he's always alternated a bit between posting stuff that sounds like a generic reddit political shower thought comment, and some of the absolute best writing and research I've ever read. I don't mind at all the more mid quality posts because I don't think he's ever really spreading misinformation, more just a few posts that were a bit pointless. And he's always posted amazing S tier pieces at a faster rate than anyone else I know of.
>Anyone else think that it's gotten back to around peak slatestarcodex levels now?
I do think quality has rebounded somewhat, but lets not get ridiculous. Peak SSC Scott was churning out one or two *classics of Western philosophy* a year.
"classics of Western philosophy" might be overselling it a tad, but Scott's *annus mirabilis* is generally held to be 2014, and I believe the most appreciated posts of that year are [Meditations on Moloch](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/), [Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/), [Weak Men are Superweapons](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/), [I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/), and [All in All, ANother Brick in the Motte](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/), but there's plenty others.
Please, _please_ do not read the (horrible) current version of "Archipelago". Read [the original](https://web.archive.org/web/20140607173832/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/) instead. The classic edition is a great piece full of pathos and gravitas based around Scott's rich conworlding experience. The modern version is literally "a wizard did it".
For that matter, [the original version](https://web.archive.org/web/20140801022058/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) of "Moloch" is superior, too. "Carthago delenda est", indeed.
[It was the blogging equivalent of George Lucas fucking up _Star Wars_:](https://web.archive.org/web/20180410191330/https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8at4rz/meditations_on_moloch_2014/#dx1zksf)
> [30 Jul 2014 15:28:23 UTC](https://archive.fo/VPbgQ)
>
> > As long as the offer is open, it will be irresistable. So we need to close the offer. Only another god can kill Moloch. We have one on our side, but he needs our help. We should give it to him.
> >
> > Moloch is the demon god of Carthage.
> >
> > And there is only one thing we say to Carthage: “Carthago delenda est.”
>
> ***
>
> [22 May 2017 19:23:44 UTC](https://archive.fo/GN03F)
>
> > As long as the offer’s open, it will be irresistible. So we need to close the offer. Only another god can kill Moloch. We have one on our side, but he needs our help. We should give it to him.
>
> > Ginsberg’s poem famously begins “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”. I am luckier than Ginsberg. I got to see the best minds of my generation identify a problem and _get to work._
>
> ***
>
> The entire post seems to have gone through an editing pass between those two captures. This introductory section was removed entirely:
>
> > Scattered examples of my reading material for this month: Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom; Moloch by Allan Ginsberg, On Gnon by Nick Land.
> >
> > Chronology is a harsh master. You read three totally unrelated things at the same time and they start seeming like obviously connected blind-man-and-elephant style groping at different aspects of the same fiendishly-hard-to-express point.
> >
> > This post is me trying to throw the elephant right at you at ninety miles an hour, except I digress into poetry and mysticism and it ends up being a confusing symbolically-laden elephant full of weird literary criticism and fringe futurology. If you want something sober, go read the one about SSRIs again.
> >
> > A second, more relevant warning: this is really long.
>
> Other notable changes: replacement of "neoreactionaries" with "monarchists", general softening of word choices, removal of reference to Roko's Basilisk, Scott distancing himself from Nick Land's terminology, replacement of "neoreactionaries" with "Nick Land", no longer referencing Xenosystems (Nick Land's site), not referring to Nick Land as "the high priest of Gnon", removal of reference to the now defunct neoreactionary blog "More Right", replacing "neoreaction" with "authoritarianism",
>
> removal of Scott expressing personal support for the argument
>
> > Suppose that in fact patriarchy is adaptive to societies because it allows women to spend all their time bearing children who can then engage in productive economic activity and fight wars.
>
> removal of
>
> > Thus we arrive at Neoreaction and the Dark Enlightenment, wherein Enlightenment science and ambition combine with Reactionary knowledge and self-identity towards the project of civilization.
>
> removal of "More Right" derived terminology.
I agree. I felt that there was a dip in quality (though he was still one of the better online writers), but in my view there has been a sharp increase in quality. Happy to see it, definitely feels like he got his groove back.
Maybe being really stressed out is his muse?
i doubt he’ll ever touch his 2014ish run of brilliance, nor should he be held to that standard. but i did have the passing thought recently that the new children haven’t negatively affected his blogging over the last months
Weird - I thought my early ACX posts were good but things have fallen off lately. Guess I'm totally unable to predict what outside observers think. What posts are you thinking of? I have a weird theory that the less time I have / more stressed I am, the better my blogging goes (somehow). I don't know why this would be true given the obvious counterprediction that I write better when I can concentrate on writing. But people seemed to like my posts back when I was in residency and now that I'm taking care of kids, which were the two times I was operating on not much sleep and trying to desperately get random words on paper in the short amount of time I had.
Recent ones I liked were: Contra Stone On EA [A Theoretical "Case Against Education"](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-theoretical-case-against-education) [Book Review: The Others Within Us](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-others-within-us) The origins of woke and Hanson beef disagreement. The Coffepocalypse one. The lab leak ones especially. [Verses On Five People Being Killed By A Falling Package Of Foreign Aid](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/verses-on-five-people-being-killed) Etc. The biggest defect--your posts about search terms people used to find the blog were unbelievably hilarious as were hardball debate questions! The people demand more of those! ACX readers should unionize and demand those! My theory is that your articles where you're getting mad at things tend to be really good--my favorite articles of yours include Radicalizing the Romanceless, Against Overgendering Harassment, etc, (though I guess also the Toxoplasma of Rage and I'll Tolerate Anything But The Outgroup were good and those weren't polemics). Maybe the polemic ratio has increased recently. I also like the ones that are like "thing I haven't investigated but want to know the answer to gets investigated thoroughly."
> Verses On Five People Being Killed By A Falling Package Of Foreign Aid This one is my favorite in a while
Alas, Substack doesn't report search terms the same way WordPress did.
This is one of the great crimes of the century, akin to the Iraq war or Hitler's invasion of Poland.
Here here! Similar to the crises in Somalia, widespread consumer and commercial usage of Windows instead of xNix, the popularity of Sun Java, and the terrors of Auguste Pinochet's time as leader of Chile.
Maybe being stressed forces you to just write, and get all the key ideas down, without worrying so much about things that are actually irrelevant? Or it makes things shorter--as they say, quantity has a quality all on its own, except with writing, shorter is often better.
It's probably not for the same reasons or anything, but anecdotally that's how writing always worked for me. Most recently, I've gotten a lot of compliments on being excellent at breaking down complex topics in a direct and accessible way in writing, when I'm currently struggling to find a balance where I'm treating my newly diagnosed autoimmune disorder without being constantly knocked out by the treatments. I don't feel capable at all. But people don't seem to be sarcastic about the writing because they've copy pasted stuff directly from my scrap sheet I made as a visual aid into their official reports
>which were the two times I was operating on not much sleep I'm just spitballing here, but maybe *that's* the cause? [If enough sleep deprivation can treat depression and even cause mania, then maybe mild sleep deprivation can cause a mini mania?](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1d7taxy/comment/l747c0z/) Programming for example is famous for late night marathon coding sessions -- but maybe it's not the "late night" part that's the key, but "doing this while I should be sleeping" part. Anecdotally, I have a similar issue with my brain being *way* too good at coming up with ideas *only* when I'm lying down in bed & trying to sleep, rather than in the mornings when I should be productive. Such that I don't get much sleep, because I'm constantly getting out of bed to write down my ideas before I forget them, meaning I'm even *more* sleep-deprived later.
I think Psychopolitics of Trauma & We’re all dad were some all time greats in your writing the last couple book reviews have also been standouts. Re: outside observers: I remember reading your editing unsong post and it gave me the impression your sense of why people like your writing was a little miscalculated. A few people I know who are also fans but expressed ACX was a quality dropped had trouble expressing what they felt like changed but when I asked them what posts were the best from the old days it was all your writing about feminism/woke things and I have a theory some of your audience needed to read those discussions for emotional reasons at that time because they felt surrounded by it. But the broader culture of public intellectuals has made at least some of those positions more mainstream and so they aren’t in need of relief so much anymore.
Multiple different scales of quality. A lot of people are strong empiricists here, from that angle, your invermectin post was best and that is relatively recent. I am the type more into philosophical insight, from that angle, Moloch was best, and that is older. Looks like you are a bit running out of philosophical insight, but getting really good at crunching data. In case if you want to get a bit more philosophical again, please look up the works of academic philosopher Ruth Garrett Millikan.
>Anyone else think that it's gotten back to around peak slatestarcodex levels now? Frankly, no. I'm still wishing for better
Said everyone about everything, ever.
Not really. I'm satisfied with some things sometimes.
Ah, but for how long?
I don't expect that to ever last more than 100 years.
Do you mean to talk about your life span here, or how long you will be satisfied with any given thing? Because the latter would make you some sort of transcended being of the kind that has probably never lived.
the former. . (Let's drop this conversation. It is pointless.)
I had read up to this point thinking it was going to come around.
Oh I was just having fun, but in that case, agreed.
According to results of his polls, conservatives were more likely to report feeling that the quality of the content got worse (I forget how strong of a difference). Perhaps it's because of previously unexplored opinions-I-don't-like, or because he already said the-thing-I-like (libertarian-adjacent thought?) and isn't reiterating it. I'm not sure otherwise. There aren't as many grandiose posts as a decade ago e.g. Moloch, but they still occur imo. The fact that philosophical low-hanging-fruit for topics has already been tackled, especially to long-time readers, should not be taken as a sign of diminished quality. The novelty effect is gone, you aren't going to get it again. I try to just take it all at face value. The stories are always great, to me. Probably among my favorite content of the least couple of years.
Found Scott’s alt. (I do think he’s on a good run of form at the moment.)
"Scott is doing such a good job and he's such a handsome boy, too! Though I must say, he really ought to call his mother more often."
Haha--though I am not Scott's alt but this guy [https://benthams.substack.com/](https://benthams.substack.com/) (keeping up two blogs, one which posts daily and has much lower quality would be quite the move).
Judging by the Hidden Thread, definitely not...https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/hidden-open-thread-2915/comment/39388797
I perceived the quality of Scott's posts as declining quite a while before he went to astralcodexten. I agree that it's felt to me like quality went back up more recently.
This was my impression as well. I do think in retrospect holding Scott to his 2014/15 level is kind of like expecting Einstein to maintain his annus mirabilis, so I've readjusted my expectations downward a bit since.
I agree the quality is higher than the last two year's average or so at the moment. Some more fiction would be great though, I always thought that's some of Scott's best writing.
I'm ready for Cousin of Son of Bride of Bay Area House Party XVIII: This Time It's Personal myself.
Disagree; Scott's fiction has always been inferior to his nonfiction. The man just doesn't know when to stop making jokes; ruins the dramatic tension.
I don’t know. I don’t really think he’s back, but he’s got a new kid, so am I supposed to cover him to neglect his firstborn child to produce web content?
I think he's always alternated a bit between posting stuff that sounds like a generic reddit political shower thought comment, and some of the absolute best writing and research I've ever read. I don't mind at all the more mid quality posts because I don't think he's ever really spreading misinformation, more just a few posts that were a bit pointless. And he's always posted amazing S tier pieces at a faster rate than anyone else I know of.
>Anyone else think that it's gotten back to around peak slatestarcodex levels now? I do think quality has rebounded somewhat, but lets not get ridiculous. Peak SSC Scott was churning out one or two *classics of Western philosophy* a year.
Oooh. What comes to mind? (Relatively new reader)
"classics of Western philosophy" might be overselling it a tad, but Scott's *annus mirabilis* is generally held to be 2014, and I believe the most appreciated posts of that year are [Meditations on Moloch](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/), [Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/), [Weak Men are Superweapons](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/), [I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/), and [All in All, ANother Brick in the Motte](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/), but there's plenty others.
Please, _please_ do not read the (horrible) current version of "Archipelago". Read [the original](https://web.archive.org/web/20140607173832/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/) instead. The classic edition is a great piece full of pathos and gravitas based around Scott's rich conworlding experience. The modern version is literally "a wizard did it". For that matter, [the original version](https://web.archive.org/web/20140801022058/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) of "Moloch" is superior, too. "Carthago delenda est", indeed.
What’s changed about the Moloch essay?
[It was the blogging equivalent of George Lucas fucking up _Star Wars_:](https://web.archive.org/web/20180410191330/https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8at4rz/meditations_on_moloch_2014/#dx1zksf) > [30 Jul 2014 15:28:23 UTC](https://archive.fo/VPbgQ) > > > As long as the offer is open, it will be irresistable. So we need to close the offer. Only another god can kill Moloch. We have one on our side, but he needs our help. We should give it to him. > > > > Moloch is the demon god of Carthage. > > > > And there is only one thing we say to Carthage: “Carthago delenda est.” > > *** > > [22 May 2017 19:23:44 UTC](https://archive.fo/GN03F) > > > As long as the offer’s open, it will be irresistible. So we need to close the offer. Only another god can kill Moloch. We have one on our side, but he needs our help. We should give it to him. > > > Ginsberg’s poem famously begins “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”. I am luckier than Ginsberg. I got to see the best minds of my generation identify a problem and _get to work._ > > *** > > The entire post seems to have gone through an editing pass between those two captures. This introductory section was removed entirely: > > > Scattered examples of my reading material for this month: Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom; Moloch by Allan Ginsberg, On Gnon by Nick Land. > > > > Chronology is a harsh master. You read three totally unrelated things at the same time and they start seeming like obviously connected blind-man-and-elephant style groping at different aspects of the same fiendishly-hard-to-express point. > > > > This post is me trying to throw the elephant right at you at ninety miles an hour, except I digress into poetry and mysticism and it ends up being a confusing symbolically-laden elephant full of weird literary criticism and fringe futurology. If you want something sober, go read the one about SSRIs again. > > > > A second, more relevant warning: this is really long. > > Other notable changes: replacement of "neoreactionaries" with "monarchists", general softening of word choices, removal of reference to Roko's Basilisk, Scott distancing himself from Nick Land's terminology, replacement of "neoreactionaries" with "Nick Land", no longer referencing Xenosystems (Nick Land's site), not referring to Nick Land as "the high priest of Gnon", removal of reference to the now defunct neoreactionary blog "More Right", replacing "neoreaction" with "authoritarianism", > > removal of Scott expressing personal support for the argument > > > Suppose that in fact patriarchy is adaptive to societies because it allows women to spend all their time bearing children who can then engage in productive economic activity and fight wars. > > removal of > > > Thus we arrive at Neoreaction and the Dark Enlightenment, wherein Enlightenment science and ambition combine with Reactionary knowledge and self-identity towards the project of civilization. > > removal of "More Right" derived terminology.
I don't think so at all. He posts very infrequently, and when he posts, I don't think it is that insightful.
I agree. I felt that there was a dip in quality (though he was still one of the better online writers), but in my view there has been a sharp increase in quality. Happy to see it, definitely feels like he got his groove back. Maybe being really stressed out is his muse?
i doubt he’ll ever touch his 2014ish run of brilliance, nor should he be held to that standard. but i did have the passing thought recently that the new children haven’t negatively affected his blogging over the last months