What Is Slate Star Codex?

Updated

Slate Star Codex (slatestarcodex.com) was a long-form blog written by Scott Alexander, active from 2013 until early 2021. It published essays on rationality, science, medicine, philosophy, and social policy, and hosted an active comment community. If you are looking for the blog's original posts today, note that the site was deleted and its author moved to a new blog, Astral Codex Ten.

What the site was

Slate Star Codex was a personal blog, not a news outlet or a peer-reviewed publication. Its identity came from its author and its comment section:

  • Author: Scott Alexander wrote the posts.
  • Format: Long analytical essays, often several thousand words, plus open threads where readers discussed topics freely.
  • Community: The site linked to a Discord server, a podcast, and a subreddit, and its comment sections were a large part of its reputation.

What it covered

The blog's topics were broad, but several recurring areas stand out:

  • Rationality — reasoning, cognitive bias, and decision-making, with links to communities like Less Wrong.
  • Science and medicine — analysis of research claims, including medical and psychiatric topics.
  • Philosophy and ethics — including effective altruism, which appears in the site's blogroll alongside organizations like GiveWell and 80,000 Hours.
  • Social and political commentary — essays on government and policy, such as "Slightly Skew Systems Of Government."

The blogroll also grouped links under Economics, Effective Altruism, Rationality, and Science, which gives a sense of the reading audience the site served.

Timeline and current status

  • 2013–2021: The archive lists monthly entries from February 2013 through January 2021.
  • September 2020: A post titled "Update On My Situation" describes the blog having been deleted about two and a half months earlier, amid a dispute over the author's real name.
  • January 21, 2021: A post titled "Introducing Astral Codex Ten" announces the new blog at astralcodexten.substack.com.

The relevant posts are:

Post Date What it says
Update On My Situation September 11, 2020 Update after deleting the blog; no resolution with the New York Times at that point
NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog — The deletion announcement referenced in the later update
Introducing Astral Codex Ten January 21, 2021 Points readers to the new blog

Where to read it now

The original slatestarcodex.com content is not the active home of the author's writing. The January 2021 post directs readers to https://astralcodexten.substack.com/, and notes that a less unwieldy domain name was planned. If your goal is to read Scott Alexander's current work, start there. If your goal is the historical Slate Star Codex archive, expect to rely on archived copies and third-party mirrors rather than the live site.