Invitation to an SSC Meetup

I used to spend a lot of time on a blog called Slate Star Codex. The author, a young psychiatrist with a wide range of interests and an extraordinary level of intellectual energy posting under the name of Scott Alexander, produced a long series of well written, intelligent and interesting posts.

In some he evaluated the evidence for and against some proposition, reading, summarizing and critiquing everything he could find. I remember that one was on Alcoholics Anonymous. Some articles claimed to have evidence that it helped alcoholics recover, others that it didn’t. Scott read them all, concluded that both claims were false, that no articles showed convincing evidence either way, and explained in detail what was wrong with each. Another, early in the Covid pandemic, looked at the existing evidence on masks as a way of preventing the spread of airborn diseases, concluded that the evidence was not very good — they probably helped but not very much. Other articles were entertaining and perceptive explorations of a wide variety of cultural and logical issues. In addition to the articles there were occasional stories, mixing humor and idea, and book reviews, including two of my books.

The conclusion of his review of The Machinery of Freedom:

“My overall conclusion is that I am delighted by this fascinating and elegant system and would very much like to see it tried somewhere very far away from me.”

A perfectly reasonable response.

The articles were one reason I spent time on SSC, the commenters were the other. They ranged from communist to anarcho-capitalist, atheist to believing Catholic, rocket scientist to plumber. Conversation was intelligent and almost always civil. It was the only place on the internet that I could find intelligent and civil conversation across such a wide range of views, a striking contrast to FaceBook or Twitter. There were enough commenters so that some began organizing meetups for readers of the blog who happened to live in the same area. I hosted ones for the South Bay.

Eventually The New York Times noticed SSC, in part for its perceptive early comments on Covid, in part for its growing intellectual influence, and wrote an article about it. Scott asked the author not to publish his real name, for reasons personal and professional. The author refused, claiming that the Times’ policies required an article to provide the real name of the person it was about. It wasn’t true; there were past Times articles that didn’t. He published. Scott shut down the blog, resigned his position, started his own private practice.

If you would like to see what SSC was like, articles and comments are still archived.

Scott eventually started a substack,  Astral Codex Ten, as a successor to SSC. If you would like the experience of participating you can join it or try posting on Data Secrets Lox, a forum started by SSC commnters after SSC shut down — my wife described it as the refugee forum — and still running. Neither has as diverse a population as SSC did but on both the conversation is still mostly civil and often interesting.

You can also, if you happen to be in the Bay Area, come to my meetup, which I and my family continue to run. The next one is March 12^th. Details are online.