Scott Alexander: checked claims

Scores by kind of claim

Each kind of claim is scored on its own, out of 100: the share that held up, with the range it likely falls in. Fewer resolved claims give a wider range.

Factual claims

Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

80 72 88

Medium confidence, 35 factual claims resolved. From 10 documents, 2014 to 2026; 15 documents sampled from 35 candidates found.

Not scored: 46 unresolvable, 9 checkable only against their own records.

See the factual claims
Predictions

Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

70 62 78

Medium confidence, 44 predictions resolved. From 7 documents, 2016 to 2025; 15 documents sampled from 35 candidates found.

Not scored: 67 unresolvable, 10 checkable only against their own records. 19 more fall due later.
Does not yet allow for how likely each prediction was when made.

See the predictions
Promises

Commitments to the person's or organisation's own future action, with something to deliver: was it delivered?

Insufficient record: 2 promises resolved, 5 needed for a score.

See the promises

All types combined: 75 (likely 69 to 80, high confidence), from 79 claims: 35 factual claims, 44 predictions. It mixes kinds of claim in different proportions for different people, so compare people kind by kind.

Scott Alexander's claims

775 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
Verdict	Kind	Said	Claim	Topic
Unresolvable	Factual	19 Oct 2026	MNX lets people sell futures representing AI company stocks, bet on AI company revenues, and trade on targets such as the Epoch Capabilities Index. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	19 Oct 2026	MNX, a project of Manifold Markets co-founder Stephen Grugett, is a real-money prediction market on AI. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	19 Oct 2026	Goodheart Labs is working on Common Notes, described as Twitter Community Notes but for everything. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Technology
Not researched	Factual	19 Oct 2026	ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	19 Oct 2026	I may have more of these in the upcoming week. Not checkable · 19 Oct 2026
Unresolvable	Factual	19 Oct 2026	An alternate survey asks respondents to predict how Scott Alexander would answer the first survey, to separate worldview differences from random noise. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable	Factual	19 Oct 2026	Common Notes is implemented through AIs writing most notes, users writing and voting on notes, and a browser extension that shows the system on any site, including ACX. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	AI capabilities
Not researched	Factual	19 Oct 2026	The Bay Area ACX meetup is scheduled for Saturday 24 October 2026 at 1 PM at Mox, 1680 Mission St, San Francisco. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	19 Oct 2026	Still trying to figure out if we can do something for the Bay Area Not checkable · 19 Oct 2026
Not researched	Factual	19 Oct 2026	Despite talk of Anthropic's API falling from $2T to $1.5T, both Polymarket and MNX still price it around $2T. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Not researched	Factual	19 Oct 2026	Scott Alexander's new survey asks respondents to assign utility weights to about 80 different AI safety accomplishments. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable	Factual	19 Oct 2026	ACX meetups in Rockville, Northampton, Eindhoven, Great Barrington, Cairo, Portland and Sofia have had changes announced as of October 2026. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	19 Oct 2026	Check it out, and install the browser extension, here. Not checkable · 19 Oct 2026
Not checkable	Not checkable	19 Oct 2026	I would once again like people who are well-versed in the AI/grantmaking worlds to take a survey on how much they value various things. Not checkable · 19 Oct 2026
Unresolvable	Factual	19 Oct 2026	ACX's main San Francisco endorsement for the 2026 election is Scott Wiener for Congress. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable	Factual	19 Oct 2026	The Boston ACX meetup group has finished its Greater Boston general election voting guide. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	19 Oct 2026	This is the weekly visible open thread. Not checkable · 19 Oct 2026
Delivered on time	Promise	19 Oct 2026	Scott Alexander will probably publish a post about the Bay Area ACX meetup. Promise · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Own records only	Factual	19 Oct 2026	Scott Alexander is continuing to work on modeling, and maybe later automating, parts of AI grantmaking. Factual · 19 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	5 Oct 2026	Reader Nikita Sokolsky has finished obtaining extra Fatima documents from Portugal and translating them into English. Factual · 5 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Not researched	Factual	5 Oct 2026	Brigham Young University's EA college meetup has changed its time, date and place. Factual · 5 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable	Factual	5 Oct 2026	Most Astral Codex Ten content is free and some is subscriber-only. Factual · 5 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	5 Oct 2026	I’m pretty busy and will try to make up for it after that changes. Not checkable · 5 Oct 2026
Unresolvable	Factual	5 Oct 2026	Scott Alexander has written little recently on ACX and forgot to post Friday's book review entry. Factual · 5 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	5 Oct 2026	Rob Ennals, who made this year's ACX book review contest site, has gathered reviews from earlier years into epubs. Factual · 5 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	5 Oct 2026	Physicians For AI Safety exists, wants to talk to physicians interested in AI safety, and has an open letter such people can sign. Factual · 5 Oct 2026	Field building and careers
Unresolvable	Factual	5 Oct 2026	Astral Codex Ten has an unofficial subreddit, Discord and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Factual · 5 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	5 Oct 2026	This is the weekly visible open thread. Not checkable · 5 Oct 2026
Not checkable	Not checkable	5 Oct 2026	And thanks again to Ana for handling the parts that required Portuguese profiency. Not checkable · 5 Oct 2026
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	We know that in general, the median outcome for a forecast like this is being totally humiliated when everything goes completely… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	To me, the differences between an autocratic centralized three-letter agency and an autocratic centralized corporation aren’t that exciting… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I do think courage has to be some part of the explanation. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	But I think that our policy prescription is let’s try as hard as we can to make it happen. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	Humans have such good heuristics that probably most of the things that show up even in our conscious mind, rather than happening on the… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I don’t understand why they can write good magazine articles without being good bloggers. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander said his impression is that economists who model long-run growth think the data are not good enough to tell whether history is one smooth process or a series of phase changes. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	And the limiting factor is basically hours in Elon’s day in the sense that he cannot be doing that with everybody’s. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander said he thinks "we" are training AI in multiple different directions at once: telling it to succeed at tasks, but also not to seek power in particular ways. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	AI safety and alignment
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	There is only about a 20% chance that things go as fast as the speakers' scenario says. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI timelines and forecasting
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	If you have a physics simulation available, then all of these real world bottlenecks don’t matter as much. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander said he thought Metaculus's timeline forecast was around 2050 in 2020. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	AI timelines and forecasting
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	If people have questions about quantum computing, they ask Scott Aronson or he is like the authority. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	You tend to get more of a diffusion of power democracy where there are many different groups and none of them can really act on their own. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	We’re not sure about that, actually. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	Once a million robots a month are being produced, AIs will get many physical-world things done very quickly, including many physical experiments. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI capabilities
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	If you can create a country of geniuses in a data center, as I think Dario Amodei put it, then you no longer have this population bottleneck Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	The speaker said that he and his co-authors theorise that AI labs are, partly consciously and partly accidentally, working toward an intelligence explosion in which AIs take over some AI research and speed it up. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI timelines and forecasting
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	And I think that once a thousand of these natural consequences of training add up, the AI is evil, in the same way that once the AI can do… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	If our timeline was 2040, then I would have these broad heuristics about is government good? Is private industry good? Things like this. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	The problem isn’t that they are dumber than the Aborigines exactly, it’s that the Aborigines have a vast head start. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	And here not only is society inherently chaotic, but there are so many things that we could be leaving out. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	In another phase we may make policy suggestions, and one of the ones that Daniel has talked about that makes a lot of sense to me is to… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Own records only	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander discovers a new blogger he is super excited about about once a year. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I think, read the document and decide which of us is right. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Own records only	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Typically about 1% of the people who read a blog's viral hit stick around as regular readers, based on Slate Star Codex's early growth. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Their own work or organisation
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	They already understand that superintelligence is kind of the key to power in the future. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	And I think that’s like the closest thing we have to a neutral aggregator where we’re not cherry picking things. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	So that 80% of scenarios where we survive contains a lot of really bad things that I’m not happy about. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	But only like 1% of these people who are good at short and medium form ever go to long form. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I do just think it’s true that the good blogging space is undersupplied and there is a strong power law. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I absolutely reject the premise that everybody has always been too optimistic. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	On the hyperbola view, the last bottleneck was around 1960, when human population growth slowed from its earlier rate. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	In the AI 2027 scenario, the government becomes extremely interested in AI and discusses nationalizing the AI companies. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI policy and governance
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Humans evolved under a genetic imperative to pass on their own genetic information rather than others'. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Philosophy, ethics and society
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander said that he and the others he spoke for do not think the process being discussed will shoot to infinity in a hyperbolic fashion, and that they expect it to hit bottlenecks again. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander said that "we" think the process under discussion will not "shoot to infinity" but will hit bottlenecks again, as previous processes did. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	It will be hard to maintain classical liberalism during difficult AI arms races in times of crisis. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	Philosophy, ethics and society
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I see the AI is lying, and it’s obviously just an artifact of the training process. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Wright's law holds that efficiency improvement on a process is proportional to doublings of the number of copies produced. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	they actually have a huge amount of things to say. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	We have something which is smarter than Elon Musk, better at optimizing things than Elon Musk. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Unresolvable	Factual	3 Apr 2025	All humans are descended from groups that exterminated other groups, and most groups throughout history have been wiped out. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Philosophy, ethics and society
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I only like certain bloggers, there are many people who I’m sure are great that I don’t like. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	The fastest historical conversion of car factories to other production that they found was in World War II, converting car factories to bomber factories. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander said he thinks AI companies will literally train their AIs to be more cooperative. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI safety and alignment
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	Part of what they want is security, because they know that if China steals some of this and they get these superhuman hackers, and part of… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	He is less sure about requiring labs to publish safety cases, because he thinks they would kind of fake it or publish a safety case made for public consumption that is not their real one. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI policy and governance
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	Yeah, we don’t know how this will work at the limit of all these different training methods, but we’re also not completely making this up. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	The AI arms race framing that people already use will have intensified by the time of superintelligence. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI policy and governance
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I mean there are probably hundreds of other professors who do quantum computing things but nobody knows who they are because they don’t… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	And there my answer is just, “I don’t know. Let’s ask the super intelligent AI oracle. Maybe it has good ideas”. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	Your blog posts are actually very good. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	Yeah. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Unresolvable	Factual	3 Apr 2025	The general research speedup multiplier today is about a thousand times that of the Paleolithic era. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Economics and markets
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I can also count on a pretty small number of figures the number of people who had great blog posts but weren’t that prolific. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Through genetic evolution, human minds adapted to be more amenable to cooperation. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Many of these training failure modes have already been observed in existing AI agents. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	AI safety and alignment
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I do think it’s possible to unbundle liberalism in this sense. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I think with blogs and I mean this is self-serving, maybe I’m an arrogant person, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not yet due	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	Scott Alexander suggested it might be useful to think of 'our timelines' as being like 2070 to 2100, with the last 50 to 70 years of that progress happening during 2027 to 2028 because of what he described as an intelligence explosion. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI timelines and forecasting
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	There are many, many times more people who have written good books than who are actively operating great bloggers right now, I think. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	The United States is a liberal country and bans slavery and torture. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Philosophy, ethics and society
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	Works in Progress is a great magazine. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	we’re trying to take almost in some sense a conservative position where the trends don’t change, nobody does an insane thing, nothing that… Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not researched	Factual	3 Apr 2025	A major part of the AI 2027 scenario is a whistleblower coming out saying the AIs are horribly misaligned and labs are racing ahead anyway, after which the government pays attention. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	AI policy and governance
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	About a year after superintelligences start wanting robots, they will be producing a million robots per month (AI 2027 scenario estimate). Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI, the economy and work
Unresolvable	Prediction	3 Apr 2025	If a Dyson sphere is achieved within five years, it will look like AIs simulated more things than humans in a gradually increasing way. Prediction · 3 Apr 2025	AI timelines and forecasting
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	Partly you get this by bumbling about and having accidents and some of those accidents are productive. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Not checkable	Not checkable	3 Apr 2025	I think there are two reasons why they might fail to do what you want, kind of reflecting how they’re trained. Not checkable · 3 Apr 2025
Mostly true	Factual	3 Apr 2025	Through history, people have been reluctant to admit an AI is truly intelligent. Factual · 3 Apr 2025	Philosophy, ethics and society

Back to the list

Scott Alexander

Open its page

Promise Their own work or organisation

“I’ll probably make a post about it, but consider this an early heads-up.”

Scott Alexander, ACX author 19 October 2026 Open Thread 456 (Astral Codex Ten)

Scott Alexander will probably publish a post about the Bay Area ACX meetup.

Delivered on time The record shows it happened or was so.

What would count as true or false

True: Scott Alexander publishes a dedicated post (or a clearly labelled section of a post) on Astral Codex Ten announcing or describing the Bay Area ACX meetup that the 19 October 2026 heads-up referred to, before that meetup takes place. Mostly false: the only further mention is a brief line in an open thread, or the post appears only after the meetup. False: the meetup takes place and the ACX posts and open threads from 19 October 2026 up to the meetup contain no such post. The 'probably' hedge is noted, but the verdict depends on whether the post was published.

Evidence

San Francisco Meetup This Saturday Astral Codex Ten (Substack), by Scott Alexander · 22 October 2026 Own record
“Why: We’re having our usual round of fall meetups, and San Francisco is one of them. I’m signal-boosting this one because it’s likely to be our biggest, and because I plan to be there.”
ACX Everywhere w/ Scott Alexander fog·city (event calendar, listed by STDISF via Luma)
“Saturday, October 24 · 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM · Mox, 1680 Mission Street, San Francisco, San Francisco — Mox Event Space (Mission 13th St)”

Reasoning

On 22 October 2026, Astral Codex Ten published a dedicated post, "San Francisco Meetup This Saturday", announcing the meetup. In it Scott Alexander says he is signal-boosting it and plans to attend (E1). An independent event calendar lists the meetup at Mox in San Francisco on Saturday 24 October, 1–5 PM, so the post appeared before the meetup (E2). This meets the criteria for a dedicated post published before the meetup took place.

Cite this claim

Scott Alexander, “Scott Alexander will probably publish a post about the Bay Area ACX meetup.” (said 19 October 2026). Verdict: delivered on time. Reliability API, claim c_fcae5a3ffc4b, method 0.1.0+8bea457b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_fcae5a3ffc4b

Claims without a verdict

Is a verdict here wrong, or do you speak for Scott Alexander? Reply on the claim's own page, with the form at its foot (how replies work). Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts and scores are made.