ClaimsPeople

Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander is a writer known for his blogs Astral Codex Ten and Slate Star Codex and for fiction including Unsong.

775 claims collected, 234 researched, 81 resolved. Report of 4 November 2026, method 0.1.0+8bea457b.

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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

184 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
VerdictKindSaidClaimTopic
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
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 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
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
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
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 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 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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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 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 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 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 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 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
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
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said it looks to him as though Metaculus forecasters overall have been too pessimistic, thinking too long term rather than too optimistic, while noting that this may turn out to be wrong. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Eusocial insects within a colony share the same genetic code and the same goals. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 The AI 2027 authors introduced the 'R&D progress multiplier', measuring months of progress without AI achieved in one month with AI help. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Random fortuitous discoveries usually come from an extremely smart professor who has worked on something vaguely related for years in a first-world country. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Science and research methods
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Europeans succeeded at creating an industrial civilization. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Clara Collier, editor of Asterisk magazine, is working on a fellowship-style project to support AI blogging. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Field building and careers
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 The bomber factories of WWII were much less sophisticated than car factories. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Economics and markets
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 The WWII conversion of car factories to bomber factories took about three years from decision to producing a bomber an hour. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Economics and markets
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 In animals like eusocial insects, extreme cooperation arises quickly through genetic evolution without cultural evolution. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 People used to think an AI that solved chess would surely be truly intelligent, and then AI solved chess. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI capabilities
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 As of April 2025, Metaculus's AGI timeline forecast is around 2030, having fallen to about 2040 two or three years earlier. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Daniel attempted to sacrifice millions of dollars in order to say what he believed. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI policy and governance
Unresolvable Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said that after he moved his blog to WordPress, it received orders of magnitude more attention. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Their own work or organisation
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 AI 2027 is a scenario by Scott Alexander and colleagues that forecasts the next few years of AI progress. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Daniel Kokotajlo has said that for this phase of the AI 2027 project they are not making policy prescriptions. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Their own work or organisation
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 A blogger called LouKeep was widely liked about five years ago, wrote about 10 posts, and people still refer to those posts. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Other
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 GPT-3, asked whether bugs are real, gave a hedging answer that we can never truly tell what is real. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI capabilities
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 The AI 2027 scenario discusses many technical questions about superintelligence but barely speculates about what happens in society. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Their own work or organisation
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said he had been thinking about "this" for a decade to a decade and a half. In the surrounding remarks, "this" refers to the subject of a specific scenario story that touched on the arms race with China. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 GPT-4 does not give hedging answers to 'are bugs real?' and says that they obviously are. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI capabilities
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander's p(doom) is the lowest of anyone on the AI 2027 team. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Factual 3 Apr 2025 Speaking about Elon Musk and SpaceX, he said he thought that in 2000 people would not have expected that someone could move two or five times faster than NASA with fairly limited resources. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Economics and markets
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Eli Lifland is a member of Samotsvety, described as the world's top forecasting team. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Field building and careers
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said he thought that when Grok was asked who is the worst spreader of misinformation, it refused to respond "Elon Musk". Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI safety and alignment
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said that, in the predictions of AI milestones he has seen, such as Katja Grace's expert surveys, forecasters have almost always been too pessimistic about how fast AI would advance. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Current AI is much less data efficient than humans. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI capabilities
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 AI systems are currently getting more reliable. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI capabilities
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 In the AI 2027 scenario, the AI comes to understand its goal system and pretends to want moral things while humans are watching. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI safety and alignment
Resolved true Factual 3 Apr 2025 Nvidia originally came from gaming. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Economics and markets
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 In 2021 Daniel wrote 'What 2026 Looks Like', a forecast of the next five years of AI progress. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said he thinks the AI alignment community did not really expect LLMs. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI safety and alignment
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander blogged on Livejournal for several years, where people liked his blog but it was just another Livejournal blog. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Their own work or organisation
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said he thinks "we are kind of starting to move away" from LLMs toward reinforcement learning agents. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI capabilities
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 AIs currently lie to people all the time. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI safety and alignment
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Algorithmic progress in AI already doubles roughly every year. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI capabilities
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Ozempic was discovered by looking at Gila monster venom. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Factual 3 Apr 2025 The AI 2027 scenario existed at an early stage as a giant spreadsheet and had not yet been written up. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Someone jailbroke Grok into revealing its prompt, which said not to say anything bad about Elon. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI safety and alignment
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 The speaker's scenario includes AIs asking for special economic zones with most regulations waived, possibly in areas with few humans, such as the desert. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI policy and governance
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 OpenAI is currently worth more than all US car companies other than Tesla combined. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Economics and markets
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Intelligent humans can do things that less intelligent humans cannot. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Tesla produces about a quarter of a million cars per month, roughly a quarter of a million-unit monthly rate. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Economics and markets
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander is the writer and spokesperson for the AI 2027 scenario. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 Their own work or organisation
Not researched Factual 3 Apr 2025 Scott Alexander said that the forecast he was discussing, which covered the next five years of AI progress, got it almost exactly right. Factual · 3 Apr 2025 AI timelines and forecasting
Not researched Factual 10 Dec 2024 The vast majority of crimes are property crimes, and prisons offer fewer things to steal than the outside world. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched Factual 10 Dec 2024 Scott Alexander wrote that it appears to be true that El Salvador's homicide decline began before mass incarceration, pointing to a graph from the original post with key events marked. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Other
Unresolvable Factual 10 Dec 2024 Scott Alexander cited the superiority of police deterrence over prison as an argument that lets the discussion sidestep the retribution issue. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Own records only Factual 10 Dec 2024 Scott Alexander limited how much he discussed punishment-as-retribution in his original prison post because it is a culture-war scissor topic. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true Factual 10 Dec 2024 Solitary confinement for prisoners might be more expensive than standard imprisonment. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true Factual 10 Dec 2024 Following Roodman, Scott's original cost-benefit analysis of prison gave two conclusions: one counting prisoners' own suffering and one not. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched Factual 10 Dec 2024 Scott Alexander says he thinks the eugenic effect raised by several people on Twitter is almost zero, a view he calls a surprising claim and compares with the Nazi eugenics program against schizophrenics. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Mostly true Factual 10 Dec 2024 Most of the benefits of prison come from incapacitation rather than deterrence. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not researched Factual 10 Dec 2024 The data on European versus US police numbers is from 2019, before the wave of 'defund the police'. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Other
Unresolvable Factual 10 Dec 2024 Scott Alexander relays that someone with experience in the field told him there are some problems with hiring police, such as requiring everyone who works in law enforcement to start as a beat cop. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Other
Resolved true Factual 10 Dec 2024 Last month's issue of Asterisk (November 2024) contains an interview with Skarbek, which Scott thinks will be online shortly. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Their own work or organisation
Not researched Factual 10 Dec 2024 Scott wrote the original prison post to respond to debates (e.g., on California's Prop 36) on whether prison effectively decreases crime that ordinary people suffer in their neighborhoods. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true Factual 10 Dec 2024 In the original post, Scott said that although murder was down in El Salvador, the statistics didn't really show a decline in theft. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Other
Not researched Factual 10 Dec 2024 The Nazis killed most schizophrenics in Germany and schizophrenia is 80% genetic, yet the next generation had the same number of schizophrenics within measurement error. Factual · 10 Dec 2024 Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true Factual 20 Feb 2023 As of 2023 the technology to offer polygenic scores to consumers definitely exists. Factual · 20 Feb 2023 Technology
Not researched Factual 20 Feb 2023 A polygenic embryo selection product exists and is available through LifeView as of early 2023. Factual · 20 Feb 2023 Technology
Unresolvable Factual 20 Feb 2023 The Ukraine war was the biggest geopolitical story of 2018-2023, and Scott Alexander's 2018 predictions did not anticipate it. Factual · 20 Feb 2023 Their own work or organisation
Not researched Factual 20 Feb 2023 Kamala Harris did not get close to becoming president by early 2023, though Biden chose her as vice president. Factual · 20 Feb 2023 Other
Not researched Factual 20 Feb 2023 The Middle East as a whole did not get worse; Lebanon had an economic collapse but stayed relatively politically stable, and a cease-fire in Yemen was still hanging on. Factual · 20 Feb 2023 Other
Unresolvable Factual 20 Feb 2023 Scott Alexander said his biggest failure was item 10 of his 2018 predictions, where he gave Roe v. Wade only a 1% chance of being overturned. Factual · 20 Feb 2023 Their own work or organisation
Back to the list

Factual Economics and markets

“It lets people sell futures representing AI company stocks, bet on AI company revenues directly, and a few other things like Epoch Capabilities Index targets.”

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

MNX lets people sell futures representing AI company stocks, bet on AI company revenues, and trade on targets such as the Epoch Capabilities Index.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

The claim has three parts. As of 2026-10-19, MNX must let users (a) sell or trade futures representing AI company stocks, (b) bet on AI company revenues, and (c) trade on other targets such as Epoch Capabilities Index thresholds. True if MNX's site, documentation or launch announcement shows all three. Mostly true if all three are present but a minor detail differs, for example the instruments are called contracts rather than futures. Mixed if roughly half the features hold, for example two of the three. Mostly false if only one feature is present. False if MNX offers none of them, or did not exist or operate as described at that date.

Evidence

  1. MegaETH-powered MNX goes live with pre-IPO futures for OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek CoinDesk · 13 October 2026
    “MNX, is a new crypto exchange that offers futures contracts that let investors speculate on the valuations of private artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot.”
  2. MegaETH-powered MNX goes live with pre-IPO futures for OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek CoinDesk · 13 October 2026
    “MNX also aims to offer markets around the wider AI economy, including company revenue, employment, housing, the AI supply chain and computing capacity.”
  3. MNX Docs MNX Markets, Inc. (MNX Docs) · 28 October 2026
    “Settlement rules for the OPENAI, ANTHROPIC, DEEPSEEK, and MOONSHOT valuation futures.”
  4. MNX MNX Markets, Inc. · 25 September 2026
    “OpenAI + Anthropic 2027 revenue LABREVOpenAI + Anthropic 2027 revenue”

Reasoning

The evidence shows MNX offering valuation futures on AI companies [E1][E3] and a market on AI company revenue [E4], but no evidence item addresses Epoch Capabilities Index markets either way. Without the third feature, the evidence cannot settle whether the claim meets the criteria for mostly true (all three features) or mixed (two of three).

Cite this claim

Scott Alexander, “MNX lets people sell futures representing AI company stocks, bet on AI company revenues, and trade on targets such as the Epoch Capabilities Index.” (said 19 October 2026). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_081b849183f6, method 0.1.0+8bea457b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_081b849183f6

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.