275 Comments

Saying “first” in a comment thread is really obnoxious so I won’t do it. Plus if I refresh I probably won’t be first.

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Have you considered a $5/mo subscription price point? I suspect that you'd see more than double the number of subscribers and come out ahead.

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founding

Metaculus is better than PredictIT in basically every way, except the only way that counts!

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$10/month is more than I'm usually willing to pay for this kind of thing. If you had a patreon or something, I'd gladly contribute $1 or $2/month, even without getting extra content for it.

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"After talking to Substack about this concern, they've agreed not to display any hint of subscription-only posts to nonsubscribers. I might occasionally remind you that they exist, but you won't get teased by the titles or see stubs that cut off halfway."

Will these posts also be completely hidden in Substack's RSS feed? I read your blog through RSS, not email. And Substack only has a public RSS feed. There are no per-subscriber unique feeds.

If the stubs are hidden in the RSS feed, then I will miss out on them, despite being a subscriber.

The best option would be for Substack to provide paid-subscriber feeds, separate from the free public ones.

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I really, really wish Substack had an all-you-can-eat type feature. There's no way I can pay $100 for every single blogger I'm interested in, but I could probably pay $150 a year for several people.

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FYI, the email I got has a footer at the bottom saying "You’re on the free list for Astral Codex Ten. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber" and a big "Subscribe" button. This doesn't bother me in the least (in fact, I appreciate the reminder and intend to subscribe within the next week or two); I'm simply letting you know in case this violates either your principles or agreements.

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I actually think I might prefer getting to see some hints of subscriber-only content?

I'm probably not going to subscribe now at $10/month, but if I see one or two subscriber-only posts that seem interesting, I might.

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Really good to see you writing again, Scott.

There are two remaining concerns about the comments:

1. The "Load more" button is annoying. My ideal would be to load all comments by default like on WordPress, but failing that there should be a one-click "load all comments" button. Without this, navigating the comments section, searching for previously read threads, etc., will be too inconvenient to allow discussion to flourish the way it did on SSC.

2. We also need a way to quickly find *new* comments. Currently, as far as I can see, nothing differentiates read comments from unread ones, so there's no good way to catch up on discussions in the various nested threads.

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I am delighted to support you. I have already gotten a full measure of value from SSC and everything else is a bonus.

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For anyone interested, here's a robot narrated podcast feed for the new blog: https://danwahl.net/ac10-podcast/feed.xml

Also, the human version of the SSC Podcast is apparently being updated with new posts as well: http://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/rss

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Hi, Scott! Am I allowed to use the coupon if I am by no definition "too poor" (indeed quite the opposite, due to a recent-ish death in the family) but sincerely unsure how my finances are going to work out this year (due to the aforementioned recent-ish death in the family, which has generated bills that by now total an excess of more than I previously ever had in my bank account, some of which are recurring) and what I can spend on a regular basis? I would, if it lets me, change to a proper model once I know more (probably Q3 or Q4 this year?).

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Yglesias really messed up on that first year deal. $250,000 is a lot of money, but he's going to end up paying Substack nearly three times that much for his first year out of his gross revenue until it goes back the usual cut next year (his monthly gross is a lot higher than $27,000/month now).

I wonder why he took it? The guy was a top columnist with two published books and the co-founder of Vox - I doubt he was hurting for spare cash unless he's got a $1500/day Faberge Egg addiction.

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Very glad you have survived this. I even wondered if this was all a major conspiracy/advertising campaign ;) lol

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"And I know some of you are concerned about the risk of corporate deplatforming. My weak answer is that so far Substack has been great at resisting calls for this, I think it's worth rewarding them with my business, and I'm proud to contribute to companies that share my values. My strong answer is that if I start feeling too constrained, I'll leave."

I hope you will test this sooner than later so that if you end up needing to leave, it happens before we all get accustomed to the new site and give substack too much money.

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I missed Slate Star Codex and am glad to have you back — I admit I’m excited to hear what you’re doing in your new psychiatry practice too, but that’s because I work in healthcare so healthcare model experiments are always interesting to me, and while I often like your content even when I disagree with it, the psychiatry posts have the special place in my heart of someone from several adjacent industries

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Is there a mechanism in place by which I can support you while also making it clear that the additional fun incentives aren't exciting to me? I guess a Patreon or similar external service would accomplish that, but I don't mind the idea of some small cut of my contribution going to the platform. They're doing a lot of heavy lifting through exposure and lack of censorship, after all. Are there plans for a subscriber poll, perhaps? This seems like useful information to guide your decision-making process when it comes to incentives.

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Given the structure of Matt's deal I wonder if it's better for me to wait a year then subscribe? E.g., does subscribing now mostly benefit Scott or mostly benefit Substack?

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$10/mo is absolutely bonkers, completely out of touch with reality pricing for a single blogger. I didn't pay that much for the entirety of the NY Times, who's subscription I cancelled over the threat of doxxing you.

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Love you Scott, and so glad you are back. Just a request, would be nice if you too didn't start saying "some of whom are probably women or minorities". As a woman and "minority" in the context of America, getting so tired of everyone playing identity politics and reducing people to their identities. If you like a female blogger, or a minority blogger, just link to them and talk about their work. Stop mentioning their immutable characteristics.

This whole thing has gotten so bad that now whenever they mention that a minority or female is going to talk about something, especially at work, I immediately get biased that they are going to be worse than the other speakers because they were just brought in for woke points. And I personally feel that instead of just being evaluated as a person, I'm also being evaluated on my gender and ethnicity and have something to prove on it's behalf.

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I’m a student and I subscribed using the coupon. Thank you!

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🙏🤗 warm thoughts from Ibasho & microcovid project, it's great to have you back!

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Everyone has a unique financial situation, and a unique approach to making financial decisions. With that said, I feel compelled to offer one additional piece of information for anyone who wants to develop a mental model that covers subscription behavior: I chose to subscribe at a price greater than $10/mo. Probably not a lot of people will comment to say as much, but we do exist.

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I think there should be an option for more than $10/month or $100/year. People would then be able to engage with you out of a sense of philanthropy. Your work is a social good at this point.

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I subscribed and it's already paid for itself just from discovering Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive". <3

My first question: Why "ten"? I mean, I know it turns the near-anagram that was "slate star codex" to an exact-anagram of "scott alexander". But this is Scott, so of course there will be significance of the number 10 as well somehow.

PS: I asked this on the Discord and someone reminded me of Sephirot -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefirot and https://unsongbook.com/chapter-9-with-art-celestial/ -- which sounds like a likely answer.

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I may be the only one who wants this, but can you bring back ads? Ads on the original blog were a really useful way for me to get exposure to the ssc community for my product. I can always buy ads on the subreddit, but I'd rather send money to you. Besides, people tend to adblock on reddit.

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> My new psychiatry practice is (I think) potentially genuinely interesting, but I'd prefer people not get too excited about it until I've been doing it a year or two and can confirm that the business model actually works. My patients are random innocent people who happened to get matched with me at my past clinic and don't need to be ambushed for a news story about changing trends in mental health blah blah blah.

Honestly, Scott should consider opening up his practice to target the SSC demographic. Or at least, this is just me voicing my frustrations at the inability to find psychiatrists who are willing to work with people who experiment with 5-HT2a agonist RCs and want to talk about the science behind it. I feel like (especially in the bay area) this subset of people are somewhat underserved. Half of silicon valley goes off to Burning Man every year and dose a 10strip of LSD or some other lysergamide or tryptamine, but this is barely noted in medical practice.

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We missed you.

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> After talking to Substack about this concern, they've agreed not to display any hint of subscription-only posts to nonsubscribers. I might occasionally remind you that they exist, but you won't get teased by the titles or see stubs that cut off halfway.

Thank you.

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> I've revealed my real name to prevent people from threatening me with it, but I'm still going by Scott Alexander.

In that case, you might also consider changing the name that each article is posted under, too.

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General question - it looks like the ssc.com domain name is available, how hard would it be to make it redirect to here?

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founding

I am interested in reading via the web/RSS and not email; I would be sad if I got emails in my inbox for AC10. So, after subscribing, I went to my account page. There I found this interesting checkbox:

> Email notifications:

> [ ] Newsletter posts

> (Disabling all notifications will unsubscribe you from this publication)

I have unchecked the checkbox, and as far as I can tell I'm still paying someone money, so I'm probably still subscribed. But this seems like a strange UI, that you might want to ask Substack about, especially if you are encouraging people to read via the website.

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Any comment on the extremely long legal agreement that Substack requires me to agree to before they'll take my money? I won't read it (or agree to it). I WILL send you money via any payment service that didn't do that. Maybe you'd like to post some other payment mechanism.

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Glad to hear they're giving you the opportunity to leave if it doesn't work out. That was my biggest concern.

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What is the "founding member" price? I notice you don't mention it - is it a default Substack thing?

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As a subscriber to several Substacks, I do find it odd to paywall only a small amount of material, yet charge (at least as a couponless default) a full $10/month. The typical price for solo bloggers is $5, with $10 being the price more common for team efforts.

In the short term, people will just pay — we want to support you! But as time goes on, you probably should try to make the experience behind the paywall actually worth the additional cost to the people interested in paying. This could mean even more frequent open threads (as Yglesias does), but I think a direction that would be attractive to you is to put most if not all of the culture war content back there, even the posts you deem less impulsive or more important.

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One thing the comment section needs that it doesn't have (as far as I can see) is a Report button.

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Count me on the list of people who would be happy to pay some small amount of money (~$1-2) a month for no specific benefit. I'm very happy you're back but don't love the idea of hidden ~~SSC~~ ACX content. $10/mo also feels like enough money that it comes with the sensation of *fealty*, and neither you nor any blogger deserves that (in both the positive and the negative sense).

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I just read “Substack’s view of content moderation” and really dig it. I didn’t know they had a grand vision that I liked so much! After reading that I feel like moving to Substack was a great choice, and plan to see if I can find more writers here I like enough to subscribe to.

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First and foremost, I'm very happy to see you blogging again, I've missed SSC and I have high high hopes for this one!

Second though, I'm a bit sad that my options eem to be either "support at double what I was paying on patreon" or "don't support". Am I right in guessing that there won't be the option to support via other platforms and forgo the subscriber content on here?

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I am so pleased you're started blogging again! Subscribed and looking forward to the good times to come!

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I am excited for your new beginnings and i love the efforts you're going to to make it a smooth experience for non subscribers. I think can't afford it currently but i will likely get it when being able to becomes an option.

Just so impressed all round with the way you do things, Scott

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Thanks for the discount coupon. Life in Russia wth 6000$ annually is not that bad, but it's hard to support people in US.

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"And I know some of you are concerned about the risk of corporate deplatforming."

What if Substack itself gets deplatformed? Are they reliant on AWS? Are they offering crypto as a payment option in case payment providers shut them off? Do they have a contingency plan in case Gmail starts marking all their emails as spam? (Example: I noticed that the only way to log into my account is to get a login email from them? It might be good to harden the service by doing a standard username+password login so they're a bit less vulnerable to deplatforming by email providers.) Are they publishing the address of an office that could be targeted by rioters? Are they doing all their own email infrastructure, so their email provider can't terminate the relationship and force them to rebuild the reputation of the IP address they're using to send email, etc.?

Yes, these measures might seem a little excessive now, but it does seem to me that there has been a sort of "boiling frog" effect from the deplatformers where what was once unthinkable gradually becomes thinkable and then it actually happens. "Only the paranoid survive."

I'm especially concerned that Substack will make some kind of controversial moderation call which will cause all the left-of-center Substackers to abandon the platform in protest (zillion witches effect), leaving a platform full of right-of-center Substackers who FAANG feel comfortable deplatforming.

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I've noticed that the new blog isn't licensed under CC-BY like SSC is. Is this an intentional decision, a condition of moving over to substack, or something that might change in the future?

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I just wanted to add to the messages of gratefulness and support, and I'm excited to see what will come to be this blog in the coming years!

Being a student, I used the coupon code and I'm glad it's there, but it still feels as though I'm not paying my fair share, but here goes regardless.

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100$ is very far out of my price range, considering everything else I'm already subscribed to. 5$ would be better...

My favorite articles were your calm insights into culture war topics, but 120$ (for a monthly subscription) would amount to a significant chunk out of my yearly income... I feel like this might defacto limit your content to readers from rich countries who can afford the cost.

(But I'm also not in a financial strain so I don't feel comfortable using the coupon.)

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Anyone know off the top of their head how to alter the Stylebot CSS to make the title bar not be sticky? I don't like how it re-appears when I scroll up, I'd prefer if it was just static at the top of the page.

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The last time I subscribed to a "news" anything was my senior year of college as a undergraduate, and the only reason I subscribed to an alleged "newspaper" was because as a college student I was somehow entitled to pay the staggering amount of one dollar per year for the school year subscription.

Implicitly that meant, I believe, I was only to receive the daily edition whenever the delivery person (who I swear was Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong) remembered to deliver it.

When it was delivered it was - politely - a disaster. It seems the cost of a proofreader was too much for the publication's budget and no one else could proofread before publishing so. . . And then the publisher/editor decided a sure-fire business idea was to insult, alienate, offend, and generally antagonize subscribers and advertisers alike by way of his weekly, poorly written screed in his capacity as Mr. Know It All. (I prefer the Rocky and Bullwinkle version of said expert, incidentally.)

The real world beckoned me, and working life kept me from having time to sit and read the newspaper in the morning or the evening, and I decided, after visiting a friend who had subscribed to a daily newspaper that amounted to an ink-stained impending avalanched in the corner of his living room, that spending money on a subscription a "news" anything was not a good investment.

I ask one thing, should I consider a subscription: Quality. Save the insults, the threats, the abuse, the antagonism for the sandbox, the litter box, or Fakebook or Twitter or whatever Social Media platform the cool kids, the in crowd, the fashionable folk frequent nowadays.

https://iamcolorado.substack.com/

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As they say on tumblr IF👏YOU👏ACCEPT👏A👏STEADY👏DAY👏JOB👏AS👏A👏WRITER👏TO👏SUPPORT👏YOUR👏PIE-IN-THE-SKY👏DREAMS👏OF👏PRACTICING👏MEDICINE👏YOU👏ARE👏VALID

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I am on the verge of subscribing after enjoying many years of wonderful content from S.S.C. Can someone please explain what differentiates the “founding member” option? Is this simply additional generosity to express one’s love of all things Scott Alexander, or is there a further benefit to the subscriber? Thanks

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I was glad to subscribe!

Question though: is there a comfortable way to access stuff from the old blog?

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Glad to see you are back! Does the "light content" that is premium-only include future short stories and such? They were amazing, and I would be very sad to miss them.

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Welcome back! I was missing you. I have two questions:

1. Is there a possibility to buy a bigger package than the $250 one?

2. Is there a chance to fix typography of quotes and apostrophes? It was working great on slatestar codex, so probably a substack problem...

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Book recommendation time! I'm on an English history kick at the moment, having finally succumbed and read Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" trilogy (did it convince me Thomas Cromwell was a misunderstood woobie? it did not, but it did give me new insights on his character). After that, I got on to two biographies of Cromwell, one by Diarmaid MacCulloch, and that led me on to his 2003 book about the Reformation, titled (of course) "The Reformation: A History" https://www.amazon.com/Reformation-History-Diarmaid-MacCulloch/dp/014303538X.

As an aside, I need a good biography of (1) Thomas Cranmer - the only version of one by MacCulloch is in print - no e-book version so I'd have to read it like a caveperson or something! - and his character is a fascinating one which I want to see explored; he seemed to crumple like a wet paper bag when it came to giving in to Henry VIII (obligingly provided him the annulments for two of his wives) yet bravely went to the stake in Mary's reign, and I want to know more about him than simply "wrote the Book of Common Prayer which is beautiful English language" and (2) Henry VIII himself - there's something very slippery psychologically about him which makes it extremely tempting to go all Freudian on him, and he seemed to switch from "you are my bestest pal in all the world" to "send him/her to the headsman's block" in minutes. Descriptions of his marital shenanigans (poor guy managed to get himself not-really-marred THREE times) and the brutal way in which he discarded former favourites (had wife Number Three lined up to marry within two days of having Number Two, Anne Boleyn's head chopped off; married Number Five the same day as the annulment from Number Four was through) is breath-taking in its seeming psychopathy. I really want to know if anyone has had a good attempt at trying to see what made him tick.

So on to The Reformation. I deliberately picked MacCulloch because I knew he would have completely different views from my own (he's thoroughly Anglicised though of Scottish heritage, raised Anglican in a long-tailed clerical family, no longer in that or any tradition; I'm none of those) and although I'm only a couple of chapters in, I find it very good. I had no idea the Portuguese were so important, for instance. So can definitely recommend it.

I'd also recommend his Cromwell biography to let you see the rise and fall of this superstar fixer of the Henrician court. He overhauled the unwieldy mediaeval political structure to establish Parliament and how it operated on a firmer basis, unwittingly creating the one force which in later years and centuries could stand up to the king (who, under Henry and his underlings' reform of the church and state was now the sole spiritual and temporal authority who could rule over you body and soul) and drafted a raft of laws amongst other works; they really were New Men creating a New World and bringing about the birth of the modern world. The description of how he used those laws, particularly in the Boleyn affair, is very striking in how it anticipates some elements of the modern world - the way he went about picking victims and disposing of them is awfully (and I do mean that) reminiscent of Soviet show trials.

And then within four years of this great triumph of destroying Queen Anne, he himself went to the execution ground. Riding the tiger is a thrilling experience - until you fall off.

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A couple of points, possibly already made as I admit I haven't gone through all the comments...

I think we are all aware of the kind of content we are going to receive from Scott (and the kind of discussion we are going to get from his followers). Most of us are here because we like what Scott has to say, and simply want him to continue saying it.

The comparison to buying a book by someone who has spent a year researching it is unfair. This is a book Scott has been continuously writing since he began blogging. What he has written every year could easily fill a book, so let's ask how many books Scott has written that we have read for free over the years?

To me, the 10 dollars I have happily paid is as much indicative of my support for what Scott is doing with his medical practice, his decision to leave his job and pursue it, and the continuance of his blogging practice. That is: I support his content creation, yes, but I also support Scott and his choices. I think we are all aware of the value Scott adds to our lives through his writing. The ideas, maybe we could get elsewhere (maybe), but his digestion and regurgitation of them we cannot. That’s what I am happily paying for.

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Uhh....why would they deplatform you? You're not a deplorable. I don't get it.

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I might be a minority here, but I want to make sure there's still psychiatry blogging. I've really missed you digging through metanalyses and discussing chemical pathways.

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I can't be the only one terrified that a "like" system in the comments will completely change the quality and character of the discussions here. I'd predict a lot more dunking and Reddit style pithiness because with any points system, the discussion necessarily becomes a competition.

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JVL sent me and I subscribed.

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Thanks alot for the coupon option! I really wanted to contribute, but 10$ was a bit too high for me, and the reduced option is perfect :)

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I suspect that even giving subscribers "advanced access" to "culture war" posts would help alleviate the dangers of going viral, both because the initial audience would be generally familiar with your work and sympathetic to your opinions and your style, and because you'd have an opportunity to edit the more emotional bits before making these posts public.

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Another group to shill: some rationalist / LW sphere people decided they were going to try to replicate GPT-3 and release it to the world, because why not? Six months later they’ve secured funding, have a viable plan for achieving the goal, and have two (not directly related) NLP papers under review. Check them out at www.eleuther.ai

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Is there any chance that healthcare providers might be able to get continuing education credits for your psychiatry posts? I don't know how hard it is to set up for that. It would definitely be cool.

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I have two suggestions:

1. You said "I might also paywall a few very impulsive Culture War posts, just to prevent them from going viral." Please consider not doing this. It's fine if you want to prevent them from going viral in some other way, but please consider providing people with someone to view these posts for free, like by logging in or something.

2. You said Substack has "agreed not to display any hint of subscription-only posts to nonsubscribers". Please consider changing it so that people who want to see the titles of subscription-only posts can do so, even if the list doesn't show up on Google search results.

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> After talking to Substack about this concern, they've agreed not to display any hint of subscription-only posts to nonsubscribers

This does not seem true at the moment. I see "Hidden Open Thread 157.5 Subscriber-only open thread" in the links and in the RSS feed.

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"I might also paywall a few very impulsive Culture War posts, just to prevent them from going viral."

It's a nice thought, but this will not work and you know it. Instead of reading your controversial statements for themselves, people will just take the word of whoever is misquoting you.

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Glad to have you back!

FYI at the bottom of your posts there is a link to a Hidden Open Thread. I am a non-subscriber. When I click the link it takes me to a "this post is for paying subscribers" page. The link looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/wfCBQYi

Just sharing in case this is a thing you want to change.

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Paywalled posts show up in the RSS feed (which I view with Feedly). Not a big issue for me, but figured you'd want to know about it.

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"After talking to Substack about this concern, they've agreed not to display any hint of subscription-only posts to nonsubscribers. I might occasionally remind you that they exist, but you won't get teased by the titles or see stubs that cut off halfway. If you do see these, something has gone wrong and you should let me know."

Just got one of these for the "Technocracy-Zilla: Origins" post. It showed up in my RSS feed as just a link, when I clicked through I got the teaser followed by the "this post is for paying subscribers, subscribe" banner.

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Test comment.

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Hello.

I attempted to reply to a comment on the "List of Fictional Cryptocurrencies Banned by the SEC" post. After spending 5 minutes typing up my reply and setting up my account, I was told that only paid subscribers could comment on that post.

I did not see any warning that comments were subscriber-only until I hit Post.

I am not sure whether this is a bug or an intended feature. I do know that it is frustrating to have to put effort into a post *before* knowing whether one is wasting said effort.

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After the NYT piece i would hope that the discussion flourishes on both sides and that evolving SSC platform grows with the new home. NYT probably is not going anywhere and in general, their approach to the news is of value. I knew nothing about SSC until the Times starting probing the story. IMO its all very interesting , valuable ideas.

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I probably would have found you again eventually, but I am here today because of he-who-must-not-be-naned at NYT. I will suscribe in two weeks. Peter Robinson

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Suggestion for a book review: https://the-power-of-capitalism.com ! by. Dr. Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

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More Substack bug reports:

- subscriber-only posts show up on the Archive pages

- when viewing comments in "Chronological" order, the buttons to show new comments seem to work strangely (I can't figure out the exact details of how they're going wrong, but they're going very wrong and this should be obvious to any Substack dev who spends a couple minutes playing around with them - my best guess is "inheriting functionality from Newest First mode")

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