15 Comments

What about the under-represented Billionaire$? Bill Gates, Elon Musk et al.

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What about magazine writers/columnists? People like Conor Friedersdorf, Zeynep Tufecki, and Kelsey Piper. As for podcasters, I’d add Thaddeus Russel.

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If you bench Robin Hanson from the Rationalist team, consider Matt Ridley as a substitute.

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founding

Noah Rothman at Commentary would be a good member for Dead Trees. He can be counted on to at least Devil's Advocate if not outright Steel Man the viewpoint he is about to take issue with.

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Kling talks a lot about opposing vicious, soldier-mindset tribalism, steel-manning and being charitable to rival points of view. But many of the pundits he has short listed as exemplifying these virtues are known for doing the exact opposite.

Read this twitter back-forth between Bari Weiss and Yoram Hazony:

https://twitter.com/yhazony/status/966809923807055872

Hazony pleads with Bari Weiss to be more civil and avoid demonizing those with which she disagrees and choosing debate rather than delegitimatizing rival points of view. Bari Weiss emphatically declines. Please read the brief exchange.

Bari Weiss is a pundit who has often chose to demonize those with which she disagrees. It's not just that one exchange and it's not just Bari Weiss. I'm familiar with many names on Kling's shortlist; many of them are often viciously tribal. Matt Yglesias encouraged a mob to intimidate Tucker Carlson's wife and children at their personal home! It's quite absurd to choose that as the standard for respectful and healthy debate.

"I wish that I had more left-of-center folks on this list". Almost every name here is left-of-center. Maybe Glenn Loury is right-of-center. He is known for expressing the right-wing view on racial issues, but I've observed him to be very non-political. Every other name I recognize is left-of-center. I remember Kling categorized Megan McArdle as conservative: she does have conservative views on issues, like on health care, and spending, but politically, she has been a hard-left pundit. She endorsed Obama for president in 2008, she criticized his signature health care policies, but she still supported him as a politician. She supported every Democrat in 2020, including Bernie Sanders; and sure, she disagrees with all of his policies, but at some tribal political level, she is a Blue Tribe, Democratic Party pundit. Bryan Caplan agrees with the political right on most issues, but he's aligned himself entirely with the political left as an activist and a pundit and as a career professor.

Would anyone of the following right-of-center pundits have a shot with Kling's scoring system?

Angelo Codevilla, Dave Rubin, Peter Thiel, Eric Kaufmann, Andrey Mir, Glenn Greenwald, William Voegeli, Michael Anton, Casey Mulligan, the Babylon Bee writers including Kyle Mann, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Alain Finkielkraut, Mollie Hemmingway and the other writers at The Federalist and American Spectator, Tucker Carlson, Jonathan Turley, politicians like Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and of course Donald J Trump.

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I propose that Scott Adams belongs on the Rationalists.

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$Sub$stack$

No Glenn Greenwald?

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