There is a weakness of your scoring system. You fail to reward people who say true things, backing them up, regardless of social ostracism. This reduces the desirability of people like Steve Sailer. You may judge him overly tribal. I judge Scott Alexander as insufficiently intellectually honest when there is a risk of social ostracism. (You, Arnold, do pretty well by my lights.)
Of course, that is a very interesting issue. I have thought about whether to value intellectual independence and how to measure it. So far, I have not included anything specifically aimed at that. I will get back to this topic in a future essay.
I concur with Michael Bailey's [1] assessment of the high value of Steve Sailer's writing. I cite Sailer's long-term and ignored critique of David Card's now Nobel Prize-winning research [2] as an example of: 1) evidence of Sailer's insights and; 2) Sailer being ignored by pundits and commentators because of their fear of "social ostracism". I contend that the facts and ideas that need to be silenced 'because CRIMESPEAK' are often the facts and ideas that best justify close public examination.
I concur with Michael Bailey's "I judge Scott Alexander as insufficiently intellectually honest when there is a risk of social ostracism". I cite as an example this a controversy[3] in the LessWrong community with which Alexander is associated and upon which Alexander has opined. Note that Quote A and Quote B, below, are from the same post by Alexander. The seeming irreconcilability between Quote A & B are evidence that he is "insufficiently intellectually honest when there is a risk of social ostracism".
Alexander/Dr. Siskind is a practicing psychologist. I have difficulties reconciling Dr. Siskind's professional obligations, as I understand them, with the practices described in Quote A and his benign acceptance of their practitioner in Quote B.
Quote A from Scott Alexander: "Vassar ran MIRI a very long time ago, but either quit or got fired, ... Since then, he's [Vasser] tried to "jailbreak" a lot of people associated with MIRI and CFAR - again, this involves making them paranoid about MIRI/CFAR and convincing them to take lots of drugs. The combination of drugs and paranoia caused a lot of borderline psychosis, which the Vassarites mostly interpreted as success ("these people have been jailbroken out of the complacent/conformist world, and are now correctly paranoid and weird"). Occasionally it would also cause full-blown psychosis, which they would discourage people from seeking treatment for, because they thought psychiatrists were especially evil and corrupt and traumatizing and unable to understand that psychosis is just breaking mental shackles."[3]
Quote B from Scott Alexander:
"I want to clarify that I don't dislike Vassar, he's actually been extremely nice to me, I continue to be in cordial and productive communication with him, and his overall influence on my life personally has been positive."[3]
Excellent list. I approve of everyone on it. I would also add: Kelsey Piper, Adam Grant, Phil Tetlock, Yascha Mounk, Alex Tabarrok, Paul Graham, Steven Pinker, Nate Silver, Noah Smith, Jesse Singal, Robin Hanson.
on the far left side I'd add Freddie DeBoer (also on substack: freddiedeboer.substack.com) though he (intentionally) swings into confrontational mode occassionally.
Richard Epstein for sure. He has a huge corpus of podcasts, blogs, op-eds, legal briefs, debates, interviews, books, and a fantastic series of talks on property rights that were animated by the Federalist Society. On every subject he touches, he speaks at the absolute highest level, and he steel-mans opposing views almost to a fault. For a fantasy league, he has never been a better bargain because his stock was trashed last year by some embarrassing public misstatements and bad predictions about covid. Yet even on covid he was ahead of the curve, getting excoriated for observations that would later become mainstream. For some GMU gossip, one of my favorite intellectuals, Don Boudreaux, told me that Vernon Smith told him that Richard Epstein is the smartest person he ever met. (Don said the smartest person HE ever met was David D Friedman, and David himself gushes about Epstein here: https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/search?q=Multitasking+or+Parallel+vs+Serial+Thinking ) Imo Epstein is woefully underrated.
Encouraging a non-tribal intellectual style is intellectual pacifism. If there is a tribe whose ascendancy will, in practice, destroy the values that you hold dear (e.g., freedom of association, free exchange of goods and services, freedom of conscience), then your interests will be served by aligning with the opposing tribe, however distasteful that might be to you.
So I’m going contrarian. While most of the people on your list might disagree at the margins they’re going to agree on the foundations. Most of them also fall under what I’d call “polite society.” Everyone doesn’t act that way. You won’t get a wide range of voices by limiting it to people that are nice.
You have no representation from the far left or the far right. Some of the people on these poles have more influence (and are more interesting) than some of the “also-rans” mentioned here.
From your list, I see several I believe are left of center (at least by some metric):
Matt Yglesias, John McWhorter, Julia Galef, and Scott Alexander are registered democrats. And even Andrew Sullivan has enthusiastically voted for Democratic candidates the last 3 major elections at least.
Justin Smith https://justinehsmith.substack.com/. My sense is that he's left of center but he doesn't address the usual political topics very often and I recommend him independently of all that anyway. He's very high on your K criterion. You need to browse several of his posts to get a real sense of what he is about.
I completely agree with Arnold's criticism of political tribalism, but I feel that he is somewhat confused as to meaning and drivers of tribalism. Plenty of people complain about tribalism these days, but very few seem to bother to actually think about it.
In the US, tribalism in a natural consequence of the idea that everybody has to self-identify with 2-3 sets of beliefs. This idea is based on implicit assumption that there are only 1-2 dimensions of policy views.
Everybody, who assumes that there are "two sides", fuels tribalism. Everybody, who uses scale "left-right", fuels tribalism. Everybody, who divides people into conservatives/liberals/libertarians (especially given that these words often evolve meaning, very different from their literal meaning) fuels tribalism.
The first step out of tribal mentality is to acknowledge that there are multiple dimensions of policy views. And these dimensions need not be correlated. Space of policies is R^n, not R^1. So all political discussions in this country are between the views, which do not even span 1% of this space.
This multi-dimensionality is true but it seems you haven't read his book Three Languages of Politics, or at least a couple of book reviews. Few have written or thought about it as much. Your critique would be much stronger if you named any you thought were better (I'd be interested). The 8 category scoring system also doesn't cover everything, despite 8 dimensions, but I think it's already a couple too many to be an optimal mix of fun and good anti-tribal thinking.
Thanks for referring me to Three Languages of Politics. I skimmed it and it seems to me that Arnold's point in Chapter 2 is that those 8 dimensions are actually 3 and are wrong way to think about policy views in the first place.
Here is simple 3-dimensional space:
1. Attitude towards business regulations.
This is single most important dimension. When we say regulations (zoning laws, environmental reviews, occupational licensing etc) what we actually mean are ways to protect rent-seekers and incumbents from competition. While two dominant tribes claim that they have the opposite views on this dimension, their actual policies are identical. If you do not believe me, check whether zoning and building restrictions are different across cities, governed by different tribes.
2. Democracy vs autocracy.
This topic is outright taboo in American politics. One gets called Neo-Nazi for even suggesting to think about different options. All 3 tribes have identical views on this dimension.
3. Law enforcement.
Less important than the previous two dimensions, but still more relevant that all nonsense issues current media are mostly talking about. The only dimension where there seems to be a difference between 3 tribes. Or at least it seemed so before 2017.
So this simple 3-dimensional coordinate system shows that there is little difference between major tribes on policies which really matter. All the tribalism is confined to ridiculous culture war issues, which look almost like distraction from the things, which really matter.
There is a weakness of your scoring system. You fail to reward people who say true things, backing them up, regardless of social ostracism. This reduces the desirability of people like Steve Sailer. You may judge him overly tribal. I judge Scott Alexander as insufficiently intellectually honest when there is a risk of social ostracism. (You, Arnold, do pretty well by my lights.)
Of course, that is a very interesting issue. I have thought about whether to value intellectual independence and how to measure it. So far, I have not included anything specifically aimed at that. I will get back to this topic in a future essay.
I concur with Michael Bailey's [1] assessment of the high value of Steve Sailer's writing. I cite Sailer's long-term and ignored critique of David Card's now Nobel Prize-winning research [2] as an example of: 1) evidence of Sailer's insights and; 2) Sailer being ignored by pundits and commentators because of their fear of "social ostracism". I contend that the facts and ideas that need to be silenced 'because CRIMESPEAK' are often the facts and ideas that best justify close public examination.
I concur with Michael Bailey's "I judge Scott Alexander as insufficiently intellectually honest when there is a risk of social ostracism". I cite as an example this a controversy[3] in the LessWrong community with which Alexander is associated and upon which Alexander has opined. Note that Quote A and Quote B, below, are from the same post by Alexander. The seeming irreconcilability between Quote A & B are evidence that he is "insufficiently intellectually honest when there is a risk of social ostracism".
Alexander/Dr. Siskind is a practicing psychologist. I have difficulties reconciling Dr. Siskind's professional obligations, as I understand them, with the practices described in Quote A and his benign acceptance of their practitioner in Quote B.
Quote A from Scott Alexander: "Vassar ran MIRI a very long time ago, but either quit or got fired, ... Since then, he's [Vasser] tried to "jailbreak" a lot of people associated with MIRI and CFAR - again, this involves making them paranoid about MIRI/CFAR and convincing them to take lots of drugs. The combination of drugs and paranoia caused a lot of borderline psychosis, which the Vassarites mostly interpreted as success ("these people have been jailbroken out of the complacent/conformist world, and are now correctly paranoid and weird"). Occasionally it would also cause full-blown psychosis, which they would discourage people from seeking treatment for, because they thought psychiatrists were especially evil and corrupt and traumatizing and unable to understand that psychosis is just breaking mental shackles."[3]
Quote B from Scott Alexander:
"I want to clarify that I don't dislike Vassar, he's actually been extremely nice to me, I continue to be in cordial and productive communication with him, and his overall influence on my life personally has been positive."[3]
Ref.
[1] 1422807-michael-bailey
[2] https://www.takimag.com/article/the-nobel-prize-and-the-cocaine-gold-rush/
[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe
Excellent list. I approve of everyone on it. I would also add: Kelsey Piper, Adam Grant, Phil Tetlock, Yascha Mounk, Alex Tabarrok, Paul Graham, Steven Pinker, Nate Silver, Noah Smith, Jesse Singal, Robin Hanson.
and if you would like to draft a team in the May league, let me know. arnold at arnoldkling dot com
Thanks, but I can't commit to the time it would take to do the scoring.
all good choices in the spirit of the exercise
on the far left side I'd add Freddie DeBoer (also on substack: freddiedeboer.substack.com) though he (intentionally) swings into confrontational mode occassionally.
Richard Epstein for sure. He has a huge corpus of podcasts, blogs, op-eds, legal briefs, debates, interviews, books, and a fantastic series of talks on property rights that were animated by the Federalist Society. On every subject he touches, he speaks at the absolute highest level, and he steel-mans opposing views almost to a fault. For a fantasy league, he has never been a better bargain because his stock was trashed last year by some embarrassing public misstatements and bad predictions about covid. Yet even on covid he was ahead of the curve, getting excoriated for observations that would later become mainstream. For some GMU gossip, one of my favorite intellectuals, Don Boudreaux, told me that Vernon Smith told him that Richard Epstein is the smartest person he ever met. (Don said the smartest person HE ever met was David D Friedman, and David himself gushes about Epstein here: https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/search?q=Multitasking+or+Parallel+vs+Serial+Thinking ) Imo Epstein is woefully underrated.
Encouraging a non-tribal intellectual style is intellectual pacifism. If there is a tribe whose ascendancy will, in practice, destroy the values that you hold dear (e.g., freedom of association, free exchange of goods and services, freedom of conscience), then your interests will be served by aligning with the opposing tribe, however distasteful that might be to you.
I suggest Matt Shapiro; he seems to be eager to join such a tribe himself
https://polimath.substack.com/p/default-friends-and-solving-problems
So I’m going contrarian. While most of the people on your list might disagree at the margins they’re going to agree on the foundations. Most of them also fall under what I’d call “polite society.” Everyone doesn’t act that way. You won’t get a wide range of voices by limiting it to people that are nice.
You have no representation from the far left or the far right. Some of the people on these poles have more influence (and are more interesting) than some of the “also-rans” mentioned here.
From your list, I see several I believe are left of center (at least by some metric):
Matt Yglesias, John McWhorter, Julia Galef, and Scott Alexander are registered democrats. And even Andrew Sullivan has enthusiastically voted for Democratic candidates the last 3 major elections at least.
I also should have included Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, who are decidedly left of center
Where is Bari Weiss? She's great. https://bariweiss.substack.com/
Also Rod Dreher is here, but his substack is much more personal than his Am Conserv blog. https://roddreher.substack.com/p/goodbye-and-coconut-pie
Ben Burgis and Matt McManus on the left are less popular than those on your list, but meet many of your other criteria
Can you think of anyone active on substack? Burgis seems to have done nothing here in 6 months, and I don't see McManus here at all.
Justin Smith https://justinehsmith.substack.com/. My sense is that he's left of center but he doesn't address the usual political topics very often and I recommend him independently of all that anyway. He's very high on your K criterion. You need to browse several of his posts to get a real sense of what he is about.
I completely agree with Arnold's criticism of political tribalism, but I feel that he is somewhat confused as to meaning and drivers of tribalism. Plenty of people complain about tribalism these days, but very few seem to bother to actually think about it.
In the US, tribalism in a natural consequence of the idea that everybody has to self-identify with 2-3 sets of beliefs. This idea is based on implicit assumption that there are only 1-2 dimensions of policy views.
Everybody, who assumes that there are "two sides", fuels tribalism. Everybody, who uses scale "left-right", fuels tribalism. Everybody, who divides people into conservatives/liberals/libertarians (especially given that these words often evolve meaning, very different from their literal meaning) fuels tribalism.
The first step out of tribal mentality is to acknowledge that there are multiple dimensions of policy views. And these dimensions need not be correlated. Space of policies is R^n, not R^1. So all political discussions in this country are between the views, which do not even span 1% of this space.
This multi-dimensionality is true but it seems you haven't read his book Three Languages of Politics, or at least a couple of book reviews. Few have written or thought about it as much. Your critique would be much stronger if you named any you thought were better (I'd be interested). The 8 category scoring system also doesn't cover everything, despite 8 dimensions, but I think it's already a couple too many to be an optimal mix of fun and good anti-tribal thinking.
Thanks for referring me to Three Languages of Politics. I skimmed it and it seems to me that Arnold's point in Chapter 2 is that those 8 dimensions are actually 3 and are wrong way to think about policy views in the first place.
Here is simple 3-dimensional space:
1. Attitude towards business regulations.
This is single most important dimension. When we say regulations (zoning laws, environmental reviews, occupational licensing etc) what we actually mean are ways to protect rent-seekers and incumbents from competition. While two dominant tribes claim that they have the opposite views on this dimension, their actual policies are identical. If you do not believe me, check whether zoning and building restrictions are different across cities, governed by different tribes.
2. Democracy vs autocracy.
This topic is outright taboo in American politics. One gets called Neo-Nazi for even suggesting to think about different options. All 3 tribes have identical views on this dimension.
3. Law enforcement.
Less important than the previous two dimensions, but still more relevant that all nonsense issues current media are mostly talking about. The only dimension where there seems to be a difference between 3 tribes. Or at least it seemed so before 2017.
So this simple 3-dimensional coordinate system shows that there is little difference between major tribes on policies which really matter. All the tribalism is confined to ridiculous culture war issues, which look almost like distraction from the things, which really matter.