I have a spreadsheet with names, listed by position. Don’t worry about the positions so much at this point. When something is in parentheses after a someone’s name, it means they are also eligible at another position.
You should not be able to edit the spreadsheet. If you want some other names on it, suggest them with a comment.
This is not the final list. They are not listed in any sort of priority order. I am still working on the format for the game.
Tyler has some thoughts on how he would choose a team.
Actually, I do think the point is to pick “the best, per se.” If you Google “hundred leading intellectuals” you will get dreck. My guess is that if you polled academic departments you would get dreck.
The motivation for this project is the almost total lack of overlap between “famous intellectual” or “renowned intellectual” and someone I would regard as a great mentor for a college-age student. I won’t hold it against someone that he or she is famous. But I don’t think you could field a decent team if you restrict yourself to those who are famous.
I think every team should be required to include at least one comedian for two reasons.
The first is simply that many participants are in danger of taking themselves far too seriously and not having a sense of humor at all. The second is that comedy is very much a part of the “cultural soil” we are supposed to be tending here. When a comedian shows that some idea can’t pass the laugh test that is usually far more devastating to that idea than some careful academic refutation. I do think we have to give comedians some extra leeway on being charitable to their targets.
The good news is that the culture is well stocked with comedians who hate cancel culture and still take on controversial subjects: Bill Mahar, Bill Burr, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Dave Chappelle, Kate McKinnon, Michael Che, Colin Jost, Chris Rock, Lewis Black will do for a start on this list.
John Oliver would be my #1 overall pick for the “anti” FIT team. His show is, at heart, a 30-minute parade of tweets designed to condition viewers to laugh at opposing viewpoints.
Although, to the point of your post, I also don’t think he should qualify as a comedian.
Well good luck trying to find any candidate comedian who isn’t trying to get his audience to laugh at the viewpoints he is opposing.
I think Chris Rock would be a good bet. He has a record of independent thinking and his comedy is occasionally more in the persuasive vein than in mocking opponents vein. He’s certainly was persuasive to me than anyone else I’ve ever heard regarding BLM.
Well, I generally prefer comedians whose comedy is not so fundamentally predicated on sourcing viewpoints for the comedian to oppose.
That said, I should have been clearer. Trying to get your audience to laugh is not the same thing as conditioning them to laugh. The best comedians try to earn laughs by showing their audience why something is funny. They succeed if the audience laughs, and the audience only laughs if they agree that something is funny. Good comedians know that meaningful agreement is, on some level, a deliberative process, so they structure their comedy to give the audience a little bit of room to think along the path to the punchline.
Oliver, on the other hand, formats his show to preempt thought with cued laughter.
I have left comedians off of my team roster for the reason that comedians used their occupation as an unprincipled shield in the early 2000’s. There was a lot of “look how stupid the (usually right wing) is – here is an example, ha ha ha”. These often raised valid, even though biased, points. The Daily Show was a very funny and was a master of this. However, any serious rejoinder was met with “hey – i’m just a comedian”. Very intellectually dishonest. John Oliver is this on steroids.
However, comedy is a potent weapon in exposing absurdities in supposedly serious discourse. Clive James once said “Humor is common sense operating at a different speed.” Any thought of including comedians in this list should ensure they were honestly self reflective and amenable to rebuttal and being proven wrong. In this sense, Joe Rogan is a good example.
That probably is a good reason to leave some of these guys off your list Mike. But anybody who thinks that all comedians are being unfair to their side lacks a sense of humor and an open mind. Joe Rogan is a reasonable pick. His standup is really good and it is like the third best known thing he is famous for.
Dennis Miller: the guy is incredibly smart. There was a generation of old improv true masters who really could make a killer joke on the fly, and he was one of them. I used to go to comedy club performances all the time, and I was lucky to see one of him in his prime (this was pre-internet). No kidding (heh), someone just handed him a copy of the local college paper, and, I’m certain with zero preparation, he just started reading bits of it to the crowd, and then making up and cracking jokes about it that *brought down the house*, one after another.
One of the best comedy performances I’ve seen in my life. My impression is that there is plenty of fire behind Denis Leary’s eyes too, so maybe it’s a De(n)nis thing.
I’ve been to DC Improv a few times in the past few years, and man, things have gone downhill for comedy. I can’t say I really laughed out loud even once, unlike when I’m at Capitol Steps, who still put on an amazing show.
90% of the jokes told at DC Improv these days are basically either crude and vulgar sex or drugs or scatological humor fit for middle school or “Woke Jokes”, thus, basically predictacble slurs and insults of people who it is ok to insult. “White people, so boring, amirite?”
They are the kinds of “jokes” written by the humorless scolds whom Norman Mailer mocked and who when asked, “How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?” answered, “That’s Not Funny!!”
Well, now they’re trying to be funny, and their former assessment of the state of comedy finally get to be right.
I’m guessing most people here would like Bill Burr’s stuff. He makes fun of cancel culture a lot. His recent guest host monologue on SNL is a good place to start.
My sleeper comedian pick is… Ronny Chieng
https://youtu.be/aLoCFK8a_Fo
Yeah, you’ve got the idea. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s almost impossible to take racial differences too seriously when you are laughing about them.
1. I propose Michael Pettis of Peking University, for his incredibly insightful and useful views on international trade, as expressed in the book “Trade Wars are Class Wars.” (Despite the title, not particularly leftie or polemic. Just telling it like it is). My only diff with Pettis is I think tariffs can be executed with effect, and he prefers capital controls and some sort international alliances which strike me as less implementable.
2. Kevin Erdmann, for his book “Shut Out” on property zoning/restrictions in US cities.
Neither one of these guys has a Phd in economics, and yet they have written the two most important books on prosperity in the US in the last 50 years.
The credentialed economists have spent lifetimes jibber-jabbering about inflation.
I used to like Pettis a lot, and I bought “Avoiding the Fall” and “The Great Rebalancing”, and I was disappointed when he took his once-free newsletters to private subscription.
But, like a lot of China “coming debt catastrophe” perma-bears, he turned out to be profoundly wrong about his biggest theme, which he repeated over and over for a decade. And then, when it started to become clear he was wrong about it, my impression is that he tended to move the goalposts, and in general, in my assessment, has not been forthright in admitting the error or grappling with the reasons for it in a way that gives me confidence he has made adjustments that could restore the accuracy of his future guesses.
To be fair, it’s possible he could still be right and that it just hasn’t happened yet.
How to deal with “possibly still right, merely wrong on the timing” is a genuinely difficult intellectual problem. It’s hard to distinguish “moving the goalposts” from mere prematurity in calling the inevitable. The expression is that you when you hear the guy who jumped off the building and observed moving between floors 30 and 20 without trouble, say, “Everything seems fine to me!”, you reply, “Just wait.”
On the one hand, you have things like millennial cults. “Ok, the messiah didn’t show up in 1996, and yeah, we were wrong about 2000 and 2012 too, but it turned out we just read the original prophecy number upside down, and it will really happen in the year 9661. Trust us, *this* time, we’ve got it. See you at the party!”
On the other hand, there are the “fiscal crisis / debt-catastrophe” doomsayers, who *do* seem to have a solid case based on the fundamentals that heavily indebted aging nations are heading for a time of pain and trouble just a few years away. But so far, it never quite arrives, and remains “just a few years away”, just like Brazil is always “the country of the future” and nuclear fusion power plants are always “20 years away”.
Sometimes it seems fair to assess these people based on their track records, and other times you want to cut them some slack. It’s tough.
I cut Pettis a lot of slack for a long time, but by this point, my slack shelf is bare, so I’m over him.
The most important thing a person can do intellectually can do is realize he’s been wrong and then admit it.
Dave Rubin’s talk with Larry Elder is a great example of this. Elder asks him for specifics regarding racism and Dave can’t come up with anything that Elder can’t instantly rebut. He realizes he has no strong reason for believing in his position and changes his mind.
There’s a portfolio manager named John Hussman who I used to follow. He made a lot of persuasive sounding arguments, backed by historical analysis. With the exception of my 401k (thankfully), his analysis helped keep me out of the stock market in the first half of the 2010s. After years of rising markets, I eventually caved and went long, as his constant warning about a market collapse kept failing to materialize.
US equities more than doubled since that time.
I subsequently found reasons why Hussman’s thesis may have been wrong, but ultimately continual data against your thesis should be sufficient. He needs to throw in the towel and admit that his framework for evaluating the markets has been wrong (last I’ve seen of his work, which was last year, he has not). I really feel bad for him. I recall when the 2020 crash occurred thinking that Hussman was finally going to be able to proclaim a small victory (small in the sense that overvaluation wasn’t the direct cause of the crash, but at least he got his 1929-style sell off), but the market ended up rising in 2020 despite the once in a century economic crash.
“The most important thing a person can do intellectually can do is realize he’s been wrong and then admit it.”
Speaking of admitting error…
Perhaps Pettis, and the entire macroeconomics profession, is going to be wrong on China and debt.
People just don’t seem to understand when you owe yourself money it is not a serious situation. Owing money to somebody else is a serious problem
The People’s Bank of China evidently has the ability to print money and buy bad debts from the commercial banking system, thus leaving the system intact.
China is well below its 3% to 4% inflation target.
However, the fact that Pettis may be wrong on China’s debt situation does not mean he is wrong on the fundamentals of international trade and industrial location.
Before I became enlightened and correct in all my views, I held some views that were incorrect.
+1 for Kevin Erdmann
A few to consider: Ken Burns, John Ioannidis, Michael Lewis, Vladimir Putin
+1 for John Ioaniddis
And another: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Ole Peters
https://ergodicityeconomics.com/
It would be neat if in addition to your fantasy league, you kept track of the dreck so we could see how your picks compared to the most famous public intellectuals.
How about Bloomberg’s Matt Levine? Great writer, funny, and informative. Not at many “takes” as many on the list, but in a sense his brilliance comes as an anti-take artist—he actually digs into details on financial/business issues and explains why the outrage over topic X or Y is usually not justified (such as payment for order flow last week, as Tyler highlighted on MR).
How are we doing on churchmen?
Bishop Lamin Sanneh is dead. What now…
Father Matthew Hassan Kukah of Northern Nigeria is alive. Include him.
Speaking of religion…
Philip Jenkins (Historian. _Next Christendom_ is out in 3d edition now)
Anthony Esolen Literary professor and essayist
Theodore Dalrymple (pen name of Anthony Daniels)
Ibn Warraq (pen name)
Gert Wilders (are foreign politicians allowed?)
A peculiar point: There should be a certain percentage of people who have been forcibly exiled, or imprisoned, or tortured, or cancelled. Or perhaps I am a mere romantic.
But it is noteworthy that, for example, Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned and forcibly exiled, and the list of those who survived abuse and firing and became exiled is long. Offhand I think of the late Brodsky, the late Amalrik, the late Koestler, the late Djilas, etc.
I am channeling in part Walter Laqueur’s observation that to learn about Soviet Communism the people to read were not seemingly objective tenured professors in the U.S. or Britain but ex-communists, renegades, heretics, enemies of the system.
One big reason for Rod Dreher is religion – the single most important “part” of most cultures.
Including ours, and including The Religion That Persecutes Heretics.
Thinkers who think seriously about religion, with faith rather than sophomorically atheistically, are among the most important whose status is too low.
Including with me.
Dalrymple is a superb pick.
This is great. Pinned three new-to-me blogs to my favorites already this morning.
“Great mentor for a college-age student” is a worthy standard. Identifying such role models is socially beneficial and a task we should not undertake lightly. This is a positive virtue-signalling exercise.
One might ask oneself how many books has one gifted to young people by the nominee, or recommended. Doing that, I see that I gifted books by Randy Barnett more than anyone else yet didn’t nominate him. Bad on me. In second place (tied with Bjorn Lomborg whom I did nominate) was Michael Shellenberger’ s Apocalypse Never which went to a handful of nieces and nephews who are concerned about the environment but disillusioned by the dominant media treatment. Shellenberger’s personal evolution might be considered role model worthy.
A critique of the list as it stands is that it seems perhaps USA-centric and bubble-ish. In putting together teams we are putting out projections of how we want to be seen rather than than who we really are. One might observe that there is no one more nativist than a professed cosmopolitan, and vice versa. Nevertheless the USA intelligentsia has devolved into its current sordid state with the intellectuals it has. Perhaps more rewarding role models can be found elsewhere?
Quintus Curtius (George Thomas) is a good one for this, in addition to being an erudite and first rate classical scholar and polyglot translator. He gets lots of young men looking for advice, and usually has some good guidance from the stoic traditions.
Similarly Rollo Tomassi at “the rational male” gets lots of young guys looking for something deeper and more insightful and inspiring than just pick up tricks, and I’d put him and Dalrock on my own list, though ‘manosphere’ folks are probably too radioactive for respectable list.
I suppose another criteria of mine is for people who can sniff out BS a mile away and can’t help but call it out relentlessly albeit in as civil a manner as possible, even when playing lip service to that particular BS is practically mandatory these days.
Thanks much. I was unfamiliar with those people. Admirable. Ability to sniff out BS is a great plus factor. I also admire Charles W. Abbott’s ideas above too.
Part of why this game is so engrossing is that you can learn a lot researching other folks’ nominations and perhaps broaden one’s thinking.
Some of the nominees people have proposed are fascinating but perhaps not ideal for whatever the final scoring criteria will be.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in part because
One can imagine the basic game being replayed with diffetent empases. Perhaps “legal” instead of “economists.”. Or instead of drafting people, draft books. It has me thinking I’d like to restart a blog and run a contest for the arts. Of course my previous blogs have never gotten any traffic. But you might do well with a version that you come up with on your blog.
After responding to your comment, I happened to go over to Althouse and read her post about Martin Garbus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Garbus ), another worthy mind previously unknown to me. A possible scoring criteria for podcasters and bloggers might be “brings awareness of great thinkers to a wider audience.”. At least that is one reason why I would like to think I prefer some blogs to others.
Jesse Singal is one of the best critics of SJW groupthink journalism on Twitter.
What do you admire about Condi Rice? She was one of the loudest proponents of a stupid, costly war.
William Jacobson
Glenn Reynolds
Chloe valdary
George will
Mitch Daniels
These all appear to missing from the spreadsheet. Not all would be picks for my team, but should be included.
I am kind of embarrassed to admit that lawyers are tough to assess for the list because of course as comes professionally natural they tend to switch from careful, air-tight scholarship and logical argumentation exhaustively supported by citation to authority and the available evidence and with consideration of all strong counterarguments, on the one hand, to utterly shameless one-sided advocacy one the other hand, and it’s not always easy to tell the difference.
I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of an argument with Jacobson or Reynolds. George Will, on the other hand, is a pompous and self-righteous blowhard and would be an easy warm up or fortunate early round match for a real player to work his way up the brackets without any fear of getting knocked out early. Contrast that with his former colleague, the late Charles Krauthammer, who you wouldn’t want in your division at all, and if you had to face him, it had better be for the championship.
By profession, lawyers argue even when they are wrong. Hard to have them at the top of my draft – but I can see them being in the pool.
George Will is tough. There are times when he seems really careful in his research and observation. His long friendship with Moynihan also speaks to an ability to disagree amiably. However – hard to read for the last 4 years. A lot of raging about the symptoms (Trump) without diagnosing or dissecting underlying causes.
Multiple solid suggestions for other names not yet on this list over in the comments at MR off of Tyler’s post. Not posting them here pretending them to be my insights.
Paul Gottfried should be on the list. Gottfried is a genuinely first rate scholar, his knowledge is expansive, and his books are amazing. They are almost all very good and worth it for the extensive footnotes alone, in which one can get lost on discursive tangents of expanding provocations of curiosity, and I don’t think I can say that about anyone else. As a ‘curator’, the number and consistent high quality of his recommendations and reference rivals that of Cowen.
Alain de Benoist’s works are thin but surprisingly rewarding. I think it helps to have someone like that who can see the Anglosphere from the outside and explain his outside view to us. In that vein, Eric Zemmour should be on the list too, though by Olympic Committee rules both operating mostly in French might restrict them to the French National FIT.
NT Wright
Love your list so far. A few more to consider:
-TheLastPsychiatrist (writer)
-Mark Sisson (business owner and health coach)
-Spotted Toad (blogger)
-Tom Holland (historian)
-Evolutionistx (blogger)
-Tim Ferriss (business)
-Marc Andreessen (business)
-Michael Flynn (writer)
-Sally Fallon Morrell (health)
another suggestion: Aleksander Dugin. Dugin is not terribly well known in the US, but is an immensely influential thinker. Not just for his influence on Putin, but on right wing nationalists all over the globe. And aside from that influence, I believe his “Foundations of Geopolitics” will prove to be as important in that field as anything since Mackinder. Note that I am not a Duginist, but his work is impressive, though not readily accessible in English. Maybe also Michael Millerman, a Canadian philosopher who has translated and analyzed Dugin (at considerable professional risk, I might add).
I think Anatoly Karlin might be a better choice. He has filled in many of my blind spots regarding Russia and Putin, and his track record of predictions seems to be solid.
He recently made a list of recommendations for his own ‘worthies’, and it’s worth checking out.
great resource, thanks
How does one sign up to participate in the draft?
Some additional nominations:
BUSINESS:
Andres Duany
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
ECONOMIST
James Heckman
Thomas Piketty
Emmanuel Saez
Wojtek Kopczuk
Michael Kremer
Esther Duflo
Bruce Wydick
John List
Steven Levitt
William Fischel
Robert J. Gordon
Robert E. Hall
David Autor
Brad DeLong (p)
Adam Ozimek
Enrico Moretti
Jean Tirole
Nota bene: Jason Furman should be qualified under economist, not just utility.
OTHER ACADEMIC:
Matthew Desmond
Richard Rothstein
Alan Mallach
Jefferson Cowie
THINK TANK:
Alain Bertaud
Oren Cass
Ryan Anderson (of EPCC)
Andrew Biggs
UTILITY:
Graham Robb
Isabel Wilkerson
Antero Pietila
Orson Scott Card
Makoto Fujimura
Michel Houellebecq
Malcolm Gladwell
Adrian Vermeule, Alan Gura, Stewart Baker, Bruce Schneier, Randy Barnett, Josh Blackman, Samuel Bray, Paul Cassell, David Bernstein, Todd Zywicki, Clarence Thomas.
Frank Easterbrook and Alex Kozinski should be on the list. I wish I could put Becker and Scalia on the list too, but RIP.
Until a few years ago, despite several important disagreements, I still would have put Richard Posner near the top of any list, at the Tom Brady level of American Public Intellectual.
I don’t know what happened to him, but it’s a terrible tragedy, and I just can’t say the same today. Sad. I have even more disagreements with his son, but still, I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of an argument with Eric Posner.
Please add JONATHAN TURLEY as blogger or Professor of law. Important on First Amendment.
Also missing Dennis Prager, altho YouTube blogger/ educator is not yet one of the categories, he is a columnist.
Religion? Where is Pope Francis (whom I often disagree with, but …)
All are “utility” possible.
So many great names! 🙁 🙁 So much work for us team choosers to pick between.
What will the actual criteria be for scoring? How to “win”?
As usual – score the most points!
How does my team get points?
On choosing the “team”, I’m expecting auctions, tho it might be OK to auction draft pick order for drafting speed.
In “scoring”, I’m wondering if we’ll be able to look back at 2020 or 2019 and get some indication of individual scores from those years.
Has Pope Francis ever said anything original or insightful? I’m at a loss.
All of it seems like the silly SJW nonsense that I had to endure at Santa Clara University in the 90s. The only difference that I’ve ever been able to make out between the progressives and the Jesuits at Santa Clara is that the latter group claims to speak for god, while the other group does not. Is it possible to get any more presumptuous than by backing up your moral arguments with the presumed endorsement from the almighty? Please give me a break.
Day of Grandparents & Elderly, 4th Sunday in July.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/01/31/pope-francis-proclaims-world-day-for-grandparents-and-the-elderly/
Originality is overrated – Truth is more important, even if it’s an Old Wive’s Tale or Ancient Wisdom.
Depending on Arnold’s criteria, Pope Francis might score quite highly. Arnold’s already, rightfully, noted how great it is to be a grandparent. How many others of the 200 listed have noted this is the last year?
It does seem the media reports his talking mostly “closer” to SJW stuff, including lots of ideas which seem pretty clearly sub-optimal for civilization. However, his voice, good and bad words together, command a huge megaphone.
That’s important. And influential, with reasonably high publicity – tho I’d guess most of us missed it (I did.)
Similarly:
Pope Francis also highlighted World Leprosy Day, which occurs each year on the last Sunday of January.
Goodness is not so original, nor requiring so much insight. But it’s also good – and better than the alternatives.
He wasn’t among the first dozen or two I thought of as “intellectual”, but comes up when thinking about ideas of criteria for judging different thinkers, and “what makes them good”?
Pope Francis was the ultimate affirmative action pick in the history of modern religion. Everyone knows why he is there. He is an intellectual lightweight and, unfortunately, the links you provided are just further evidence of this.
Modern Catholic thought = social justice + repackaging for the masses + holy water sprinkled on top. There isn’t anything remotely interesting in it.
Sorry if I’m coming across as uncharitable and please correct me if I have gotten something wrong.
Mohan Malik
https://mohanmalik.wixsite.com/gamesnationsplay
Really looking forward to this. Like many I’ve long thought idly about a similar idea. The most interesting thing has been quickly identified – how to measure the best group. H-index? Patents? Profits or utils within some defined time resulting from their work? Readership? Research funding?
Sorry, two more sleeper picks…
Bo Winegard
Tulsi Gabbard