Left wing posters who are not awful

the top 11

Engaging with the opposition is overrated, but is necessary if one wants to have political beliefs that are not influenced by luck. Given that it’s unlikely that the right wing is correct about everything, reading the left also simplifies the process of rooting out which right wing beliefs are not true. At the very least, the best people on the left know what the good arguments for the bad policies are.

Prompted by a tweet, I was able to come to these names in an hour:

1. Sasha Gusev. His understanding of both behavioural and molecular genetics supersedes mine; that alone lands him first place on this list.

2. Slavoj Zizek. Has charisma and a sense of humour.

3. Paige Harden. Behavioural geneticist.

4. Alice Evans. Writes on culture and gender.

5. Stuart Ritchie. Intelligence researcher and metascientist.

6. Destiny. He’s fallen off, but was a legitimate pundit back in the day. He’s debated Sean Last, MrMetokur, and the Alt Hype.

7. Freddie DeBoer. Writes on mental illness and education. Listened to him speak on the question of sex differences in intelligence, and his understanding of the issue was surprisingly good.

8. Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias. Both of these people occupy the same space in my mind due to their similarity in appearance and style, so I figured I would list them together. Neither of them are good, but are worth reading at least once.

9. Noam Chomsky. I guess he’s ok.

10. Malcom Gladwell. He’s obviously massively overrated, but he isn’t awful.

There’s a few others I could name like Anatoly Karlin, Scott Alexander, Steven Pinker, or the DEEP LEFT, but calling these people left wing feels like a bit of a reach.

Also, another reason why engaging with the opposition is overrated: this is the best top 11 I could come up with.