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:
Sasha Gusev. His understanding of both behavioural and molecular genetics supersedes mine; that alone lands him first place on this list. Previously1 I considered him to be wrong wrt heritability and race, but had no opinion on whether he was acting in good faith. After some reflection, I have come to the conclusion that he’s probably acting in bad faith: if you are studying something as a career, and you are wrong about it, then you are either incompetent or malicious. Given he’s clearly not incompetent, he’s probably malicious. That said, I still follow what he says to fling myself deeper into the genetics rabbit hole.
Slavoj Zizek. Has charisma and a sense of humour.
Paige Harden. Behavioural geneticist. Knowledgeable, hot, and friendly in messages.
Alice Evans. Writes on culture and gender.
Stuart Ritchie. Intelligence researcher and metascientist.
Destiny. He’s fallen off, but was a legitimate pundit back in the day. He’s debated Sean Last, MrMetokur, and the Alt Hype.
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.
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 that good, but are worth reading at least once.
Noam Chomsky. I guess he’s ok.
Malcom Gladwell. He’s obviously massively overrated, but he is nowhere near as bad as his critics say he is.
There’s 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 strech.
Also, another reason why engaging with the opposition is overrated: this is the best top 11 I could come up with.
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"There’s a few others I could name like Anatoly Karlin, Steven Pinker, or the DEEP LEFT, but calling these people left wing feels like a bit of a reach."
Excellent troll. DLA is now going to write a 24,000-word article digressing on Byzantine theatre and Aztec agronomy to prove that he is a real Leftist.
My favorite leftist is Scott Alexander.