Most Influential Non-leftist Thinkers

Here, influence is defined as the aggregate effect on people’s thoughts independent of extrinsic or historically determined factors. If an original thinker transmitted an idea to a regurgitator, and then that person transmitted the same idea to others, more weight is given to the original thinker than to the regurgitator. Weight is also given to those with more radical and unorthodox ideas, as convincing people of them has a larger effect on their broader worldview.

For the sake of simplicity, the list was limited to living individuals. With no further ado, and ranked in order:

S tier:

• Elon Musk.

• Donald Trump: probably should have put him on here. Even as somebody who is not a traditional public intellectual, Trump has an incredibly devoted base of fans and a lot of media attention.

A tier:

• Peter Thiel: may not have a recurring blog or twitter account, but manages to attract a persistent audience and maintain relevance regardless.

• Curtis Yarvin: extremely influential on the online right.

• Charles Murray: mostly for the Bell Curve, but for other reasons as well.

B Tier:

• Tucker Carlson: his willingness to take on guests that people of his caliber do not tend to consider increases his influence substantially.

• Steve Sailer: read, but rarely mentioned.

• Tyler Cowen: large following on multiple platforms, but seems to be more of a social/organizational force than an independent thinker.

• Bronze Age Pervert: an odd choice, but has a book that sold incredibly well, promotes radical ideas, and a loyal following.

• Bryan Caplan: The Case Against Education and Caplan’s blog have been influential on discourse regarding education. Mixed feelings about his other work, but from a cynical perspective, it sold well.

• Jonathan Haidt: on a technical level, I have some criticisms of his work, but it would be delusional to deny his influence.

• Jordan Peterson: his influence is decreasing due to his insistence on fighting the culture war, but he has reach on a lot of different platforms (academia, youtube, twitter, books), and has turned himself into a household name.

• Scott Adams: not into his work, but holds large followings through several platforms and ventures.

• Roissy: most respected blogger on the manosphere, though his influence seems to have dropped after he (probably) gave away the pen name and got deplatformed. Not epistemologically rigorous, but has creative talent that is hard not to respect.

C Tier:

• Robin Hanson: a proper polymath.

• Richard Dawkins: new atheism is much, much less relevant now than it was 20 years ago. But it would be a snub to not put him here.

• Nick Land: not a household name, but holds sway in the tech community and the radical right.

• Peter Singer: big in EA/morality circles. At a nominal level he is influential, but mostly with a type who is high in social class but low in cultural capital; values and morality as concepts were solved by Nietzsche a hundred years ago.

• Hans-Herman Hoppe: the go-to alternative libertarianism guy.

• Thomas Sowell: widely read, but largely shoehorned himself into a historically-specific position (cultural race realism, conservatism) rather than a perennial one.

• Eliezer Yudkowsky: the most influential person in AI safety, but that’s the equivalent of being the best footballer in la Segunda División.

• Steven Pinker: an early adopter of “soft hereditarianism” who has stayed relevant for a decent amount of time, but suffers from being too moderate.

• Scott Alexander: fan of the guy’s writing, but, like Pinker, suffers from being too moderate and has little sway on platforms besides his blog.

• Joshua Lisec: he claims to have ghostwritten over 80 books, which I find hard to believe. To be fair, there is no evidence he’s lying, and best-selling authors have claimed he wrote their works (many of which sold incredibly well).

• Richard Hanania: hard to rate in terms of influence. Newish figure with a moderate following, but is selling some pretty radical ideas (race realism, civil rights skepticism) to an otherwise moderate audience.

• Richard Stallman: regardless of how tenable free software is as a model, he does have sway within the tech community.

Honorable Mentions:

• Alex Jones: big platform. Big ideas. No elite human capital.

• Nick Fuentes (and co): same problem as Alex Jones.

• Aleksandr Dugin: his influence is overrated by the neurotic and anti-Russian media.

• Gwern: extremely influential… On people within a particular niche.

• Leopold Aschenbrenner: another new face that is hard to rate.

• Bryan Johnson: he sells supplements and biohacks more than ideas.

• Andrew Tate: has talent as a persona, but his audience is low human capital and is not promoting any interesting ideas.

• Eric Kaufmann: I have a ton of respect for him, but I don’t know if he actually has a lot of influence. His books don’t sell that well and his following isn’t that large.

• Naval: famous, but stays out of the spotlight.

• Arthur Jensen: he might be the greatest intelligence researcher ever, but his influence was largely limited to academics. And he’s dead.

• Christopher Rufo: gets things done, though is not particularly influential in terms of ideas.

• Nassim Taleb: has reach, but is being taken less seriously year after year.

• Paul Gottfried: to be fair, I’m not that familiar with the guy, but it seems like he gets sidelined by bigger names on the alt-right like Yarvin or Land.

• Jared Taylor: wonderful guy, but got sidelined by bigger fish.

• Sargon: large following, but more of a wave rider rather than a wave creator.

• Garett Jones: from what I see, he is taking toxic ideas (e.g. national IQs, democratic skepticism) and trying to make them more palatable to the masses. Honorable, though this is the equivalent of saying the naked emperor only wears underwear.

• Rollo Tomassi: big platform, but has a low human capital audience.

• Kevin MacDonald: influential on the far-right, but niche.

• Richard Spencer: massive spotlight in the mid 10s, but burnt out too quickly.

• Neil Strauss: the Game has held up well, but he largely disappeared from the spotlight.

• TV Anchors/interviewers: most of them, bar a few, are just figureheads with very little influence.

• Richard Lynn: Dead. Otherwise, I would have put him in the A or B tier — genetically caused national IQ differences as a model for what causes differences in economic development between countries is the empirically supported model, but economists cannot endorse it because it is too edgy. As a result, the national development literature has largely stagnated, and been left to either opporitunists who want to sell stories or incompetents who did not get the memo.

• The Palladium people: I’ve heard good things about the magazine, but they are too niche to be on the list.

• The Quillette people: out of momentum.

• Sam Harris: like Quillette, out of momentum.

• Yuval Harari: not that familiar with the guy, but seems to be more of a popularizer than a researcher. No shame in that, but it’s a less influential role.

This is a list of non-leftists; part of this is simply due to unfamiliarity, but also because I don’t think leftist thinkers are actually influential in the same way that others are. The progressive egregore is simply too powerful for one person to stand among the crowd — if influence could somehow be precisely measured, I wouldn’t be surprised if an oddball like Destiny or Thomas Piketty would be found to be the most influential leftist thinker alive.

A final note: influence and value are correlated, but not highly, as humans do not always have the best taste. The names of people who I respect, but do not consider influential, can be inferred by what is listed on the sidebar.