I am trying to move the FITs stuff over to substack. My latest essay describes my plans for May, including one league composed of think-tank scholars and another league composed of people with different institutional bases. Comments are better left there than here.

I no longer can send posts out by email. My hosting provider insists that I pay for Constant Contact, and even then I am skeptical that it will send to any of my existing subscribers.

Also, I have this garbage at the top of the page, and my hosting provider says that to get rid of it I have to pay for customization services.

This is a really bad time for me to be trying to deal with these issues. So bear with me.

I am going to write on substack for two reasons.

1. To promote fantasy intellectual teams
2. To do long-form essays

Subscriptions will be free for the foreseeable future. I hope you will sign up to show your support. I think you can use the form below to sign up.

For May’s edition of Fantasy Intellectual Teams, I would like to have three leagues of eight owners each. As of this morning, we are a little more than half way there. I am thinking that each owner would pick 5 intellectuals, but we could have one of the leagues consist of 7 intellectuals on a team if enough owners want that.

As an owner, you really have to keep track of the intellectuals on your team, so that you can let me know when one of them has scored a “point.” Tracking your players is your cost in terms of time. There may be a dollar cost if you pick players for whom you need to buy a subscription. Note that intellectuals are chosen in a competitive draft, so you cannot count on getting the exact 5 players you would most like–a couple of them might be picked ahead of you by other owners. So you have to have more than 5 players in mind as possibilities before going into the draft. Although within a league a player can have only one owner, the same player could be owned in multiple leagues.

If you have not already indicated an interest in becoming an owner, leave a comment below to let me know. We need to draft teams before May 1.

UPDATE: Some people have expressed interest, so for now I am not taking any more applications. Thanks.
I would like about a weekend’s worth of work (maybe two weekends) from

(a) a web designer, who can create an attractive, functional, and mobile-friendly template for some forms and some tables of statistics.
(b) a developer who is handy with scripting (JavaScript plus either Python or PHP). The project involves simple manipulation of data, which could be kept as JSON files or in a simple database. The results of the data manipulation are then used to populate the tables on the web site.

As of now, I have web pages and software that work. But the developer was an idiot. I used him because I was in a hurry. I am still in a hurry, but it’s time to replace the idiot.

The project is my Fantasy Intellectual Teams project (FITs). The project goal is to change the way that public intellectuals communicate about current events. Today, they are rewarded for nasty tribalism. Instead, FITs will award points in eight categories:

1. playing Devil’s Advocate
2. thinking in terms of bets
3. admitting to caveats
4. engaging with someone on the other side in a structured debate
5. kicking off a discussion with a piece that earns praise that is not motivated by tribalism
6. demonstrating an openness to changing one’s mind based on new information
7. balanced analysis of research, as opposed to selectively citing only studies that support one’s opinion
8. steel-manning the other side, as opposed to knocking down a straw man or using pejorative labels

To get a picture of the functionality, look at this fake demo (with all numbers made up).

Tens of thousands of people follow intellectuals who participate in Twitter, YouTube, Substack, and web sites maintained by newspapers, think tanks, and individuals. These commentators tend to be rude and polarizing.

The idea of FITs is to have some of these tens of thousands of followers draft fantasy teams whose content will be scored using criteria like those listed above. Once FITs achieves popularity, there will be a lot of people rooting for intellectuals who are truth-seekers rather than tribal warriors. In terms of a recent book by Julia Galef, FITs will reward intellectual scouts rather than intellectual soldiers.

I would prefer help from someone who is motivated by the goal of the project. I am willing to reward help with small gifts. But I do not want to set up a corporate entity with a payroll. I know I can always fall back on the idiot. But the idiot would rather be dancing.

If you or a kid you know might be interested in helping, contact me at arnoldsk at us dot net, or leave a comment.

Play Fantasy Intellectual Teams and change the world!

I am excited by the way people who are aware of FITs have started to read commentaries and listen to podcasts with our scoring categories in mind. I find myself doing this (Balaji just gave the odds for a bet! Great research summary [a version 2.0 category] by Scott!). When we can get a lot of people thinking in terms of our scoring categories, we change the world. So help the project by becoming an owner. Send me a message at arnoldsk at us dot net or leave a comment with your email address.

Commenter Handle writes,

one way to test FIT versions is to pick a public intellectual with views one hopes become higher status, and to see whether your FIT-scoring system would tend to capture their style.

Views and style are not the same thing. I can be sympathetic with the views of Victor Davis Hanson , but his style tends to be uncharitable toward those who disagree. I tend to disagree with Ezra Klein’s views, but often his style is fair to other points of view.

When I came up with the Fantasy Intellectual Teams idea, in my mind I was not differentiating views from style. But now I want to put all of the focus on style.

Imagine you came to a town and you found fistfights breaking out everywhere. Two people accidentally brush into one another on the sidewalk, and fists fly. A road rage incident occurs, and people get out of their cars and start throwing punches. In a restaurant, if a patron has to wait too long for the waiter, the she smacks the waiter. If the waiter is unhappy with his tip, he throws a haymaker.

This culture is reinforced, because whenever a fight breaks out, especially when it is between someone wearing a red shirt and someone wearing a blue shirt, people gather and cheer. They award high status to the meanest people. They like to see someone get poked in the eye or kneed in the groin.

We have a town like this, called Twitter. But it’s not just Twitter. Rude, abusive, and nasty discourse predated Twitter. Talk radio has had it at least since Rush Limbaugh. Paul Krugman has engaged in it for close to twenty years, ever since he joined the NYT.

I aim to clean up this town by raising the status of politeness. Start cheering for those who say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me” until manners improve.

I don’t equate being polite with being soft, or with letting “them” abuse “us.” In the end, views matter. And I think that with higher-caliber political discourse, our views will do better than they do in Twitter town.

That is how I am thinking about the scoring catetories in FITs version 2.0.

How can you not love a team named The Null Hypothesis? They had the fourth pick in the first round.
You can go to this page (link fixed) to see the different Fantasy Intellectuals teams. Just select any team. Comment only on the teams you like. Continue reading →

This one calls itself “The Definite Optimists.” They had the next to last pick in the first round of the Fantasy Intellectuals draft. I thought that this was another team that stayed away from mood affiliation.

You can go to this page to see the different Fantasy Intellectuals teams. Just select any team. Comment only on the teams you like.
UPDATE: link fixed, and now the report shows the current standings. Game On!
Continue reading →

I want to use individual blog posts to single out some of the Fantasy Intellectual Teams that were selected. If the owner wishes to reveal himself, he can do so in the comments. The team calling itself Deep Thought had the last pick in the first round. I think that if any team managed to avoid mood affiliation, it was this one.

You can go to this page to see the different Fantasy Intellectuals teams. Just select any team. Comment only on the teams you like. Continue reading →