1. We have ten teams, but there is still room for a few more co-owners, where you would share a team with another owner.
2. I am proposing a scoring rules change, but I will take input from the owners. I want to combine the pairings category (P) and the wins category (W) into a single category, called Steel-manning (S). A player scores an S whenever that player does a fair job of representing the point of view of another qualified player (someone who has been selected by any team in the league or someone else who appears on the pre-season cheat sheet). Examples would include a typical joint podcast or a fair book review, like Scott Alexander’s review of Freddy de Boer. To get an S, the discussion of the player has to be extensive–not just a few sentences.
John McWhorter and Glenn Loury appearing together would count as an S for each. But any given pair can only get one S per season. Glenn could get an additional S by appearing with Coleman Hughes, for example.
Awesome – looks like it’s happening! Thank you to all of the fence sitters that decided to move to the “owner” category from the “fan” category. Please feel free to use my team name, the Texas Neanderthals.
Note to self: time to buy more hummus and pita chips.
Would Taylor’s owner get a W for refuting somebody (not sure who) with the post linked to today?
Would a post like Taylor’s linked today count as “steel manning” and be worth a point?
Taylor has a lot of posts where he gives a fair description of a study or a paper. But to count for an S, the paper he describes has to be by a qualified player, probably one of the academic economists on the cheat sheet. That is pretty rare in his case.
Any sigh of relief that I’m not an owner? You were moments away from getting drafted by the Texas Neanderthals as our star running back. My team would have definitely pwnd the competition with all to witness…at 100% capacity.
Thank you for the explanation. Very useful.
Sorry to impose upon you with yet another question, but will you consider bloggingheads tv appearances for pairing points purposes? https://bloggingheads.tv/
Pairing is no longer a category. Superceded by the steel-manning category. See http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/fits-update-4/
Good change – steel man arguments for both sides is exactly what society needs more of from their intellectuals.
Tho from my view, neither Scott A. nor J. Rauch were at all close to a steel man critique of Trump Republicans in their recent articles about how the Reps should change, so giving either or both an S (or a W) is quite a judgement call. And most points will be coming from these S calls.
In the example above about the fine review by Scott of the Cult of Smart book, S seems very appropriate for Scott. But would Freddie de Boer also get an S (from his book) for that book review article? I would argue yes.
More examples of points or non-points in the coming days would be helpful.
As I prepare for the draft, I made my own copy so that I could add my own ratings and sort on them.
Please consider adding another sheet for the draft that:
– is sorted (by first name)
– keeps at least 7 columns, so more can be easily seen on screen; or split the “o” into two 38 name long columns o1 & o2 (8 name columns)
– on the left, in front of each name column, a blank column ready for adding the team number (1-10? 0-9?) as people get picked.
So many interesting intellectuals to read – so little time.