https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/does-anything-i-write-matter-anymore
Does anything I write matter anymore?
Punditry in the age of populism, AI, and monetization.
Noah Smith
Jun 18, 2026
About three years ago, someone asked me why, with my physics undergrad
background and a PhD in economics, I had decided to become a professional
blogger. I told him that blogging seemed like the highest-leverage thing I
could do, in terms of actually having an impact on the world.
...
Providence … providence …
Alan Jacbos is a bit stymied
by Noah Smith’s belief that blogging is the highest leverage thing a person can
do. Injecting ideas into discourse may look like it provides immediate
results but Jacobs contends that Noah Smith’s zinger quote from John Keynes
gets Keynes’ point precisely wrong. Why?
https://blog.ayjay.org/idea-injection/
June 24, 2026
idea injection
...
If Keynes is right, then the ideas that Smith “injects into the
discourse” won’t be his, but rather those of thinkers from decades past — the
people who weren’t worried about having “something out within hours,” but
rather cared about making arguments strong enough to last. Instead of seeking
to be quoted by Substackers and podcasters, they rely on “the gradual
encroachment of ideas.”
It may not be possible to have both immediate currency — quotability —
and long-term significance. You might have to choose between Smith’s model and
Keynes’s.
Or it's not even in your hands. Providence ... providence.
Still… here’s an observation
from John Neville Figgis back in 1900 about the contrast between the influence
of the practical and the theoretical bent among writers. Let's call it the distinction between the influencer and the Influencer:
https://archive.org/details/studiesofpolitic00figgiala
Studies of Political Thought From Gerson to Grotius
1414-162
John Neville Figgis
The Birkbeck Lectures delivered in Trinity College, Cambridge 1900
Cambridge: at the University Press 1916
... The existing arrangement of political forces is dependent at least as
much upon ideas, as it is upon men's perception of their interests. If we allow
little to the theorist in momentary influence we must admit, that his is the
power which shapes the "long result of time." The normal value, in
fact, of political theories is a "long period value." The immediate
significance of an Algernon Sidney or an Althusius is small and less than
nothing as compared with a practical politician, like Maurice or Jeffreys. But
his enduring power is vast. Hildebrand, Calvin, Rousseau, were doctrinaires, if
ever there were such. Yet neither Bismarck, nor even Napoleon has had a more
terrific strength to shape the destinies of men. In literature as in life, the
thinker may be dull; but it is with a significant dullness. [emphasis added]
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