Resolves to my estimated probability (rounded to the nearest 25%) in a week (on Aug. 6, 2025) that Laurentius Clung, the alleged sixteenth-century theologian described by Sam Kriss, was a real person who lived. Convince me!
Quote from Sam Kriss's latest:
Even though this is all very funny, I suppose I ought to set the record straight. Even if I don’t usually like to break the fourth wall, I’ll do so briefly here, just to confirm that absolutely everything I publish is true. Laurentius Clung is a 100% real historical personage. He is not a metaphor, or my hyperbolic self-insert, or a device I use to extend an argument by illustrating important truths in a non-literal way; he was an actual theologian who lived and died in the sixteenth century. Some sceptics have said they started getting suspicious when they couldn’t find any other information about him online, but one of the nice things about the world is that large chunks of it are still not available online. The crow uttering its sharp call outside my window right now has no digital footprint; it still exists. Of the one hundred billion people that were ever born, very few can be confirmed with a Google search or a question to ChatGPT, but they really did live, just like you’re living now. Not to get all boomer on you, but there are such things as books. I first encountered Clung in Roland Bainton’s 1952 history The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, where he gets two paragraphs in the chapter on Calvinism. Bainton’s book was a bestseller in its day, and while it’s now out of print you can still buy it on Amazon if you want. He’s also discussed in the second appendix to the expanded 1970 edition of Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium, which is very much still in print and also great; if you haven’t already read it you should do so immediately. (By the way, did you know that Cohn’s son Nik inspired Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Who’s Pinball Wizard? He also wrote the source material for Saturday Night Fever. This world is packed together more tightly than you think.) There’s substantially more on Clung in Blaire G Smellowicz’s Sodomites, Shepherds, and Fools: Minor Prophets of the Reformation, which is where I cribbed most of his more interesting quotes, and a very thorough but much less entertaining biography in Ander van der Gunk’s The Dutch in European Intellectual History, 1482-1648. (There’s also a complete scholarly edition of his pamphlets, letters, and diaries from Uitgeverij Verloren, but since it costs four hundred euros and I don’t read Dutch I haven’t been able to make use of it.)
General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.
Update 2025-07-30 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has clarified that for a positive resolution, they must be convinced that Laurentius Clung was both:
A real person who lived
A sixteenth-century theologian
The creator will not arbitrate on more complex details beyond these two conditions.
Update 2025-08-02 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator will count a small spelling difference in the name 'Laurentius Clung' as a match for the purposes of resolution.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ297 | |
| 2 | Ṁ179 | |
| 3 | Ṁ66 | |
| 4 | Ṁ54 | |
| 5 | Ṁ46 |
It is possible to text search this 1952 edition of Roland Bainton's 'Reformation of the Sixteenth Century' on Google Books.
'Laurentius' does not occur in the text, and 'clung' just twice in its usual verb sense.
I get the sense that Kriss is just throwing out more nonsense to try to cover the original nonsense.
@Conflux Reading further down he goes on an absurd tangent that makes it clear he's admitting to making this stuff up. In context I think he's defending some other fictional thing he introduced as a device in some earlier brouhaha, but I don't have time to sort through it all.
was a real person who lived. Convince me!
to clarify, does this resolve purely based on the existence of this person (roughly: someone with this name during this period who people would agree is the guy the article must be referring to), & not the accuracy of how he's described in these stories?
e.g. if this article had been written about the miracles jesus performed in the bible, would an equivalent market resolve to 100% (since AFAIK there is little controversy among historians about the existence of a historical jesus)
@Ziddletwix Real person who lived and was a sixteenth-century theologian. I don’t feel like arbitrating anything more complex
@Conflux I might take a look at a physical copy of Roland Bainton's book on Monday; there's a copy in the King Library just a few miles from my house. I doubt there is a precise name match, else it would have turned up in Google Books; but this raises the question of how to resolve this if there was a Läurentius Clung, Laurentius Clüng, Laurentius Klung or what have you.
@BorisBartlog I will count a small spelling difference. Spelling wasn’t standardized back then anyway, right? You can find Shakespeare’s name spelled all kinds of ways
@Conflux I tracked down Bainton's book in the King Library. There are actually two chapters that touch on Calvinism (6 and 9), but no mention in either one of Laurentius Clung. Possible that it was a weird riff on Cornelius Hoen, who is mentioned in chapter 9 ... though he is not so incredibly obscure as Kriss makes Clung out to be, and is not mentioned in 'The Pursuit of the Millenium' (a Google Books search of that book turns up no Laurentius Clung, either).