/lit/ - Literature

>>7279606

I've read his Curmudgeon's Guide, What it means to be a Libertarian, The Bell Curve, and Losing Ground. In Pursuit is high on my list of future reads right now along with his "Human Accomplishment".

Like anything Murray writes, Losing Ground was wonderful. But, and per the year published, the actual data is a bit dated -- but this didn't discourage me. I've read other critiques of the bloated state and the message of the data stays the same despite what welfare epoch we're talking about.

Honestly, The Bell Curve was the most poignant and relevant to my personal politics. You grow up on the internet and all you hear about is evil conservatives and conservative denial of science, your taught unabashedly false liberal talking points in university, so on and so forth -- but when I read The Bell Curve everything seemed to click for me. Here was a man purveying facts about our society who received such disproportionate, vitriolic backlash from both academia and the public. I didn't understand it. Science is science -- you can sacralize equality if you like, but that doesn't change facts.

That's when I really started seeing partisan bias and incessantly searching for truth. I also think that intellectuals too readily overlook IQ when studying societies. I think the stratification of society by IQ needs more attention than we give it; i.e. the cognitive elite become the wealthy and elite, but you know this. I don't know. It just had an affect on me. That was years ago though.

As for people like Shapiro or Coulter, I don't really mind. I guess it's a pretty good thing that during their stay at the indoctrination hotel they're at least exposing themselves to forbidden fruit, albeit the fruit is rather stale. Folks like Shapiro and Ann are too partisan in their thinking for me -- the whole denying of evolution, willingness to enter nuclear war, fundamentalism, etc. kind of irks me. That said some of the stuff they say is spot.