I must be a bad person for being so well-informed

Saturday, June 5th, 2021

What if I’m right?, Steve Sailer asks:

What if my way of thinking is, in general, more realistic, insightful, and reasonable than the conventional wisdom?

I dislike thinking of my concepts as an ideology. I don’t propound “Sailerism.” I lack the ambition and the ego. I am by nature a staff guy rather than a line boss. I like to think of my approach to understanding human society as one that will eventually seem obvious to everybody, so I shouldn’t claim credit now for what is simply solid empirical thinking applied to the more contentious subjects.

Instead, I like to tell myself, I should just keep coming up with more ideas that are (in declining order of importance to me) true, interesting, new, and funny. Eventually, people will notice how much better my approach to reality has been than that of the famous folks winning MacArthur genius grants and try to figure out for themselves how I do it so that everybody can do it too.

Or at least that’s what I hope.

On the other hand, it’s now 2021 and public discourse has just gotten stupider and more self-destructive over the course of my career.

Maybe that’s my fault?

What if I had just kept my mouth shut and, instead of challenging popular pundits to be honest and intelligent, I’d let them work it out for themselves? After all, while people who know me tend to find I’m an admirable individual, people who don’t know me tend to hate me.

Many pundits seem enraged over the idea that I might prove right. This tendency to personalize social science disputes has always struck me as dim-witted, but, apparently, the fear “What if Sailer is right?” is infuriating and/or terrifying to many. It’s almost as if what gets people mad is my being correct so often.

Thus, when I point out the facts, I’m often greeted with incoherent anger centering on the allegation that I must be a bad person for being so well-informed.

Comments

  1. Jackie Pratt says:

    What an ego. Gosh. Facts….. who needs em anyway?

  2. Bill Jones says:

    I have roughly this conversation with my wife about every six weeks.

  3. Bomag says:

    Seems partly the science vs. church dichotomy.

    Our installed politics is now an official church. Sailer the scientist is in danger of being silenced for blasphemy.

    Islamic nations had a flourishing natural science for a short period. Then the politicized church took over more completely and societal effort went into the equivalent of full time George Floyd worship. Results flowed.

  4. Wang Wei Lin says:

    Bill Jones,

    I say this in humor. So who’s not getting it? You or your wife? (I know the answer.)

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