[THREAD]

1/ These anti-IQ Twitter threads popping up over the past week might very well be the first in what will end up being a series of skirmishes on the outskirts of town before the left calls in the elite troops at the New York Times to try to finish things off for them.

2/ By “finish off” IQ, I don't mean as a scientific concept (that isn't remotely possible on its own terms), but rather as a subject which can be discussed semi-openly out among the general public without guaranteed (or eventually statutory) censorship or cancellation.

3/ If the left wins this, it might be content to allow the subject to recede back to where it quietly simmered in the decades before the internet: The low-circulation scientific journals & lightly-attended conferences of the insular & protected world of intelligence research.

4/ The reason Charles Murray is so reviled by the left is because he was the person who shined the light on the long-hidden sacred texts of that world for all to see. For the elites, it was OK to discuss uncomfortable findings within the “circle of trust”...

5/ ...of the researchers involved, but definitely not OK for the public to know what was going on in twin, adoption, and transracial studies.

Murray and Herrnstein courageously f***ed up this quaint little bargain with publication of The Bell Curve.

6/ At the beginning of 2019 — the start of that year that came after the short period in which we had Plomin and Reich's books and GWAS/PGS breakthroughs — I predicted that the left would go on the offensive, and it did. And so we had books by Adam Rutherford and Angela Saini.

7/ These glossy and scientifically-threadbare exercises in High Anti-Racism were enormously popular where the goodest thought prevails (big cities and college towns), but there was not yet a galvanizing event or force that could be called upon to fully exploit them.

8/ The left now has that necessary energy and momentum, and whether it decides to go after IQ with its most well-trained troops (like the NYT) depends entirely upon how long it can milk the sacred martyrdom of George Floyd. The size of that window of opportunity is not apparent.

9/ A Trump victory (particularly if it comes after a nasty campaign) might be able to open that window long enough for the left to try to find the necessary casus belli so that it can sell a full-scale attack against public discussion of IQ to the intelligentsia.

10/ With its recent success in effortlessly whipping up moral panic and race hysteria, it will look for some Gulf of Tonkin-ish justification: Perhaps the uncovering of some archaic remark by a long-dead hereditarian about “rhythm” or “watermelons”. A Jimmy the Greek moment.

11/ Let's re-examine the timeline: Saini, Rutherford, attacks on the predictive validity of SATs — indeed, attacks on all standardized educational testing — and the ascendancy of equality of *outcomes* as the centerpiece of our newest New Society.

This is all since 2019.

12/ No institution can strike the fatal blow against public discussion of IQ as efficiently as NYT, at which Anti-Racism has replaced Russian Collusion as guiding thesis, and at which ace reporter and acclaimed blank slatist Amy Harmon is gainfully employed at the science desk.

13/ If you don't think the NYT can do it, ask yourself if you would have thought a year ago that your kids might soon be taught that every fluid in the US body of history runs through the tumor of slavery, or that The Black American Experience *is* The American Experience.

14/ The NYT accomplished that in a matter of months with the '1619 Project'. By comparison, stigmatizing public discussion of a field within psychology might end up being a walk in the park.

That's how powerful the Times is.

14/ If a full-scale anti-IQ battle cry ever goes up at the Times it will be up to liberals like Steven Pinker to try to stop it. Will Pinker and others be willing to risk careers, prestige, speaking fees, dinner party invitations, and book contracts?

I'm not optimistic.

15/ I don't think we're going to have a Joe Welch moment when someone of stature will directly address the bullies: “Have you no sense of decency? This is most scientifically-sound area in all of psychology. Don't pretend your attacks have anything to do with science.”

POST-SCRIPT/

I wrote the tweets in this thread quickly, and I can see now upon re-reading the one about Amy Harmon, I did a terrible job making my sarcasm apparent, and as a result that tweet is confusing.