Many years ago, long before "The Bell Curve", I spent way, way too much time reading Murray's book "Losing Ground" (1984) and going to the library to read the papers he referenced and reading the papers those papers referenced and then the papers those papers referenced. My conclusion was that his book is junk. My second conclusion was that citations are like a game of telephone and every time someone cites something, it changes slightly, so don't trust anything until you get to a primary source, and maybe don't even trust that. (This second conclusion applies in general, not just to Murray.) My third conclusion was that arguing online is a waste of time and approximately nobody cares about actual facts.
My second conclusion was that citations are like a game of telephone and every time someone cites something, it changes slightly, so don't trust anything until you get to a primary source, and maybe don't even trust that. (This second conclusion applies in general, not just to Murray.)
This part is definitely true. It has also been my experience -- but more so within academic areas with sloppy "researchers" and political problems. Linguistics is pretty good, gender "research" is awful. Intelligence research is pretty damn good, social "science" and psychology (outside of psychometrics) is awful. Economics is awful, apart from the basic ideas of competition, capitalism, and low taxes. Keynesianism is largely a fraud.
Your interlocutor might not care about facts but the audience might. I’ve learned interesting new things from reading the back-and-forth of others going at it online.
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Many years ago, long before "The Bell Curve", I spent way, way too much time reading Murray's book "Losing Ground" (1984) and going to the library to read the papers he referenced and reading the papers those papers referenced and then the papers those papers referenced. My conclusion was that his book is junk. My second conclusion was that citations are like a game of telephone and every time someone cites something, it changes slightly, so don't trust anything until you get to a primary source, and maybe don't even trust that. (This second conclusion applies in general, not just to Murray.) My third conclusion was that arguing online is a waste of time and approximately nobody cares about actual facts.
This part is definitely true. It has also been my experience -- but more so within academic areas with sloppy "researchers" and political problems. Linguistics is pretty good, gender "research" is awful. Intelligence research is pretty damn good, social "science" and psychology (outside of psychometrics) is awful. Economics is awful, apart from the basic ideas of competition, capitalism, and low taxes. Keynesianism is largely a fraud.
This is unlikely to be true.
Your interlocutor might not care about facts but the audience might. I’ve learned interesting new things from reading the back-and-forth of others going at it online.