The Bell Curve
Article
The Bell Curve is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 14, 2021 and July 14, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and IQ in ‘The Bell Curve’”; “a journalist dishonestly spliced my words to imply I supported Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve”; “those “everyone is equally smart” romantic navel-gazers who find The Bell Curve too scary to open?“. It most often appears alongside Bryan Caplan, Charles Murray, Freddie DeBoer.
Metadata
- Category: Books
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: February 14, 2021
- Last seen: July 14, 2023
Appears In
- Statement on New York Times Article
- Book Review: The Cult Of Smart
- Your Book Review: The Educated Mind
Related Pages
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- Bryan Caplan (2 shared issues)
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- Charles Murray (2 shared issues)
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- Freddie DeBoer (2 shared issues)
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- Harvard (2 shared issues)
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- Reddit (2 shared issues)
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- Silicon Valley (2 shared issues)
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- Steven Pinker (2 shared issues)
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- United States (2 shared issues)
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- !Kung San (1 shared issues)
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- aboriginal people on the west coast of Canada (1 shared issues)
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- Adam Smith (1 shared issues)
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- ADHD (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
1. The article tries to connect me to Charles Murray and The Bell Curve, saying:
In one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and IQ in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.”
Inline links: aligned himself with Charles Murray
Earlier this week, I objected when a journalist dishonestly spliced my words to imply I supported Charles Murray's The Bell Curve. Some people wrote me to complain that I handled this in a cowardly way - I showed that the specific thing the journalist quoted wasn’t a reference to The Bell Curve, but I never answered the broader question of what I thought of the book. They demanded I come out and give my opinion openly. Well, the most direct answer is that I've never read it. But that's kind of cowardly too - I've read papers and articles making what I assume is the same case. So what do I think of them?
Alice: Speaking of gaps, there’s a huge one in your treatment of this — what about IQ? It’s the most-tested, most-validated measurement in all of schooling! Is Egan one of those “everyone is equally smart” romantic navel-gazers who find The Bell Curve too scary to open?
Reviewer: Look, not everyone has the cognitive capacity to put their shirt on by themselves; I have nieces and nephews who are developmentally disabled. This “all children” rhetoric that you hear so much in educational reform seems to shut its eyes to the existence of people on the far end of the bell curve.
Anyhow, at the other end of the bell curve, Egan has something interesting to say, too.