It Takes a Selectionist to Catch a Selectionist

Because "selectionist" thinking is so verboten in American intellectual life today, the chattering classes have no practice in thinking critically about selectionist theories, as opposed to demonizing them as Thoughtcrime. So, they are saps for a selectionist, like Steven D. Levitt, when he tells them something they wanted to hear. As I pointed out in my Slate debate with Levitt way back in 1999:

The widespread assumption that your theory must be correct reveals just how many people deep down believe, whether they admit it publicly or not, that "certain people" are just permanently more incorrigible than others. As a contender for the World's Least Politically Correct Human, I'm sympathetic. It's ironic, but because I've been arguing for years that genetic diversity affects society, I was one of the few to notice in this particular case that crime has risen and fallen not because we are aborting the poor and black and unwanted, but because of that staple of genteel liberal commentary, Cultural Forces (e.g., crack).

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer