Ben Shapiro made another guest appearance on The Rubin Report the other day. A Patreon supporter inquired whether Ben “believed” in the existence of a cognitive elite and differences in intelligence among people more generally.
Fortunately enough, he took the intellectually honest course and clarified “yes.” From my interpretation, during the brief moment Rubin was posing the question, Ben was a little flustered about how he was going to respond. I have a feeling these guys are only politically incorrect to the extent that the “politically incorrect” coalition allows them to be. Though the boundaries of political incorrectness are variable, there are some that aren’t to be crossed if Ben is to maintain his popularity. The existence of individual differences in IQ make no one happy, and even tolerant folks on the right wouldn’t enjoy hearing that variation in economic status can be explained by IQ. The alt-right and the HBD community cannot compensate for this, as they constitute such a minute portion of society. There are some ideological incongruencies as well: the alt-right is deathly opposed to Jewish overrepresentation, while HBD’ers are primarily agnostic/atheist and don’t subscribe to Shapiro’s intellectual backflips to justify his faith.
Shapiro also suggested that Eric Weinstein’s IQ was around 160. This is obviously extremely tentative since I don’t know the upper limits of his IQ awareness and whether or not he understands the relative frequency of a 160 IQ. Nevertheless, Weinstein obtained a degree in mathematical physics from Harvard University, and that’s likely the most potent sponge for cognitive ability of all disciplines. Ben seems to indicate that he’s in over his head with respect to many of the ideas promulgated by Eric. A 142 IQ being stumped doesnt happen too often; in this way, a 160 IQ also becomes plausible for Eric. There’s obviously an imperfect correlation between ideas and intelligence, and considering the very different backgrounds of both, I wouldn’t acknowledge cognitive disparity as the sole perpetrator for Ben’s confusion.
Those that do are bereft of the competence to acknowledge statistical significance, but accept that said significance does not imply accounting for all the variance in a conversation between two individuals.
Brutal 