Charles Murray

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@charlesmurray

Husband, father, social scientist, writer, Madisonian. Or maybe right-wing ideologue, pseudoscientist, evil. Opinions differ.

Burkittsville, MD aei.org/scholar/charle… Joined February 2009

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Charles Murray @charlesmurray Sep 28, 2025

I wish more people had read this book. I wish it had been reviewed by outlets that had previously reviewed my books. I wish it had been discussed by people who previously discussed my books. But it appeared in 2021. Not a year in which facing reality was in vogue.

CharlesMurrayQuotes @CharlesMurrayQu Sep 28, 2025

“[It’s]a paradox: I want America to return to the ideal of treating people as individuals, so I have to write a book that treats Americans as groups. But there’s no way around it.”

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Charles Murray @charlesmurray 1d

As in so many things, the difference between STEM and the social sciences/humanities departments is profound. Namely: STEM is still engaged in pushing back the frontiers of knowledge.

Acquiring reliable, accurate and objectively new knowledge about how the world and human beings work has never been an important function of the humanities (the delusions of the postmodernists notwithstanding), and the pretensions of the social sciences in that regard have been largely discredited over the last fifty years.

Or to put it another way, the research that grad students in STEM do is often actually useful.

UAP_tech Verified account @UAP_tech 1d

As a faculty member, I think you are wrong. Perhaps it is different in the humanities but in STEM, the bulk of our outputs are produced by PhD and postdoctoral researchers. We have a crucial role in guiding their work, advising and securing funding, but don't diminish them. They are also far cheaper than a member of faculty.
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Charles Murray @charlesmurray 1d

I'm tempted to say "Everyone who gave him a fair chance." I was assigned Merchant of Venice in ninth or tenth grade. Seventy years later, I still remember my sense of wonder upon first seeing the layers of meaning and the elegance of expression and saying to myself that everything I had heard about Shakespeare and doubted was really true. Maybe my experience wasn't typical. But I suspect that those who didn't love Shakespeare read him the way they would read a thriller--quickly, once. It takes more work than that.

David Wall @wall_david61 2d

@charlesmurray What percent of all students ever really loved Shakespeare?
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Charles Murray @charlesmurray 1d

I've never seen evidence for that, but I stand ready to be corrected if there's recent work on this that I missed.

John Doe @UFOGuy3 2d

@charlesmurray Agreed. Question about the Asian-white IQ ranking (which I know is well evidenced): does it narrow by 25-30 years old as differential educational focus up to that age fades away and “true” IQ reveals itself?
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Charles Murray @charlesmurray 1d

Here's how idiotic government unions are: Even FDR thought they were bad.

The idiocy lies in the breakdown of a counterbalancing incentives in negotiations between labor and management. In the private sector, the CEO of a for-profit business has urgent reasons to resist excessive union demands. Succumbing puts to those demands puts the company's profitability and ultimately the CEO's own job at risk. A mayor, governor, or president has no equivalent incentive. Public opposition to the union's position may be widespread, but it is diffuse and is unlikely to be an important issue in the next campaign, whereas resisting the union guarantees political problems from a highly incentivized and well-funded union.

It's a variant on the power asymmetry that Mancur Olson described in The Logic of Collective Action.

peter rowe @Prowerock1 2d

@charlesmurray I had never thought of the idiocy of unions for govt employees. But yes why are they needed?
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