John Paulson, who made his fortune betting against loser homeowners, is donating $400 million to Harvard’s engineering school – a good use of money to help America’s best and the brightest. Malcom Gladwell, who along with Taleb, Ariely, Kahneman and other liberals is famous for his pseudoscience books that downplay individual cognitive exceptionalism, predictably opposed the donation:
It came down to helping the poor or giving the world's richest university $400 mil it doesn't need. Wise choice John! http://t.co/2bFmuTy397
— Gladwell (@Gladwell) June 3, 2015
Gladwell is struggling to remain relevant, years after Outliers was thoroughly debunked by Pinker and social media at large, squandering the intellectual credibility he had accumulated after Tipping Point and Blink. Although Gladwell still commands generous speaking fees and has a following who will buy anything with his name on it, he has been demoted from promising public intellectual to faddish self-help huckster whose aphorisms and platitudes dissolve at the slightest scrutiny
Libs like Gladwel, in their war on STEM and IQ, would rather fritter the money on useless social programs to help the dull masses who otherwise contribute little to society except consumer spending and social media usage that boosts stock prices and web 2.0 valuations. Apparently Gladwell is unaware or ignoring that the government already wastes billions on various entitlement programs, so it’s not like Paulson’s extra $400 million would make a dent in the figure. People like Paulson are the reason why we need to put the elite in power since they know how to optimally allocate resources. They , the cognitive and creative elite, understand that they are the reason why humanity/society advances, so understandably giving high-IQ people money so they can live to their fullest cognitive potential could only do good – hence the donation. Liberals want to live in an alternate reality where IQ doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist, where markets and smart people are irrational, where every societal ill can be fixed by throwing money at it, where practice can make perfect, where environment matter more than genes, where everyone is born equal and no one is intrinsically better than anyone else – it’s an upside-down world for the left. But it’s hard to get mad at the likes of Gladwell when their stupidity is so obvious and entertaining.