The Bell Curve

Elon Musk’s Endgame

The Ezra Klein Show, 30 October 2026. The book comes up at 46 min 23 sec in.

Quinn Slobodian describes The Bell Curve (1994) by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein as the book that revived IQ discourse in the 1990s, summarising its two arguments: that IQ would become ever more determinative of economic success, while those at the low end would become a social problem — with the incendiary additional claim of racial group differences in intelligence. He links this to the era of mass incarceration and connects the IQ framework to Musk's worldview.

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