Fenster writes:

A blog post by the physicist Stephen Hsu on the need to own up to group differences driven by genes. Hsu writes:

We are scientists, seeking truth. We are not slaves to ideological conformity.

True. But I always get a kick out of the fact that it is not enough to defend evidence with evidence; a moral play must be enacted as well. Thus his blog post is entitled “The Truth Shall Make You Free”.

But how can that be true, always? We would not insist on self-deception as much as we do if it did not confer advantage.  No society has ever been built on total truth, and never will be, as long as we are gooey and not robotized.  We always need a story, even when we pretend it is not about a story.

That’s not to criticize the move to let the evidence speak for itself in this case. The time appears to be up for ignoring the evidence and there will be more conflicts as the scientific view forces itself into a conventional narrative that has had no room for it.

Some perspective is in order, though. One cheer, always, for hypocrisy.

But there I go, moralizing again.