Those are excellent points, particularly the first. Adolf Hitler was one of the most effective rhetoricians in human history - his public speaking skills were simply astounding. Even the people who hated his message were stunned after attending rallies in which Hitler exercised his crowd-manipulation skills.

It struck me that "top-level" is ambiguous. Do you mean high quality or general-purpose?

I don't think that it is taboo to say that Hitler was a good orator or that he was good at mass psychology. But people don't admit to desiring to manipulate crowds; I don't think Hitler has to do with that. I've heard it suggested that a lot of people have the skills to be cult leaders, but they just don't want to be.

Film makers do study Leni Riefenstahl.

First one's just plain true.

Second one is probably true. The issue with eugenics isn't that it wouldn't work, it's that it would be unethical to try.

Third one seems to fail the evidence test. It's proposing a significant deficit in a measurable quantity that has not been observed to exist (after correcting for socio-economic status).

I'll grant you that they're all taboo, but they're not really useful, either. (I mean, some people claim these are true to justify their prejudices, but that's not what we're talking about.) In particular, the statement about Hitler is too vague to suggest what ought to be imitated, and the statement about racial groups focuses on an effect which is almost entirely obscured by historical facts about the distribution of resources.

That said, regarding eugenics: have you read any of David Brin's Uplift books?

1st one: Nope, don't think anyone here would dispute that, except on the grounds that it's rather nonspecific.

2nd one: Only if it were in the form of encouraging particularly valuable individuals to reproduce more. Removing even the bottom 50% would have fairly negligible effects compared to doubling the top 1%. Several countries already implement programs to encourage the most valuable members to reproduce more (with mixed success).

3rd one: I find it nearly impossible to find any good data on that either way. Pending evidence, it looks like most of the quality of life and education effects can basically be explained by looking at who got the industrial revolution first. Unless very large effect sizes were found, however, the policy implications would be minimal or nonexistent.

Related to: Mind-killer.

Human "racial" groups may have differing average attributes (like IQ), and these may contribute to the explanation of historical outcomes of those groups.

Surely few would argue with that. The more controversial issue is the claim that such differences are genetic.

From Paul Graham's essay:

How do we get at these ideas? By the following thought experiment. Imagine a kind of latter-day Conrad character who has worked for a time as a mercenary in Africa, for a time as a doctor in Nepal, for a time as the manager of a nightclub in Miami. The specifics don't matter-- just someone who has seen a lot. Now imagine comparing what's inside this guy's head with what's inside the head of a well-behaved sixteen year old girl from the suburbs. What does he think that would shock her? He knows the world; she knows, or at least embodies, present taboos. Subtract one from the other, and the result is what we can't say.

Maybe there is something I am missing, but I don't understand his last sentence. How do you take two people, and "subtract one from the other" ?