Darwin apparently originated the concept of lumpers and splitters. Both lumping and splitting are enormously useful for thinking about reality — and it’s even more useful to understand that you can do either depending upon the circumstances and your needs — but as the Troublesome Inheritance brouhaha shows a lot of people who think they are really smart can’t handle F. Scott Fitzgerald’s challenge of holding two ideas at once (e.g., lumping and splitting) and still function.

In general, Wade’s critics have a hard time dealing with complexity (in other words, they aren’t as smart as they think they are). Chuck deals extremely well with complexity (i.e., he’s really smart).

Steve Sailer