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Progressive Myths
Do women really get paid 30% less than men for the same work? Do American police regularly murder unarmed black men just for being black? Is global warming really going to destroy human civilization? This book answers these and other questions about the state of our society. A sober look at the evidence reveals that many factual claims used to support progressive political views are false, exaggerated, or radically misleading. After exposing a series of these myths, the author explains how and why progressive myths have become popular, why they are harmful, and how we can avoid being taken in by political myths.
“When I get a little money, I buy [Mike Huemer’s] books; if any is left, I buy food and clothes.” –Erasmus
“If only I had listened to Mike Huemer, millions might not have had to die in the 20th century.” –Karl Marx
“This book is terrible. Never listen to Mike Huemer.” –Satan
CONTENTSIntroductionPart Myths About Individuals
1 Trayvon Martin
2 Michael Brown
3 Amy Cooper
4 Jacob Blake
5 Kyle Rittenhouse
6 Three Non-Myths
Part Racial Myths
7 Racist Police Shootings
8 Implicit Bias
9 Stereotype Threat
10 Racist Drug Laws
Part Feminist Myths
11 The Gender Pay Gap
12 Campus Rape Culture
13 Women Don’t Lie
Part Gender Myths
14 What Is Gender?
15 Transgenderism
Part Economic Myths
16 Generational Wealth
17 The Tax Burden
18 Regulation
Part Science Myths
19 The Global Warming Consensus
20 Existential Climate Risk
21 Mask Science
Part Analysis
22 The Roots of Wokism
23 How Myths Thrive
24 The Dangers of Progressive Myths
25 Avoiding Myths
References
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, where he has taught since the last millennium. He is the author of more than eighty articles in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy, in addition to approximately ten other amazing books that you should immediately buy.
“When I get a little money, I buy [Mike Huemer’s] books; if any is left, I buy food and clothes.” –Erasmus
“If only I had listened to Mike Huemer, millions might not have had to die in the 20th century.” –Karl Marx
“This book is terrible. Never listen to Mike Huemer.” –Satan
CONTENTSIntroductionPart Myths About Individuals
1 Trayvon Martin
2 Michael Brown
3 Amy Cooper
4 Jacob Blake
5 Kyle Rittenhouse
6 Three Non-Myths
Part Racial Myths
7 Racist Police Shootings
8 Implicit Bias
9 Stereotype Threat
10 Racist Drug Laws
Part Feminist Myths
11 The Gender Pay Gap
12 Campus Rape Culture
13 Women Don’t Lie
Part Gender Myths
14 What Is Gender?
15 Transgenderism
Part Economic Myths
16 Generational Wealth
17 The Tax Burden
18 Regulation
Part Science Myths
19 The Global Warming Consensus
20 Existential Climate Risk
21 Mask Science
Part Analysis
22 The Roots of Wokism
23 How Myths Thrive
24 The Dangers of Progressive Myths
25 Avoiding Myths
References
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, where he has taught since the last millennium. He is the author of more than eighty articles in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy, in addition to approximately ten other amazing books that you should immediately buy.
277 pages, Hardcover
Published September 15, 2024
39 people are currently reading
246 people want to read
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January 21, 2025
One of the best books I’ve read that counters progressive/woke myths. Huemer is fair-minded, refrains from hyperbole, writes extremely clearly, and makes it very easy to follow his train of thought. Recommended for people across the political spectrum.
Huemer begins with a section on more topical issues related to homicide, especially police shootings, comparing the way these incidents got portrayed by the media and left-leaning pundits with the facts on the ground. Cutting through most of these examples is the myth that the US police are endemically racist, a claim that Huemer tackles head-on in section 2. The belief that racist police kill many unarmed black men is so entrenched among self-identified progressives in the US, yet the best evidence available either does not support such claims or, in many cases, soundly refutes them (e.g., Fryer, 2019). There is really very little empirical support to substantiate the “racist police shootings of unarmed black men is endemic” claim. And yet, the mythology lives on, mostly harming black communities who end up trusting police less and yet must rely on the police the most given the racial crime gap.
Huemer continues on with the race theme by debunking the claims that implicit bias and stereotype threat explain racial gaps of various sorts. In the case of implicit bias, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has been show to lack test-retest reliability and predictive validity, undermining its ability to diagnose racially prejudicial attitudes and predict meaningful outcomes. Stereotype threat, like many purported phenomena in social psychology, has fallen victim to the replication crisis and likely isn’t a persistent phenomenon—or, if it is, it’s likely tiny and cannot be used to explain racial gaps in test performance or other outcomes.
Section 3 continues with feminist myths, specifically on the alleged gender pay gap, the existence (or lack thereof) of campus rape culture, and the supposedly low rate of false rape accusations. In economics, the gender pay gap is well-known to shrink to somewhere between 95-99 cents on the dollar once adequate controls are introduced, and yet the myth persists due its ideological appeal and due to there still being a raw gap. On rape culture, Huemer soundly debunks the ridiculously misleading claim that 1 in 4 female students will experience rape during their undergrads. This figure was generated by conflating rape with sexual assault, using an expansive definition of sexual assault, straight-out mathematical fabrications, and dubious data collection methodologies (bad surveys). Perhaps most contentiously, when progressives cite the alleged low rates of false rape allegations of women, they often conflate various categories that allow them to shrink this percentage down. For example, in studies of rape cases that the police investigate, some subset are confirmed to be true, some are confirmed to be false (usually under 10%), and the rest are unsolved. These results are often misleadingly summarized as the rate of false allegations being low; but the true rate of false allegations is unknown, having a large range, with the confirmed false percentage being the low end estimate. It is notoriously difficult to estimate the rate of false (or true) rape allegations simply because so many cases go unsolved. The justified conclusion is that we don’t know what the rate of false rape allegations is, but that it ranges from under 10% to much higher.
Part 4 focuses on gender myths, specifically on transgender-related issues. I didn’t agree with everything in this section, as Huemer is more charitable to the coherence of the concept of gender/gender identity than I think is justified. For example, Huemer raises the well-known case of a boy who had a botched circumcision that was then raised as a girl, who then experienced extreme discomfort with his anatomy. Huemer interprets this as being evidence of there being an innate gender identity that we all have, which is mostly invisible to those of us who don’t experience dysphoria. Yet, a more straightforward interpretation is that there are entrenched social expectations associated with each sex, and thus, we may experience discomfort if we’re expected to live/behave one way when we are another way biologically. Perhaps this is a distinction without a difference. Yet, I see no need for the concept of gender or gender identity (see Alex Byrne’s fantastic book The Trouble with Gender for a thorough critique of these terminologies).
Part 5 (on economic myths) was most interesting and educational for me, as I wasn’t familiar with some of it previously. Huemer starts by debunking the notion that most wealthy individuals’ wealth is inherited (very little of it is) before tackling the tricky issue of whether the wealthy pay their “fair share” of the tax burden. Huemer contends that the claim “the wealthy don’t pay their fair share” is a myth because it rests upon inaccurate claims about profits/net income that the wealthy supposedly earn, which is then used to artificially deflate the amount of tax they pay. At the heart of this misunderstanding is that much of the wealthy’s wealth is tied up in assets, which of course is not income taxable unless and until it is sold at a profit. Furthermore, if a company makes a profit one year and an equal loss the following year, they can use the loss in one year to offset the profit in another, leading to them not having to pay income tax overall. This is not some loophole, but deliberately designed into the system. No serious thinker thinks it is a good idea to force people to pay income tax on assets.
Lastly, Huemer contends that most regulations are net negative in terms of their overall economic effects, yet concedes it’s very difficult—if not impossible—to do a comprehensive assessment of all US regulations on the books (given the 188,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations). Even if you’re skeptical of this claim, it should be easy to concede the softer claim that many regulations are not designed for the public’s or society’s interest at large (given the existence of lobbyists) and thus harm society at large—a place where progressives and libertarians should be able to align.
Part 6 (on science myths) I thought was going to go off the rails, but it was a valuable read even if I think Huemer gets some things wrong. He starts by acknowledging the existence of climate change and that it’s likely mostly man-made, but disputes some of the claims made about the extent to which climate scientists agree. Specifically, when headlines state that X% of scientists agree about man-made climate change, the studies cited to support such claims actually refer to papers (not scientists) that support this claim in large reviews. (I would argue papers are actually more relevant for gauging consensus than scientists’ opinions—consensus of published evidence rather consensus of opinion, though the latter usually does follow the former.) However, in such large reviews, many such papers fail to state a position either way on man-made climate change. Should the X% agreement claims omit these “no position” papers from the denominator, thus arriving at a higher percentage, or should the breakdown be given more granularly (“agree”, “disagree”, “no position”)? One could argue both ways, but I can see Huemer’s point that omitting the “no position” papers does inflate the percentage to make it seem like the totality of evidence is near-unanimous agreement when the reality is that among papers stating a position, almost all support man-made climate change.
The next chapter I think is bang on: climate scientists definitely do not generally think climate change will cause an existential catastrophe, yet many progressive pundits and the left-wing media have broadcast such claims very irresponsibly—which regrettably ends up undermining trust in climate science as a whole. Additionally, I agree with Huemer that climate change is not the most pressing problem in the world right now, given the still huge numbers of people in poverty, starving, and vulnerable to preventable diseases like malaria.
The last chapter in this section (on mask science) I had some disagreements with. Huemer cites Jefferson et al (2023), a Cochrane meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), to refute the claim that masks are highly effective at reducing the spread of respiratory viruses. Yet, this meta-analysis was thoroughly criticized for questionably combining studies together that looked at many respiratory viruses, only one RCT of which looked at Covid-19 (in Bangladesh), finding a small (13%) but statistically significant benefit of mask usage. However, the devil’s in the details: even in the treatment group, only 42% actually wore masks compared to 13% in the control. With higher mask usage, the risk reduction would obviously be greater. Huemer didn’t do his homework properly in citing this, and ignored many other observational studies that estimated a much higher mask effectiveness in preventing Covid-19 transmission (e.g., this meta-analysis of observational studies that found a 53% risk reduction estimate: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2...)
The final section is an informative but more speculative look at the roots of wokeness, the societal harms caused by these myths, and how we can arm ourselves to avoid these myths.
Notwithstanding the few weaknesses, this was an absolutely fantastic book. Highly recommended antidote to myths that many of your peers undoubtedly believe.
Huemer begins with a section on more topical issues related to homicide, especially police shootings, comparing the way these incidents got portrayed by the media and left-leaning pundits with the facts on the ground. Cutting through most of these examples is the myth that the US police are endemically racist, a claim that Huemer tackles head-on in section 2. The belief that racist police kill many unarmed black men is so entrenched among self-identified progressives in the US, yet the best evidence available either does not support such claims or, in many cases, soundly refutes them (e.g., Fryer, 2019). There is really very little empirical support to substantiate the “racist police shootings of unarmed black men is endemic” claim. And yet, the mythology lives on, mostly harming black communities who end up trusting police less and yet must rely on the police the most given the racial crime gap.
Huemer continues on with the race theme by debunking the claims that implicit bias and stereotype threat explain racial gaps of various sorts. In the case of implicit bias, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has been show to lack test-retest reliability and predictive validity, undermining its ability to diagnose racially prejudicial attitudes and predict meaningful outcomes. Stereotype threat, like many purported phenomena in social psychology, has fallen victim to the replication crisis and likely isn’t a persistent phenomenon—or, if it is, it’s likely tiny and cannot be used to explain racial gaps in test performance or other outcomes.
Section 3 continues with feminist myths, specifically on the alleged gender pay gap, the existence (or lack thereof) of campus rape culture, and the supposedly low rate of false rape accusations. In economics, the gender pay gap is well-known to shrink to somewhere between 95-99 cents on the dollar once adequate controls are introduced, and yet the myth persists due its ideological appeal and due to there still being a raw gap. On rape culture, Huemer soundly debunks the ridiculously misleading claim that 1 in 4 female students will experience rape during their undergrads. This figure was generated by conflating rape with sexual assault, using an expansive definition of sexual assault, straight-out mathematical fabrications, and dubious data collection methodologies (bad surveys). Perhaps most contentiously, when progressives cite the alleged low rates of false rape allegations of women, they often conflate various categories that allow them to shrink this percentage down. For example, in studies of rape cases that the police investigate, some subset are confirmed to be true, some are confirmed to be false (usually under 10%), and the rest are unsolved. These results are often misleadingly summarized as the rate of false allegations being low; but the true rate of false allegations is unknown, having a large range, with the confirmed false percentage being the low end estimate. It is notoriously difficult to estimate the rate of false (or true) rape allegations simply because so many cases go unsolved. The justified conclusion is that we don’t know what the rate of false rape allegations is, but that it ranges from under 10% to much higher.
Part 4 focuses on gender myths, specifically on transgender-related issues. I didn’t agree with everything in this section, as Huemer is more charitable to the coherence of the concept of gender/gender identity than I think is justified. For example, Huemer raises the well-known case of a boy who had a botched circumcision that was then raised as a girl, who then experienced extreme discomfort with his anatomy. Huemer interprets this as being evidence of there being an innate gender identity that we all have, which is mostly invisible to those of us who don’t experience dysphoria. Yet, a more straightforward interpretation is that there are entrenched social expectations associated with each sex, and thus, we may experience discomfort if we’re expected to live/behave one way when we are another way biologically. Perhaps this is a distinction without a difference. Yet, I see no need for the concept of gender or gender identity (see Alex Byrne’s fantastic book The Trouble with Gender for a thorough critique of these terminologies).
Part 5 (on economic myths) was most interesting and educational for me, as I wasn’t familiar with some of it previously. Huemer starts by debunking the notion that most wealthy individuals’ wealth is inherited (very little of it is) before tackling the tricky issue of whether the wealthy pay their “fair share” of the tax burden. Huemer contends that the claim “the wealthy don’t pay their fair share” is a myth because it rests upon inaccurate claims about profits/net income that the wealthy supposedly earn, which is then used to artificially deflate the amount of tax they pay. At the heart of this misunderstanding is that much of the wealthy’s wealth is tied up in assets, which of course is not income taxable unless and until it is sold at a profit. Furthermore, if a company makes a profit one year and an equal loss the following year, they can use the loss in one year to offset the profit in another, leading to them not having to pay income tax overall. This is not some loophole, but deliberately designed into the system. No serious thinker thinks it is a good idea to force people to pay income tax on assets.
Lastly, Huemer contends that most regulations are net negative in terms of their overall economic effects, yet concedes it’s very difficult—if not impossible—to do a comprehensive assessment of all US regulations on the books (given the 188,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations). Even if you’re skeptical of this claim, it should be easy to concede the softer claim that many regulations are not designed for the public’s or society’s interest at large (given the existence of lobbyists) and thus harm society at large—a place where progressives and libertarians should be able to align.
Part 6 (on science myths) I thought was going to go off the rails, but it was a valuable read even if I think Huemer gets some things wrong. He starts by acknowledging the existence of climate change and that it’s likely mostly man-made, but disputes some of the claims made about the extent to which climate scientists agree. Specifically, when headlines state that X% of scientists agree about man-made climate change, the studies cited to support such claims actually refer to papers (not scientists) that support this claim in large reviews. (I would argue papers are actually more relevant for gauging consensus than scientists’ opinions—consensus of published evidence rather consensus of opinion, though the latter usually does follow the former.) However, in such large reviews, many such papers fail to state a position either way on man-made climate change. Should the X% agreement claims omit these “no position” papers from the denominator, thus arriving at a higher percentage, or should the breakdown be given more granularly (“agree”, “disagree”, “no position”)? One could argue both ways, but I can see Huemer’s point that omitting the “no position” papers does inflate the percentage to make it seem like the totality of evidence is near-unanimous agreement when the reality is that among papers stating a position, almost all support man-made climate change.
The next chapter I think is bang on: climate scientists definitely do not generally think climate change will cause an existential catastrophe, yet many progressive pundits and the left-wing media have broadcast such claims very irresponsibly—which regrettably ends up undermining trust in climate science as a whole. Additionally, I agree with Huemer that climate change is not the most pressing problem in the world right now, given the still huge numbers of people in poverty, starving, and vulnerable to preventable diseases like malaria.
The last chapter in this section (on mask science) I had some disagreements with. Huemer cites Jefferson et al (2023), a Cochrane meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), to refute the claim that masks are highly effective at reducing the spread of respiratory viruses. Yet, this meta-analysis was thoroughly criticized for questionably combining studies together that looked at many respiratory viruses, only one RCT of which looked at Covid-19 (in Bangladesh), finding a small (13%) but statistically significant benefit of mask usage. However, the devil’s in the details: even in the treatment group, only 42% actually wore masks compared to 13% in the control. With higher mask usage, the risk reduction would obviously be greater. Huemer didn’t do his homework properly in citing this, and ignored many other observational studies that estimated a much higher mask effectiveness in preventing Covid-19 transmission (e.g., this meta-analysis of observational studies that found a 53% risk reduction estimate: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2...)
The final section is an informative but more speculative look at the roots of wokeness, the societal harms caused by these myths, and how we can arm ourselves to avoid these myths.
Notwithstanding the few weaknesses, this was an absolutely fantastic book. Highly recommended antidote to myths that many of your peers undoubtedly believe.
July 23, 2025
3.5/5 rounded up to 4
Looking at the title of this book, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is a right-wing, anti-leftist diatribe designed to highlight the evils of left-wingers (or liberals, though I wouldn’t use the term as I am not from the US).
In fact, I found this book to be a fair, well sourced examination of some commonly held beliefs that form some of the tenets of progressive thought that are actually incorrect. For the most part, the “myths” are deconstructed, examined and compared against the relevant literature. Claims are fact checked and sweeping statements are broken down and analysed. I suspect the author may have been slightly right-leaning, though he is quick to criticise the myths of the right where they are relevant.
Ultimately, I didn’t really learn much from this book. I did learn about some high-profile tragedies that occurred in the US which didn’t have as much significance over in the UK and how they were misrepresented and poorly reported by the American mainstream media. The author included some cases in which he highlighted that the prevailing narrative of unjust killing or murder was more or less accurate, for example the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor cases. This section was mostly fresh information for me (though I was familiar with George Floyd).
The other area that I did learn a little about was the science myths. Firstly, the author tackled climate change myths. I don’t know a lot about climate change, but I do know that it is widely accepted amongst scientists that it is occurring, and it is also widely accepted that human beings are the cause. The myths that were debunked didn’t go against these two pieces of information, but did clarify certain things. For example, the claim that 97% of scientists agree that human beings are the primary cause of climate change is extremely misrepresentative. The data he uses to refute this bogus claim is the exact data that is referenced as the source of that 97%. I guess people just don’t read studies that are cited and take someone’s abridged summation as accurate and without bias. To be fair, I have done this myself in the past. The second myth was that climate change is going to wipe out all life on earth. It isn’t. It may be seriously destabilising, costly and in some cases deadly, but the alarmists claiming it will be an apocalypse are exaggerating in the same way as those who are downplaying it or suggesting it is a hoax.
One thing I was pleased to see referenced was the replication crisis in psychology and the social sciences in general. This is a really interesting phenomenon that I think everyone ought to learn about. For anyone who isn’t familiar, the replication crisis (and I’m being very loose in my explanation here) refers to a series of studies that were repeated (as in the same study was done again with completely new people) and then checked to see if the results were the same in the repeated study as they were in the original study. If the results were the same (or similar) then the study was likely reliable. If the results were different, the study was likely bogus. The number of studies that didn’t replicate (i.e. were bogus) was extremely high, close to half in some areas of the social sciences. These studies were overwhelmingly “progressive” in that the results often served as evidence for theories such as social constructivism (i.e. that people are a result of society and environment and not genes) and other left-wing causes. The book did a good job of explaining how and why this happened, and the methods that were employed to either a) manipulate studies such that they appear to produce results which support these causes or b) block the publication of studies that actively counter the prevailing progressive narrative.
I did have a couple of issues with the book. Firstly, the author occasionally used metaphors to highlight a point. I understand why he did this, but I think the technique is flawed and that it was a poor decision. This was most prominent in the example he gave about four friends eating lunch and paying unequal amounts as a metaphor for quintiles’ tax contributions.
The other issue I have, and it may be negligible to many people, is that the author used the word “woke”. Now, I don’t have a problem with the word. I use it myself amongst some of my friends, but not amongst others. However, the word can be misinterpreted and people often have unique and dissimilar understandings of the definition. For some people, it is akin to a slur and to see it used to describe ideas, policies or sources may turn them away from this book which would be a tremendous shame. I say this because the underlying message is important in that people should do independent research to fact check and not simply believe things that they hear on the news or read on social media. The author also points out that this applies to both left-wing and right-wing talking points.
On the whole, this is a good and important book that is well sourced and accurate (as far as I am able to tell, certainly in the areas where I am more knowledgeable) but not without some flaws. Worth a read, even if only to challenge what you believe you already know.
Looking at the title of this book, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is a right-wing, anti-leftist diatribe designed to highlight the evils of left-wingers (or liberals, though I wouldn’t use the term as I am not from the US).
In fact, I found this book to be a fair, well sourced examination of some commonly held beliefs that form some of the tenets of progressive thought that are actually incorrect. For the most part, the “myths” are deconstructed, examined and compared against the relevant literature. Claims are fact checked and sweeping statements are broken down and analysed. I suspect the author may have been slightly right-leaning, though he is quick to criticise the myths of the right where they are relevant.
Ultimately, I didn’t really learn much from this book. I did learn about some high-profile tragedies that occurred in the US which didn’t have as much significance over in the UK and how they were misrepresented and poorly reported by the American mainstream media. The author included some cases in which he highlighted that the prevailing narrative of unjust killing or murder was more or less accurate, for example the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor cases. This section was mostly fresh information for me (though I was familiar with George Floyd).
The other area that I did learn a little about was the science myths. Firstly, the author tackled climate change myths. I don’t know a lot about climate change, but I do know that it is widely accepted amongst scientists that it is occurring, and it is also widely accepted that human beings are the cause. The myths that were debunked didn’t go against these two pieces of information, but did clarify certain things. For example, the claim that 97% of scientists agree that human beings are the primary cause of climate change is extremely misrepresentative. The data he uses to refute this bogus claim is the exact data that is referenced as the source of that 97%. I guess people just don’t read studies that are cited and take someone’s abridged summation as accurate and without bias. To be fair, I have done this myself in the past. The second myth was that climate change is going to wipe out all life on earth. It isn’t. It may be seriously destabilising, costly and in some cases deadly, but the alarmists claiming it will be an apocalypse are exaggerating in the same way as those who are downplaying it or suggesting it is a hoax.
One thing I was pleased to see referenced was the replication crisis in psychology and the social sciences in general. This is a really interesting phenomenon that I think everyone ought to learn about. For anyone who isn’t familiar, the replication crisis (and I’m being very loose in my explanation here) refers to a series of studies that were repeated (as in the same study was done again with completely new people) and then checked to see if the results were the same in the repeated study as they were in the original study. If the results were the same (or similar) then the study was likely reliable. If the results were different, the study was likely bogus. The number of studies that didn’t replicate (i.e. were bogus) was extremely high, close to half in some areas of the social sciences. These studies were overwhelmingly “progressive” in that the results often served as evidence for theories such as social constructivism (i.e. that people are a result of society and environment and not genes) and other left-wing causes. The book did a good job of explaining how and why this happened, and the methods that were employed to either a) manipulate studies such that they appear to produce results which support these causes or b) block the publication of studies that actively counter the prevailing progressive narrative.
I did have a couple of issues with the book. Firstly, the author occasionally used metaphors to highlight a point. I understand why he did this, but I think the technique is flawed and that it was a poor decision. This was most prominent in the example he gave about four friends eating lunch and paying unequal amounts as a metaphor for quintiles’ tax contributions.
The other issue I have, and it may be negligible to many people, is that the author used the word “woke”. Now, I don’t have a problem with the word. I use it myself amongst some of my friends, but not amongst others. However, the word can be misinterpreted and people often have unique and dissimilar understandings of the definition. For some people, it is akin to a slur and to see it used to describe ideas, policies or sources may turn them away from this book which would be a tremendous shame. I say this because the underlying message is important in that people should do independent research to fact check and not simply believe things that they hear on the news or read on social media. The author also points out that this applies to both left-wing and right-wing talking points.
On the whole, this is a good and important book that is well sourced and accurate (as far as I am able to tell, certainly in the areas where I am more knowledgeable) but not without some flaws. Worth a read, even if only to challenge what you believe you already know.
December 24, 2024
It was just self-published substacks from a partisan. I say partisan because of the choices he makes. For instance, this small example where he says liberals are more likely to believe police kill more blacks — and then blames it on mainstream media. The accusations towards liberals being truth ignoring is clear.
In a thinking person’s mind, the counter to this of how many conservatives think the election was stolen in 2020 would immediately occur in our heads and is equally damning. But he only pulls out what fits his narrative at the time. I can get these takes from chart racist on X, I didn’t need to pay $30.00.
If he doesn’t have this occur in his head, he’s ignorant and disqualified to be a philosophy professor. If he does have this occur in his head but doesn’t follow where the revelation leads — that we live in a truth-ignoring political climate both sides participate in — he’s a partisan for which truth seeking is secondary to ideology. Both allow for me to dismiss him.
In a thinking person’s mind, the counter to this of how many conservatives think the election was stolen in 2020 would immediately occur in our heads and is equally damning. But he only pulls out what fits his narrative at the time. I can get these takes from chart racist on X, I didn’t need to pay $30.00.
If he doesn’t have this occur in his head, he’s ignorant and disqualified to be a philosophy professor. If he does have this occur in his head but doesn’t follow where the revelation leads — that we live in a truth-ignoring political climate both sides participate in — he’s a partisan for which truth seeking is secondary to ideology. Both allow for me to dismiss him.
December 18, 2024
Excellent debunking tour and pragmatic guide to finding truth.
October 26, 2024
I believe this book remedies much of the lack of addressing these "myths" in a single source and does it in a way that is not an ideological driven attack on the believers. However, I don't have much faith in it being anything but heresy to the believers. I certainly hope that is not the case. Perhaps this book may allow the believers to begin to understand how these kind of myths and narratives obfuscate reality and can lead to dangerous outcomes.
Most of the myths I was familiar with and had already been made aware of the reality. Still, there were some that I may have been exposed to in passing, or more likely by repeated hammerings from broadcast news media and I didn't quite have the full picture. I discovered that I had been led to believe in myths without even trying.
One of these myths was one I had even tried to follow and dig deeper, but I didn't go deep enough. I found myself wanting to ask more questions and get more solid info to get a grasp on the real. This is excellent and what I hope others will be able to do when they are faced with challenges to their beliefs in these myths.
It's a well organized and easy read with a ton of references. Recommended for those interested in these sort of topics or anyone that wants to have a reference to turn to when encountering these myths in the future as I am sure they will continue to be leveraged for their manipulative utility.
Do not accept this work as the end-all-be-all for addressing these myths, but rather a short peek behind the veil. It is up to YOU to do the work and craft the full picture of reality that will help you understand the world along with the how and why of these kinds of destructive myths.
Most of the myths I was familiar with and had already been made aware of the reality. Still, there were some that I may have been exposed to in passing, or more likely by repeated hammerings from broadcast news media and I didn't quite have the full picture. I discovered that I had been led to believe in myths without even trying.
One of these myths was one I had even tried to follow and dig deeper, but I didn't go deep enough. I found myself wanting to ask more questions and get more solid info to get a grasp on the real. This is excellent and what I hope others will be able to do when they are faced with challenges to their beliefs in these myths.
It's a well organized and easy read with a ton of references. Recommended for those interested in these sort of topics or anyone that wants to have a reference to turn to when encountering these myths in the future as I am sure they will continue to be leveraged for their manipulative utility.
Do not accept this work as the end-all-be-all for addressing these myths, but rather a short peek behind the veil. It is up to YOU to do the work and craft the full picture of reality that will help you understand the world along with the how and why of these kinds of destructive myths.
October 14, 2024
Very good--for a longer review, see here:
https://benthams.substack.com/p/progr...
https://benthams.substack.com/p/progr...
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January 25, 2025This is the second book criticizing ‘wokeness’ that I’ve read in the past month or so—the other being Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke (review)—and though they’re very different in focus and purpose, I think it’s interesting to compare the two.
One of Huemer’s motives for writing Progressive Myths seems to be that he thinks our society is unusually good and progressivism is a threat to it. He says in a blog post:
And he says in the book:
So on this view, ‘wokeness’ is a threat to a relatively good status quo. By contrast, al-Gharbi’s book argues that ‘wokeness’ is used (or maybe abused) by elites to justify exploitative systems that benefit themselves. On that view, as I interpret it, ‘wokeness’ is part of a bad status quo (or at least, part of a bad aspect of the status quo).
The two books also give different pictures of where ‘wokeness’ comes from. Huemer thinks people were hooked on the psychological benefits—e.g. “meaning” and “community”[3]—of being part of the civil rights movement, so they wanted to find a way to keep the movement going after it had accomplished its original goals. On al-Gharbi’s account, ‘woke’ ideology is a distinctive cultural characteristic of certain professions that traces back closer to the beginning of the 20th century, and periods of particularly intense focus on political correctness are a reaction to social/economic insecurity faced by (actual or aspiring) members of those professions.
Anyway… I was most interested in Part 1 of this book, which discusses individuals: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Amy Cooper, Jacob Blake, and Kyle Rittenhouse. Huemer thinks these cases have been widely misrepresented by progressives and the media. (He also discusses the cases of Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, which he agrees are examples of police misconduct.)
Whatever I knew previously about those cases was largely absorbed from the sentiments people express in (my mostly left-leaning) social media bubble. Those sentiments tend to involve: total certainty about what happened, total certainty that there’s a clear villain and a pure victim (and total certainty about which is which), and a conviction that anyone who’s not certain about these things is morally suspect. I’m always a bit uncomfortable with such certainty, since it seems like the same psychological and social forces drive people on opposite sides of an issue to feel equally certain. The emotion of certainty has no necessary connection with truth. Still, when people who share my values seem confidently united on some issue, it’s hard to resist assuming that they’re at least in the general vicinity of the truth. After reading this book, though, I do feel like the zeitgeist gave me a seriously misleading impression of some of these cases. I don’t know if Huemer’s conclusions about them are correct or not, but the facts seem to at least suggest far more ambiguity than it’s popular on the left to acknowledge.
I have a criticism of the chapter on Amy Cooper (a white woman who called the cops on a Black man named Christian, whose video of the incident went viral). Huemer includes the following quote by Trevor Noah regarding the incident: “And now here you have this woman who…blatantly knew how to use the power of her whiteness to threaten the life of another man and his blackness.” Huemer thinks that quote is an example of a progressive misrepresenting things. He gives some context around the event: that Christian had made a threatening statement to Amy prior to her calling the police, and that Amy mentioning Christian’s race repeatedly during the 911 call was due to the 911 operator having trouble hearing her. But Huemer doesn’t mention the fact (which you can see in the video) that Amy told Christian “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life” before she called 911. This sure sounds like she was trying to threaten Christian with the prospect that police will mistreat him because he is Black.
This book covers a lot of topics and I’m not prepared to evaluate much of what it says right now, so, I’m not going to rate it.
[1] Michael Huemer, “Help Save Western Civilization,” Substack newsletter, Fake Noûs (blog), September 14, 2024, https://fakenous.substack.com/p/help-save-western-civilization.
[2] Micheal Huemer, Progressive Myths, 2024, 233.
[3] Ibid., 196.
(crosspost)
One of Huemer’s motives for writing Progressive Myths seems to be that he thinks our society is unusually good and progressivism is a threat to it. He says in a blog post:
I’m for preserving America and Western civilization, not disrupting them. Trump and the Woke left are both for disrupting our society and undermining its core institutions. Both are sowing discord and undermining social trust in their own ways.[1]
And he says in the book:
…the natural state of human beings is not one of harmony, freedom, and equality. The natural state of human beings is one of strife, exploitation, oppression, and misery. The current state of American society is a historical fluke, marked by its extraordinarily low levels of exploitation, oppression, and injustice. Somehow, we have reached a metastable equilibrium of peace and prosperity that earlier generations could only dream of. The key sources of this happy state include such institutions as democracy, free markets, and modern science.
So what should we do now? No doubt, we can still make things even better; there are still some injustices to fight. But perhaps we should take a bit of advice from the Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm. If we undermine our current norms and institutions, the most likely result is not that we will be swept into a paradise of justice and sistery love. The most likely result is that we will revert to something closer to the natural state of human beings, in which a small cadre of the powerful oppress, exploit, and commit violence against the majority.[2]
So on this view, ‘wokeness’ is a threat to a relatively good status quo. By contrast, al-Gharbi’s book argues that ‘wokeness’ is used (or maybe abused) by elites to justify exploitative systems that benefit themselves. On that view, as I interpret it, ‘wokeness’ is part of a bad status quo (or at least, part of a bad aspect of the status quo).
The two books also give different pictures of where ‘wokeness’ comes from. Huemer thinks people were hooked on the psychological benefits—e.g. “meaning” and “community”[3]—of being part of the civil rights movement, so they wanted to find a way to keep the movement going after it had accomplished its original goals. On al-Gharbi’s account, ‘woke’ ideology is a distinctive cultural characteristic of certain professions that traces back closer to the beginning of the 20th century, and periods of particularly intense focus on political correctness are a reaction to social/economic insecurity faced by (actual or aspiring) members of those professions.
Anyway… I was most interested in Part 1 of this book, which discusses individuals: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Amy Cooper, Jacob Blake, and Kyle Rittenhouse. Huemer thinks these cases have been widely misrepresented by progressives and the media. (He also discusses the cases of Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, which he agrees are examples of police misconduct.)
Whatever I knew previously about those cases was largely absorbed from the sentiments people express in (my mostly left-leaning) social media bubble. Those sentiments tend to involve: total certainty about what happened, total certainty that there’s a clear villain and a pure victim (and total certainty about which is which), and a conviction that anyone who’s not certain about these things is morally suspect. I’m always a bit uncomfortable with such certainty, since it seems like the same psychological and social forces drive people on opposite sides of an issue to feel equally certain. The emotion of certainty has no necessary connection with truth. Still, when people who share my values seem confidently united on some issue, it’s hard to resist assuming that they’re at least in the general vicinity of the truth. After reading this book, though, I do feel like the zeitgeist gave me a seriously misleading impression of some of these cases. I don’t know if Huemer’s conclusions about them are correct or not, but the facts seem to at least suggest far more ambiguity than it’s popular on the left to acknowledge.
I have a criticism of the chapter on Amy Cooper (a white woman who called the cops on a Black man named Christian, whose video of the incident went viral). Huemer includes the following quote by Trevor Noah regarding the incident: “And now here you have this woman who…blatantly knew how to use the power of her whiteness to threaten the life of another man and his blackness.” Huemer thinks that quote is an example of a progressive misrepresenting things. He gives some context around the event: that Christian had made a threatening statement to Amy prior to her calling the police, and that Amy mentioning Christian’s race repeatedly during the 911 call was due to the 911 operator having trouble hearing her. But Huemer doesn’t mention the fact (which you can see in the video) that Amy told Christian “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life” before she called 911. This sure sounds like she was trying to threaten Christian with the prospect that police will mistreat him because he is Black.
This book covers a lot of topics and I’m not prepared to evaluate much of what it says right now, so, I’m not going to rate it.
[1] Michael Huemer, “Help Save Western Civilization,” Substack newsletter, Fake Noûs (blog), September 14, 2024, https://fakenous.substack.com/p/help-save-western-civilization.
[2] Micheal Huemer, Progressive Myths, 2024, 233.
[3] Ibid., 196.
(crosspost)
December 1, 2024
I have read most of Huemer's books, and I typically enjoy and learn a lot from them. (I particularly enjoyed Understanding Knowledge and the Problem of Political Authority.) However, I was disappointed by this book. I have two complaints - both of which I concede are perhaps idiosyncratic to myself.
First, I'm not sure who this book was directed at.
On the one hand, it isn't clearly directed at libertarians or conservatives or people who want to learn more about those ideologies. That is because the book doesn't provide much in the way of information that is new for anyone familiar with those ideologies. Most of what is contained in this book is the standard beliefs of libertarians and/or moderate conservatives and can be found in various different books by libertarian and conservative authors. For example, Tyler Cowen and Bryan Caplan in various books cite the same exact claims to the effect that regulation supposedly slows economic growth. Similarly, one need only tune into Ben Schapiro or Fox News to hear the case that racial police shootings are over stated. So, the book isn't some deep dive into those philosophies.
But, on the other hand, the book also isn't clearly directed at audiences new to those ideologies. At some points, Huemer speaks as if he is addressing the unconvinced and rational moderate, simply attempting to offer them information they might not already have. Yet, at other points, he speaks as if he is addressing someone who already agrees with him. For example, in the final chapters he refers to progressive ideology as a "mind virus" - yet at no point in the book has he explained what a "mind virus" is. The term just comes off as an underhanded insult, and that isn't something that won't convince the unconvinced but rational moderate. It will just make him, the author, seem bias.
There are other points at which Huemer goes into detail tearing down arguments and ideas he disagrees with, yet sometimes he presents his own (sometimes surprising) case without considering much in the way of counter-argument. For example, during the chapter on regulation, he offers a figure that suggests the economy is vasty smaller than it would otherwise be, were it not for regulation. In a footnote, rather than in the main text, he concedes that the number he's just cited is almost certainly a statistical illusion, and that the real number is likely vastly smaller. Moreover, he doesn't consider objections. I'm sure there's someone, somewhere in the literature who has criticized these claims about regulation - responding to their criticisms would have made his (very surprising) case more convincing. Instead, without considering objections, the case just comes off as (potentially) bias in a way that wouldn't convince newcomers or undecided parties.
So, there's an audience-identification problem. Suppose that I agreed with Huemer on political and social matters and I want to use this book as a steelman of libertarianism and moderate social conservatism to convince my friends of those ideologies. Unfortunately, due to the unclarity of the audience, I don't think this book would accomplish that. My friends might just think I'm an ideologue. Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now might better make the case for many of the same views, albeit from a more progressive and less libertarian perspective.
Thankfully, the book appears to be self-published through Amazon, and so Huemer could probably easily correct this first mistake in future editions.
Second, I was personally disappointed that the book didn't go into enough depth for some of the issues. Specifically, the book didn't go into depth on some issues such that the book's case feels ultimately unconvincing - even assuming all the arguments made within it are correct.
This problem emerges during the discussion of race. Huemer, for example, cites statistics that claim that black men are not more likely to be shot by police than white men, given police interactions. Supposedly, black men just commit more crime and are hence more likely to be shot by police. This is standard conservative fair.
However, anyone who has heard both sides of this debate has already heard, roughly, the same statistics and considerations Huemer cites.
And it is at this exact point in the debate that other people have explanations for why it is the case that black men commit more crime. The progressives, here, often appeal to "systemic racism," arguing that it is the fact of society's racism that makes black men more likely to commit crime. If Huemer wishes to dispense with progressive ideology, he should next take on that claim, and claims related to it. To his credit, Huemer does, indirectly, attempt to refute the idea that the US is a racist society by arguing against the implicit attitudes test. But the implicit attitudes test is merely a purported means to measure bias, not the fact of there being or not being bias. Hence, refuting it still leaves the ball in the progressive's court. And, even if there weren't bias today, that black men are on average poorer could still be the product of past racism and, hence, the progressive case - or something close to it - fundamentally correct.
The progressives here have an explanation, even if, as Huemer argues, they can't measure bias. And, at the same time, people further right of Huemer who believe there are race differences in IQ also have an explanation. Yet, Huemer here halts the argument, and leaves it unexplained why black men would be committing so much more crime than every other demographic. This is disappointing, and seems to leave the debate unadvanced. Moreover, it feels unconvincing, even if everything Huemer said is true. That is, Huemer could be completely correct in all the claims he argues for, yet the progressives could still be right in their claim that America is systemically racist. For that reason, I felt the book was disappointing.
Anyway, in sum, the writing is very clear, and perhaps I'm overly negative since I've read various books and articles on most of these topics from both the right wing and left wing perspective, as well as the extreme right and extreme left wing perspectives, so perhaps I'm naturally going to find a more moderate, introductory review of the topics unsatisfying. It's not a bad book - just not as good as his others and not a good book for me.
First, I'm not sure who this book was directed at.
On the one hand, it isn't clearly directed at libertarians or conservatives or people who want to learn more about those ideologies. That is because the book doesn't provide much in the way of information that is new for anyone familiar with those ideologies. Most of what is contained in this book is the standard beliefs of libertarians and/or moderate conservatives and can be found in various different books by libertarian and conservative authors. For example, Tyler Cowen and Bryan Caplan in various books cite the same exact claims to the effect that regulation supposedly slows economic growth. Similarly, one need only tune into Ben Schapiro or Fox News to hear the case that racial police shootings are over stated. So, the book isn't some deep dive into those philosophies.
But, on the other hand, the book also isn't clearly directed at audiences new to those ideologies. At some points, Huemer speaks as if he is addressing the unconvinced and rational moderate, simply attempting to offer them information they might not already have. Yet, at other points, he speaks as if he is addressing someone who already agrees with him. For example, in the final chapters he refers to progressive ideology as a "mind virus" - yet at no point in the book has he explained what a "mind virus" is. The term just comes off as an underhanded insult, and that isn't something that won't convince the unconvinced but rational moderate. It will just make him, the author, seem bias.
There are other points at which Huemer goes into detail tearing down arguments and ideas he disagrees with, yet sometimes he presents his own (sometimes surprising) case without considering much in the way of counter-argument. For example, during the chapter on regulation, he offers a figure that suggests the economy is vasty smaller than it would otherwise be, were it not for regulation. In a footnote, rather than in the main text, he concedes that the number he's just cited is almost certainly a statistical illusion, and that the real number is likely vastly smaller. Moreover, he doesn't consider objections. I'm sure there's someone, somewhere in the literature who has criticized these claims about regulation - responding to their criticisms would have made his (very surprising) case more convincing. Instead, without considering objections, the case just comes off as (potentially) bias in a way that wouldn't convince newcomers or undecided parties.
So, there's an audience-identification problem. Suppose that I agreed with Huemer on political and social matters and I want to use this book as a steelman of libertarianism and moderate social conservatism to convince my friends of those ideologies. Unfortunately, due to the unclarity of the audience, I don't think this book would accomplish that. My friends might just think I'm an ideologue. Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now might better make the case for many of the same views, albeit from a more progressive and less libertarian perspective.
Thankfully, the book appears to be self-published through Amazon, and so Huemer could probably easily correct this first mistake in future editions.
Second, I was personally disappointed that the book didn't go into enough depth for some of the issues. Specifically, the book didn't go into depth on some issues such that the book's case feels ultimately unconvincing - even assuming all the arguments made within it are correct.
This problem emerges during the discussion of race. Huemer, for example, cites statistics that claim that black men are not more likely to be shot by police than white men, given police interactions. Supposedly, black men just commit more crime and are hence more likely to be shot by police. This is standard conservative fair.
However, anyone who has heard both sides of this debate has already heard, roughly, the same statistics and considerations Huemer cites.
And it is at this exact point in the debate that other people have explanations for why it is the case that black men commit more crime. The progressives, here, often appeal to "systemic racism," arguing that it is the fact of society's racism that makes black men more likely to commit crime. If Huemer wishes to dispense with progressive ideology, he should next take on that claim, and claims related to it. To his credit, Huemer does, indirectly, attempt to refute the idea that the US is a racist society by arguing against the implicit attitudes test. But the implicit attitudes test is merely a purported means to measure bias, not the fact of there being or not being bias. Hence, refuting it still leaves the ball in the progressive's court. And, even if there weren't bias today, that black men are on average poorer could still be the product of past racism and, hence, the progressive case - or something close to it - fundamentally correct.
The progressives here have an explanation, even if, as Huemer argues, they can't measure bias. And, at the same time, people further right of Huemer who believe there are race differences in IQ also have an explanation. Yet, Huemer here halts the argument, and leaves it unexplained why black men would be committing so much more crime than every other demographic. This is disappointing, and seems to leave the debate unadvanced. Moreover, it feels unconvincing, even if everything Huemer said is true. That is, Huemer could be completely correct in all the claims he argues for, yet the progressives could still be right in their claim that America is systemically racist. For that reason, I felt the book was disappointing.
Anyway, in sum, the writing is very clear, and perhaps I'm overly negative since I've read various books and articles on most of these topics from both the right wing and left wing perspective, as well as the extreme right and extreme left wing perspectives, so perhaps I'm naturally going to find a more moderate, introductory review of the topics unsatisfying. It's not a bad book - just not as good as his others and not a good book for me.
August 18, 2025
The author, Michael Huemer, is a philosophy prof at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I got the relatively cheap paperback edition of this book, it being one of those self-published, printed-on-demand deals. (It's slightly cheaper on Kindle.) I've read a couple of his previous books, Ethical Intuitionism and The Problem of Political Authority. (I found the former kind of daunting, the latter less so.)
Progressive Myths, however, is completely accessible to the lay reader. It is (more or less) a wide-ranging corrective to the worldview promulgated by left-wingers in the media and in positions of political power.
An initial chapter deals with "myths about individuals" that were endlessly reported in the news in past years: allegations that Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Jacob Blake were murdered by racists; that Amy Cooper and Kyle Rittenhouse were motivated by racism. Huemer does a good job debunking those cases. And, to his credit, he adds in three "non-myths" where the left's narrative was more factual: George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor.
Subsequent chapters deal with more general topics. A sampling: the male/female "wage gap"; racist police shootings; transgender ideology; anthropogenic global warming; progressive taxation; government regulation. And more.
Why is this important? Huemer's final chapters discuss how progressive mythologies are particularly corrosive to American society, pushing the oppressors/oppressed binary narrative: whites oppressing blacks, males oppressing females, the rich oppressing the poor, the straight oppressing the not-so-straight. (Yes, we well-off white male heterosexuals are evil, I might as well confess.)
I didn't find much new information in the book; Huemer is mostly repackaging and summarizing progressive-refuting arguments that have previously been made by others at greater length and detail. Still, it's a useful and perceptive overview of an ideology that seems to depend on a largely fanciful view of reality.
Huemer also has a substack, Fake Noûs. Heh!
October 1, 2024
I purchased this book the day it came out. Eagerly, I waited for its arrival.
I hoped to finally have many of the progressive dogmas I held overturned. Huemer has always been someone I valued because he could always make intuitive, straightforward, well-reasoned arguments. There was none of that in this book.
Somewhere, I remember Huemer talking about his younger life and how he did not like studying history. I think this is revealed to its fullest extent in this book. One of Huemer's weakest points in literally everything he writes is that his sociological, historical, and anthropological understanding of the world is more lacking than an undergraduate who only studied the topics for a year. As a result, he makes shockingly inaccurate arguments. This is especially seen when he goes on to discuss his theory of gender.
As with all his books, he also struggled with sympathetically presenting the opposing view. He almost always presents a given view in a way that makes it seem so obviously untrue. The reason that it seems that way, of course, is that he will wildly overemphasize certain points in an attempt to make the argument seem more irrational than it really is.
In unsympathetically presenting the opposing view, he repeatedly left information out. As such, the reader, hoping to learn more about how to criticize progressive myths, is left with the idea that they came away with much more knowledge about each discussed topic--when in reality, Huemer left out so much crucial information that it ends up harming the reader more than helping. This was seen throughout the book but was most grotesque when he began discussing "Mask Science."
Really, if you want to read it, go for it. But please, before you make up your mind on any given topic, do further research on it. What you will find is that Huemer leaves out so much critical information. For instance, do some further research after finishing his chapter on "Gender Myths." His theory of gender is completely erroneous and has already been substantively responded to by the present literature.
I hoped to finally have many of the progressive dogmas I held overturned. Huemer has always been someone I valued because he could always make intuitive, straightforward, well-reasoned arguments. There was none of that in this book.
Somewhere, I remember Huemer talking about his younger life and how he did not like studying history. I think this is revealed to its fullest extent in this book. One of Huemer's weakest points in literally everything he writes is that his sociological, historical, and anthropological understanding of the world is more lacking than an undergraduate who only studied the topics for a year. As a result, he makes shockingly inaccurate arguments. This is especially seen when he goes on to discuss his theory of gender.
As with all his books, he also struggled with sympathetically presenting the opposing view. He almost always presents a given view in a way that makes it seem so obviously untrue. The reason that it seems that way, of course, is that he will wildly overemphasize certain points in an attempt to make the argument seem more irrational than it really is.
In unsympathetically presenting the opposing view, he repeatedly left information out. As such, the reader, hoping to learn more about how to criticize progressive myths, is left with the idea that they came away with much more knowledge about each discussed topic--when in reality, Huemer left out so much crucial information that it ends up harming the reader more than helping. This was seen throughout the book but was most grotesque when he began discussing "Mask Science."
Really, if you want to read it, go for it. But please, before you make up your mind on any given topic, do further research on it. What you will find is that Huemer leaves out so much critical information. For instance, do some further research after finishing his chapter on "Gender Myths." His theory of gender is completely erroneous and has already been substantively responded to by the present literature.
January 16, 2025
I found this to be a very interesting and helpful read. I have previously seen a lot of conservatives argue against a range of these progressive myths but found these arguments uncompelling because either (1) the argumentation made no sense or (2) the empirical facts being relied upon were dubious (partly because they were being propounded by unreliable conservative partisans). Fortunately I was already familiar with Huemer's academic philosophical work and was confident his argumentation would be good and he would draw appropriately on true empirical facts.
I'm convinced by many of his arguments here, perhaps excluding the ones about transgenderism. But I wonder if there is going to be any satisfactory account of transgenderism.
Some of the reviews here complain that he is not sufficiently critical of right wingers. But I don't find this a reasonable criticism because, as Huemer says early on, he's focused here on issues within leftism.
I'm convinced by many of his arguments here, perhaps excluding the ones about transgenderism. But I wonder if there is going to be any satisfactory account of transgenderism.
Some of the reviews here complain that he is not sufficiently critical of right wingers. But I don't find this a reasonable criticism because, as Huemer says early on, he's focused here on issues within leftism.
March 15, 2025
It's great until he starts talking about climate change without talking about the actual science of climate change. He omits important information about the climate change consensus, basically thinking polling of experts is the only thing that matters, or the culture of a couple scientists, as opposed to the actual science of climate change. I'm not a climate scientist, but if you've read in depth on the issue, with the specific data points and theories about CC, you understand why it's consensus. Because, like evolution, it's hard to make sense of the field without CC. This hurt his overall book because it made me question what information he was omitting in sections I agreed with and knew less about.
November 19, 2025
Finished the book and went straight into the trash. Even if one were to concede every point made in chapters 1 through 23, the 24th chapter about the dangers of progressive myths is outlandishly exaggerated in comparison to the opposition in 2025. Only an academic insulated among the worst of the proclaimed dangers could miss the forest for the trees. The author makes reasonable criticisms in certain chapters, but it's utterly laughable to be worried about the health of institutions due to progressive myths when reactionaries are tearing them down openly, with no subtext and no apology.
December 27, 2024
Very good book about some of the most talked about progressive theories.
It is not the only reference one will ever need to understand why some progressive beliefs can be seen as myths. However, it is a fantastic start.
The author loses one star because of some of the contradictions I have perceived while reading it.
Made me think a lot, which is always a great think in my opinion.
It is not the only reference one will ever need to understand why some progressive beliefs can be seen as myths. However, it is a fantastic start.
The author loses one star because of some of the contradictions I have perceived while reading it.
Made me think a lot, which is always a great think in my opinion.
January 31, 2025
Excellent, but will not be read by those who most need to sadly.
September 30, 2025
Far-left progressive ideology is complete garbage, agreed.
December 19, 2025
A delightful book. The taxation chapter is interesting if only for its weakness.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews