I'm leaving Aporia

A message from our founder

Written by Matthew Archer.

I'm leaving Aporia.

I founded the magazine almost two years ago as Ideas Sleep Furiously, a name inspired by my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky.

My goal was to widen the social science Overton window, having made a series of startling discoveries in my mid-to-late twenties.

After university, I made good money—easy money, really. But like most easy money, it rarely resulted from meaningful work. By 28, I had saved enough to try something brand new. So I tried teaching.

For a couple of years, I taught 11- to 18-year-olds philosophy, sociology, psychology, theology, and even golf! I worked at private schools, so I didn't have to follow the national curriculum and could kind of make things up as I went.

After 18 months of teaching, I met Georgios, a 13-year-old boy with a 145 IQ who had seemingly read all of philosophy and a great chunk of the classics. Those who read my article on Georgios know that it wasn’t a happy ending:

Beyond IQ: The consequences of ignoring talent

Disgusted by Georgios’ treatment and fascinated by his mind, I read everything I could find about IQ and giftedness, and soon realized how overlooked gifted children are in most societies (it’s not just a Western problem).

What’s more, I couldn’t believe how little this was spoken about compared to the equally complex needs of children with learning disabilities. I stopped teaching and started writing a book, Dumbing Down Da Vinci: How We Fail Gifted Children. The Georgios story became a chapter, as did my article advocating the Genius Basic Income—an article read and regurgitated by the esteemed writer Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg.

Then I went further down the rabbit hole.

To kill two birds with one stone, I recorded the interviews I was doing for the book as a podcast. The more I spoke about intelligence, the more viewers told me to check out other academics and invite them onto the podcast. That’s when I began to read about group differences in socially salient traits.

In April 2022, I spoke with Bo Winegard for the first time on Episode 19. It was my favorite discussion to date. I loved chatting with Bo and still do; he has a truly open and curious mind. Like Noah, he would have an h-index north of 40 in a sane society and be teaching at a top-tier university.

By November, I had acquired another intellectual hero in Charles Murray and the opportunity to interview him and have several dinners with him and his wonderful wife, Catherine. Just like Sam Harris, I had previously dismissed The Bell Curve, assuming that there simply couldn’t be that much smoke without fire. How wrong I was.

2022 changed me, though not quite as much as 2021. Let’s just say nothing makes you double down on hereditarianism quite like discovering your father isn’t your father, that you were conceived by a sperm donor, and have several half-siblings. But that’s an Aporia article for another day.

At the end of 2022, my blog turned into more of a magazine as other writers and academics began to submit articles. By March 2023, Bo Winegard and Diana Fleischman had joined the team, and I renamed the publication Aporia. In July, Noah Carl joined.

As Aporia nears its eighteenth month, we have almost fourteen thousand readers and over two hundred thousand views every thirty days.

Beyond the metrics, I found what I was looking for. Giving up money resulted in gaining a community, many special friendships, and a real sense of purpose.

But I’ve taken Aporia as far as I can. In reality, Bo and Noah have largely been running the show for the last six months or so as I worked on other projects. I’ll still write the occasional piece and host meet-ups, but Bo is now officially Editor-in-Chief.

I wish the team well and know they will continue to fill the demand for truly interesting social science and philosophy.

Matthew Archer is the founder of Aporia Magazine.

---

Consider supporting Aporia with a paid subscription:

You can also follow us on Twitter.