Saturday, March 31, 2018

Sam Harris and Ezra Klein Podcast

Neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris has the notorious Charles Murray on his podcast to talk about race differences, "Forbidden Knowledge."
Races can be thought of as analogous to families. Some people have said that a race is essentially just a very large family that is partly inbread. But you can see family resemblance in the races. I mean it's not an accident that you can generally predict where someone's ancestors came from just by his face. I mean there are phenotypic differences between people that have genetic underpinnings. And it's not merely just skin deep. I mean there are genetic diseases that various racial groups have/ are more prone to... This is just straight biology. Because different racial groups differ genetically to any degree, and because most of what we care about in ourselves, intelligence included, have some genetic underpinnings... it would be very very surprising if everything we cared about was tuned to the exact same population average in every racial group. I mean there's just virtually no way that's going to be true. So based purely on biological consideration, we should expect that for any variable there will be differences in its average level across racial groups that differ genetically to some degree.
Ezra Klein at Vox publishes piece very critical of Murray and Harris, "Charles Murray is once again Peddling Junk Science about Race and IQ. Sam Harris is the latest to fall for it."
The conviction that groups of people differ along important behavioral dimensions because of racial differences in their genetic endowment is an idea with a horrific recent history. Murray and Harris pepper their remarks with anodyne commitments to treating people as individuals, even people who happen to come from genetically benighted groups.
Sam Harris and Ezra Klein exchange e-mails and consider doing a podcast on the topic. But Sam Harris is too upset that Ezra fails to acknowledge that Vox published a hit-piece on him.
You published an article (and tweets) that directly attacked my intellectual integrity. At a minimum, you claimed that I was taken in by Murray, because I didn’t know enough of the relevant science. Consequently, we peddled “junk science” or “pseudoscience” on my podcast.

You published an article (and tweets) that directly attacked my moral integrity. Murray is “dangerous,” and my treating him as a free speech case is “disastrous.” We are “racialists” (this is scarcely a euphemism for “racist”). There is no way to read that article (or your tweets) without concluding that Murray and I are unconscionably reckless (if not actually bad) people.
 This was nearly a year ago, and nobody knew even about the e-mails!

Fast forward to the present, and the New York Times publishes article by geneticist David Reich. How Genetics is Changing our Understanding of Race.
“it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among ‘races.’”
So Sam Harris posts to Ezra on Twitter.
Ezra Klein responds with another Vox article. This is not “forbidden knowledge.” It is America’s most ancient justification for bigotry and racial inequality.
In this country, given our history, discussions about race and IQ need more care and context than they get. As a starting point, rather than being framed around the bravery of the (white) participants for having a conversation that has done so much damage, they should grapple seriously with the costs of America’s most ancient justification for bigotry, and take seriously why so many are so skeptical that this time, finally, the racial pessimists are right when they have been so horribly wrong before. 
And Sam, I’m still up for that podcast.
 In response, Sam Harris posted the previously mentioned e-mails from the year before.
The list of prominent people on the Left who are willing to behave unethically in order to silence others continues to grow. If nothing else, readers of this exchange will understand how much harm these people are doing to honest conversation, both in public and in private.
 Sam Harris then posted that posting the e-mails backfired. And then after that he put up a Twitter poll,

With 76% saying yes, Sam Harris is now willing to do the podcast. To boot he throws in a link to an article by Andrew Sullivan. Denying Genetics Isn't Shutting Down Racism, It's Fueling It.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the podcast.

Other links relating to the situation:

Psychologist Richard Haier, No Voice at Vox, Sense and Nonsense about discussing IQ and race.
whatever the factors are that influence individual differences in IQ, the same factors would influence average group differences. Since there is overwhelming evidence that genes influence the former, it would not be unreasonable to hypothesize that genes at least partially influence group differences.
Steven Pinker has also linked to the How Genetics is Changing our Understanding of Race article.


Posted by at