The Bell Curve

[_EAllusion]

r. What is problematic is the idea that anyone listening to the podcast with Murrey is going to be influenced into promoting a racist social agenda for having listened to that conversation.

No one argued that. Clearly Klein, who listened to the podcast, has not become a devotee of race science for having listened to it. If you reform this strawman argument into something like "promotion of Charles Murray may lead to people pursuing a racist social agenda" that's probably true. Murray is a known gateway into broader alt-rightism.

Take, for example, the infamous "crying Nazi" from Vice's piece on the Charlottesville march. He writes about his own transformation from a more libertarian-minded conservative into a Nazi here:

https://christophercantwell.com/2017/08 ... alt-right/

He identifies the key moment being this:

Stefan Molyneux had published a video about Race and IQ with Charles Murray, and this video was posted to a Facebook group for supporters of a broadcast radio show I was hosting called Free Talk Live. The poster called Molyneux a racist, and after concluding the video was an honest intellectual inquiry, I challenged the merits of this accusation. For this, I too was called a racist.

The show demanded I apologize for my racist statements, and I said I would gladly correct any factual error I had made, but I would not apologize for speaking truths that had upset people. For this I was fired from broadcast radio, and my cohost even said to me at one point “That true statement, is racist”

If truth and racism are the same thing, then paint me racist, I guess. I have always thought it was more important to be honest than popular, and so I decided to try and educate myself more on matters of race, seeing as to how I had never really investigated the matter. Growing up in New York, I had lots of interactions with ethnically diverse people, and though I noticed patterns amongst them, I never considered stereotypes a reliable way of judging individuals, and certainly not a cause for hate, so I thought racism was stupid.

What I realized in the course of my inquiries, is that the people everyone called racists weren’t claiming that race was a reliable way of judging individuals. They were only observing demographic trends, and hate was not the focus of their efforts. They were trying to reduce the amount of conflict and violence in their society, and they figured out that discrimination based on ethnic categories was an efficient method of accomplishing this goal.

Are listeners of Sam Harris going to have a similar eureka moment? Some, maybe. That's not even ballpark Ezra Klein's main criticism of Harris here. I actually wonder how much you read of the back and forth.

(or whatever the ____ argument Klein wants to be true).

You know, you can read what Klein actually says. It's linked in this thread.

[_EAllusion]

William Saletan wrote about this in Slate just recently:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... o-did.html

I didn't realize he had given up his affection for race science, but he has.

[_Some Schmo]

(or whatever the ____ argument Klein wants to be true).

You know, you can read what Klein actually says. It's linked in this thread.

*sigh*

[_Some Schmo]

That's not even ballpark Ezra Klein's main criticism of Harris here. I actually wonder how much you read of the back and forth.

I've wondered this about you on several occasions, and all I can think is that you have particular preconceived notions about all parties concerned which dictate you see this situation in only one way.

Murrey is a racist. Thus sayeth the EA. I get it.

[_EAllusion]

That's not even ballpark Ezra Klein's main criticism of Harris here. I actually wonder how much you read of the back and forth.

I've wondered this about you on several occasions,

One difference is that I can quote the people saying what I claim they said, whereas you cannot.

Murrey is a racist. Thus sayeth the EAllusion. I get it.

I don't think you do.

[_Some Schmo]

One difference is that I can quote the people saying what I claim they said, whereas you cannot.

I can cut and paste too. You're not as special as you'd like to think.

Murrey is a racist. Thus sayeth the EAllusion. I get it.

I don't think you do.

Obviously.

I get the feeling you dislike Sam Harris for his smugness because it's something you recognize and don't like about yourself.

[_EAllusion]

One difference is that I can quote the people saying what I claim they said, whereas you cannot.

I can cut and paste too. You're not as special as you'd like to think.

Then how about you cut and paste some examples of Ezra Klein claiming what you say, because he hasn't. I'm not sure how a productive dialogue can be achieved if I'm willing to quote examples of either participant saying what I claim they said, but you will not. That's just proving one's point.

Obviously.

I think that Murray promotes racist pseudoscience, and I think Harris uncritically gave him a platform to further that. I don't think that's even a little bit disputable, but if you want to defend examples I already pointed out in this thread, go for it. I've been cautious about how far I'm willing to go in calling him a racist, and my complaints with him in this thread and elsewhere have been more focused on sloppy and irresponsible scholarship. I agree with Klein that Harris's interest here is almost certainly in pushing back against leftwing attacks on free speech.

That said, remember when representative Steve King asked, rhetorically, what non-whites have done for civilization to argue for the relative superiority of whites? Remember when ldsfaqs defended that position on this board? I think you may have attacked him for being racist for saying this. This is a view shared by Charles Murray. He once proved it, using the miracle of science, by going through " histories, chronologies of events, anthologies, encyclopedias, and biographical dictionaries" and computing up civilizational contributions.

https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/20 ... shment.pdf

He ended up concluding that most significant contributions to civilization are highly concentrated in male Europeans.

Do you think this is racist? If not, I suggest apologizing to ldsfaqs if you attacked him for defending what we now understand to be just sharing reality.

I get the feeling you dislike Sam Harris for his smugness because it's something you recognize and don't like about yourself.

Ah, more science.

I actually don't mind smugness when it is attached to knowledge or skill. The fact that he is smug is more of a an annoying add-on when he is wrong about things, which is not infrequent whenever I pay attention. If there's anything that gets to me about Harris, it's that he reinforces negative stereotypes of atheists by embodying them so thoroughly. Smugness is a small part of that, but more than that, it's that he's consistently shallow in his understanding of philosophy that he pontificates on, is dogmatic, intolerant, kinda secretly religious, and morally suspect. I once saw him described as a "minstrel show of atheism" and I think that's about right.

[_Some Schmo]

This is what I was paraphrasing from Klein (italics mine):

Here is my view: I think you have a deep empathy for Charles Murray’s side of this conversation, because you see yourself in it. I don’t think you have as deep an empathy for the other side of this conversation. For the people being told once again that they are genetically and environmentally and at any rate immutably less intelligent and that our social policy should reflect that. I think part of the absence of that empathy is it doesn’t threaten you. I don’t think you see a threat to you in that, in the way you see a threat to you in what’s happened to Murray.

I listened to the entire podcast with Murrey, and in light of that, this strikes me as complete nonsense. He's commenting on something I didn't hear.

Murrey certainly has ideas about how the government should spend money, but if I followed his logic correctly, it was for egalitarian motives. He wasn't trying to discriminate against anyone (that's if you take his actual words at face value). One might argue that his policies could end up hurting certain people more than others, but to call that racist, you have to then claim that he knows it will hurt some people more than others and either doesn't care or takes perverse pleasure in it.

There was also this that influenced my earlier comment:

What I want to convince you of is that there’s a side of this you should become more curious about. You should be doing shows with people like Ibram Kendi, who is the author of Stamped from the Beginning, which is a book on racist ideas in America which won the National Book Award a couple of years back. People who really study how race and these ideas interact with American life and policy.

I think the fact that we are two white guys talking about how growing up nonwhite in America affects your life and cognitive development is a problem here, just as it was a problem in the Murray conversation.

[_EAllusion]

Murrey certainly has ideas about how the government should spend money, but if I followed his logic correctly, it was for egalitarian motives.

Murray's policy advocacy cannot be described in any reasonable sense as "egalitarian." His overarching goal during his career has been to 1) tear down government programs with egalitarian aims and 2) justify existing inequalities as a natural consequence of relatively immutable characteristics of people rather than cultural factors that can be ameliorated. Over his career, he's actually advocated for this basic position in a few different ways with the conclusion always staying the same.

In no other context can I imagine you simply describing someone with Murray's views by saying, "He's got egalitarian motives. He says so."

He wasn't trying to discriminate against anyone (that's if you take his actual words at face value).

He's pro-eugenics.

He thinks people from countries like your native country should be discouraged from immigrating to the United States because it brings down our heritable national IQ and thus invites social ruin. Like Donald Trump, he wants to see more immigrants from countries like Norway (*wink* *wink*) and less from intellectually impoverished areas of the world like where you hail form.

Likewise, he wants to see black people reproduce less so they do not bring down national IQ and criticizes social welfare programs as deleterious because of how they make life comfortable enough for poor blacks to have children.

I'd describe this as having discrimniantory intent, but your mileage may vary.

One might argue that his policies could end up hurting certain people more than others, but to call that racist, you have to then claim that he knows it will hurt some people more than others and either doesn't care or takes perverse pleasure in it.

He literally cites scientific racist arguments glowingly to dismiss the effects of slavery/segregation on US black populations and to argue for the inherent inferiority of blacks. Those arguments rely on research that has scandalously bad methodological flaws. That's about as racist as racist gets. It's certainly the promotion of racism.

[_Some Schmo]

EA, everything you wrote about Murrey in that last post could be true based on the other things he's said or done in his life, but it was not communicated in the podcast I heard. That's all I'm saying. Apparently, for the podcast, Murrey decided to be on his best behavior. It's the only exposure to him I've had, and I am not comfortable calling him a racist based on that. I trust you are more interested in his career than I am and feel you have enough evidence to be comfortable calling him one.

I've spent more mental energy on this topic than I think it's worth. Ultimately, I don't care if Murrey is a racist, nor do I care about Klein's concerns, which, while might be well-intended, I think are overblown. One thing I will say is that this entire episode has made me far more cautious about throwing around the term "racist."