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Sam Harris Whitewashes ‘The Bell Curve’ During Interview With Charles Murray

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U

unpopularblargh

Member
Link: https://angrywhitemen.org/2017/04/2...l-curve-during-interview-with-charles-murray/

Harris is no stranger to staking out controversial positions on subjects from gun rights to torture, but an endorsement of “race realism” is new territory even for him. Harris began the podcast with an apology to Murray, whom he believes was unfairly maligned. Harris called The Bell Curve “the most controversial book in the last 50 years” because of Murray’s willingness to tackle “a set of nested taboos” on race and intelligence.
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"People don’t wanna hear that a person’s intelligence is in large measure due to his or her genes, and there seems to be very little we can do environmentally to increase a person’s intelligence — even in childhood. It’s not that the environment doesn’t matter, but genes appear to be 50 to 80 percent of the story. People don’t want to hear this. And they certainly don’t want to hear that average IQ differs across races and ethnic groups".
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And, Harris said, “for better or worse, these are all facts,” and “there is almost nothing in psychological science for which there is more evidence than these claims.” He attacked the critiques of Murray’s work as byproducts of a “politically correct moral panic that totally engulfed Murray’s career.”
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Indeed, Murray was listed as a “white nationalist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and his speech to Middlebury College in Vermont — allegedly the first American university to grant a Bachelor’s Degree to an African-American — was met with fierce resistance. All of this, Harris believes, is unwarranted overreaction to a “dispassionate” look at the prevailing scientific literature.

And the discussion between the two was largely congenial, with Harris allowing many of Murray’s claims to go unchecked or agreeing with them outright.
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In fact, Harris didn’t bat an eye when Murray accused critics of race realism — or human biodiversity, or whatever the alt-right calls its racist junk science nowadays — of elitism and compared them to modern-day flat Earthers. As Murray put it: “But at this point, Sam, it’s almost as if we are in the opposite position of conventional wisdom versus elite wisdom that we were, say, when Columbus was gonna sail to America. … It’s the elites who are under the impression that, oh, IQ tests only measure what IQ tests measure, and nobody really is able to define intelligence, and this and that, they’re culturally biased, on and on and on and on. And all of these things are the equivalent of saying the Earth is flat.”
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There's much more at the link above and you can find the podcast on iTunes/Google Play/etc. Lock if old and nuance is missing.
 
S

Slayven

Member
unpopularblargh said:

There's much more at the link above and you can find the podcast on iTunes/Google Play/etc. Lock if old and nuance is missing.
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I am good.

Pro tip people, you don't need a sliderule or a formula to say you hate Niggers. Just say it, be honest with yourself and everyone
 
U

unpopularblargh

Member
Slayven said:
I am good.

Pro tip people, you don't need a sliderule or a formula to say you hate Niggers. Just say it, be honest with yourself and everyone
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He even titled the episode "Forbidden Knowledge" like it's some great scientific fact that's being kept from the public at large and not just a bunch of racist pseudo science.
 
L

lightskintwin

Banned
You mean there's White people that believe in the superiority of their IQ and the inferiority of Blacks IQ determined by their own biased criteria?

I'm shocked.
 
B

BlastProcessing

Member
It's been a horrific couple of decades for the Atheist movement. I'm not sure how it became such a perfect incubator for misogyny and racism, but that's where we are.


Burn it all down and start over.
 
R

Ridisc

Banned
Must admit I listened to the whole episode and absolutely did not come away thinking either was a racist, or had racist motives. If someone wants to explain to me how they are id be happy to hear it, but in isolation, from the podcast, that was not the impression.
 
T

The Jazz Cabbage Master

Member
cackhyena said:
No. I listened to this episode. He flat out asks Murray why he even considers this worth looking into. There's nothing to gain from it.
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Ridisc said:
Must admit I listened to the whole episode and absolutely did not come away thinking either was a racist, or had racist motives. If someone wants to explain to me how they are id be happy to hear it, but in isolation, from the podcast, that was not the impression.
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Yeah I'm confused as well...
Sam Harris hate on here is interesting.
 
B

Banglish

Member
Man, my sister recently asked me what I thought of Harris. Said he was pretty intelligent in terms of STEM etc.. but when it came to geo-politics (*muslims*)... ehhh.

But jesus christ. Is it just me, because I'm not understanding how average intelligence between races is genetic..?
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Ridisc said:
Must admit I listened to the whole episode and absolutely did not come away thinking either was a racist, or had racist motives. If someone wants to explain to me how they are id be happy to hear it, but in isolation, from the podcast, that was not the impression.
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TheLover said:
Yeah I'm confused as well...
Sam Harris hate on here is interesting.
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Will listen later, but is this accurate?

Harris called The Bell Curve “the most controversial book in the last 50 years” because of Murray’s willingness to tackle “a set of nested taboos” on race and intelligence
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T

thesoapster

Member
Perhaps a bias does exist with regards to IQ, but of course most IQ tests possess cultural bias, so it's difficult to use them as a way to compare intelligence of different cultures.
 
R

Ridisc

Banned
thesoapster said:
Perhaps a bias does exist with regards to IQ, but of course most IQ tests possess cultural bias, so it's difficult to use them as a way to compare intelligence of different cultures.
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They addressed this in a section in the podcast, though honestly I cant remember how they did it
 
P

ponpo

( ≖‿≖)
Ridisc said:
They addressed this in a section in the podcast, though honestly I cant remember how they did it
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I think they brought up words being used that were obviously rare in some cultures and that you could get people from those cultures to devise a test that made more culturally appropriate examples.
 
K

kcp12304

Banned
I don't think Sam Harris is a racist but he does get into topics he has no expertise in and punches way above his weight. Like how can you pontificate about gun control, Israel/Palestine, genetics of intelligence, airport security, religion, meditation, torture, philosophy of science, etc.

I was really embarrassing to see him argue with a genuine security expert who gets paid for this kind of stuff and only rebut with some simple thought experiments

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/05/to_profile_or_not_to.html
 
R

Ridisc

Banned
ponpo said:
I think they brought up words being used that were obviously rare in some cultures and that you could get people from those cultures to devise a test that made more culturally appropriate examples.
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If I remember correctly they also raised the differences in iq scores between groups of with more recent levels of assimilation as a way to explain how some groups thrived even though they would purportedly have greater difficulty adapting to the culture.
 
S

Squalor

Junior Member
kcp12304 said:
I don't think Sam Harris is a racist but he does get into topics he has no expertise in and punches way above his weight. Like how can you pontificate about gun control, Israel/Palestine, genetics of intelligence, airport security, religion, meditation, torture, philosophy of science, etc.
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His expertise is propping up white people in all of those cases, so, yes, he's a racist.
 
F

fauxtrot

Banned
Goes to show you that you can be smart in one field and a complete fucking moron in other fields / areas of your life.

But yeah, fuck Sam Harris... I've been saying that he's trash for a loooong time.
 
S

Slayven

Member
If you are having a rational conversation using the Bell Curve(other than laughing at it), you are in the same boat as Flat Earthers, and Homeopathy. Except you are racist
 
R

Ridisc

Banned
I can see this thread going in the way of all the others where we throw out ad hominems in lieu of discussion.

If anyone who thinks this is wrong wants to listen to the podcast and fancies talking about it with someone who has an open mind, feel free to pm me, id be glad to have the discussion.
 
Y

Yeoman

Member
Hopefully this serves as a good lesson to the "Sam Harrris isn't racist he's just stating facts" brigade.
Sam Harris endorsing racial profiling and his nuclear first strike "thought experiment" should have set off warning bells, but of course there were many people (even on NeoGAF) totally ready to defend his every word.
 
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