Brave heroes of Whites Are Smarter Ltd
Ezra Klein on Sam Harris and “we brave awesome white guys are going to talk Forbidden Truth about race now, so suck it up, cowards.”
It starts with a typically smug taunt by brave awesome Sam himself.
I hope @ezraklein is on the case. Scientismic, neo-racialist thought crime never sleeps… https://t.co/U7AJkU3dKt
— Sam Harris (@SamHarrisOrg) March 25, 2018
Klein explains:
The background to Harris’s shot at me is that last year, Harris had Charles Murray on his podcast. Murray is a popular conservative intellectual best known for co-writing The Bell Curve, which posited, in a controversial section, a genetic basis for the observed difference between black and white IQs.
Harris’s invitation came in the aftermath of Murray being shouted down, and his academic chaperone assaulted, as he tried to give an invited address on an unrelated topic at Middlebury College. The aftermath of the incident had made Murray a martyr for free speech, and Harris brought him on the show in part as a statement of disgust with the illiberalism that had greeted Murray on campus.
Harris’s conversation with Murray was titled, tantalizingly, “Forbidden Knowledge,” and in it, Harris sought to rehabilitate the conversation over race and IQ as well as open a larger debate about what can and cannot be said in today’s America. Here is Harris framing the discussion:
People don’t want to 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.
But Brave Sir Sam is here to do what those cowardly people who Don’t Want To Hear It refuse to do – he’s here to assure us that yes white people really are smarter than everyone else, and that’s Science.
Harris returns repeatedly to the idea that the controversy over Murray’s race and IQ work is driven by “dishonesty and hypocrisy and moral cowardice” — not a genuine disagreement over the underlying science or its interpretation. As he puts it, “there is virtually no scientific controversy” around Murray’s argument.
But even if he’s right that there’s no scientific controversy (Klein says in fact there’s plenty), it doesn’t follow that not wanting to go around shouting WHITE PEOPLE ARE SMARTEST OF ALL is necessarily dishonesty and hypocrisy and moral cowardice. I can think of several other things it could be. It strikes me as quite typical of Sam Harris to think dishonesty and hypocrisy and moral cowardice are the only explanation.
Subsequently, Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard E. Nisbett — three academic psychologists who specialize in studying intelligence — wrote a piece for Vox arguing that Murray was peddling pseudoscience and Harris had been irresponsible in representing it as the scientific consensus. (You can read their piece here, a criticism of their piece here, and their response to their critics here.)
Harris responded furiously to their article and publicly challenged me, as Vox’s editor-in-chief at the time, to come on his show and debate the issue. Over email, after failing to persuade Harris to have Turkheimer, Harden, or Nisbett on instead, I accepted Harris’s invitation. Unfortunately, our exchange seemed to only make him angrier. He ultimately refused to have me on his podcast on the grounds that a conversation between the two of us would be “unproductive,” pivoting to a demand that I instead publish an op-ed supporting his views (you can read that piece here) or suggesting instead he simply publishes all our emails to each other (I rejected that because my emails were attempting to set up a podcast between Harris and Vox’s authors, not arguing my position on this issue).
The linked op-ed supporting his views is at Quillette. Of course it is.
Here is my view: Research shows measurable consequences on IQ and a host of other outcomes from the kind of violence and discrimination America inflicted for centuries against African Americans. In a vicious cycle, the consequences of that violence have pushed forward the underlying attitudes that allow discriminatory policies to flourish and justify the racially unequal world we’ve built.
Generations of poverty will do that to people. It’s pretty gruesome to see privileged (yes, privileged, in just about every sense you can think of) guys like Sam Harris falling over themselves to push the “whites just are smarter, it’s Science” line.
The conversation between Murray and Harris, one not unique to them, is particularly important right now because it shows how longstanding, deeply harmful tropes are being rehabilitated across the right as a brave stand against political correctness, and as a justification for cutting social programs and giving up on efforts to foster racial equality.
So he explains where Harris goes wrong.
H/t Screechy Monkey
I’m not exactly sure why it’s brave to take their stance in Trump’s world. I hear liberal friends actually try to sneak this idea in under the table (the inferiority of the darker skinned) while not looking like that is what they’re saying, because they are liberal. They’re just…well, pointing out a few things that everybody knows, and they don’t really mean to say, etc etc etc…then they often manage to follow it up with some “subtle” everybody knows, etc etc etc about women and the not-quite rational, emotional pinkness of women, but meaning it in a good way, of course, because it’s so positive to be stupider and nicer and need someone to rescue you all the time.
Sometimes I wonder if I went to sleep and woke up in 1860 in sort of a reverse Rip Van Winkle.
Ultimately a meaningless clarification, but the so-called “race realists” don’t generally go around saying science proves white people are the smartest, as East Asians score higher on IQ tests and they accept that as accurate.
Note that I am not agreeing with them on any of their claims!
Latest development: Harris got pissed off at Klein’s article, and followed through on his “threat” to publish their email conversation from a year ago when Vox (not via an article written or edited by Klein) wrote about Murray’s interview.
Harris is apparently under the impression that these emails will make Klein look bad, but so far the reaction on Twitter seems to be that Harris comes off as the jerk.
I’m still working my way through, but I had to smile at this bit from Klein (who really does start off very nice and complimentary to Harris and his podcast):
Reminds me a lot of the Sam Harris Two Step; no wonder Harris and Murray get along so well!
Oh, Harris’s portion of this discussion is priceless.
His entire theme is, yes, we should discuss this on my podcast, but I don’t wanna talk to the scientists who wrote about Murray’s scientific claims, I want you, a non-expert, to come on my podcast to discuss how political correctness has suppressed True Science and how people like me and poor Charles Murray are smeared by people like the scientists I’m refusing to interview.
It’s just nuts. One of the basic principles of having productive discussions with another person is that you can’t get anywhere by making the discussion topic What Motivates You to Be Wrong About Issue X, especially when you refuse to discuss the merits of Issue X!
Then he busts out this gem:
THE LURKERS SUPPORT ME IN EMAIL! Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that one; I don’t mind telling you, it brought tears of nostalgia.
…and now I’ve finished. Klein remains polite and measured throughout the discussion; Harris gets increasingly agitated. It really is astonishing that he thinks he comes off the better in this exchange.
I’ve never understood the argument…if, as they suggest, the percentage of IQ that is related to genes is 50-80 percent, then at the best you could get a large boost from the 50% that was attributable to environment by working with the individuals who were poor and otherwise environmentally challenged; even at 80 percent genes, you would still get a significant amount of improvement if you worked with that 20 percent, and when you take into account the level of error in those tests, and the variation around the mean, it seems possible that, even with their insistence on the amount of it that is attributable to genes, working to improve the environmental conditions and educational opportunities for those who are lesser (i.e., non-white non-Asians, plus, of course, women) could perhaps erase the performance gap, even if we accept their assumption (which I am not, since there doesn’t seem to be much more than their say so and some rather dicey studies that back them up).
Oh, yes, the famous “many well-known scientists” dodge. Does he realize he shares that same argument with the creationists? I’m sure those are not the bedfellows he would hope for, but they are the ones he decided to lie down with.
inklast,
Yeah, apparently even tenure isn’t enough security for these secretive scientists to come forward in support of these Bold Truths. Look at what could happen to them — they could end up like poor Charles Murray, offered endless interviews and profiles and magazine articles and book deals while he struggles to make ends meet on the meagre salary of an AEI fellow.
As Klein’s piece notes, the fate of the “oppressed conservative intellectual” isn’t that dire. Even Milo, who can hardly be said to be an intellectual in any sense, was riding the gravy train pretty well for a while there.
“Sometimes I wonder if I went to sleep and woke up in 1860 in sort of a reverse Rip Van Winkle.”
Wink Van Ripple?
I’ve listened to a number of interviews and podcasts about IQ measure over the years. The consensus seemed to be that they are a rough guide at best. And then only in the population they are designed for.
– IQ tests contain cultural and educational biases, rather than testing any immutable and innate trait.
– You get better at IQ tests the more you do them.
– Even allowing for genetic determination, there are many environmental chemicals proven to have negative effects on brain development and learning ability (i.e. environmental) such as lead, cadmium and alcohol just to skim the surface. Lead levels (from petrol) in inner city areas used to be frighteningly high in the USA. It was one of the reasons why it was phased out.
IQ testing and the broad conclusions that the likes of Murray drew from it without a causal link is a fraction of a step up from pseudo science.
Rob, I was told many years ago that IQ rating only signifies a person’s ability for passing IQ tests, and calling somebody highly intelligent based on a high IQ test score was equivalent to calling somebody extremely healthy because they passed a liver function test.
NY Times: What is your I.Q.?
Stephen Hawking: I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.
source
“As he puts it, “there is virtually no scientific controversy” around Murray’s argument.”
Wait, what? I’m not in the field, but my understanding was that Murray’s position is a decidedly minority one, and that most specialists (as Rob noted above) argue that IQ scores are a rough guide at best to one’s skills and abilities.
Rob @ 9 is right.
The year of psychology I did at uni was in the academic year 1960-61, before most of the world’s current population was born. We covered the bits about the history, the relevance of practice on either the tests themselves or helpful exercises, the cultural biases inherent in the tests and also how the earlier ones (Burt and co) were quite deliberately skewed to produce the results which an hierarchical and somewhat racist society demanded.
We did not know as much then as we do now about environmental pollutants and we are still working on the effects of diet, social and economic insecurity. This last is something that the Maudesley in London has been studying for years.
How come Superhero Sam doesn’t know about all this? It almost looks as though he is the worst sort of pseudo-scientist, the one who grew up with a few prejudices and now wastes a decent education hunting high and low, usually low, to find someone who will tell him he is right.
The real problem with Murray is that he talks about race. The proper term is population, and blacks would include populations from all parts of Africa, the Tamils, the Samoans, the Hawaiians, and the Aborigines of Australia and the South Pacific. These are all different populations with different heritages and genetic makeups; there are some black populations who have more genetic material in common with the Finns than they do with other black populations. American blacks are an assortment of all these different populations. You can’t lump them together for anything, because the only thing that they really have in common is dark skin.
And that gives the whole game away, doesn’t it?
I think I agree with everything above. Saves my finding the Hawking quote, which was pointed out to me by Neil de Grasse Tyson. Just imagine the artificial voice saying “LOSERS”! :D
Who, may I point out, is not white, so he is probably not intelligent enough to get that right…or do these guys manage to realize that Tyson is (at least) as smart as they are? I mean, he is male, that’s one mark in his favor, and he has managed to penetrate the upper reaches of STEM fields, so maybe he’s just the exceptional exception most of these brave heroes are willing to acknowledge occur, if only to keep intact their overall assumption of supremacy by assuming the exceptional exceptionalness of one or two non-white (and maybe a handful of non-male) individuals that are simply “outliers” in their group.
iknklast @17,
It’s the latter explanation. This is why Murray insists that he’s not a racist and that his assertions don’t have racist implications. Murray (and Harris) will cheerfully tell you that, if you’re interviewing candidates for a particular job, of course you shouldn’t take race into account, because the individual variances within the races swamp out the differences between races, so in any particular set of job candidates there’s no reason to prefer one race over another. On the other hand, Murray does think that his work has implications for social policy.
It’s pretty much James Damore’s gender views, applied to race. Sure, there will be individual women who are interested in and good at programming, but (Damore asserts) the overall gender disparity in the profession is attributable to inherent differences and therefore isn’t evidence of discrimination, therefore there isn’t a discrimination problem. As I wrote in a comment-turned-guest-post, that’s an incredibly dubious chain of reasoning when there’s so much much hard evidence showing that discrimination is real and has an impact.
The same applies here. As people have pointed out throughout this thread, and all over the place whenever Murray’s “suppressed” views get yet another prominent airing, there are so many known instances of environmental (including socioeconomic and cultural) factors that work against African-Americans, that to suggest that we’re anywhere close to saying “any disparities in outcome can be safely attributed to genetic differences” is preposterous.
When I was growing up, I would occasionally hear some idiot claim, with a straight face, that the reason there were so few black hockey players was that “their ankles aren’t strong enough, so they tend to ankle-skate.” (For those not familiar with the term: “ankle-skating” means that you’re bending at the ankles. But pretty much everybody does that when they’re learning to skate — it’s a function of developing the skills, not some issue of inherent bone structure or musculature.) Yeah, sure, that must be it. Nothing to do with the fact that the black population is lower in traditional hockey hotbeds, or the fact that it’s one of the more expensive sports for kids to play, or racist attitudes discouraging them — must be the ankles! (Ankle strength, presumably, being a non-factor in basketball, or boxing, or distance running, or sprinting, or any of the many other sports where black athletes have done just fine….)
Oh god – the ankle thing made me laugh. Spend enough time reading Sam Harris in a tantrum and you start to get giddy. Must.leave.desk.
I recall somewhere coming across the reported results of a study of attitudes of children in war zones vs children in US slums. The war zone children (I think it was somewhere in the former Yugoslavia if I recall correctly) were more positive and optimistic than those in the slums. The story I read/heard said resrearchers interpreted the results thus: the children in the war zone knew that their current situation was abnormal and temporary; the slum dwelling kids knew that their conditions were normal and permanent.
If Harris reads the Klein piece without changing his tune, then he is being wilfully ignorant and deserves no benefit of any doubt at all. There are so many red flags in the (likely less than exhaustive) list of both historical and presently occuring structural and systemic racism not accounted for or filtered in the out in the testing that any result that ignores them will be utterly meaningless. To continue insisting that “that’s just the way it is” and to continue to recommend policy based on such fatally unwarranted conclusions is not a neutral, unbiased, dispassionate or uninterested stance. It constitutes endorsement, advocacy for and support of continued systemic, structural racism. If Harris can’t see this it is only because he does not want to, not because it’s not there.
Ankle skating? Oh, good grief! Not to mention that in the sports you mention, black athletes have not only done just fine, they have utterly dominated for decades.
iknklast:
Brilliant. That reminded me of a popular belief when I was young, that black people couldn’t swim because their bones were “too heavy” so they sank! I refused to believe it because I went to the local swimming baths every week with my best friend who matched me stroke-for-stroke in the pool. He was a Jamaican immigrant.